Ryan Knudson

Why are people concerned about this technology?

When you edit an embryo, it changes that person's DNA.

But tweaks made at the embryo stage can also be heritable, meaning scientists aren't just messing around with one person's genetic code, but potentially their kid's too, and their kid's kids.

So if any of those edits goes wrong, the impact could be huge.

But there's another concern, and it's less to do with the science of embryo editing and more to do with what it could mean for society.

Many boosters of embryo editing talk about it as a way to eliminate debilitating genetic diseases, to prevent human suffering before it even begins.

But critics, like the supporters of that moratorium, worry that once the technology is out of the bag, people won't stop at just curing diseases.

Hmm, right, there could be some group of people that are enhanced and therefore smarter, better, stronger, faster, and then they could pass that on to their own offspring, and then suddenly you have like a new class of human.

Embryo editing, with the intention of bringing a baby to term, is illegal in many countries around the world, including the U.S.,

Today, the Food and Drug Administration can't even consider applications for clinical trials if they involve creating a pregnancy with an edited embryo.

But that hasn't stopped powerful people in Silicon Valley from wanting to do just that, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Armstrong has made it clear he's interested in edits that would prevent diseases.

But he's also expressed interest in the exact thing those scientists were worried about, designing better humans.

It's what some in Silicon Valley refer to as enhancements.

Yeah, we'll cure some diseases and we'll also get, you know, some taller, more handsome people with full heads of hair.

First of all, if you haven't seen Gattaca, highly recommend.

The movie stars Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law.

And it's set in a future where embryos are carefully screened and selected to produce the best babies.

We didn't want, I mean, diseases, yes, but... Armstrong seems to have taken some inspiration from the movie.

In a tweet last April, Armstrong wrote about his vision for an IVF clinic of the future, powered by a combination of technologies that he described as, quote, the Gattaca stack.