The revelation that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein planned to impregnate 20 women with his sperm in a “DNA seeding” centre left the world feeling sick. But for patrons of a small, but growing, political movement it caused utter chaos.

“This is the largest media coverage we have ever experienced,” says Zoltan Istvan, former presidential candidate and founder of the Transhumanist Party. “But this is the worst type of coverage. Lots of damage control is being done right now.”

The father-of-two has spent the morning taking telephone calls and sending emails to fellow “leaders” of the movement to try and work out some form of publicity crisis management strategy.

Epstein's DNA seeding idea may have stemmed from transhumanism, or the belief that people can artificially improve the human body using technology.

Epstein's links with transhumanism

Now Istvan hopes to quell a potential panic surrounding the transhumanist party’s beliefs. An explosive report in the New York Times alleged that not only was Epstein, a 66-year-old financier and convicted sex offender, donating thousands to various scientists in an attempt to infiltrate their inner circle, but that he also donated $120,000 to transhumanist organisation Humanity Plus.

Further, Jaron Lanier, a respected virtual reality expert who said he refused his funding claimed Epstein told him he hoped to inseminate 20 women at one time, a claim that Epstein is alleged to have repeated on another occasion.