This APA Blog series has broadly explored philosophy and technology with a throughline on the influence of technology and AI on well-being. This month's post brings those themes into focus recounting a vital Washington Post Opinion piece by friend of the APA Blog, Samuel Kimbriel. Samuel is the founding director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative and Editor at Large for Wisdom of Crowds. We collaborated on a Substack Newsletter about intellectual ambition, building on his essay, Thinking is Risky.
Chris Buck isn't your typical home brewer - he's a virologist at the National Cancer Institute, known for discovering several human polyomaviruses, a family of viruses linked to cancers and serious infections in people with weakened immune systems. Buck's day job involves developing vaccines against these viruses, but he took things in an unexpected direction: using yeast engineered to produce viral proteins, he brewed a beer that delivered those proteins orally.
"This is really important work that's moving embryo research forward an important advance in the search for scientific answers for what makes a pregnancy healthy," says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at The Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank, who was not involved in the research. "However, it also presents a technology that could be used for other purposes that are concerning."
Kian Sadeghi, the 25-year-old founder and CEO at Nucleus Genomics, believes every parent has a right to do just that, selecting qualities they desire - from height to weight to intelligence. He calls it "genetic optimization," and it's part of a Silicon Valley push to breed "super-babies." Sadeghi dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania and started the company in 2021, inspired by a cousin who died of a rare genetic illness.
If a TV programme sets about sequencing the genome of Adolf Hitler the person in modern history who comes closest to a universally agreed-upon personification of evil there are at the very least two questions you want the producers to ask themselves. First: is it possible? And second, the Jurassic Park question: just because scientists can, should they? Channel 4's two-part documentary Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator is not the first time the self-consciously edgy British broadcaster has gone there.
First, a little background on human gene-hacking, also known as germline gene editing. On top of being wildly unethical - and we're talking Frankenstein levels here - human gene-editing has also been strictly prohibited in the US by an act of Congress. However, and this is a huge caveat, the congressional ban only affects research done with federal funds, meaning privately-funded germline gene editing is technically allowed, though anyone caught doing it runs the risk of becoming a pariah in the scientific community.
Watson shared a 1962 Nobel prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for discovering that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a double helix, consisting of two strands that coil around each other to create what resembles a long, gently twisting ladder. That realization was a breakthrough. It instantly suggested how hereditary information is stored and how cells duplicate their DNA when they divide. The duplication begins with the two strands of DNA pulling apart like a zipper.
Then, just over two decades ago, the Human Genome Project - the international scientific effort to decode the three billion letters of human DNA - changed everything. Critics at the time called it too expensive, too ambitious, too abstract. And they weren't wrong. It was the largest biology project ever proposed, and scientists hadn't even managed to sequence the smallest bacterial genome yet. But the organizers knew that big plans - moonshots - inspire people and attract funding.
With IVF, prospective parents already have options to screen embryos, not just for sex or severe genetic diseases, but increasingly for a full range of genetic traits. Thanks to whole genome sequencing (WGS), the choice isn't science fiction; we can now analyze all 20,000+ human genes in an embryo with better than 99.9 percent accuracy for many mutations and chromosomal problems (assuming parents are willing to forego natural conception, and instead supply their eggs and sperm to a lab for embryo creation and analysis).
Developing neurotech can transform how we monitor and improve our well-being. But lawyer and AI ethicist Nita Farahany warns this tech can supercharge data tracking and infringe on our mental privacy. Nita Farahany is the Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University and founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, which works to advance the responsible use of science and technology.
