Breeding the Future Human

Humanity, Evolution, and the Ethics of Directed Evolution

I spend a lot of time wondering not only what alien civilizations and biospheres might be like, but also in thinking about what the future of our own world and our own species might be like.

It’s rather easy to assume that we might just stay the same. The nature of our short lifespans and limitations on our time perception make it compelling to think on short time scales, and often keep people from imagining futures that might be wildly different. But with so much technological change and so much acceleration in that technological change of late, it’s becoming harder and harder to imagine a future that isn’t different.

Will we humans persist in our current form much longer? Will we use medicine and biotech to extend our lifespans or to even alter our own biology? Will we replace ourselves with AGI or blend ourselves with AI such that the technological civilization of Earth a century from now will look utterly alien from what we currently are? What if something happens along the way that drives us to begin directing our own evolution with more intention and biological manipulation?

All of these questions circle around one that’s bigger: What is the future of being human?

Among possible answers to such questions are ideas from science and science fiction of how we might manipulate human genetics such as to control what we become. We might manipulate ourselves into a different form in the near future (with or without merger with our digital technologies).

One place in sci-fi where we see this profoundly is in the directed breeding program of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood in the Dune universe (and certainly those who’ve been reading my work long enough know that I love considering themes and topics from Dune).

While Frank Herbert himself had never given an exact start date, the novels suggest that the sisterhood had been working for some 90 generations—perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 years or more—on their plan of deliberate genetic manipulation (admittedly, I haven’t watched the new Dune: Prophecy show yet, so not sure if they’re going to hint at the beginning of it there).

In the stories, the idea of the sisterhood is to influence and manipulate the political marriages and matings within their interstellar feudal system with the intention of producing a superhuman—the Kwisatz Haderach, a male who can access both male and female ancestral memories and who possess prescient vision beyond any prior being. The breeding program was secretive and manipulative, it involved careful record-keeping, arranged matings, and avoidance of inbreeding, and also steered bloodlines toward specific mental, physical, and prescient traits. The original Dune story shows the process leading to Paul Atreides as the unintended early culmination of the program—arriving a generation sooner than planned and throwing their many centuries of planning into disarray. But we also see some others who are outputs from the breeding program (Feyd Rautha and Count Fenring in the first novel are other examples).

But could it be possible for some secret (or even openly public) program to selectively breed some future superhuman? Could we see a variety of traits selected for intentionally and bred into our future descendants? What are the scientific and moral concerns that come into play for such a program of genetic manipulation? Are we seeing some of this already occurring right now?

ChatGPT’s take on what “future humans” might look like

Dune, Darwin, Dogs, and Destiny

In Dune, the Bene Gesserit undertake their clandestine, multi-generational human breeding program to bring forth a superhuman with prescient vision and cosmic awareness. As fictional as this premise sounds, it draws eerie parallels to our own history of intentionally shaping other species—dogs, horses, crops, and more—through artificial selection. But what about ourselves? Should we ever attempt to direct our own genetic future?

Evolution for life as we know it has acted through eons via selective pressures allowing for adaptation and divergence—evolution has driven the diversity of living things to thrive and survive within a wide array of environments.

Charles Darwin’s work on exploring the operation of evolution began with natural selection—pressures from the environment being the primary force to control which traits are optimized or selected against. Much as with the famous finches of the Galapagos, where the food availability of the different islands in the archipelago favored different adaptations in the finches who landed there and, over time, caused their divergence into new and different forms. (A fantastic read on the finches is The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, which we read as an optional class reading when I took Evolutionary Biology at York College of Pennsylvania nearly 20 years ago.)

But even in the Origin of Species, first published in 1859, Darwin was exploring other forms of selection. He briefly considered the kinds of competition that might drive sexual selection (which he further explored in more detail in his later work, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, which he published in 1871). But he had also spent many years and a good deal of work in considering artificial selection—whereby some traits can be selected for and propagated intentionally.

Darwin’s primary examples were crop plants, dogs, and pigeons. It was easy enough even by the middle of the 1800s to see how people had been selectively breeding certain plants to make better crops and how new dog breeds had been opted for by mating only certain individuals. Darwin himself had many dogs, but he also raised and bred pigeons (and mentions the word “pigeon” in the book some 111 times). With pigeon breeding, Darwin noted how breeders could produce dramatic variations in form and behavior within just a few generations. By comparing this human-directed process to nature’s own selective pressures, Darwin illustrated how small, accumulated changes could lead to the emergence of new species over vast timescales. Artificial selection became a powerful analogy for natural selection, showing how selection—whether by human intention or environmental conditions—can shape the course of life.

Some years back—while walking with friends near a lake in Madison, Wisconsin, during AbGradCon 2015—one of my friends brought up the fact that all dogs are of the same species and there aren’t any distinguished subspecies among them. That seems wild. If you think about some of the ranges of types of dogs like chihuahuas, great danes, huskies, dachshunds, border collies, and more, it very much feels like some of these have grown so different that they can’t interbreed (often considered the limiting factor delineating species for animals). And, yet, every now and then someone comes up with the means to produce new offspring from various breeds that are wildly different—it’s even led to what some of us argue to be morally questionable breedings, such as those that produce animals with extreme health issues. All of the dogs we have in our modern world, many of which come from breeds that have been developed in the past couple of centuries, come from a process of domestication and selective breeding from wild wolves over the last tens of millennia.

And, believe it or not, we humans aren’t the only ones practicing a form of artificial selection. Here are just a few other examples of directed evolution or co-evolution by other organisms (these aren’t necessarily intentional, so some might argue against calling them directed, but these are forms of coevolution and mutualism that allow for desirable traits to be selected for by other organisms):

• Fungus-Farming Ants: Leafcutter ants (Atta and Acromyrmex) have cultivated specific fungal species for tens of millions of years, carefully tending and weeding their underground gardens (in turn promoting selection).
  

• Aphid-Herding Ants: Many ant species “farm” aphids, protecting them from predators and moving them to better plants, encouraging honeydew production.
  

• Algae-Gardening Damselfish: Some damselfish (Stegastes spp.) maintain “algal lawns” on coral reefs, selectively removing undesirable species and promoting edible algae growth.
  

• Ambrosia Beetles and Fungal Cultivation: These beetles carry fungal spores in special pouches and grow them in tree tunnels, relying on them as a food source and selecting specific strains. Along with the leafcutter ants above, these are just a small selection of the larger insect-fungus mutualisms that have been observed.
  

• Lichen Symbiosis: Though not intentional breeding per se, lichens—complex partnerships of fungi with algae or cyanobacteria—show long-term co-evolution and tight trait pairing, resembling a mutualist form of domestication.

Again, it could be argued that these examples don’t inherently count as forms of artificial selection, but these mutualisms often include forms of selection which direct evolutionary forces. So, even other beings in our own world have tendencies to drive the selection among populations of other beings. When we add our own intentionality into the mix, we can see how artificial selection has brought about ranges of new species and breeds of species that never would have existed without us.

But will we (or some small subset of people among us) choose to take over the direction of human evolution?

And, if we can ask the question about whether or not we “can” or “will” do this, then we also have to ask whether or not we “should” do this, and that’s where things can become a bit concerning.

The Shadowed Legacy of Eugenics

Any conversation about directed human evolution inevitably brushes up against the darker history of eugenics.

In sharing about my work on this piece on Facebook recently, a friend of mine pointed out her own fears and the negative connotations she immediately feels as soon as she reads about something like “directed breeding programs”. As my friend wrote in one comment, “this topic is very borderline, like, Handmaid's Tale to me.” And I can definitely see how it brings out immediate negative connections for many people, especially given our own history with negative eugenics.

I recall listening to the audiobook version of Carl Zimmers’ Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, and one thing that has stuck in my mind for years is the way the narrator put a little accent in his speech when saying “better baby” when talking about the better baby contests and fitter family contests in the U.S. in the early 1900s. Many people would find it bizarre to think of now—going to a state fair and then having your infant judged on whether it’s the healthiest specimen—but the concept was rooted in a mix of hopefulness for a healthier society as well as various levels of fear, hatred, and bigotry toward differences between people. Eugenics had grown in the U.S. and other nations by that time. There was even a Eugenics Record Office where detailed records about American citizens were kept with intentions for “race betterment”—President Teddy Roosevelt in 1913 sent a letter to the Director of that office in which Roosevelt states, “...society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding.”

By the early 20th century, the ideas of directed breeding, forced sterilizations, and state-sponsored racism and bigotry had all taken a firm hold in the U.S. and many other nations. The eugenics movement was going strong.

While artificial selection had long been used to shape crops, livestock, and domesticated animals, attempts to apply similar principles to humans led to some of the darkest deeds in human history.

The term “eugenics” was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton (notedly a young cousin of Charles Darwin), who believed that human society could be improved by encouraging the reproduction of those with “desirable” traits and discouraging—or forcibly preventing—those with “undesirable” traits from passing on their genes (much as Teddy Roosevelt lamented in that letter from 1913). Galton’s ideas gained traction in the early 20th century, especially in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Eugenics movements were often cloaked in the language of science and progress, but they were deeply rooted in racism, classism, ableism, and colonialist thinking. In the U.S., eugenic policies led to the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of people deemed "unfit," including those with mental illness, disabilities, or simply those who were poor or marginalized. And much eugenicist thought had led to the dehumanizing of various groups of people.

These ideas culminated in their most horrific form under the Nazi regime, where eugenics was weaponized to justify outright genocide. Eugenic belief became fuel for the depravity of the Holocaust.

Much as in the U.S., eugenics had grown in public and political support in Germany in the early 20th century. The German term that was used was “racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene), which was first stated by economist Alfred Ploetz in 1895. And the concept of racial hygiene tied in well with the Hitler regime’s beliefs that Jewish people were among those to blame for the economic struggles Germany had faced after WWI. Among the propaganda campaigns the Nazis ran, they included many banners and images depicting Jewish people as inhuman and genetically inferior (along with other races that didn’t fit the stereotype of the healthy western European the Nazis were pushing).

I won’t go into the full atrocities of the Holocaust here, but definitely recommend a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for those living in the U.S. Each time I’ve toured through that museum, I’ve walked out in tears and a deep sense of our shared humanity. It’s incredible that there are still Holocaust deniers who can convince themselves the Nazi program of internment, torture, medical experimentation, and extermination didn’t happen.

There are, sadly, other examples historically of racism in the name of eugenics and societal health being used to justify torture and murder. One other famous example is Unit 731. At the same time that the Nazi program was operating, the Japanese Empire's military ran their own network of camps, mostly to detain and kill prisoners of war. But at Unit 731, military doctors who had dehumanized their prisoners ran a variety of barbaric human experiments.

It’s saddening and soul shaking to think that people could have done these things, but justifying the treatment of other people as inferior humans (on any basis) can lead to the kind of dehumanization that would allow for these atrocities. And this negative form of eugenics itself didn’t end with the realizations of how far down it had taken our humanity during WWII.

Even after the fall of the Nazi regime, negative eugenics continued to echo through scientific and social discourse, sometimes repackaged in more subtle forms. Even today, there are politicians, thought leaders, influencers, and more who use the language of genetic superiority to justify their racist and bigoted beliefs. Discrimination, racism, racial resentment, and the hate fueled by “otherness” still run rampant in our societies today. So any consideration of directed human evolution inherently runs up against a strong distrust and distaste for any kind of program that suggests there are certain human traits that could or should be optimized (much as my friend lamented on Facebook).

For instance, this shadowy history of eugenics challenges us to ask: Who decides what traits are desirable? Who gets to shape the future of humanity? What values underlie those decisions?

And as we are moving into an era of broader genetic screening, gene editing, and even designer babies, these questions become all the more urgent. We can now not only direct selection based on which people are allowed to reproduce, but have tools that allow for selection and alteration at the genetic level. The technological tools allowing for this enhanced selection may be new, but the ethical terrain is familiar. If we're not careful, well-intentioned efforts to reduce suffering or enhance ability could revive the biases and injustices of the past—only this time, with far more powerful technologies.

Artificial Selection, Genetic Tools, and Future Humans

The 21st century has ushered in new tools for shaping life at the genetic level.

In recent years, breakthroughs in gene editing technologies, especially the development of CRISPR-Cas9 for gene editing, have made it possible to precisely alter DNA sequences in living organisms—including humans. These tools offer the potential to eliminate hereditary diseases such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and Tay-Sachs disease by repairing or silencing faulty genes. For example, a landmark trial in 2023 successfully used CRISPR-Cas9 to treat patients with sickle cell disease, leading to remission in a majority of participants without the need for a bone marrow transplant. Researchers are also exploring gene therapy for conditions like muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, and certain inherited forms of blindness. These advancements have huge potential for reducing human suffering and diseases. They also reveal that society has already deemed there to be specific human traits in the form of diseases that individuals would want to select against to have “healthier” children.

CRISPR-Cas9 and gene editing approaches may soon eliminate most hereditary diseases that are considered bad. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) enables modern parents using IVF to screen embryos for specific genetic markers—paired with gene editing tools this may one day soon culminate in a realm of designer babies that has fueled some dystopian sci-fi. The film Gattaca from 1997 presented a future world where racial discrimination is driven by applied eugenics—designer babies with the “best” traits have come to dominate society while humans born “the old fashioned way” are relegated to subservient roles as second-class citizens.

Could it get so bad?

Honestly, I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone else does either.

The possibilities for our technologies to be used in malicious ways or in ways that, even if unintentional, lead eventually to greater suffering always remain. That’s part of why we need to have deeper discussion on the ethical impacts, now and in the future, of our behaviors and our uses of our technology.

That said, the outcomes of our selective pressures may be positive, especially coming at a time when we’re advancing technologically at remarkable rates. The elimination of disease, life extension, and mergers with our digital technologies are all on the table, and could all be part of the next large step for what it is to be human.

We might even find that there is a future where a realm of traits have been selected and we have directed some of our evolution, not only for living on Earth but also possibly for allowing the future human to live elsewhere. For instance, I wrote recently on the potential that we might radically alter the human form so that there may be people who could live on other worlds or out among the stars, and who may appear drastically different from what we are now.

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Living on Mars or spending generations on a spaceship travelling to nearby stars would pose extreme challenges for modern humans: low gravity, high radiation, extreme isolation, and limited resources among them.

Would we want future generations of spacefarers to be genetically selected—or even engineered—for these conditions? Traits like resistance to cosmic rays, reduced muscle and bone loss in microgravity, and enhanced psychological resilience might one day be built into the genomes of interstellar explorers or our Martian descendents.

We already modify astronauts’ environments—shielding, diet, exercise regimens. But as we reach the limits of what external changes can do, internal biological adaptation may become a more serious consideration.

And if we can imagine a future where we’ve directed some of our evolution for new populations to thrive on Mars or out among the stars, certainly we can imagine much the same happening here on Earth first.

The film Gattaca presumed a future where the traits selected for would lead to a monoculture of human “perfection”, but what if the direction wasn’t just toward one ideal? There may be future humans who have been slowly amplified over generations to be much bigger in body weight and height, or far better at swimming with extra long arms, or selected for intellectual abilities. Among possible changes could be alterations in how our eyesight works or how we use smell and taste for sense reception. We might see some people choosing to select for puzzle solving abilities or even exploring the depths of consciousness by selecting for traits that make some people more receptive to transformative experiences. There’s so much uncertainty about what could be selected for and where such traits may lead.

But again, we should come back to asking the questions of whether or not we should do this. Even if we could, should we allow individual parents to select for or against certain traits? Do we have the right to tell people what traits they can or cannot select for in their own children? Is there a difference between some parents choosing to remove a potentially harmful disease from an embryo and some other parents who wish to select for a slightly taller or physically stronger child?

Perhaps one of the most important questions of all: what role could specific bodies of people such as governments, corporations, or interest groups have in directing the selection of future humans?

Ethics at the Edge of Evolution

(Note: There are so many possible routes to exploring some of the ethical issues here. Admittedly, I’ve had a hard time figuring out my own way into it and may not be going as deep as some readers may want, so please let me know if you would have pursued this differently.)

As our tools for genetic intervention grow more powerful, the questions we face are no longer only scientific—they are profoundly moral, philosophical, and political.

If we allow individuals to select for or against traits in their children, where do we draw the line between therapy and enhancement, between responsible planning and hubristic interference? The ability to prevent hereditary illness may seem ethically sound, even compassionate. But what happens when those same tools are used to select for height, intelligence, strength, or even temperament? Is this an expression of parental autonomy, or does it invite a subtle form of modern eugenics—one driven not by states, but by market forces, beauty standards, and cultural biases?

Different ethical frameworks offer competing insights. Utilitarianist and consequentialist approaches, for instance, might support widespread gene editing if it reduces suffering or enhances overall well-being. But deontological ethics—with its emphasis on moral duties and individual rights—might caution against treating future children as the products of design. Virtue ethics may ask us to consider what kind of people we become when we wield such power: Are we cultivating wisdom and compassion, or feeding into vanity and control? There’s also Rawlsian justice, which challenges us to ask whether these technologies are accessible and fair to all, or if they would only deepen inequality and privilege.

The threats of inequality loom large. If access to genetic enhancement becomes a luxury good—available only to the ultra-wealthy—we may find ourselves facing a future of biological castes, where the affluent literally engineer themselves and their offspring into a more capable elite. The gap between rich and poor would no longer be defined by wealth or education alone, but by our biological makeup itself. Even worse, such inequalities could become self-reinforcing, inherited not only socially, but genetically. We already live in a world where mate selection is often driven by wealth and social class—as much as we love to tell stories where someone falls in love and lives happily ever after with a person well removed from their own socioeconomic status, that tends not to be the case.

And what of state power, or coercive control over reproduction?

My friend suggested that the very concept of directed breeding programs reminds her of The Handmaid’s Tale. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel offers a chilling vision of a forced breeding program in the wake of societal collapse. Such stories present issues from feminism and individual agency in regard to state run programs for reproduction.

History is full of real-world analogs: from forced sterilizations under eugenic policies to the enslavement of women for reproductive purposes (which has continued happening, even now, in the world). The specter of state-sanctioned, corporate-directed, or even military or secret interest group human design is not confined to fiction. A secret, long-term project—like that of the Bene Gesserit—might not be so unthinkable in a world of geopolitical rivalry, data monopolies, and increasing biotechnological sophistication. What protections exist to prevent this? Who is watching the watchers?

We are left with no easy answers, only the need for ongoing vigilance, humility, and global conversation about the things we choose to do. The ability to shape future humans may be within reach. But unless it is grounded in ethical clarity and collective responsibility, it risks becoming a tool of division, domination, or unintended tragedy.

Who comes next?

We have long shaped life around us, but only recently have we gained the power to radically shape ourselves. Not only could we direct human evolution intentionally through mate selection, but we now have the tools to alter the nature of being human at the genetic level.

The dream of the Bene Gesserit—to bring about a specific kind of superhuman through long-term planning over centuries or millennia—is not entirely out of reach. Yet history teaches us that attempts to control human evolution have often led to horror and atrocities when guided by arrogance or prejudice. Do we have it within us in our current time to morally and responsibly deal with these issues?

Like it or not, we’re already on the precipice of what might come next—we may need to choose, ready or not, to either climb or fall.

The future of humanity is rather uncertain, in my view. Our exponential technological development is bringing so much possibility to us all at once. From medicine and biotech and AI tools and the potential for brain-computer interfaces and more. We’re already engaging in programs of human gene editing, and it seems like only a matter of time before we have not just selection against disease in human embryos but also selection for specific traits.

A recent survey exploring the use of polygenic embryo screening, for instance, where some traits considered negative could be selected against whilst other traits could be selected for, showed that, of 1400 respondents undergoing IVF or working in reproductive healthcare, 82% said they were at least slightly interested in using polygenic screening, 72% and 77% approved of using the screening to select against psychiatric and physical health issues (respectively), and 30% and 36% approved of using the screening to select for potentially positive traits in physical and behavioral health (respectively). I imagine overall support would be far less among the general population, but that might change in the near future. Who knows what the next health trend touted by celebrities and influencers might be?

Having the power to alter the future of being human is a great power indeed. And with great power comes great responsibility, as they say.

If we are to wield this power, we must do so with humility, wisdom, and care—recognizing that humanity's greatest strength lies not in homogeneity, but in the diversity and unpredictability that has always driven evolution forward. And we have to decide not just for ourselves but for our descendants and the future we’re leaving them how we wish to be now.

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This piece was inspired by a short blog post I wrote in A Cosmobiologist’s Dream in 2011, after I had finished reading The Science of Dune for the first time. As always, many thanks for reading and exploring these ideas with me!