Here is an excerpt from the second edition of Gardeners of the Universe
They’d talked about the morality of her plan and the long-term effects on humans. Dan simply didn’t buy the inequality argument—the haves and have-nots—advances eventually spread to everyone. Sarah said, “You have the genius to improve humans; you have the responsibility to do it.” Rianne had weighed the risks that inhibited the rest of the scientific and medical community and chose to take on the burden for them all.
She designed her babies to have Dan’s nose, Joti’s skin tone, her father’s humor, Mary’s devotion, Sarah’s special vision and her own hearing. She identified three of the Torae-designed genes, which caused extra brain folds in Dan’s temporal lobes, and included them. Altogether, she changed 1500 genes, about one third as many as the difference between humans and chimps. She assumed half would become active after the fertilization. Dan’s sperm had been sorted only for sex–using the slight gender-dependent size difference.
The fertilized eggs were allowed to divide for a week, until there were 100 cells in each and they became sustainable blastocysts. A graduate student anchored the embryos onto Rianne’s uterus–one girl and one boy. Both became healthy fetuses and were born successfully nine months later. None of the grandparents suspected anything unusual for several months after the birth. The babies appeared normal, which had been one of her key goals, but Rianne had advanced normal human evolution by fifty thousand years.
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