Jeffrey Epstein was convicted and widely known for sex trafficking and child abuse. But human trafficking was not the full extent of his ambitions.
Behind the scenes, Epstein pursued a different obsession: eugenics.
Numerous reports and first-hand accounts describe Epstein discussing a plan to “seed” people with his DNA, including allegations that he wanted to impregnate up to two dozen women at his Zorro Ranch, a remote property in New Mexico.
He was reportedly inspired by the Repository for Germinal Choice, a notorious sperm bank in the 1980s that sought genes from “special” men, including Nobel laureates.
What eugenics project was Epstein involved in?
As far as we know, Epstein did not have a formal public-label program. Instead, he pursued a personal, donor-driven project built around three overlapping goals:
- He wanted to reproduce his genetic heritage. Epstein openly talked about impregnating multiple women to spread his DNA at Zorro Ranch. He also discussed the preservation of his head and penis. His Virgin Islands company, the Southern Trust Company, conducted DNA-banking operations.
- He bought his way to elite science. Epstein has given at least $6.5 million to Harvard’s Program on Evolutionary Dynamics, funded George Church’s CRISPR research, donated $2 million to Church’s lab from other donors, donated $20,000 to Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association), and registered general AI intelligence worker Ben Goertzel. He wasn’t just writing checks. He made introductions, managed other people’s money, and set himself up as a security guard.
- He turned dinner parties into eugenics seminars. Attendees of Epstein’s private gatherings described a consistent pattern: he advanced discussions about genetic variation, intelligence, and human “development,” seeking out qualified participants willing to engage rather than walk away. According to the New York Times, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said he was surprised after hearing Epstein’s views on eugenics aired at a Harvard luncheon.
What Do His Emails Suggest About Motives?
Epstein’s writings suggest that this was no ordinary anger. He returned again and again to the same topics: genetics, gene editing, and the genetics of intelligence. He posed them as blueprints for social engineering, not scientific questions with ethical constraints. Eugenics was not the only thing he discussed. It shaped who he funded, what he pushed in the debate, and how he talked about the future.
A DOJ document release in late 2025 and early 2026 included personal emails that put this pattern on full display:
The Chomsky exchange
In a February 2016 email to linguist Noam Chomsky, Epstein argued for a genetic basis for racial differences in test scores and used that as a basis for extensive genetic programming. Chomsky backed down. Epstein’s answer was two words: “Genetic altruism,” a phrase that echoes Silicon Valley’s “successful thinking” while rehashing the logic of old eugenics.
Correction of IQ and DNA
A 2013 email showed Epstein writing a confession about “children’s IQ tests,” noting, “there are enough different types of tests, making the system robust.” In other letters, he asked his collaborators about DNA testing, saying he was looking forward to seeing “how many genes we share.” When someone asked if he had the serial gene, he joked that he had “two genes that are duplicated that cause hyper fucking.”
Research on transgender people
One of the most disturbing threads involves evolutionist Robert Trivers, whom Epstein has supported since at least 2009 and later described to Chomsky as the scientist he was his “big sponsor.” After Trivers thanked her for “the extra money and appointment as an advisor to your Foundation,” Epstein responded with a directive: “I want to see your piece on transgender in the bio world.” Two months later, Trivers responded that he was “reaching the end of the ‘heterosexual.'”
The communication between the two about transgender people was clearly degrading. Trivers wrote about transgender women in vulgar, sexist terms, reducing them to body parts. In 2018, he called trans men “unhappy and lonely,” using derogatory anatomical terms. In 2019, a few months before Epstein’s death, Epstein again pressed Trivers to “focus on transgender biology.” Trivers later published a joint study that suggested finger length measurements could predict gender, which University of Vienna psychologist Martin Voracek compared to phrenology, calling it “a house of cards built on an unknown and uncertain environment.”
Trivers also defended Epstein’s crimes in a 2015 Reuters interview, saying that his victims, who were under the age of 14 or 15, were like older women 60 years ago, so I don’t see these heinous acts.
Epstein’s philosophy of financing. In a 2017 Science magazine interview, Epstein dismissed the Gates Foundation as not looking for “smart people” and described himself as interested in “extraordinary peaks” and “new ideas in biology.”
How far did it go?
The available record supports a clear conclusion: Epstein built an ecosystem around genetics and bioengineering and pursued ambitious programs. But he did not realize those desires, and there is no evidence that, before his death, he actually saved his head or his penis.
