Short Wave - Why Gene-Edited Babies May Be Closer Than Ever

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, made a shocking announcement to the world in 2018: He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies. The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and unethical by the scientific community. That’s because, among other things, the CRISPR gene-editing technique Jiankui used was so new. NPR science correspondent Rob Stein has been following the controversial world of gene-editing and human reproduction, including some companies’ recent quests to push gene-editing technology forward.Read more of Rob Stein’s reporting on the topic here.Interested in more science news? Let us know at [e-mail]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwaver's, Regina Barbara here. A year before the pandemic hit, a scientist in China made a shocking revelation to the world. He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies. Two beautiful little Chinese girl named Lulu and Nana came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago. The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and reckless. unethical by the scientific community. Because among other things, the CRISPR gene editing technique the scientist used was so new. My colleague Rob Stein is here to tell us about that now

infamous announcement of the world's first gene edited babies, known as CRISPR babies. Hey, Rob. Hey, Gina. Yeah, and I've been continuing to follow all this, including when China imprisoned the scientists for three years for violating medical regulations. His name is Heh-Gen quay. And I continue to follow this world of gene editing and human reproduction. And this stuff, I just find it fascinating. Not only is the science just amazing, it also raises all kinds of provocative, social, legal, moral, and ethical issues. Yeah, absolutely. Like, this is very controversial. And there's so many questions. Right. Would it ever be safe? Would it be ethical? Why would someone want to make gene edited babies to prevent diseases or even go further? Right. Like, that

movie Gattaca making so-called designer babies. Exactly. And that's just a few of the tough questions. If this ever really became possible, how would it affect society, our sense of family, our relationship with our own genes? Yeah, and you've been investigating a new piece of all this that's unraveled in just the last few weeks, right, Rob? Absolutely. I've been on the case, and I recently discovered that the quest to produce gene-edited children appears to be getting a reboot. Like all the movies we've been seen.

Today on the show, the new movement to jumpstart the pursuit of genetically modified babies. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, Rob, I have so many questions. First, tell me what prompted a story about this now? Yeah, so earlier this summer, I started hearing about an unexpected new development. It involves scientists, Silicon Valley startups, East Coast entrepreneurs, and even some so-called pronatalists, those are the folks who fear declining birth rates pose an existential threat to humanity. Turns out, they're kind of forming a coalition of forces eager to try to accelerate the creation of more gene-edited babies.

A coalition, wow. I talked about this with Alta Chara. She's a lawyer and bioethicist from the University of Wisconsin, who actually was sitting next to the Chinese scientists at dinner the night before he made that big announcement in Hong Kong. Kong. Wow. Yeah. And she's been following this too and is now consulting with governments and private companies. You've got a convergence of people who are thinking that they can improve their children, whether it's their children's health or their children's appearance or their children's intelligence, along with people who are comfortable using the newest technologies and people who have the money and the chutzpah, the daring to try and do this through starting companies that would bring these

forces together. So then I went out and, you know, I started talking to some of these Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were trying to decide whether there are any companies out there that they could invest in or whether maybe they should just try starting up a company themselves. And I found out that a prominent cryptocurrency billionaire publicly he had announced that he wanted to start an embryo editing company. And there were rumors swirling that a startup was getting going in California. and just as I was about to put my story on the radio, guess what happened? What? What happened? Well, there's this woman that I've been trying to interview.

I found out she was just about to reveal that she was starting the first company to publicly announce plans to pursue editing human embryos. Wow. So this is starting up again. Yeah, it's a real thing. And so I quickly finally scored an interview with that woman to break that news. Her name is Kathy Tye, and what she was announcing was her latest startup, a fledgling company based in New York City that, and get this, she was calling the Manhattan Project. Wow, that is, that is something. Yeah, yeah, and Kathy Tye says she chose the name deliberately because she thinks the scale of what she wants to do is just as bold as the original Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb. And just as controversial, apparently. Yeah. Manhattan Project will explore how to do gene correction in human embryos more safely. We want to be the company that does this in the light with transparency and with good intentions.

Okay. I mean, in the light and good intentions, it all sounds good, but like what exactly is she saying she wants to do? You know, Tai says her Manhattan project plans to test newer, potentially less risky gene editing techniques than CRISPR. You know, that's the techniques that Chinese scientists use. So she founded the company with Ariana Hysoli. She headed biological scientists at another company called Colossil Biosciences. This is the company that wants to de-extinct mammoths and the dire wolves, all that. Yeah, yeah. These are the folks that are using gene editing in the hopes of kind of bringing back extinct animals, like you said, like the wolfy mammoths. Okay, so I think this is a good place to pause and just like talk about what Christos.

is exactly. Sure. It's, you know, it's a relatively new technology that allows scientists to modify DNA much more easily than ever before. And many scientists think CRISPR will revolutionize scientists that it maybe already is because it's already led to new treatments for inherited diseases like sickle cell. But CRISPR can be kind of messy. So scientists are exploring newer gene editing techniques that could be more precise for this sort of thing, like a technique known as base editing. Okay. And so Ty and her colleagues hope to prove that one of these newer gene editing techniques would be safe to modify embryos to make babies, babies, you know, that wouldn't be born

with diseases like cystic fibrosis, maybe Alzheimer's, by editing out disease-causing mutations at the embryonic level. Wow. There are so many diseases that have no cures and there's not going to be cure for them for many more decades. And I think that we have a responsibility to talk about this with patients. that do have those cerebral diseases and see if they want the option to not pass that on to their future generations.

But you know, Gina, some investors and other folks are talking about going further with this sort of thing. Right. I mean, where do you draw the line? Yeah, and that's part of the problem. That's a very fuzzy line. But some people are saying that if this does turn out to be safe, they say parents should basically just have the option, have the freedom to use it in all sorts of ways. Right, like physical features.

Exactly, exactly. And this is where that odd coalition I was talking about earlier starts to come in. Yeah. I talked about this stuff with Malcolm Collins and his wife, Simone. They're vocal pronatalists. Okay, so they think people should be having more kids. Yeah, yeah. And they're funding many cutting-edge reproductive technologies.

People can say, well, you're playing God by using this type of technology. And I'd say people would say that with any technology of the past. They'd say you're playing God with glasses. They say you're playing God with blood transfusions. I'm really excited for a future within human history where there are some people that have decided to really lean into technologies like this. We fundamentally believe in reproductive choice. And we also very much support parents' rights to give their children every privilege they can.

And if people would like to start to do that at a genetic level, they should have every right to do so. Now, I think it's really important to point out that, you know, many scientists do not endorse that point of view. view. They do endorse researching genetic modification of sperm, eggs, and embryos, however. And the reason for that is they think it could lead to big discoveries about basic human biology and reproduction. And that could have lots of benefits like leading to new ways to treat infertility, maybe prevent miscarriages. I talked about this with Dr. Paula Amato. She works on embryo editing at the Oregon

Health and Science University. And she says it's tough because the federal government doesn't fund this kind of work. NIH doesn't typically support human embryo research. So if the technology pros are interested, that would be welcome in the field. Oh. Yeah. But as long as they make safety, the top priority, she says, and at least initially, would only try to edit out diseases.

She knows this kind of work has to be done very carefully and with strict oversight. Okay. But even if tech people in Silicon Valley, like, want to do this, I thought they couldn't, because it's illegal to try to make gene-edited babies. Yeah, it is prohibited in many countries. And the United States, U.S. regulations would prohibit trying to make gene-edited babies out of genetically modified embryos. And several leading scientific organizations just recently called for at least a 10-year moratorium on anyone

trying to make gene-edited babies, including Tim Hunt. He's the chief executive officer for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. Human heritable germline editing is quite clearly a terrible solution in search of a problem. If you make a mistake, the mistake passes on to all future generations. So that's a pretty big ethical role of the dice. But some wonder whether this could change. I talked about this with Glenn Cohn. He's a lawyer in bioethicist at Harvard.

There's a president who has some advisors and some political forces whispering in his ear. that have a decidedly pronatalist bent that are interested in these technologies. All of that is opening up a moment where some of what would have been unthinkable may now become possible. But all of this is setting off lots of alarm bells, as you might imagine. Yeah, like tell me about those alarm bells. So I talked to Hank really about that. He's a bioethicist at Stanford. Smooth fast and break things has not worked very well for Silicon Valley in healthcare.

When you talk about reproduction, the things you are breaking are babies. And I think that makes it even more dangerous and even more sinister. And Greeley, you know, he's far from alone. I talked with a bunch of bioethicists who agree that renewed interest is making them very worried. And they argue that this movement is today's version of eugenics, you know, that long, discredited pursuit of supposedly genetically superior people. Yeah. And I talk about this with Katie Hassan.

She's the associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a genetic technology. a genetic technologies watchdog group. We're going to mass produce genetically engineered human beings. And I think that's a very dangerous way to approach these technologies, right? I'm very worried, right, that all of this together means that we're headed straight into a new era of high-tech market-based eugenics. Yeah. What do the folks like the founders of the Manhattan Projects say about all this?

You know, so they agree that safety has to be the number one top priority and would only move forward if they can show that it is. But the Manhattan Projects Hysoli argues the potential benefits of editing human embryos could be huge. If you have the tools to actually correct the pathogenic mutation that can be passed down to other generations, is it sort of ethical to do it or not to do it? And I would argue it would be more ethical to stop that mutation. And remember the CRISPR baby scientist? Since getting out of a Chinese prison, he's gone from repentant to defiant and is vowing to resume working on gene edited babies too. Wow. But it turns out that Thai, that Manhattan Project co-founder, was briefly married to that scientist.

What? What? Yeah. I know. I know. But she says they recently divorced and that he has nothing to do with her new human embryo gene editing company. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. I know. Well, it's kind of a small world in many ways. But she's already assembled a small scientific team and developed protocols to start working on a methodical set of experiments in a Manhattan lab. The team plans to start by studying mice before moving onto primates and then human cells before ultimately, they hope, working with human embryos. And the project's first goal would be to produce enough evidence to hopefully convince the federal government to fund this kind of research and also persuade the food, drug administration to authorize them to keep going. Well, Rob, you've given me a lot to think about today.

Thank you so much for bringing all of this to Shortwave. Anytime. It's always great to be here, Gina. For all of you listening, if you like this episode, make sure you'll never miss a new one by following us on the NPR app or whatever podcasting platform you're listening from. And if you have a science question you'd like us to investigate, send us an email at Shortwave at npr.org. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by a shoreer and Rebecca Ramirez. Rob Stein checked the facts.

Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.