Scenario – Protecting Yourself from a Time Travelling Gene Editor with Court-Worthy Documentation in an Unsympathetic Environment

Disclaimer: Time travel is a science fiction concept and/or speculation. The existence of time travel cannot be verified. The author loves playing with unfavorable scenarios based on logic which may include errors to figure out the types of situations that should be avoided in the future that may or may not become reality. Feel free to have an open mind and explore possibilities.

In a scenario where there is a time traveling gene editor, then there could be paranoia in descendants or some other rather dangerous parties about their ancestors (and give them a hard time over gene edits or alternatively being a time traveler) and various other difficult problems. It would probably be wise to have documentation to protect yourself as soon as someone in the family starts making noises about gene editing family members. Some documentation that might be worth sending down the family line to deal with a time travelling gene editor might include:

  • Some information about the family members in your family unit when you lived with your parents and then the same when you live with your spouse
  • Birth certificates (very original ones and not ones that were remade because of an update to the government systems)
  • Immigration paperwork, if any
  • Marriage certificates
  • Similar milestones to the above including career and education milestones
  • Genealogy as far back as you can go (track the Y chromosome ancestors (follows the fathers), mitochondrial DNA ancestors (follows the mothers) and take a few guesses at who your X chromosome ancestors (women get an X chromosome from each parent and men get their X chromosome from their mother) might be based on where you get your appearance or personality traits on)
  • Explanations around some of the weird or interesting ancestors
  • Commentary around any interesting genealogy patterns
  • Some notes on how the genealogy was done
  • Documentation that proves a gene edit was not done on you by your parents and also that you did not do a gene edit on your children
  • Details around the birth of your children and any paperwork around babies that were born via IVF for example
  • Details of DNA tests
  • Pictures of family members and you
  • Key personal details about you

You could put it all into one document and call it a cute name like ‘Defense of Childbirth Document.’