One of the genomics industry’s best kept secrets is that people resembling the mutants of X-Men are already living among us and that Big Pharma has been quietly studying them for decades in the hopes of finding recipes for new blockbuster drugs. That, however, is where the similarity to a Hollywood script ends — in reality these mutations are as often a hindrance to their bearers as they are a help.

Take the case of Steven Pete, a resident of Kelso, Washington who possesses a congenital insensitivity to pain. Steven can hold his hand directly over an open flame without feeling a thing. You might imagine this kind of trait would propel him to stardom as a cage fighter, or to the top echelons of an elite military unit. In reality, Steven lives in a heightened state of physical insecurity – ever cautious that he may have suffered some terrible physical trauma and not realized it. A burst appendix is particularly worrisome given that the principle symptom is the immense internal pain that alerts a person to what has happened. As an infant, Steven’s parents were terrified that he might bight off his tongue and not realize it.

But not all superhuman type mutations are as troublesome and life threatening. Take Timothy Dreyer, who has bones several times thicker than the average human, capable of withstanding punishment like the mighty Wolverine of X-Men. Conditions like Dreyer’s have attracted the attention of pharmaceutical companies interested in preventing osteoporosis and other bone density disorders.

Sounding like nothing so much as the uber-evil corporate villain from a Hollywood movie, Andreas Grauer of the pharmaceutical company Amgen, called Dreyer and Pete “a gift from nature,” and opined, “It is our obligation to turn it into something useful” regarding their mutations. Whether the people possessing the traits feel the same is often in doubt, but this hasn’t stopped Big Pharma from trundling on in pursuit of bigger profits.

What maybe even more surprising is that readers like you are also likely to possess such rare and potentially lucrative mutations. When parents pass their genes down to their children, an average of 60 unique mutations are introduced to the genetic code in the process. These are mutations not found in the parents’ DNA. Any of these stand to be of the radically altering variety found in Pete and Dreyer. While more often than not these turn out to be “nonsense mutations” that have no effect on phenotype, it’s less uncommon to receive a mutation from one’s parents that does confer extraordinary ability.

For instance, a mutation in the FOXO3 gene common to about 20% of people of European decent greatly affects ones chances of living to be over 100. Those with the mutation are over two times as likely to become a centenarian. With the hunt for a drug to arrest aging firmly in the site of Big Pharma, people with FOXO3 mutation may just become the blueprint for a new anti-aging serum.

An illustration showing how genetic mutations occur

Similarly, a common mutation in the ACTN3 gene conveys improved muscle performance, necessary to excel in sports like sprinting and powerlifting. In fact, it appears that no one lacking this mutation has ever become an Olympic-level sprinter, suggesting that much of our professional sports have already become the exclusive purview of mutants. Now that we have discovered “superhumans” in our midst, and realized we may even be among them, the harder question facing society is what to do about it? The answer up until now has been to ignore the ramifications of this knowledge. Should sprinters possessing the ACTN3 mutation be handicapped to promote fair play? And what about if we discover a mutation for business acumen — should non-mutants receive a salary hike as compensation? I don’t propose to have the answers, but I am sure these types of questions will increasingly need to be asked.