{"id":207172,"date":"2025-02-24T14:21:33","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/how-to-make-superbabies"},"modified":"2025-02-24T14:21:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:21:33","slug":"how-to-make-superbabies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/how-to-make-superbabies","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Superbabies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pvsQCa8ws28?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Working in the field of genetics is a bizarre experience. No one seems to be interested in the most interesting applications of their research.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve spent the better part of the last two decades unravelling exactly how the human genome works and which specific letter changes in our DNA affect things like diabetes risk or college graduation rates. Our knowledge has advanced to the point where, if we had a safe and reliable means of modifying genes in embryos, we could literally create superbabies. Children that would live multiple decades longer than their non-engineered peers, have the raw intellectual horsepower to do Nobel prize worthy scientific research, and very rarely suffer from depression or other mental health disorders.<\/p>\n<p>The scientific establishment, however, seems to not have gotten the memo. If you suggest we engineer the genes of future generations to make their lives better, they will often make some frightened noises, mention \u201cethical issues\u201d without ever clarifying what they mean, or abruptly change the subject. It\u2019s as if humanity invented electricity and decided the only interesting thing to do with it was make washing machines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Working in the field of genetics is a bizarre experience. No one seems to be interested in the most interesting applications of their research. We\u2019ve spent the better part of the last two decades unravelling exactly how the human genome works and which specific letter changes in our DNA affect things like diabetes risk or [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}