THE founder of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, has joined a clutch of tech billionaires contributing to the $30million funding of a biotechnology business called Preventive which aims to ‘correct devastating genetic conditions for future children’. The US company has plans to edit the DNA of babies before they are born, a process known as human germline genetic engineering, which is banned in 70 countries. Preventive is seeking a country which will give it permission to carry out its experiments. No doubt the New Zealand Gene Technology Bill, currently awaiting its Second Reading, which will liberalise decisions about gene technology experiments and place them in the hands of a single regulator, will have brought NZ to the attention of Preventive.
