Weird Thoughts

Altered People: The Interviews

From The Morningtide Daily editorial team

Altered people remain a controversial topic, even at the 50th anniversary of the first ones created. In this article, Brett McNamara of The Morningtide Daily offers a retrospective through a series of interviews. You'll read about people on both sides of the argument; experts as well as average Joes. After half a century of genome alteration, how do we look upon this phenomenon?

Dr. Andrew Tuttle – researcher at the LA biomedical institute

There are a lot of preconceptions of what genome alteration is. Most believe it interferes with the way a person is conceived. They're not incorrect. The process alters the genome of either an embryo in its single cell stage or the egg cell used for its conception. Medical professionals can alter existing genomes or introduce new ones. You can essentially design a person's appearance, intelligence or immunity to disease. One could for example determine hair and eye color.

The result of the altered cell is fertilized and inserted into the womb. A pregnancy then proceeds like any other, leading to a child with an altered genome. The failure rate of this technique is almost non-existent.

John Rice – Historian and scholar on altered people

The precursor to creating altered people goes back to the 1980's. There was a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. Long story short, scientists could detect if an embryo had genes related to disease. Beforehand, often such things were only discovered in later stages of pregnancy or after birth.

Fast forward forty years. We could not only detect flawed genomes; we could now also change them. Chinese biophysicist He Jankui performed several experiments in this field. He tested various couples with at least one carrier of HIV. His mission was to prevent an embryo, conceived by one of those couples, from creating a protein critical for HIV to enter human cells. He did this by altering the embryo's genome, making it immune to the disease.

By all accounts, he succeeded. In October 2018 twins with pseudonyms Lulu and Nana were born. They were the first altered people. Back then they were called designer babies. Solid evidence was presented that the twins were immune to HIV. There's little else known about them, as their real identities were never revealed.

Nowadays altering genomes is common, though controversial. But back in the late 2010s, it outraged people. Granted, Jankui had performed the experiments without consent from his university. He published his research when Lulu and Nana were already a month old. Needless to say, he was condemned. His university fired him and the Chinese government placed him under house arrest.

Some consider Jankui a hero. They compare him to Copernicus or Galilei; shunned for their discoveries. Although their honor is restored now, Jankui's experiments are still being debated. People know altering embryos is possible. They just aren't sure it's ethical.

Daisy Robinson – fashion model and altered person

I know I'm hot. What else could I be? I was made this way. When I was little, I never thought I was different. But when I got older, people got interested. I had tons of dates because guys just liked me. Later, my parents said they'd gotten me altered. They're pretty famous in the fashion industry, but they wanted more for their daughter.