Epstein planned ‘baby ranch’ to ‘improve’ humans
Jeffrey Epstein wanted to ‘‘improve’’ the human race by impregnating multiple women at his New Mexico ranch, scientists have said.
Three people – two awardwinning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals – have said that Epstein confided in them that he wanted to improve the gene pool with his own DNA. The sources, speaking to The New York Times, said that Epstein explained his ambition was to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies.
Jaron Lanier, an author and a founding father of virtual reality, told the paper that he spoke to a Nasa scientist who said Epstein’s idea was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his sprawling New Mexico ranch, in a tiny town outside Santa Fe.
Lanier said he had the impression that Epstein was using the dinner parties, featuring attractive women with impressive academic credentials, to screen candidates to bear Epstein’s children.
Epstein reportedly based his idea for a ‘‘baby ranch’’ on the Repository for Germinal Choice, a programme that aimed to store the sperm of Nobel laureates for use by women who wanted to strengthen the human gene pool.
Only one Nobel Prize winner has acknowledged contributing sperm to it, and it closed in 1999.
The 66-year-old financier, currently in jail in Manhattan awaiting his child sex trafficking trial next year, was known for seeking out some of the most brilliant minds in scientific research – both men and women.
The scientists were frequently enticed by his US$500 million (NZ$765m) fortune: Epstein would fund their pet projects, host their conferences, and support their causes.
He hosted buffet lunches at Harvard’s Programme for Evolutionary Dynamics, which he had helped start with a US$6.5m donation.
Epstein was known to be interested in ‘‘transhumanism’’, the science of improving the human population through technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.
Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.
Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Epstein’s former lawyer, told the paper that Epstein hosted a lunch in the Massachusetts town of Cambridge – where Harvard is located – and steered the conversation towards the question of how humans could be improved genetically.
Dershowitz said he was appalled by the conversation, given the Nazis’ use of eugenics to justify their genocidal effort to purify the Aryan race.
Epstein was also interested in cryonics, where people’s bodies are frozen and potentially brought back to life.