February 25, 2026 • 34 mins
The 1997 science fiction film Gattaca depicts a dystopian future where genetic technology creates a two-tier society: people who were born with the “best” genes selected vs. people who were conceived naturally. This was a cautionary tale, showing us a future we don’t want. But now, Silicon Valley is heavily investing in making this technology real. Dexter talks to Amanda Gerut, West Coast editor at Fortune, about the rise of polygenic screening companies, the investment in gene editing of embryos, and how close we are to creating designer babies.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
- Amanda’s article, “Silicon Valley sets its sights on building the perfect baby” - https://fortune.com/2025/11/29/ivf-silicon-valley-billionaire-baby/
- WSJ's reporting, “Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned. Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway.” - https://www.wsj.com/tech/biotech/genetically-engineered-babies-tech-billionaires-6779efc8
- kill switch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Have you seen Gatica.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I love that movie and I actually rewatched it when
I was reporting this story.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Amanda Garrett is the West Coast editor of Fortune, and
she recently wrote an article about how Silicon Valley is
investing in fertility technology to create the quote perfect baby.
This is a concept that's been around in science fiction
for decades, and a good example of that is in
a movie from almost thirty years ago called Gatica.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I mean, in so many conversations with people who are
outside this industry, a lot of them, you know, would
sort of refer to Gatica like a future ESSEC kind
of We're going to change your genes and make you superhuman,
amazing looking, just like Jude Law or Uma Seraman.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
If you haven't seen Gatica, I don't know, pause the
podcast and go watch it. But all so, it came
out in nineteen ninety seven, like don'd tell you honestly,
I kind of feel like we may be at a
stage where Gatka is required reading or required watching just
for understanding what's happening right now if you need to
catch up. Without giving you too many spoilers here. Gatica
(01:17):
is a science fiction film that's set in a dystopian
future in which there are two tiers of people. At
the top, you have valid people. These are people who've
been genetically selected to be the healthiest and most attractive possible,
and at the bottom, people who were conceived naturally. And
these people are called literally invalids. So valids get access
(01:37):
to certain high class jobs and invalids don't. The story
follows Vincent Freeman, who is an invalid played by Ethan Hawk,
who kind of borrows the identity of a valid man
played by Jude Law to try to achieve his dream
of going to space.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
And that's the way it was. Each day I would
dispose of as much loose skin, fingernails and hair as
possible to limit how much of my invalid self I
would leave in the valid world.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's fully instantly in a way that like he's a
newborn baby every day scraping off his cell so that
he doesn't leave a cell behind. Because there are all
these sort of genetic identifiers everywhere you go. You need
to get into work well, just like bioscan you to
like get in and then you know, even urine he's got,
like Jude Law's urine that he's leaving behind because he
can't even be behind his own urine.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
At the same time, Eugene prepared samples of his own
superior body matter so that I might pass for him,
customized urine pouches for the frequent substance tests, fingertip blood
sachets for security checks, and vials filled with other traces.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
The idea is that he is trying, as a normal
person to be just as good as you know the
people who are these sort of super human who started
out as designer babies.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And according to a man is reporting, there is a
lot of money going toward making that scie my future
of designer babies get here faster than you might have thought.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
People inside this industry is fertility tech kind of startup space.
They're very optimistic and very excited about what's possible.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, this is kill Switch. I'm
Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
I'm all right, I'm sorry, good bye.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Where are we right now? With all of this technology, this.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Is sort of a burgeoning twenty five billion dollar industry,
this fertility tech startup industry. Twenty twenty four was sort
of one of the biggest years for investment. There was
like a two billion dollar jump over the year before
twenty twenty five. I think, you know, we don't have
numbers yet, but I think we'll see that definitely be exceeded.
Just based on some of the major tech money that
(04:40):
is backing up a lot of these startups.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Silicon Valley is heavily investing in the fertility tech industry.
There's big names like Reddit co founder Alex o'hanian, open
Ai CEO Sam Altman, and twenty three and Meter co
founder and former CEO. And we just if you live
in New York, you might have seen the ads on
the subway that read have your Best Baby telling you
to go to www dot Pickyourbaby dot com to I
(05:04):
guess have your best baby. Those ads are from Nucleus Genomics,
and there's other companies like Orchid Health and Haroosite, and
these companies are offering what's called polygenic screening.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Traditional IVF testing looks at chromosomes and single gene diseases
like cystic fibrosis, sicle cele, anemia, taseas, and these new
breed of companies are sort of claiming that they can
predict more complex traits through the polygetic screening. So it'll
take some cells and then they use AI to amplify it,
and then you have a genome that you can study,
(05:36):
and so they'll look at that genome and they can
use it to predict complex traits like childhood cancers, autism,
spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, fight no shape, hair texture.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Dollar nose shape, no.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Shape, face shape, and then on the margins you have
things that people are interesting in. That kind of science
doesn't necessarily back up like IQ musical ability.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Genetic testing of embryos itself isn't a new thing. Screening
has been part of the IVF process since the nineties,
but those tests could only show you so much. You
could figure out the sex of the embryo or traits
for certain genetic disorders. But now the introduction of AI
is really pushing forward what's possible with polygenic screening.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So human genome consists of three billion base pairs. You
get one set from each parent, so there's a total
of six billion base pairs in each cell. So that's
a lot of data, right, So you're using AI to
when you get your five or six cells from your embryo,
you're using AI to amplify that and see what it
(06:48):
would look like as a human and then you're checking
against data to see what the potential person might be ultimately.
And the backers in this space are a lot of
it's a lot of tech money, it's a lot of
people who are interested in AI. AI is great at
detecting patterns, and this sort of fits the bill.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The founders of these polygenic screening companies are betting on
their technology to be able to accurately screen for things
like height, or complicated health disorders, or even personality.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The founders themselves, they're banking embryos and they're planning to
screen for these traits in their future kid. Like the
founder of Harisite is named Michael Christiansen. He's sixty six,
you know, and he's planning to screen his own embryos
when he's ready for kids, to make them a little
bit shorter because he's like sixty six is kind of annoying,
it's hard to travel. That's a little bit too tall.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That is fascinating. That was the first thing that hit
me of the opening line with your article is that
he's six six. He wishes that he was short. He
wants his kid to be shorter because it's inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, another one of the geneticists there, Tobias wool from it.
He hit the genetic lottery in terms of his health.
But you know, he's like, I have depression in my history,
and it's something that I don't want to pass on.
He and his partner don't want to pass it on
in their future children, so it's something that they're planning
to screen for. So these are people who are really
(08:08):
highly information taking. They want to be as controlled as possible,
and so they're just extremely focused on optimizing the whole
entire birth experience the same way they would optimize everything
about their lives.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And so just to clarify here, so basically, you can
essentially choose the embryo that has the traits that you want,
and if it has traits that you're worried about or
do not want, you can not use those for IVF exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Like, if you're screening your embryos and you see that
your potential child could have a high likelihood of having
a childhood cancer, the idea is that you wouldn't want
to choose that embryo. You would want to choose a
different embryo.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, I know this is a lot already, but let's
pause for a second. So right now we're talking about
the ability to screen for cancer. So just imagine you're
already going through IVF and you have the option, the
opportunity to choose an embryo to avoid a high risk
of a potentially fatal disease. Would you take that opportunity?
(09:13):
So hold on to that answer in your mind, whatever
it is, right now, and let's go a little further.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I spoke with a couple from the Bay Area, Roshan
George and Julie King. Rochan's firm. He has a consulting
firm called Technology Brother. Like Techbro, they're highly information seeking people.
They just wanted to know everything they could possibly know
about their embryos, and so they discovered going through IVF testing,
they shared a genetic mutation, which is basically like a
(09:39):
typo in your DNA, where there's a G there should
be an A. You know it's on. There's no manifestation,
but a couple together, the likelihood of them having a
child that becomes profoundly deaf is a real thing. So
they'd wound up screening their embryos using the polygenetic screening
at orc at Health, and then it came down to
like ninety seconds in the hospital, the audio tech comes in,
(10:01):
sticks things in the baby's ears, and then they're like,
hearing's normal. What's interesting too about Rosan George, he talks
a lot about his experience doing this, and he talked
with a father whose son has the condition that they
were worried about their daughter having. And this other father
said he wished he would have known about the genetic
(10:22):
screening technology before a son was born, but that said,
he also couldn't imagine substituting out his actual son with
a son who could hear. And so for Rosian, his
reflection about this was that no one's ever thinking you're
substituting out the actual child who's there. But we're all
(10:46):
trying to ensure that you have a child who is
as healthy as possible, and you want your child to
have the full range of human experiences without being limited.
One of those sources I spoke with for the story
is age stamp expert named Ferry Bear, and he said,
advisor to work at health and he's made huge strides
in terms of IDF advancements, and his feeling was there's
(11:09):
nothing that you wouldn't do for your kid, like don't
tell me that you wouldn't want to do this because
you wouldn't want to meddle with how things are supposed
to be. You know. His feeling was, if the science
can show you how to have a better outcome for
your child, most people are going to choose in their
(11:31):
heart of hearts to go that route. And so people
think of about it really in those terms. Despite sort
of the cautionary gataka like slippery slope, it exists where
you get into some of those issues like IQ or
how athletic is your child going to be? Et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
But okay, we got a backup. This is all assuming
that this stuff actually works. So really, how accurate is
polygenic screening? Where's the line between real science and science fiction? Also?
How much does it cost? We'll get into both of
those questions after the break. How common is embryo screening?
(12:20):
Is this just a Silicon Valley thing? Especially this more
advanced stuff that we're talking about, the.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
More advanced that you're paying for out of your pocket,
and the price ranges for this from Russian George and
Julie King, they spent about twelve five hundred dollars. That's
on the low end, but it goes all the way
up to fifty thousand dollars fifty k, right, so this
is obviously going to be more affluent, wealthy parents who
are looking into this. It's not covered by insurance, so
(12:50):
this is sort of a small pocket. But it does
continue to grow and grow and grow. But I wouldn't say,
you know, there are not a thousand babies out there
in Silicon Valley that have gone through polygenic screening at
these startups. We're probably in hundreds.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So okay, These polygenic screening companies are promising that you
can screen for a lot of different things. Nucleus Genomics
that's the company with those heavier best Baby ads. They
have a long list of over two thousand diseases, traits,
and other factors that they can test for. But how
reliable and how accurate is this stuff?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
The experts who I spoke with basically said there is
a lot of science backing up certain traits like physical traits, sex,
Do you want a boy? Do you want a girl?
The single cell gene disorders that we talked about TASAC
sickle cell Tristey twenty one, which is the chromosomal disorder
(13:47):
that leads to down syndrome. All of these things will
be there in your genome, but it's these things on
the margin that people tend to be most excited and
interested in and just in read to buy, which would
be like height, IQ, musical ability, Will you be a
good picture? Are you going to be Clayton Kershaw? You know,
the critics in this space really are very skeptical about
(14:11):
how effective the pologetic screening is for these other things.
One of the experts for I spoke with from Illumina
and he do a lot with testing themselves and looking
at genomes. They were saying that one of the reasons
that we're not as close as we could be is
that they're just aren't enough people who have had their
genome mapped. We're about at one million. We need to
(14:34):
be at a billion, and then we need to go
beyond that in order to have a really good set
of data in order to be able to make these
outcomes more meaningful and more accurate. And I did speak
with this great sort of pioneer in this field. His
name is Hank Greeley, and he's at Stanford and he
knows a lot of the players in the space because
(14:55):
they were his students. So he was saying this stuff
this awesome clickbait dystopian fiction. But he was like, there's
so much hype, like separating the actual science what's possible
now versus the hype. We're decades away from that. But
this is also like the tech money, this being sort
(15:17):
of a Bay Area kind of wealthy family conversation starter.
Hype is part of it. Hype is sort of part
of what makes Silicon Valley go round, right, But hype
with babies is also a little bit like this is different. Right,
We're talking about human beings and we don't want to
think about this products or projects.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Regardless of what the science says. Now, these companies are
promising these results for their clients, even if they do
say that they have some internal guardrails for what they
will and will not do.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
So Harrasite, for instance, talks about you know, IQ hype, BMI,
et cetera. They feel confident that they can screen for
this potential. Nothing is guaranteed. You know, there's no such
thing as a designer baby, is what they told me,
and that they don't make designer babies. They won't There
are certain things they will not do. For instance, they
(16:10):
won't allow you to choose a child that's a psychopath.
They won't allow you to choose your child's skin color,
for instance. There are just certain things that they wouldn't
want to do, but they are really confident that we're
very close to being able to do those things, and
they're really optimistic about their abilities to help you screening
(16:31):
for the potential there.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So there are critics who would say that these new
tech fertility companies are getting into what you could call
techno eugenics. And you can also imagine that there might
be a slippery slope that would lead to something like
the valids and invalids of Gatica. And yet there are
companies and investors who are taking this stuff even further
to gene editing in embryos.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So gene editing it involves editing the embryo before it's implanted.
It is extremely controversial, and I want to say controversial
in all caps.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Editing embryonic genes has been a taboo since precise gene
editing became possible with something called crisper. This has been
used on adults and even children to treat genetic diseases,
including a baby who was successfully treated with crisper therapy
just last May, but editing the genes of an embryo
is way more controversial and its outright band in most countries,
(17:31):
but it has been done. In twenty eighteen, a Chinese
researcher named Hudgin Quay reported that he had genetically altered
twin girls to be resistant to HIV.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Two beautiful Nito Chinese guard named the Lulu and Lana
came crying into the world as healthy as any other
babies a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This is Hudgincoay in his video announcing the birth of
those twin girls.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
We mark Sahadalta for the first had he said that
he never thought he could be a father. No, he
has found a reason to leave, a reason to walk,
a purpose. You see Mark has ivjeene surgery is and
(18:17):
should it remain a technology for hearning, enhancing IQ or
selecting how or I call it that suld be banned.
I understand them work would be controversial, but I believe
family need this technology and I'm willing to take the
criticism for them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Ujinkway wasn't just criticized. He was sentenced to three years
in prison for illegally practicing embryonic gene editing, which you
would think would scare people off from gene editing technology,
but not everyone. Some people are investing in it. The
Wall Street Journal reported late last year about investments from
Sam Altman's husband and also from coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
(19:03):
into a company called Preventive that wants to experiment with
gene editing. They're just going to do it in places
outside the US, like United Arab Emirates, where this stuff
is allowed.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I did speak with a woman named Kathy t who's
also former Stanford former Teal fellow. She started a firm
called Manhattan Genomics, and she is planning to test on
non human climates this year. She said there's a lot
of support in the background for her because people do
(19:35):
feel like, why not explore this area if we can,
why leave this untouched if it's something that we could
potentially get right. One of the points that she made
that I thought was really compelling was that older women
struggle to get a lot of eggs in order to
make embryos, and then sometimes they don't make enough eggs,
(19:57):
and so you have to go back and stimulate your
follow cles to get more eggs. So that's like an
arduous process. You're injecting yourself with hormones every day. It's painful.
You can't turn and bend if you are injecting yourself
with hormones. These are things that women know, but like
people don't necessarily talk about them because women are just like,
I'm going about my daily life even though I am
not able to bend over' just going to get through
(20:18):
this because I want to have a baby. So, you know,
her point is sort of women are having children later
in life. They just are like, that's what all of
the data shows us, and it's more difficult, and gene
editing potentially makes that easier, particularly for this group of
women who are having children later in life, and that
(20:40):
it gives you more of a shot at having your
own biological child.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Gen editing right now is not legal. You can't do
that now, not in the US. But you've got companies
who are based in the US who are putting money
into this. Are they proposing to change the laws to
get around this? Somehow?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I think they're hoping for you know, with this administration,
they're being sort of less restriction on around innovation and
medical testing and those kinds of things. So I think
that that's the hope.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Really, that the laws will change to allow for whatever
does they want to do technologically with designer babies.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Right, and that there'll be more research, more advancements, that
they'll be more in the space. There's a regulatory vacuum
right now. One of the lawyers who I spoke with said,
the law always struggles to keep up with technology, so
there's a lot of advancement and experimentation that happens when
there's a regulatory vacuum, when things aren't like banned outright.
So I think that with the gene editing piece, there's
(21:44):
a lot of optimism and hope there. But because it's
so controversial, people don't really want to touch it. It's
like a third rail almost in this space that it's
just people are less conversant in it. They're more afraid
of what we'll have and it does sound scary. We
don't know what it means, you know, generations to come
(22:04):
a few edit your genes for your baby.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So if scientists don't think we're there yet to predict
complex traits from genetic testing, then editing genes to get
those traits seems even further away. But some very rich
people are betting that those scientists and those lawyers are wrong,
and if those bets pay off, they have a very
specific vision of what the future could look like. That's
(22:29):
after the Break. A few years back, a South African
lawyer wrote a brief article in an academic journal where
she was partially talking about the legal and moral implications
(22:51):
of genetiting, but she also makes a comparison between the
film Gatica to the real life era of South African
apartheid that she expect sperience. And it makes sense because
the plot of Gatica centers on a kind of genetic apartheid,
the divide between the valids and the invalids, and we
the viewers were supposed to identify with the invalid character
(23:13):
who's played by Ethan Hawk, because in this society, we
would also be invalid in the film, this is a
future that we do not want. And yet one of
the investors in this industry, Coinbay CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted
the other day quote, the IVF Clinic of the Future
will combine a handful of technologies parentheses the Gatica stack.
(23:36):
He goes on to describe this Gataka stack as including
technologies that would allow for embryo editing, including for what
he calls enhancement, and also allow for creating artificial wounds.
He also says that quote it would start to accelerate evolution.
It seems like a meme at this point. But it's
like some people watch these techno dystopian movies and say,
(24:00):
that would be dope. We should do that, you know,
will be really cool. We should have Sky in it, yeah,
and have it go live. Yeah, you're supposed to watch
Terminator and say that would suck. I don't want that.
You're supposed to watch Gatica and say that would suck.
I don't want that, And somebody's watching it, somebody with
a lot of money's watching and say, you know, it
(24:20):
would be really cool if we did that thing that
that guy told me not to do. That we all
as a society agreed that that'd be a bad idea.
Let's do that thing.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah. These are all supposed to be cautionary tales.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yes, thirty years ago, these.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Were cautionary tales. Today they're aspirational tales like let's do that.
But I mean, if you think about it, there is
also like if I think of like biohackers. So people
who are doing peptides, glp ones, nad talking about how
they're gonna live for a very long time. The Gatica
(24:56):
stack feels like it takes a lot of those same boxes,
like demize your kid because you want your kid to
be as healthy as possible, the same way you're becoming
as healthy as possible by hacking your biological decline. So
it feels very and I hate to use this phrase
but on brand, but yeah, it is interesting how we've
(25:16):
totally gone to the upside down. Whereas we used to
be like, well, this would be terrible. We would all
be invalid and not given chances to fulfill our hopes
and desires and dreams in this world. And then now
we're like, let's do it. Well, let's turbocharge our embryos
and pump it up and have the just the dopest
(25:38):
best baby we can possibly have. Right, But when I
rewatched Gatica, I still was rooting for our invalid hero,
our invalid avenging angel ethan Haaks Like I was like,
he's the hero. And when they do he and his
like superior and finger quotes brother go and they do
that swimming contest the very dangerous that they do where
(25:59):
they go on the ocean, in the store or whatever.
The brother who's supposed to be superior as strungers like
how did Joys beat them? And he says, I never
sank anything for the way back legend, right, Like, I'm
rooting for him in Europe so even now, but I
don't know, you know, I wasn't forged in the fires
of crypto and all of these other things that I
feel like, you know, so you think different I think differently. Yeah,
(26:24):
I'm rooting for Eakalk. Some people are clearly rooting for
his superior brother.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know, you don't really have to watch Gatika to
imagine a twos tier society. You don't have to watch
Gadeka to imagine second class citizens. Functionally speaking, this is
kind of what we're talking about here. I mean, you
were saying, what is twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, that's the low end, that would be the low end.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, on the low end, Yeah, twelve thousand dollars on
low end, fifty k on the high end. I could
imagine it going upwards of that. A lot of people
can barely afford to have a child, period, and so
I mean, are we now just in a situation where
rich people with access to this kind of capital can
(27:10):
have kids that will further have more advantages in their life,
and everybody else gets left behind?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Huge issue. Yes, yes, exactly right. I mean IVF itself
is very, very expensive. So the barrier to entry to
even having a child if you deal with fertility issues
is already there. We're already there. This could definitely make
it a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
We hear the word design er baby thrown around a lot.
It seems like we're getting a little bit closer to
that as a reality. What does that word mean for you?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Designer baby means to me is a sort of fictitious
concept that will I don't think ever be a reality
because I just don't think that at that base level.
I think think that what makes a human being is
so much more to do with how you grow up
(28:04):
and your experience is growing up. I just think it's
a fictitious concept. I think people are interested in trying
to make that concept as close to reality as possible.
Design your baby, but I don't think it gets you
to that outcome because there's a lot more that after
the embryo comes out of the lady, Like, you know,
one day it's in the womb, one day it's out.
(28:25):
And once it's out, it's like you still have to
get that baby to sleep and eat and put them
in preschool and do those things. You know, So it's
like it's an uphill slog regardless. And Hank Greeley was saying,
you know, don't forget there are other things that we
know influence childhood outcomes, like reading to your kids, taking
them to the park, good nutrition, getting them vaccinated, Like
(28:47):
those are studied and have a much more meaningful and
larger impact on how high you'll be able to vertically
jump than the genetic material that you're starting with.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, I mean to take a couple steps back and
think about the genetically superior child who may be born,
not just of you know, embryo selection, but we're talking
about gene editing. Right, some kid is they got their
genes edited. I mean to the nines. They're tall, they're handsome,
they're muscular, they're whatever, and then they're not so good
(29:27):
at the piano, not as good as mom and dad hoped.
Does mom and dad go complain about a defective product
and won a little bit of a refund, Like, how
does that even work?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean I imagine that it turns into just torture
for the kid, like we spent all this money to
make you perfect, and what's wrong? You know? And I
did talk with ethicists who say that there's so much
danger in thinking of your child as being the best
from the get go, telling them that they're superior birth,
(30:03):
that they're going to be able to do all these things.
And then what if they don't. What if they're a
little chubby or not really good at the violin, or
they don't really feel like playing music, do you love them? Lest?
Luckily this doesn't apply to me because I have children
and definitely not having anymore. But you know, it's like
what I do this, But then I think about what
(30:25):
I would want, Like you want your kid to feel joy,
You want your kids to be kind and curious? Right?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah? I mean it doesn't sound like anybody is really
just aching to find the gene for kindness. I would
love that. Listen if you wrote an article that you
told me dexter, Listen, these people out here, they're trying
to make sure that they have the kindest, most empathetic kids.
I say, you know what, let me step back. Maybe
(30:52):
I'm being a hater here, but when I hear you
know you want your kids hair color to be such
and such, you want to be such and such a height,
You're gonna be good as such such sport, I'm feeling
like I'm back in Gadega again. You know what. Matter
of fact, let's go back to Gatica again. So early
in the movie, when the main character is born, the
doctors scan him and tell the parents that, hey, your
(31:14):
kid has a potential heart condition, and also he's going
to be a little near sighted, he'll probably need glasses,
and so this child is now invalid. And then we
see this montage of the kid being discriminated against, like
the preschool won't even let him in the door. So
the parents decide to have another kid, and they're going
to make sure that this kid is going to be valid.
(31:35):
So they meet with the doctor that talks them through
what kind of child they're going to get.
Speaker 6 (31:39):
You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair, and fair skin.
I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial
conditions pretty much, your baldness, myopia, alcoholism, and addictive susceptibility
propuncity for violence, obesity, et cetera.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
We didn't want I mean diseases, yes, but just wondering
if it's good to just leave a few things to
the chance. You want to give your child the best possible.
Start believing we have enough imperfection built in already. Your
child isn't needing additional burdens. And keep in mind, this
child is still you, simply the best.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Of you, Still you, simply the best of you. And
of course, as the viewer, you're supposed to think this
is terrible, and yet here we are.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know, very Bear, who made a lot of advancements
in IVF technology. He was like, it used to be
horrible to show your collarbones and your knees, and now
people are wearing thongs at the beach, you know when
he was like that line moves with time and we
eventually get born more.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Comfortable with it, or may we all continue to be invalid?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Invalid heroes unite. We are leading at this point.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Thank you so much for listening to kill Switch. If
you want to talk, you can email us at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram. We're at
kill Switch Pod And if you dug the show and
want to do a favor for some fellow random, invalid stranger,
get that phone back at your pocket and leave us
a review. Seriously, it helps other people find the show
and you can think of that as your good deed
(33:27):
for the day. Also, did you know that kill Switch
is on YouTube? Watching the show is a whole different experience,
So if you're into that, the link for that and
everything else is in the show notes. Kill Switch is
hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki,
Darluk Potts, and Julia Nutter. Our theme song is by
me and Kyle Murdoch and Kyle also mixed the show
(33:48):
from Kalaidoscope. Our executive producers are Oswa Lashin, Mangesh Hotigador
and Kate Osborne from iHeart Our executive producers a Katrina
Norville and Nikki E.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Tour.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Catch on the Next One by m HM
Have you seen Gatica.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I love that movie and I actually rewatched it when
I was reporting this story.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Amanda Garrett is the West Coast editor of Fortune, and
she recently wrote an article about how Silicon Valley is
investing in fertility technology to create the quote perfect baby.
This is a concept that's been around in science fiction
for decades, and a good example of that is in
a movie from almost thirty years ago called Gatica.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I mean, in so many conversations with people who are
outside this industry, a lot of them, you know, would
sort of refer to Gatica like a future ESSEC kind
of We're going to change your genes and make you superhuman,
amazing looking, just like Jude Law or Uma Seraman.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
If you haven't seen Gatica, I don't know, pause the
podcast and go watch it. But all so, it came
out in nineteen ninety seven, like don'd tell you honestly,
I kind of feel like we may be at a
stage where Gatka is required reading or required watching just
for understanding what's happening right now if you need to
catch up. Without giving you too many spoilers here. Gatica
(01:17):
is a science fiction film that's set in a dystopian
future in which there are two tiers of people. At
the top, you have valid people. These are people who've
been genetically selected to be the healthiest and most attractive possible,
and at the bottom, people who were conceived naturally. And
these people are called literally invalids. So valids get access
(01:37):
to certain high class jobs and invalids don't. The story
follows Vincent Freeman, who is an invalid played by Ethan Hawk,
who kind of borrows the identity of a valid man
played by Jude Law to try to achieve his dream
of going to space.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
And that's the way it was. Each day I would
dispose of as much loose skin, fingernails and hair as
possible to limit how much of my invalid self I
would leave in the valid world.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's fully instantly in a way that like he's a
newborn baby every day scraping off his cell so that
he doesn't leave a cell behind. Because there are all
these sort of genetic identifiers everywhere you go. You need
to get into work well, just like bioscan you to
like get in and then you know, even urine he's got,
like Jude Law's urine that he's leaving behind because he
can't even be behind his own urine.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
At the same time, Eugene prepared samples of his own
superior body matter so that I might pass for him,
customized urine pouches for the frequent substance tests, fingertip blood
sachets for security checks, and vials filled with other traces.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
The idea is that he is trying, as a normal
person to be just as good as you know the
people who are these sort of super human who started
out as designer babies.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And according to a man is reporting, there is a
lot of money going toward making that scie my future
of designer babies get here faster than you might have thought.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
People inside this industry is fertility tech kind of startup space.
They're very optimistic and very excited about what's possible.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, this is kill Switch. I'm
Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
I'm all right, I'm sorry, good bye.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Where are we right now? With all of this technology, this.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Is sort of a burgeoning twenty five billion dollar industry,
this fertility tech startup industry. Twenty twenty four was sort
of one of the biggest years for investment. There was
like a two billion dollar jump over the year before
twenty twenty five. I think, you know, we don't have
numbers yet, but I think we'll see that definitely be exceeded.
Just based on some of the major tech money that
(04:40):
is backing up a lot of these startups.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Silicon Valley is heavily investing in the fertility tech industry.
There's big names like Reddit co founder Alex o'hanian, open
Ai CEO Sam Altman, and twenty three and Meter co
founder and former CEO. And we just if you live
in New York, you might have seen the ads on
the subway that read have your Best Baby telling you
to go to www dot Pickyourbaby dot com to I
(05:04):
guess have your best baby. Those ads are from Nucleus Genomics,
and there's other companies like Orchid Health and Haroosite, and
these companies are offering what's called polygenic screening.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Traditional IVF testing looks at chromosomes and single gene diseases
like cystic fibrosis, sicle cele, anemia, taseas, and these new
breed of companies are sort of claiming that they can
predict more complex traits through the polygetic screening. So it'll
take some cells and then they use AI to amplify it,
and then you have a genome that you can study,
(05:36):
and so they'll look at that genome and they can
use it to predict complex traits like childhood cancers, autism,
spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, fight no shape, hair texture.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Dollar nose shape, no.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Shape, face shape, and then on the margins you have
things that people are interesting in. That kind of science
doesn't necessarily back up like IQ musical ability.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Genetic testing of embryos itself isn't a new thing. Screening
has been part of the IVF process since the nineties,
but those tests could only show you so much. You
could figure out the sex of the embryo or traits
for certain genetic disorders. But now the introduction of AI
is really pushing forward what's possible with polygenic screening.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So human genome consists of three billion base pairs. You
get one set from each parent, so there's a total
of six billion base pairs in each cell. So that's
a lot of data, right, So you're using AI to
when you get your five or six cells from your embryo,
you're using AI to amplify that and see what it
(06:48):
would look like as a human and then you're checking
against data to see what the potential person might be ultimately.
And the backers in this space are a lot of
it's a lot of tech money, it's a lot of
people who are interested in AI. AI is great at
detecting patterns, and this sort of fits the bill.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The founders of these polygenic screening companies are betting on
their technology to be able to accurately screen for things
like height, or complicated health disorders, or even personality.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The founders themselves, they're banking embryos and they're planning to
screen for these traits in their future kid. Like the
founder of Harisite is named Michael Christiansen. He's sixty six,
you know, and he's planning to screen his own embryos
when he's ready for kids, to make them a little
bit shorter because he's like sixty six is kind of annoying,
it's hard to travel. That's a little bit too tall.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That is fascinating. That was the first thing that hit
me of the opening line with your article is that
he's six six. He wishes that he was short. He
wants his kid to be shorter because it's inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, another one of the geneticists there, Tobias wool from it.
He hit the genetic lottery in terms of his health.
But you know, he's like, I have depression in my history,
and it's something that I don't want to pass on.
He and his partner don't want to pass it on
in their future children, so it's something that they're planning
to screen for. So these are people who are really
(08:08):
highly information taking. They want to be as controlled as possible,
and so they're just extremely focused on optimizing the whole
entire birth experience the same way they would optimize everything
about their lives.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And so just to clarify here, so basically, you can
essentially choose the embryo that has the traits that you want,
and if it has traits that you're worried about or
do not want, you can not use those for IVF exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Like, if you're screening your embryos and you see that
your potential child could have a high likelihood of having
a childhood cancer, the idea is that you wouldn't want
to choose that embryo. You would want to choose a
different embryo.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, I know this is a lot already, but let's
pause for a second. So right now we're talking about
the ability to screen for cancer. So just imagine you're
already going through IVF and you have the option, the
opportunity to choose an embryo to avoid a high risk
of a potentially fatal disease. Would you take that opportunity?
(09:13):
So hold on to that answer in your mind, whatever
it is, right now, and let's go a little further.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I spoke with a couple from the Bay Area, Roshan
George and Julie King. Rochan's firm. He has a consulting
firm called Technology Brother. Like Techbro, they're highly information seeking people.
They just wanted to know everything they could possibly know
about their embryos, and so they discovered going through IVF testing,
they shared a genetic mutation, which is basically like a
(09:39):
typo in your DNA, where there's a G there should
be an A. You know it's on. There's no manifestation,
but a couple together, the likelihood of them having a
child that becomes profoundly deaf is a real thing. So
they'd wound up screening their embryos using the polygenetic screening
at orc at Health, and then it came down to
like ninety seconds in the hospital, the audio tech comes in,
(10:01):
sticks things in the baby's ears, and then they're like,
hearing's normal. What's interesting too about Rosan George, he talks
a lot about his experience doing this, and he talked
with a father whose son has the condition that they
were worried about their daughter having. And this other father
said he wished he would have known about the genetic
(10:22):
screening technology before a son was born, but that said,
he also couldn't imagine substituting out his actual son with
a son who could hear. And so for Rosian, his
reflection about this was that no one's ever thinking you're
substituting out the actual child who's there. But we're all
(10:46):
trying to ensure that you have a child who is
as healthy as possible, and you want your child to
have the full range of human experiences without being limited.
One of those sources I spoke with for the story
is age stamp expert named Ferry Bear, and he said,
advisor to work at health and he's made huge strides
in terms of IDF advancements, and his feeling was there's
(11:09):
nothing that you wouldn't do for your kid, like don't
tell me that you wouldn't want to do this because
you wouldn't want to meddle with how things are supposed
to be. You know. His feeling was, if the science
can show you how to have a better outcome for
your child, most people are going to choose in their
(11:31):
heart of hearts to go that route. And so people
think of about it really in those terms. Despite sort
of the cautionary gataka like slippery slope, it exists where
you get into some of those issues like IQ or
how athletic is your child going to be? Et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
But okay, we got a backup. This is all assuming
that this stuff actually works. So really, how accurate is
polygenic screening? Where's the line between real science and science fiction? Also?
How much does it cost? We'll get into both of
those questions after the break. How common is embryo screening?
(12:20):
Is this just a Silicon Valley thing? Especially this more
advanced stuff that we're talking about, the.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
More advanced that you're paying for out of your pocket,
and the price ranges for this from Russian George and
Julie King, they spent about twelve five hundred dollars. That's
on the low end, but it goes all the way
up to fifty thousand dollars fifty k, right, so this
is obviously going to be more affluent, wealthy parents who
are looking into this. It's not covered by insurance, so
(12:50):
this is sort of a small pocket. But it does
continue to grow and grow and grow. But I wouldn't say,
you know, there are not a thousand babies out there
in Silicon Valley that have gone through polygenic screening at
these startups. We're probably in hundreds.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So okay, These polygenic screening companies are promising that you
can screen for a lot of different things. Nucleus Genomics
that's the company with those heavier best Baby ads. They
have a long list of over two thousand diseases, traits,
and other factors that they can test for. But how
reliable and how accurate is this stuff?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
The experts who I spoke with basically said there is
a lot of science backing up certain traits like physical traits, sex,
Do you want a boy? Do you want a girl?
The single cell gene disorders that we talked about TASAC
sickle cell Tristey twenty one, which is the chromosomal disorder
(13:47):
that leads to down syndrome. All of these things will
be there in your genome, but it's these things on
the margin that people tend to be most excited and
interested in and just in read to buy, which would
be like height, IQ, musical ability, Will you be a
good picture? Are you going to be Clayton Kershaw? You know,
the critics in this space really are very skeptical about
(14:11):
how effective the pologetic screening is for these other things.
One of the experts for I spoke with from Illumina
and he do a lot with testing themselves and looking
at genomes. They were saying that one of the reasons
that we're not as close as we could be is
that they're just aren't enough people who have had their
genome mapped. We're about at one million. We need to
(14:34):
be at a billion, and then we need to go
beyond that in order to have a really good set
of data in order to be able to make these
outcomes more meaningful and more accurate. And I did speak
with this great sort of pioneer in this field. His
name is Hank Greeley, and he's at Stanford and he
knows a lot of the players in the space because
(14:55):
they were his students. So he was saying this stuff
this awesome clickbait dystopian fiction. But he was like, there's
so much hype, like separating the actual science what's possible
now versus the hype. We're decades away from that. But
this is also like the tech money, this being sort
(15:17):
of a Bay Area kind of wealthy family conversation starter.
Hype is part of it. Hype is sort of part
of what makes Silicon Valley go round, right, But hype
with babies is also a little bit like this is different. Right,
We're talking about human beings and we don't want to
think about this products or projects.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Regardless of what the science says. Now, these companies are
promising these results for their clients, even if they do
say that they have some internal guardrails for what they
will and will not do.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
So Harrasite, for instance, talks about you know, IQ hype, BMI,
et cetera. They feel confident that they can screen for
this potential. Nothing is guaranteed. You know, there's no such
thing as a designer baby, is what they told me,
and that they don't make designer babies. They won't There
are certain things they will not do. For instance, they
(16:10):
won't allow you to choose a child that's a psychopath.
They won't allow you to choose your child's skin color,
for instance. There are just certain things that they wouldn't
want to do, but they are really confident that we're
very close to being able to do those things, and
they're really optimistic about their abilities to help you screening
(16:31):
for the potential there.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So there are critics who would say that these new
tech fertility companies are getting into what you could call
techno eugenics. And you can also imagine that there might
be a slippery slope that would lead to something like
the valids and invalids of Gatica. And yet there are
companies and investors who are taking this stuff even further
to gene editing in embryos.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So gene editing it involves editing the embryo before it's implanted.
It is extremely controversial, and I want to say controversial
in all caps.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Editing embryonic genes has been a taboo since precise gene
editing became possible with something called crisper. This has been
used on adults and even children to treat genetic diseases,
including a baby who was successfully treated with crisper therapy
just last May, but editing the genes of an embryo
is way more controversial and its outright band in most countries,
(17:31):
but it has been done. In twenty eighteen, a Chinese
researcher named Hudgin Quay reported that he had genetically altered
twin girls to be resistant to HIV.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Two beautiful Nito Chinese guard named the Lulu and Lana
came crying into the world as healthy as any other
babies a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This is Hudgincoay in his video announcing the birth of
those twin girls.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
We mark Sahadalta for the first had he said that
he never thought he could be a father. No, he
has found a reason to leave, a reason to walk,
a purpose. You see Mark has ivjeene surgery is and
(18:17):
should it remain a technology for hearning, enhancing IQ or
selecting how or I call it that suld be banned.
I understand them work would be controversial, but I believe
family need this technology and I'm willing to take the
criticism for them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Ujinkway wasn't just criticized. He was sentenced to three years
in prison for illegally practicing embryonic gene editing, which you
would think would scare people off from gene editing technology,
but not everyone. Some people are investing in it. The
Wall Street Journal reported late last year about investments from
Sam Altman's husband and also from coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
(19:03):
into a company called Preventive that wants to experiment with
gene editing. They're just going to do it in places
outside the US, like United Arab Emirates, where this stuff
is allowed.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I did speak with a woman named Kathy t who's
also former Stanford former Teal fellow. She started a firm
called Manhattan Genomics, and she is planning to test on
non human climates this year. She said there's a lot
of support in the background for her because people do
(19:35):
feel like, why not explore this area if we can,
why leave this untouched if it's something that we could
potentially get right. One of the points that she made
that I thought was really compelling was that older women
struggle to get a lot of eggs in order to
make embryos, and then sometimes they don't make enough eggs,
(19:57):
and so you have to go back and stimulate your
follow cles to get more eggs. So that's like an
arduous process. You're injecting yourself with hormones every day. It's painful.
You can't turn and bend if you are injecting yourself
with hormones. These are things that women know, but like
people don't necessarily talk about them because women are just like,
I'm going about my daily life even though I am
not able to bend over' just going to get through
(20:18):
this because I want to have a baby. So, you know,
her point is sort of women are having children later
in life. They just are like, that's what all of
the data shows us, and it's more difficult, and gene
editing potentially makes that easier, particularly for this group of
women who are having children later in life, and that
(20:40):
it gives you more of a shot at having your
own biological child.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Gen editing right now is not legal. You can't do
that now, not in the US. But you've got companies
who are based in the US who are putting money
into this. Are they proposing to change the laws to
get around this? Somehow?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I think they're hoping for you know, with this administration,
they're being sort of less restriction on around innovation and
medical testing and those kinds of things. So I think
that that's the hope.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Really, that the laws will change to allow for whatever
does they want to do technologically with designer babies.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Right, and that there'll be more research, more advancements, that
they'll be more in the space. There's a regulatory vacuum
right now. One of the lawyers who I spoke with said,
the law always struggles to keep up with technology, so
there's a lot of advancement and experimentation that happens when
there's a regulatory vacuum, when things aren't like banned outright.
So I think that with the gene editing piece, there's
(21:44):
a lot of optimism and hope there. But because it's
so controversial, people don't really want to touch it. It's
like a third rail almost in this space that it's
just people are less conversant in it. They're more afraid
of what we'll have and it does sound scary. We
don't know what it means, you know, generations to come
(22:04):
a few edit your genes for your baby.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So if scientists don't think we're there yet to predict
complex traits from genetic testing, then editing genes to get
those traits seems even further away. But some very rich
people are betting that those scientists and those lawyers are wrong,
and if those bets pay off, they have a very
specific vision of what the future could look like. That's
(22:29):
after the Break. A few years back, a South African
lawyer wrote a brief article in an academic journal where
she was partially talking about the legal and moral implications
(22:51):
of genetiting, but she also makes a comparison between the
film Gatica to the real life era of South African
apartheid that she expect sperience. And it makes sense because
the plot of Gatica centers on a kind of genetic apartheid,
the divide between the valids and the invalids, and we
the viewers were supposed to identify with the invalid character
(23:13):
who's played by Ethan Hawk, because in this society, we
would also be invalid in the film, this is a
future that we do not want. And yet one of
the investors in this industry, Coinbay CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted
the other day quote, the IVF Clinic of the Future
will combine a handful of technologies parentheses the Gatica stack.
(23:36):
He goes on to describe this Gataka stack as including
technologies that would allow for embryo editing, including for what
he calls enhancement, and also allow for creating artificial wounds.
He also says that quote it would start to accelerate evolution.
It seems like a meme at this point. But it's
like some people watch these techno dystopian movies and say,
(24:00):
that would be dope. We should do that, you know,
will be really cool. We should have Sky in it, yeah,
and have it go live. Yeah, you're supposed to watch
Terminator and say that would suck. I don't want that.
You're supposed to watch Gatica and say that would suck.
I don't want that, And somebody's watching it, somebody with
a lot of money's watching and say, you know, it
(24:20):
would be really cool if we did that thing that
that guy told me not to do. That we all
as a society agreed that that'd be a bad idea.
Let's do that thing.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah. These are all supposed to be cautionary tales.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yes, thirty years ago, these.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Were cautionary tales. Today they're aspirational tales like let's do that.
But I mean, if you think about it, there is
also like if I think of like biohackers. So people
who are doing peptides, glp ones, nad talking about how
they're gonna live for a very long time. The Gatica
(24:56):
stack feels like it takes a lot of those same boxes,
like demize your kid because you want your kid to
be as healthy as possible, the same way you're becoming
as healthy as possible by hacking your biological decline. So
it feels very and I hate to use this phrase
but on brand, but yeah, it is interesting how we've
(25:16):
totally gone to the upside down. Whereas we used to
be like, well, this would be terrible. We would all
be invalid and not given chances to fulfill our hopes
and desires and dreams in this world. And then now
we're like, let's do it. Well, let's turbocharge our embryos
and pump it up and have the just the dopest
(25:38):
best baby we can possibly have. Right, But when I
rewatched Gatica, I still was rooting for our invalid hero,
our invalid avenging angel ethan Haaks Like I was like,
he's the hero. And when they do he and his
like superior and finger quotes brother go and they do
that swimming contest the very dangerous that they do where
(25:59):
they go on the ocean, in the store or whatever.
The brother who's supposed to be superior as strungers like
how did Joys beat them? And he says, I never
sank anything for the way back legend, right, Like, I'm
rooting for him in Europe so even now, but I
don't know, you know, I wasn't forged in the fires
of crypto and all of these other things that I
feel like, you know, so you think different I think differently. Yeah,
(26:24):
I'm rooting for Eakalk. Some people are clearly rooting for
his superior brother.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know, you don't really have to watch Gatika to
imagine a twos tier society. You don't have to watch
Gadeka to imagine second class citizens. Functionally speaking, this is
kind of what we're talking about here. I mean, you
were saying, what is twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, that's the low end, that would be the low end.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, on the low end, Yeah, twelve thousand dollars on
low end, fifty k on the high end. I could
imagine it going upwards of that. A lot of people
can barely afford to have a child, period, and so
I mean, are we now just in a situation where
rich people with access to this kind of capital can
(27:10):
have kids that will further have more advantages in their life,
and everybody else gets left behind?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Huge issue. Yes, yes, exactly right. I mean IVF itself
is very, very expensive. So the barrier to entry to
even having a child if you deal with fertility issues
is already there. We're already there. This could definitely make
it a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
We hear the word design er baby thrown around a lot.
It seems like we're getting a little bit closer to
that as a reality. What does that word mean for you?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Designer baby means to me is a sort of fictitious
concept that will I don't think ever be a reality
because I just don't think that at that base level.
I think think that what makes a human being is
so much more to do with how you grow up
(28:04):
and your experience is growing up. I just think it's
a fictitious concept. I think people are interested in trying
to make that concept as close to reality as possible.
Design your baby, but I don't think it gets you
to that outcome because there's a lot more that after
the embryo comes out of the lady, Like, you know,
one day it's in the womb, one day it's out.
(28:25):
And once it's out, it's like you still have to
get that baby to sleep and eat and put them
in preschool and do those things. You know, So it's
like it's an uphill slog regardless. And Hank Greeley was saying,
you know, don't forget there are other things that we
know influence childhood outcomes, like reading to your kids, taking
them to the park, good nutrition, getting them vaccinated, Like
(28:47):
those are studied and have a much more meaningful and
larger impact on how high you'll be able to vertically
jump than the genetic material that you're starting with.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, I mean to take a couple steps back and
think about the genetically superior child who may be born,
not just of you know, embryo selection, but we're talking
about gene editing. Right, some kid is they got their
genes edited. I mean to the nines. They're tall, they're handsome,
they're muscular, they're whatever, and then they're not so good
(29:27):
at the piano, not as good as mom and dad hoped.
Does mom and dad go complain about a defective product
and won a little bit of a refund, Like, how
does that even work?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean I imagine that it turns into just torture
for the kid, like we spent all this money to
make you perfect, and what's wrong? You know? And I
did talk with ethicists who say that there's so much
danger in thinking of your child as being the best
from the get go, telling them that they're superior birth,
(30:03):
that they're going to be able to do all these things.
And then what if they don't. What if they're a
little chubby or not really good at the violin, or
they don't really feel like playing music, do you love them? Lest?
Luckily this doesn't apply to me because I have children
and definitely not having anymore. But you know, it's like
what I do this, But then I think about what
(30:25):
I would want, Like you want your kid to feel joy,
You want your kids to be kind and curious? Right?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah? I mean it doesn't sound like anybody is really
just aching to find the gene for kindness. I would
love that. Listen if you wrote an article that you
told me dexter, Listen, these people out here, they're trying
to make sure that they have the kindest, most empathetic kids.
I say, you know what, let me step back. Maybe
(30:52):
I'm being a hater here, but when I hear you
know you want your kids hair color to be such
and such, you want to be such and such a height,
You're gonna be good as such such sport, I'm feeling
like I'm back in Gadega again. You know what. Matter
of fact, let's go back to Gatica again. So early
in the movie, when the main character is born, the
doctors scan him and tell the parents that, hey, your
(31:14):
kid has a potential heart condition, and also he's going
to be a little near sighted, he'll probably need glasses,
and so this child is now invalid. And then we
see this montage of the kid being discriminated against, like
the preschool won't even let him in the door. So
the parents decide to have another kid, and they're going
to make sure that this kid is going to be valid.
(31:35):
So they meet with the doctor that talks them through
what kind of child they're going to get.
Speaker 6 (31:39):
You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair, and fair skin.
I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial
conditions pretty much, your baldness, myopia, alcoholism, and addictive susceptibility
propuncity for violence, obesity, et cetera.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
We didn't want I mean diseases, yes, but just wondering
if it's good to just leave a few things to
the chance. You want to give your child the best possible.
Start believing we have enough imperfection built in already. Your
child isn't needing additional burdens. And keep in mind, this
child is still you, simply the best.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Of you, Still you, simply the best of you. And
of course, as the viewer, you're supposed to think this
is terrible, and yet here we are.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know, very Bear, who made a lot of advancements
in IVF technology. He was like, it used to be
horrible to show your collarbones and your knees, and now
people are wearing thongs at the beach, you know when
he was like that line moves with time and we
eventually get born more.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Comfortable with it, or may we all continue to be invalid?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Invalid heroes unite. We are leading at this point.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Thank you so much for listening to kill Switch. If
you want to talk, you can email us at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram. We're at
kill Switch Pod And if you dug the show and
want to do a favor for some fellow random, invalid stranger,
get that phone back at your pocket and leave us
a review. Seriously, it helps other people find the show
and you can think of that as your good deed
(33:27):
for the day. Also, did you know that kill Switch
is on YouTube? Watching the show is a whole different experience,
So if you're into that, the link for that and
everything else is in the show notes. Kill Switch is
hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki,
Darluk Potts, and Julia Nutter. Our theme song is by
me and Kyle Murdoch and Kyle also mixed the show
(33:48):
from Kalaidoscope. Our executive producers are Oswa Lashin, Mangesh Hotigador
and Kate Osborne from iHeart Our executive producers a Katrina
Norville and Nikki E.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Tour.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Catch on the Next One by m HM
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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