We’ll wrap up today with what I suspect will be a controversial topic. Fair warning: this bleeding-edge tech may be uncomfortable to think about…
A company called Conception just raised a $20 million venture capital round. And while the name is very descriptive of the company’s purpose, it isn’t in the way that we might think.
The backers are a couple of tech-heavyweights. The former president of Y Combinator and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, were two major backers.
The work this company is doing is straight out of a science-fiction novel. Conception is developing technology that takes a human white blood cell and converts it into a pluripotent stem cell. This is a cell capable of turning into any other kind of cell.
That stem cell is then turned into artificial eggs whose genetic makeup comes from the person who provided the original blood cell. If this technique is proven to be successful, it will be a way to produce human embryos, and ultimately, children that are biologically related to their parents… entirely in a laboratory.
The most immediate application is to allow women who aren’t able to naturally conceive a child to still have biologically related children. This could also allow women in their 50s and 60s to be able to easily have biological children, irrespective of their age.
This could give hope to many couples who want children but are unable to conceive. There are however other implications here…
For one, this technology makes it possible for a man to have children without a woman’s egg. The technology could literally be used to produce an egg from one person’s blood cells. It could also allow more than two people to contribute their blood cells to the eggs’ genetic material.
That means children could potentially have DNA from any number of different people rather than just a mother and father. And, of course, this opens the door to the “designer babies” debate once again.
This tech could allow someone to produce a large number of eggs – say 1,000 – and then screen each embryo to determine which one is genetically the strongest.
Some will argue that this is absolutely wrong on all levels. Meanwhile, others will say that this would allow parents to filter out embryos with genes that make them susceptible to debilitating diseases – either in childhood or as they age.
Proponents might argue that this is an ethical thing to do because it spares the child and the parents from going through a painful experience.
To be very clear, the team at Conception has not yet proven that this approach will work. But they are going to try. And knowing Silicon Valley, I suspect that there is even more capital waiting in the wings to fund the effort if there is even the smallest amount of progress at Conception.
This is going to be a massive moral and ethical debate in the coming years.
It is admittedly a difficult and uncomfortable topic. And it is also closely linked with the developments related to genetic editing technology. After all, genetic editing allows us to mend, repair, and even improve our DNA after we are born.
But utilizing these kinds of techniques at the time of conception becomes a far more sensitive subject. Broadly speaking, the genetic editing industry has drawn a line at germline editing. The general principle is that no editing should be performed on an embryo. The ramifications are simply too severe and of course, the unborn child would have no say in the matter.
This is a deeply personal topic to me as I have a special needs child that I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world. So my goal is only to share what is happening on the bleeding edge in Silicon Valley. I’d rather us be aware of these developments than be ignorant of them.
So we should be prepared for a major ethical debate around this topic. This is going to make a lot of us uncomfortable, but we can’t deny that it is happening.
One other interesting dynamic about Conception is that the backers do not have a background in life sciences, biochemistry, or anything related to biotechnology. They aren’t life scientists. They are technologists. And they are absolutely thinking outside the box on this issue.
I’ll be keeping an eye on developments around this kind of technology. It has implications not only for humans but also for livestock.
Genetically optimized cows, pigs, and poultry could be selected and bred to improve food yields and quality. It’s going to raise all kinds of complex issues around the ethical use of technology.
And it has tremendous implications for the future of humankind.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
A company called Conception just raised a $20 million venture capital round. And while the name is very descriptive of the company’s purpose, it isn’t in the way that we might think.
The backers are a couple of tech-heavyweights. The former president of Y Combinator and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, were two major backers.
The work this company is doing is straight out of a science-fiction novel. Conception is developing technology that takes a human white blood cell and converts it into a pluripotent stem cell. This is a cell capable of turning into any other kind of cell.
That stem cell is then turned into artificial eggs whose genetic makeup comes from the person who provided the original blood cell. If this technique is proven to be successful, it will be a way to produce human embryos, and ultimately, children that are biologically related to their parents… entirely in a laboratory.
The most immediate application is to allow women who aren’t able to naturally conceive a child to still have biologically related children. This could also allow women in their 50s and 60s to be able to easily have biological children, irrespective of their age.
This could give hope to many couples who want children but are unable to conceive. There are however other implications here…
For one, this technology makes it possible for a man to have children without a woman’s egg. The technology could literally be used to produce an egg from one person’s blood cells. It could also allow more than two people to contribute their blood cells to the eggs’ genetic material.
That means children could potentially have DNA from any number of different people rather than just a mother and father. And, of course, this opens the door to the “designer babies” debate once again.
This tech could allow someone to produce a large number of eggs – say 1,000 – and then screen each embryo to determine which one is genetically the strongest.
Some will argue that this is absolutely wrong on all levels. Meanwhile, others will say that this would allow parents to filter out embryos with genes that make them susceptible to debilitating diseases – either in childhood or as they age.
Proponents might argue that this is an ethical thing to do because it spares the child and the parents from going through a painful experience.
To be very clear, the team at Conception has not yet proven that this approach will work. But they are going to try. And knowing Silicon Valley, I suspect that there is even more capital waiting in the wings to fund the effort if there is even the smallest amount of progress at Conception.
This is going to be a massive moral and ethical debate in the coming years.
It is admittedly a difficult and uncomfortable topic. And it is also closely linked with the developments related to genetic editing technology. After all, genetic editing allows us to mend, repair, and even improve our DNA after we are born.
But utilizing these kinds of techniques at the time of conception becomes a far more sensitive subject. Broadly speaking, the genetic editing industry has drawn a line at germline editing. The general principle is that no editing should be performed on an embryo. The ramifications are simply too severe and of course, the unborn child would have no say in the matter.
This is a deeply personal topic to me as I have a special needs child that I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world. So my goal is only to share what is happening on the bleeding edge in Silicon Valley. I’d rather us be aware of these developments than be ignorant of them.
So we should be prepared for a major ethical debate around this topic. This is going to make a lot of us uncomfortable, but we can’t deny that it is happening.
One other interesting dynamic about Conception is that the backers do not have a background in life sciences, biochemistry, or anything related to biotechnology. They aren’t life scientists. They are technologists. And they are absolutely thinking outside the box on this issue.
I’ll be keeping an eye on developments around this kind of technology. It has implications not only for humans but also for livestock.
Genetically optimized cows, pigs, and poultry could be selected and bred to improve food yields and quality. It’s going to raise all kinds of complex issues around the ethical use of technology.
And it has tremendous implications for the future of humankind.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
