Sponsored: The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore talks “test tube babies”

By AV Club Staff | February 10, 2015 | 3:00pm

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Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show continues to break new ground in its time slot, with Thursday’s program asking a question that has likely never been posed before in late night history: Someday, will we face a reality where people are able to design the shape of their unborn baby’s butt? It sounds silly, but Wilmore and his panelists were (mostly) earnest as they tried to sort out where the ethical lines lie on bio-engineering technology like embryonic repair.

After CBS medical correspondent Holly Phillips explained the process of mitochondrial transfer—the “three parent” process recently approved by the British parliament—comedian Rachel Feinstein dumbed it down for the layman by explaining that there’s one guy, a “main woman,” and a “side piece,” just like a threesome. The panelists try to place the debate in proper context: Magician Penn Jillette offers some historical perspective by recalling early fears of in-vitro fertilization—the process by which his own daughter was conceived—and actress Gabrielle Union responds to fears of a genetically privileged “superclass” by noting, “We already have that. They’re called white people.”