Lately there has been a lot of talk about designer babies. Basically that means exactly what it says: you can design your baby while he or she is still an embryo. You can genetically enhance the characteristics, such as how intelligent she is or her hair and eye color. Essentially, you can have her personality and physical characteristics genetically enhanced. This sounds great, but there are many people who believe that the government will create superhumans. They will be faster, stronger, etc. I know… when I first read this I didn’t believe it either, but it has actually been done in China.

China is claiming they are able to genetically enhance dogs to run faster. According to an article from Express.co.uk, “The dogs, which are test tube bred in a lab, have twice the muscle mass of their natural counterparts and are considerably stronger and faster.” These dogs are going to be stronger, faster, and better at running and hunting. These dogs, in the future, may potentially be assisting police officers on the frontline service.  The canine genome is very similar to the human genome, meaning this has brought us closer to genetically engineering humans. As of today, we apparently have “superdogs” in China, o  that mean we will have superhumans within the decade?

There have been recent discoveries about being able to edit the human genome, which has been used in many laboratory studies. There are many trials happening right now to prevent future diseases from spreading from one generation to the next, or even slow down the aging process. According to an article on Sputnik, an expert, Dr. Hynes says, “Many diseases are complicated, they involve multiple genes and environmental impacts. We can’t edit multiple genes at this point.” At this moment it is actually impossible to get rid of all diseases and slow the aging process, since they are only in the early stages of editing the human genome. This will be possible in the future, but just not anytime soon. Dr. Hynes believes that we are not ready for superhumans just yet, since we don’t know all the risk of genome editing.

Does that mean we won’t have superhumans soon? For humans to be able to regrow limbs they lost in combat? To be able to lift record breaking weights? To go days without food or sleep, and not be affected in anyway? To have our soldiers survive significant blood loss without immediate medical treatment? Who really knows those answers? Absolutely no one. As of right now, the experiments for this are in their early stages of development. Who knows, we may even have superhumans within the decade. Or we may not have them for many decades. But some time in the future, we will literally have real-life superheroes to fight in battle, and it will be something extraordinary to see.