Epstein planned ‘super-race’ breeding programme by impregnating 20 women at New Mexico ranch: Report

New York: Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of sex trafficking, harboured ambitions to create a genetically engineered “super-race” of humans, according to a major investigative report by The New York Times. Epstein’s plans, centred on his New Mexico property Zorro Ranch, allegedly involved using upto 20 women to bear his children in what he envisaged as a large-scale breeding programme.

As per the 2019 report, Epstein discussed these ideas with scientists and business leaders over several years, describing his interests as “transhumanism” – though critics said they resembled a modern form of eugenics.
Eugenics is an early 20th‑century ideology that claimed humanity could be improved through selective breeding, later adopted and weaponised by the Nazis.

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Epstein reportedly began speaking about these ambitions in the early 2000s, and after his 2008 sex trafficking conviction, he was more open about wanting Zorro Ranch to serve as the hub of his scheme. The ranch, outside Santa Fe, is also one of the sites where young women, including minors, were allegedly abused.

Epstein hosted dinners and conferences attended by leading scientists, among them physicist Stephen Hawking, molecular engineer George Church, theoretical physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Frank Wilczek, neurologist Oliver Sacks, and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. He donated $6.5 million to Harvard University’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and contributed $20,000 to the Worldwide Transhumanist Association, now Humanity Plus.

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Despite his efforts to cultivate intellectual circles, many dismissed his ideas. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker branded him an “intellectual impostor”, while technologist Jaron Lanier said his theories did not qualify as testable science. Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in 2008, described the eugenics angle as “shocking”, adding that many wondered whether scientists were more interested in his money than his views.