¶ Introduction and Guest Welcome
Also media, Oh what's Epstein? My Jeffries, I think a version of that before. Should we not? Is that bad, Sophie? Should we not start that way? How many chances do you get now that he's dead?
You know, zero?
We don't need to do a lot.
That's right, That's right. That's the real tragedy. You know, I wouldn't say tragedy. Likeston Kerrman, our guest, how are you?
I'm doing great. I'm excited to hear more. This feels weird to say out loud, but I'm excited to hear more about Jeffrey Epstein and everything he's been up to with our boy Georgetown.
Yeah. Well, thankfully we are past. We're done with the Epstein part of the story, because you know how that ends. Obviously, Bernie Sanders sneaks into prison and puts him out of his misery in order to keep some certain people's secrets or something. You know, nobody knows, right, some people are pretty sure they know. I don't know.
It was like I would say, like four or five people who probably know exactly.
There's like four five Yeah, maybe you who know exactly? Yeah, yeah. I continue to be, you know, an agnostic. I'm an Epstein agnostic, but definitely fucking George Church. I feel like knows more than he's slepting on.
He knows more than we do on this podcast.
Yeah man, But yeah, maybe it was George no that that'll go So we can't we can't accuse this bioscientist of having Epstein guilt. Fuck yeah. Yeah, maybe he like inserted a gene and do him that made him choke more.
Yeah, just made something explode in the middle of.
Prison, right right, Yeah? Sure, Like yeah, created a spontaneously grew a noose out of his hair, so oh boy.
¶ Church, Epstein, and De-Extinction Beginnings
Around the time he renewed his association with Epstein, which would have been in the twenty fourteen to fifteen era unless he'd been continuing to talk to him, which we really don't know, but we have records of them starting to meet again multiple times in twenty fourteen anyway, and around that same period of time in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen, that's when doctor Church first started seriously pushing
the extinction as a scientific topic. Right where he was I think you can find some quotes where he sort of talked about the possibility, But two than fourteen fifteen is when he really is like, this is an actual thing we can and should do, and maybe even a potential business that I want to be in. He had danced around the issue in his twenty twelve book ReGenesis, where he had proposed bringing back Neanderthals, which people always
get angry. Are like, Robert, you're mispronouncing it again. That is how you say what most people call Neanderthals.
I'm not brave enough to have ever challenged to question.
Some people did in my novel, and then they're like, oh shit, I looked it up.
I say Neanderthal. But I'm a dumb dumbs so I'm glad.
I'm very all dead. So that's not what they call themselves. You call us what they Yeah, wow wow, No, it's fine. We wipe them out because we're uh well, because we're monsters. We're the devils here, so uh. Anyway, he had proposed bringing back Neanderthals by genetic engineering and using an actual human woman to serve as their surrogate mother.
Oh no.
He described in the book the ideal surrogate to rebirth the Neanderthal race as quote an extremely adventurous female human. Oh man, you can feel everyone about this, but my maybe Sophie you can chime in here, depending on how if you feel I'm getting this wrong. It's kind of fucked up to call her a female human as opposed to like an adventurous woman. Like either way it's fucked up, but female human seems worse somehow than like we're gonna
find some adventurous woman, right. I don't know if neither is good, but female human like you sound like a star trek care you sound like Quark talking about ladies.
Female human as if female human you didn't need both of those.
Could just say woman again.
Just say a woman.
Yeah, that's what that word is for.
It literally was like a female human. It's just kind of awkward.
Man, you're not being chill.
You're not being cool. Derspiegel and Derspiegel is a German news agency. I think it literally means the voice or something like that. I don't know. Don't quote man that I'm bad at German. But it's it's a major It's like their New York Times almost right, it's a major publication over there. Interviewed doctor George Church in twenty fifteen because he had recently made the claim that it would
soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. They asked him, will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime? And he replied, I think so. But boy, there are a lot of parts to that. He goes on a list a few of the technologies that have developed recently which might allow this kind of cloning, and then adds another technology that the de extinction of a Neanderthal would require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it's very likely that we could clone a human.
Why shouldn't we be able to do so?
Yeah, now we're getting to what you really want here.
Yeah, exactly. Now we're getting to the real sketchy shit.
Something tells me you're not as concerned with these wolves and these Neanderthals as now.
Der Spiegel very reasonably said, well you shouldn't, maybe because it's super illegal, right, Like, you're not it's very illegal to clone human beings. And Church's responses, Well, that may be true in Germany, but it's not true everywhere, and laws can change, by the way.
WHOA cool?
That's like if I was like if someone was like, oh, I think I'm going to commit some murders, but it's illegal to murder. Well, what if the law changed? That's not really my question.
It's illegal to murder because you're living in the past, man, I'm thinking about the future.
Like I'm not really like if it were legal to murder, that wouldn't change my judgment upon you for wanting to murder somebody, you know. And it's interesting because, again, he's always described as having this deep consideration of ethics and you know, putting even a lot of money into making
¶ Neanderthal Resurrection Ethics
sure that what he does is ethical. And he's asked like, yeah, but like it's super illegal to clone human beings for like obvious reasons, and he's like, well, what if it wasn't not my question, my dude, Okay, yeah, it's it's it's just fascinating. And the other thing that's interesting here is that, like, not only is he like his answer to like this is kind of fucked up. Well, we could make it legal, But when he's kind of pressed by der Spiegel, I'm like, why would you want to
do this? Like what's the benefit? His answer is complete horseshit. First off, he's asked like why would the be desirable?
Right?
And when you ask that, you're asking like, give me a good reason to want a Neanderthal clone, that's not like some sort of cheap profit, Like, why is this desirable? And his first answer is, well, that's another thing. I tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine what's technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits. Wow, that is bad scientific edicts.
Yeah.
First off, man, you shouldn't decide what's desirable based on
¶ Interview on Human Cloning Legality
societal consensus. Go back to the fifties. What was societal consensus on inerracial dating. If you're letting that move you to decide what's desirable, you're gonna be bad.
It was also not taking genuine polls. No, he's just talking to Jeffrey Epstein.
The average human probably doesn't give a shit about this, right.
I didn't know that bringing back a Neanderthal was possible, and frankly, it never was interested in.
It was not on my list of concerns. Yeah, and the attitude that like, well, my only job is to determine, like what are people willing to let me do, and then what's technically feasible. You're literally doing the Ian Malcolm in draask Park thing like you're literally your scientists are so busy asking what they can do, they're not asking
should we Is this fucked up? Like Michael Crichton was not a good man, but he understood that this is bad ethics, right that just be like, I wonder if I can It's like evil, it leads you to do evil?
No, you should chill out?
Yeah, fine, probably fine, fuck it. Yeah. So it's very interesting to me how just he has he's completely incurious as to whether or not there's a practical benefit to doing this kind of cloning. And Derschpiegel has to prod him like two or three times to get him to answer kind of directly, like what is is there any potential benefit to bringing back this species? And here's what Church eventually says, Well, andertoles might think differently than we do.
We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever. It's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial. Okay, I got a lot of issues here.
Fine, man, if we're just gonna pretend fine.
First off, let's split my issues here into pragmatic and then ethical. Pragmatic. Bigger brain doesn't mean smarter. No, bigger brain. That dolphins have bigger brain than us, they're not so far prove it useful in getting us off the planet. They have other concerns, right. The other thing is if you're creating, if you're bringing back this species, this is a sentient, sapient species, an independent species, and you are saying we'll use their big brains to get off the planet.
What if that's not what they want? What if they
¶ Questionable Ethics vs. Feasibility
have other interests being their own independent beings. Because it seems like you're concerned, is like, well, we can just harness their big brains so that we can do the science stuff that I want to do because they'll be smart. But what if they don't want to do that? Are you just saying you'll own them? Is that kind of what you're saying.
Is that what you're saying, I think you're trying to make big ass slaves man. Yeah, I think you're trying to make some big old slaves. And that's yeah, that's something you should maybe just say out loud instead of pretending like it has some other value.
It's one of those things. He's not saying, I want to make big ass slaves, But if you say I want to bring back a new intelligent species, you kind of immediately have to say and they will immediately be full citizens and right with the rights of human But you have to like really emphasize that if you don't want me to be like, do you just want slaves?
They don't have to live with me wherever they want.
So that's the other thing, because like this this Der Spiegel journalist is like, how do you even go about raising this species that you've brought back to life? Right? Like they won't have parents or a culture, and as like this is an intelligent, homitted species. Presumably most of how the real ones knew how to do the things that they did was that they were raised in families like us, right, who like raise them? But there's no culture of these people anymore? So how do you raise them?
And Church is kind of vaguely like, well, you'd like make a bunch at a lot at once, like a cohort, he calls them, and then he's like, maybe they'd become their own culture. Maybe they'd even become a political force.
Who what name.
Yeah, I keep coming back to Jurassic Park because you can't not when it's talking about the extinction. But also what's amazing to me is again Michael Crichton, the climate change denier, fucking weird guy. Michael Crichton understood all of the ethical issues with this when applied to dinosaurs in a way this guy doesn't when applying them to like
effectively a humanoid creature. Because in the actual book Jurassic Park, one of the things that becomes clear, like the raptors, which are super intelligent, the ones that engine clones don't
¶ Neanderthals for Problem Solving
act like real velociraptors. They're terrible to their young. They like murder their own kids. They're just like crazy, violent and dangerous because they were not raised by adults that
knew anything. They're just these monsters that got unleashed, and so they grew up completely without any kind of a culture that would teach them how to raise their young and as an intelligence speed like Crichton imagined this when talking about dinosaurs, yea, and George Church is just uncurious about it, like literally read Jurassic Park.
We literally have a an economic system where you see what raising people without their families does, and he's like, yeah, I bet these ones will figure it out. Yeah, Like, no, that's not that's not how it's gonna work, big dog.
Well, it's also like just even when you're talking outside of the andertoals, we talk about like the animals he wants to raise like a major story from like like animal you know, biology and whatnot. In the last couple of decades, as we used to have these beliefs about alpha wolves that deeply influenced a lot of toxic aspects of human culture. And then the scientist who came up with the idea was like, I was completely wrong. I
was looking at wolves raised in prisons. Basically they don't act like wild wolves, right Yeah, Which, again, if you're just bringing back a dead ancient animal and it has no animals of its own type to raise it, how the fuck are you going to have it? Because his goal here is always for it to retake its original evolutionary niche how would it do that? It doesn't know when to do that.
You ever seen those videos where like they'll like put a tiger in with a pig, like a baby tiger, and then the baby tigers starts acting like the pig a little bit it's like, well, yeah, that's because that's
¶ Raising a De-Extincted Species
more influential than it being just raw tiger by itself.
Yeah, yeah, this is why I intend to raise a human being with a bunch of tigers. But that's a separate point. I just want to see if they'll grow claws. All the scientists are saying no, but I have my own theories.
Scientists are saying a lot of things.
They say a lot of shit has these episode show So yeah, my opinion here is that his primary interest isn't even I don't even think he ever intended to clone the antithosis, right, I think he knows that this is not really going to happen. It's clear to me that his real interest is a mix of both, like driving up hype because he's going to be starting this. He's trying to and he's gotten very good at using
his lab. We'll do some work in like finding some Neanderthal DNA and sequencing it, and then he can use that to start making claims of we'll be able to clone them one day and eventually get investments so that he can spin off another startup company. Right, And that's kind of part of how where about Colossal bioscience is the Direwolf Company comes from. That's part of what he's doing.
I think the other thing that he's doing here, and this becomes clear later in the interview, is he's sort of giving away that his actual interest is not to bring back extinct species. It's to find traits of those species and edit them into other animals for much less altruistic purposes. At one point he has asked, like, do you think there's anything wrong with creating a whole new species, and he says, the main goal is to increase diversity.
The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species, and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore, the recreation of Neanderthals would mainly be a question of societal risk avoidance. And that's a really good example of using like the language of social justice and liberalism to advocate for horrifying things like first off, human beings have mostly done fine
with that Neandthals. I don't know that there's any evidence that they would make us like more diverse. But also
that's not what he's interested in doing. Later in the interview, dearsh People asks, Hey, wouldn't you just be able to add some of their genes to a human and change the human And the answer Doctor Church gives makes it clear that this is what I think he's really interested in, because he says, suppose you were to realize, wow, these five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things that could give us what we
want in terms of neural diversity. And that's when I'm like, oh, you just want to create designer smart babies for rich people, right, that's the blueprint here.
You're just trying to make it so that so that the baby comes out exactly the way you planned and with no other stuff.
Right, and you can make hyper smart babies for your rich friends that become a new species to rule over all of us. That's your goal.
Yeah, we're at your eyes and no need for braces, right, we get.
It, right, Right, that's your dream. He continues, Even if you don't have the DNA, you can still make something that looks like it. And this is this is where he lays out the blueprint for what Colossal is going to do because he's like DNA doesn't last. We can't get full dinosaur DNA, you'll never be able to clone a real dinosaur. But then He's like, even if you don't know the DNA, you can still make something that
looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make a dinosaur, you'd first consider the ostrich, one of its closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is a large bird, and you would ask, what's the difference between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds loose their hair? Hands? And you would try to identify the mutations to try and back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible, and again it's not really.
¶ Church's Real Interests and Hype
But yeah, there's a I learned about this recently. But there's somebody who's making something called the chicken asaurs. Yeah, where they are essentially claiming that they're like re they've rediscovered or re given us dinosaurs again via this chicken assaur. But it's just a fucked up chicken. Yeah, that like looks like it's got like some dinosaur qualities.
And it's it's one of those things like is that kind of interesting? Sure? Would I want something that looks like a dinosaur and is a pet. I'm not made of stone? Of course? Is that a dinosaur that you've de extincted? Now it's a thing you made, And there's still these ethical questions about like, well, what are the rights of that animal? Like YadA YadA, Like there's a lot of weird things, you know, Like there's a lot of weird shit about that. Right, I'm not thrilled with this,
but that's my least kind of concern. Here is somebody who's like, look, this isn't a real dinosaur, but it looks like one. Do you want to have it as a pet? All right? I have bigger concerns, you know, Right.
It's not the true crime that is that our boy George is working out on the back end.
Of this, although there's also the day if it is like made out of it from a chicken. Chickens are soulless monsters, like you don't want to make them more powerful, like.
And they're also not particularly bright and none of this feels like a great combination.
If you know, chickens their favorite food is their own kind, like they are scary animals. Yeah, my favorite that Werner Herzog has some great quotes about if you want to see a frightened stare into the eyes of a chicken.
¶ The Designer Baby Blueprint
There's like nothing but blackness in there.
It's oh man.
It's good stuff.
Your chicken listeners are going to be pissed. You'll be nasty.
You know, we've all had like I've had chickens. I remember once one of my chickens, raccoon got in the coop and one of my chickens fought it off and got injured, and all of its friends ate it to death. It's horrible. Chickens are nightmares.
Oh I really didn't even like give him a shit shit Oh man, Chicken Run really sold me a different.
Story about the chickens are not that good at solidarity, not their strong suit as a species. So we'll talk more in a little bit about his so called de extinction ambitions. But again this starts in like twenty fourteen to fifteen, and the fact that he's like working on this stuff, the fact that he's got this history with Epstein and Epstein's weird baby breeding project and all these this genome sequencing, all these that he's talking in twenty
fifteen about like editing human genes make designer babies. This all leads directly to the most fucked up thing about doctor George Church, which is how often he winds up, shall we say, tugging at the fringes of outright eugenics, right, oh yeah. In a twenty nineteen interview for CBS with Scott Pelley, Church talks about his goal, which is framed in the article as to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases,
and aging. In the interview, George talks about age reversal, which he says has been proven about eight ways and animals. Now it hasn't, right, And that's a really vague statement for a scientist to make. And I want to know what are the eight ways? What do you mean by proven? Right? These are all the questions that aren't answered.
I did find that there's that jellyfish that doesn't that can like regenerate it or like turn itself back into a child, But like that's not proving it. That's just that species, right.
And there's like there's like turtles that may basically live forever if they're not killed by something, right, Like there's some tortoises that are like three hundred years old, right, And there's some other species where it may be a similar thing where like they kind of only die if something gets them.
Yeah, yeah, but.
That doesn't mean you can't just like, maybe there will be some sort of life extensions seecrets in that animal, but maybe it's just different enough from us that like there's no way to transfer that to human beings. He's saying that we have proved how to reverse age in animals, right, that we have done it using science, and that should be a falsifiable statement, but he doesn't give much more
detail there. I did find an article for the Center for Genetics and Society that attempts to reverse engineer his claim, and they're like, he is almost surely over selling this, but they suspect one of the proven cases he's talking about here is a study about gene therapy for mitral valve disease and mice. Right, And it's a study that showed that by editing some genes you can fix like
mitral valve disease and mice. Now, that's important and may have some really crucial implications for science, may allow us to extend a lot of people's lives.
Right.
I'm not saying that that's not good science, it's not age reversal. Right, that that's curing a valve disease. Right, it's not exactly the same thing.
Now, you're still gonna die when you die, you just will die from that.
You'll get older. It's just like you'll be this problem with your heart we might be able to fix with gene editing. And obviously, like, is it possible given enough time that we will be able to extend human life enough that we keep extending it. It's not impossible. I'm not saying I don't think it's necessarily likely, because there's a lot of shit you'd have to figure out, and I just don't know if we're going to get there, given all of the other things human beings civilization's going
to have to deal with. But it's not impossible. It's
¶ Connecting to Eugenics and Age Reversal
just the way he talks about this is so blase a and he glosses over so much that it's not like serious scientific talk. And part some of the evidence for this is that like when he gets pressed on like a, right, well, how do you know where are we actually making animals younger? The only real evidence that he's able to cite is an ongoing clinical trial to see if gene therapy can extend the lifespan of dogs, and maybe that will be possible, but any resultant therapy
is going to be number one, not proven yet. And number two, any resultant therapy that come out of this doesn't We don't know that it would work on people, because there's dogs, aren't people, right.
Yeah, there's some noticeable difference.
Not in a genetic sense, Sophie, in an ethical sense, share, but not in a genetic sense. We're different, we constructed.
It's really funny when people sort of like sink into these types of sciences, because like, if you want your dog to live longer, just stop making it fuck its cousin, you know what I mean, Like that's part of it, right, Stop breeding them till they're like sick the second they come out, and let them be whatever random mutt that they all are kind of supposed to be.
Yeah, and you know, for the record, if we ever find a way to make dogs live like sixty years, I'm on board. Ditto cats. You know, I don't have an issue with like keeping our pets alive with us.
I'd welcome their presence, the welcome their presence.
I would do so many things to keep my dog alive longer.
There's no evidence that this thing he's talking about is going to work really on dogs, And even if it can extend the lifespan, it's also it's not the same as reversing age necessarily. But also even if, and again these are all many, these ifs are increasingly fractional long shots. Even if this study works on dogs, and even if there proves to be an application on human beings, any
¶ Skepticism on Age Reversal Claims
resultant therapy that allows you to extend human lifespan or reverse human age will be exhaust outlandishly expensive, so expensive that it will only be available to guys like Jeffrey Epstein. Right. In response to doctor Church's claims about age reversal science, historian Nathaniel Comfort noted, lengthening the lives of rich Westerners the obvious customers, would be the biggest ecological crime since standard oil. It's hard to argue with that.
Sure, yeah, that's pretty fair.
Obviously, that doesn't mean we wouldn't do it. The question, there's two separate questions. Is this ethical?
No?
Is this possible? Also? So far no? Right that said, I should note that the ethics of this are not a topic that Church ignores. There's a whole nother CBS article I found where he talks about genetic equality and emphasizes the fact that he keeps an ethicist on staff. Quote, he does not want to see a world in which big advances in genetic engineering are available only to those
who can afford it. He considers a quality both one of manipulating genes for therapy like correcting genetic defects to cure genetic diseases, and for enhancement augmenting genes beyond what is normal. But like it doesn't mean anything. Like, for one thing, the pharmaceutical companies that buy this from you are going to set the prices, right, they'll pay you off.
Like, I just think it's always a bad sign when somebody has to outsource ethics, right, I mean, like you need somebody else to handle ethics because that's just not how you think is you're gonna do some vile shit.
That that that's probably a fair point too, And it's it's also hard for me to square this statement that like, well, I really I don't want, you know, there to be netic you know, bias. I want everyone to have access to these wonderful things. We're definitely going to be able to do. His claims that that's what he wants are hard for me to square with other statements he has made, saying like but that I quoted earlier, where he's like, hey, man, it's just my job to figure out what we can
do right. Whatever society's fine with is, you know what's right?
Right, that's none of my business.
My business, it's a very Vernervon braun. When the rockets go up, who knows where they come down? That's not my department, says Vernervon Brown.
I'm just here to make as many humunculi as possible. I don't, right, I don't decide where they go.
Look, man, I'm in the homunculi business. I'm not nowhere a monculy i go business. You know, he told CBS, We're not necessarily opposed to enhancement if everybody gets access to it simultaneously and again. But there's no how do you do that? You don't talking about how that would ever happen. You're just saying, obviously that's what I want.
Yeah.
Are you going to turn down millions of dollars or billions of dollars to make sure that happens unless somebody guarantees it somehow?
Are you?
How doesn't seem real doesn't seem likely anyway. He doesn't propose any way to ensure this, nor do I believe he truly cares. Scott Pelley, who's the journalist who interviewed Church, made this statement after talking to him. He doesn't see a great distinction between being able to travel five hundred and fifty miles an hour on an airliner or changing somebody's genome in order to make them maybe cognitively more astute. There's a big difference.
That's why I fuck with Scott Pelly. He really end of the day, he really breaks it all down in a very succinct, clear way. He's like, that man that I just spoke to is a psychopath, and you should know that.
That would be like if like a weapons designer's like, what's really the difference between building a new artillery shell and genetically encoding a bomb into someone's DNA without them knowing? Is there really a difference?
They're both dead, Yes, I think they're dead.
Yeah, they are both dead. But I do think there's a difference. Now, I know me saying I don't trust that this guy cares about ethics. I think he's lying about caring about a quality here. Maybe that just seems like old Robert being an asshole because all the bastards he reads about. There's other good reasons to doubt George Church here, and I want to quote from that article
from the Center for Genetics and Society. The massive Chinese company BGI sees synthetic biology as a promising field, and in twenty seventeen launched the George Church Institute of ReGenesis in Shinzhen. Bgi's corporate culture has been criticized as eugenics like, and the company is currently involved in state surveillance and harassment of millions of Wigers, a Muslim minority group in Zendjang.
¶ Doubting Church's Ethics Claims
Oh man, it's not great. And the company that starts the institute named after you has been criticized as eugenics like, or for surveilling a minority being targeted by the state. None of those are good things.
I really was hoping this wasn't going to lead to you knowing who the test subjects were. But boy, oh.
Boy, prove that. But yeah, the other thing is that, like, just outside of those ethics, the George Church Institute of ReGenesis, that's a dystopian name. I'm sorry, that's from like a cyberpunk source book like that.
You're doing.
You should know that's a bad name. But that said, I had to look further into this BGI and everything. When I heard the words eugenics like for this company culture, I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And holy fuck, is this company screwed up? So back in twenty eighteen, Wang Jian, who's a co founder and president of the company, participated in a panel discussion at a conference. He stated that bgi's goal was for each of their
employees to live to at least age one hundred. To ensure this, they have like they have to in order to work there, embrace three rules, and I'm going to read you about these rules. Per an article for the English language Chinese news website sixth Tone Quote, the first rule is that BGI staff are not allowed to have children with birth defects. If they were born with defects, it would be a disgrace to all seven thousand staff, Wang said, it would mean that me are fooling society
and just eye hang each other's pockets. Whang added there are no known serious congenital diseases among the fourteen hundred infants that have been born to the company's employees. Oh boy, oh god, Well that's just I mean, do I have to like talk about why that's evil?
God? Damn, they're just saying stuff plainly. Holy shit, Holy fuck, that's crazy.
These people made a center named after you, George Jesus Christ.
They also, there's no way they mean that about like the cleaning staff. No, you know what I mean, Like they're only talking about very specific employees at this time.
Yeah, that's nuts. That's also what do you consider a defect? Right? And I know this is actually tricky. The ethics here are really tricky.
Right.
If I was having a kid and I learned like, hey, this this few future potential child would have a heart
¶ Ties to Sketchy Company BGI
defect we found evidence of and we can fix it in you to row, of course you'd want to fix that as a parent, bunce your kid have a heart defect. What about if they're like, hey, your child, they'll be perfectly healthy, perfectly intelligent, but they'll be on the autism spectrum or they'll have ADHD. Yeah, I got to give you an option to zapp that because that kind of feels like genocide to me.
Yeah, and they're going to have they're going to have a sixth finger think this slope is so slippery for like what they'll decide is acceptable and not acceptable?
Yes, and this is something we will have to grapple with and it's not going to be easy because obviously if you're like, hey, your kid's going to be has this genetic condition, that will mean that there will be constantly in horrible pain for every second of their short life. But we can fix that right now, Who wouldn't want to fix that? But then how do you build guard rails in so that you're not just saying we're going to get rid of everyone? It is different, right, like.
And and who frankly are the scientists and charge of making those decisions?
Right?
We know for a fact it's a real uh, I'll bring back dire wolves ass person.
Yeah, or Wang who's like none of the kids of my employees can be defective?
Right?
Like this is all just like it gets really bad, very very quickly.
Right.
And it's also like, you know, Church makes this big claim of like I'm a big believer in diversity. He
¶ BGI's Eugenics-Like Employee Rules
talks about like I have narcolepsy, and I have a lot of my great nest ideas and when I like kind of have these quick narcoleptic naps and stuff. He's a big believer in neurodiversity, according to what he says, but also the science and the people he's working with are actively working to end neurodiversity. Yeah, like that's the result of this, right, Like we all know that's where these people would go. Yeah, not a problem.
It's a real hit. Like it's like Hitler being like, well, my mom was Jewish, so that's why I mean, yeah, that's why I'm doing this.
That would have been a weird thing for Hitler's Oh Hitler.
So.
Bgi's second rule is that the company can't detect cancer later than hospitals do, which I guess is fine as an ambition, right, you want your company to who does these screenings to be faster than the current technology. Okay, give you a pass on that one. The third rule for BGI employees is almost as fucked up as the first, and I'm gonna quote from sixth Tone again. Employees are forbidden from having a heart bypass surgery. Instead, they are expected to rely on gene tech and clean living to
prevent cardiovascular disease. To promote fitness and healthy eating, Wang said, BGI tracks the dieting habits of employees at its cafeteria, and has put its elevators out of service. Now Man Wang describes this policy as a bit mean. He's also opposed women from the Chinese mainland getting HPV vaccines in Hong Kong, not because he's anti vax, but because he thinks that genetic testing is a better value for the money, which is like, that's just none of your fucking business man.
Like oh man, He's like, no, don't don't care their disease. I want to figure out out how to test more. I need more diseases to play with.
What if they get vaccinated and get to anyway, this company is fucked up. And the fact that doctor Church is involved with this guy and his company to such an extent that this BGI named a center after George Church says more than every vague claim he makes about ethics and genetic equality about what I think his actual ethics are. And the more you read about him, the more it becomes clear that there are two very different
George Churches. There's the one who legitimately contributed to some huge scientific breakthroughs and who runs a Harvard lab that does work on some really cool projects. One of the companies he's affiliated with is working to like clone pigs with organs that can be transplanted more easily into human beings. I think that's a really good idea, right, not that there's no ethical concerns there, but like probably worth it
in my opinion. Some people will feel differently, but like not enough organs out there right now for everybody who needs them. But there's another George Church, and that's the guy who will work with absolutely anyone in anything if there's money in it, right, and we'll kind of say anything, you know. That's my interpretation of events. I'm not saying
that's objectively true my opinion. You see the first George in these hagiographic articles for the popular press that are talking about like how amazing he and his companies are. And you see the second George when you actually look into a lot of the companies that he's either co founded or been hired to advise. For example, of a company he's co founded, I'd like to introduce you to a venture that he co founded in twenty nineteen called
Digit eight or Digitate Digitate. No, do you think you know where we're going here?
I have no clue it's dating.
It's a dating service. It's a genetic dating service. Oh no, no loops. Oh oh shit, Yeah that sounds bad.
Fuck.
His co founder is Bargavi Govindarajen, who is a Harvard graduate who met Church at a school event. They got to talking about consumer genetic testing, and she seems to have like soft pitched him, like what if we integrated genome sequencing into a dating app? And this is what she said later. It did not take us much time to uncover synergies in terms of how we wish to build a nimble, modern platform that taps into molecular biology and accelerates the impact of preventative health for a variety
of consumers. Within a year of the first meeting that seated our conversations, we incorporated Digitate with planet wide ambitions. God, that's just it's both like such tech corporate speak and also evil supervillain speak at scale.
Yeah, that's nuts. That's terrifying.
You can probably guess the basics of this idea. You give Digitate your DNA, they sequence it, and they compare it to other people on the service to ensure that you only match with someone you're compatible with.
I really don't like where this is going.
This is going on, this kind of like eugenics. Eugenics me gen x who.
Knows you plus me eugenics?
Yes, yeah. Quote. The idea is to use DNA comparisons to make sure people and this is from the m t AT Technology of Review. The idea is to use DNA comparisons to make sure people who share a genetic mutation like those that cause Tay Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis, never meet, fall in love and have kids. Well, I mean, it's a really fucked up way to say.
That's like, yes, two people say very brosis are dangerous to each other if they're near near each other.
But well no, I mean, like that's not even true. It's like if two people who have like if two people are likely to have kids with a certain horrible disease, maybe like adoption is a better choice or something.
I know, it's like wildly abusive and creepy.
Making sure they never meet is just like reducing human beings to things that combine DNA. Or maybe they're not interested having kids, right yeah, maybe they just.
They can meet, they can hang out, they can.
Even talk about each other, right, Yeah.
They might be like, hey, you got that, zoo, I'm good. Let's make other choices like yeah, they have the ability to figure this out for themselves.
Yeah, it's just the whole Like the goal is to make sure they don't fall in love. It's like, wow, okay,
¶ DigiDate: The Genetic Dating App
I don't like this, Sylvie. I want you to pull up the image of this tweet from digit Date in March sixteenth of twenty twenty one. Let's just take a look at this. I'm going to read this. Digitate is here to help enhance your relationships, providing a dining experience that relies on communication, teamwork, and it's intimacy. Give it a try today, hashtag couple, hashtag dating, hashtag virtual date,
hashtag date. And then there's a little image macro that says intimacy isn't always easy, but Digitate is here to help. We provide a virtual dining experience for you and your date, leading to closer, more intimate connections. So again they're advertising other aspects of this, which is like we let you have a digital date before you meet. They're not talking in the public facing ads about the fact that like, also, we're sequencing your DNA to determine who you'll make a good genetic match.
With I don't like these two little fuckers in the corner.
No, no, I'll go so far as to say that that look how little they invested in the actual like images.
Yes they don't. I don't know if there's a lot of money behind the side.
They're like, just give us your DNA if you're going to fall for this. We're not spending a dime on advertising.
That's right. But you know who is spending a dime on advertising? That's perfect our advertisers. Baby, we're back. We're talking about crimes, but we're not going to tell you what crimes. We're not planning an Ocean's eleven heist of a casino, of course it's not. Langston's not also the best safe cracker in the business. You know, I'm not, you know, the world's best getaway river surfy, so surfy, jesus. The fun was that I got to make a joke about Sophie being trained in jiu jitsu, but I ruined
it by mispronouncing your name. I'm sorry, that was weird.
I don't think i'd be very good at that, It's okay, but i'd be good at crimes.
You'll be good at great at crimes theoretically. Theoretically.
Now, I'm just thinking, like you know, if you find I would, I would do so many crimes to keep Anderson alive longer.
I'm thinking of you as the mobster in the movie Ghost Dog starring Forrest Whitaker. Great film. Yeah you could. You could be using ghost Dog to assassinate your rivals. He would love you. You could be his. Uh Damio, I think Daimio.
I'm looking eyes.
Sorry, we got off the thing we're talking about digit Date, the creepy genetic dating company.
I was trying to distract us away from it because it makes me so uncomfortable.
No, we still got worse ship to talk about. So here's the technology review that the m T technol You review in this article about Digitate describes Church's lab as gravitating towards provocative projects, and they describe Digitate not as a separate dating app, but as a service like GPS in the company's words, that could run in the background of any existent dating app. GPS. Yeah, I don't like
that either. So basically, every dating app could use Digitate's technology in order to have their users send in their DNA and get their genomes sequenced to stop them from meeting genetically and campatical people. Now, genome sequencing costs like seven hundred and fifty bucks, so obviously this is not super easy to pencil out financially for a dating app, which generally is not that expensive. But Church thinks you could offset this by increasing the subscription price of dating apps.
I don't know if I think this is a great business. Hasn't taken off yet, but as usual, he puts what is effectively eugenics, like this is a eugenics dating app in humanitarian terms, claiming it would eradicate huge numbers of diseases which cost quote about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.
And again when it comes to horrific diseases, I'm all for stopping horrible diseases that harm people, but there's a lot of other ethical concerns when you start talking about this shit, and you're just not dealing with them at all. As a guy who is like I'm not neurotypical, and I think there's huge benefit and having people with brains that work different be involved in science, you're also creating an app to put an end to that. Maybe and you're not talking about that problem at all.
Anyway, You're not and you're not being even transparent about to your point about what is being considered a deformity, a a not typical uh thing inside of a person.
Because it's like some scientists are like, hey, there's a disease where people's skin is born inside out. We want to stop that. I'll be like, yeah, man, I don't think we gain anything from babies and their skin inside out, right, But that's just never where it ends, you know.
And I also I want you to know what color that skin is when we flipped around. Yeah, it's gonna be the color we like, right, what other stuff you wanted to do with baby skin?
This got announced this dating service for the first time during an appearance Church made on Sixty Minutes. He later claimed that the section about Digitate wasn't supposed to air, like, oh, I had no idea they were putting that in the show. I was just talking, and that he'd intended to just talk about his pig cloning company. But here's how the documentary wound up sounding. I don't know if I believe him on this, but Sophie's just got to play this whole clip for you.
Okay, wonderful church is a role model for the next generation. You got it working.
It looks like he has co.
Founded more than thirty five startups.
Oh, this is incredibly important.
Recently, investors put one hundred million dollars into the pig organ work on. Another church startup is a dating app that compares DNA and screens out matches that would result in a child with an inherited disease.
You wouldn't find out who you're not compatible with, You'll just find out who you are compatible with.
You're suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases could be eliminated.
Right, it's seven thousand diseases. It's about five percent of the population. It's about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.
Now, it's kind of like prone about five percent of the population. You know, of those types of people happening, I'm problematic there.
I just want to walk through like some kind of like conference and walk up to a board and go, this is important, this is important.
I do that. That's exactly what I'm like at cees. If I think they'll give me something cool consumer electronics show work. Oh yeah, it's important.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So when you're a tall guy with a beard and you walk around leaning into screens going this is important, people will just give you stuff. It's nuts.
Yeah he really, he really sped past it in a way that it's more about the elimination of like the diseases, and not the curation of yeah, of another species, like truly saying like important seven thousand.
Huh can I get a list?
He's so tall, he's so tough to look at. Yeah, given how bad he wants perfect people, right, like, you would think that he should not get to say what a perfect person is. And yet here we are.
No.
He you know what he looks like? Do you remember back when like internet comedy websites were all funded by T shirt ads where they would like photoshop different T shirts into the same like old white guy with a long beard. He was like, surprisingly jacked. He looks like that guy if he stopped taking hgh. So this this sixty minutes interview cost a Ruckus online to put it lightly, and I don't think I need to go to the
obvious issue people had with the eugenics app. But it's worth emphasizing that this would be just a nightmare from a privacy standpoint, like your genome being out there, okay, Cupid having your genome?
Yes, not good?
Maybe not the best.
No, not all of these apps are created equal. I don't even know that they have the staff that could manage your genome properly much, right, Yeah.
So doctor Church responded to this by declaring his detractors clickbait critics who weren't thinking deeply about a complex problem. You assured everyone that any given person on the app would still be compatible with ninety five percent of the population, and that the app wouldn't provide health data to users. Although there's also stuff that got like brought up in
that MIT article. They're like, what about people with like Huntington's disease markers, because like there's no one technically that you could match them with and be totally safe. Do people who have those markers not deserve to have relationships? Is that kind of what you're saying? Like that seems kind of bad.
I don't know.
Yeah. I also can't find where he says the data would never be sold or used for any other purpose. Ever, I certainly don't know that that's written down anywhere in like an eu l al o. Again, this service does not exist really yet.
I'm sure part of his funding says that he's not allowed to say that that, like there, we want to be able to use this in a different kind of way, and that's how we can we can justify giving you all this money. Also, the elimination of diseases is such a silly concept because you also might make new ones. It's not like we know for sure that like there's no new possibilities in these perfectly synchronized genomes.
Yes, yeah, thank you for being the Ian Malcolm of these episodes and like reminding us all of chaos theory. If you want, you can drop a little bit of water down your hand. Maybe I'm button the top two buttons of your shiit, like, really go for it.
I gotta get jacked first. Yeah, I'll get there. I forget it out.
Oh man, he did look good in that movie. Right as to the whole eugenics of it all, When he gets got challenged on this church, who is a Twitter user replied, eugenics US Comma Germany, Comma, etc. Nineteen twenty to nineteen seventy interfered with human lives and personal reproductive choices. True, not just those two countries, not just that type. But okay, okay, it's Twitter.
If we're listening facts. Yeah, that's sure, that's cool.
And then he says like, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to help people understand genetic risk. But you're saying they won't even be matched with those people. Is that really?
Yeah?
I cur it right now. And that MIT article also noted that like what he's claiming to do, like preconception genetic testing is already common. But that's a lot less sketchy because you're not saying we want to stop people from meeting who aren't quote unquote compatible. That's just saying, if people decide they might want to have a kid, we can test them both and see are their potential
things that like illnesses that those kids could have. Right, And there's a debate to have about that too, But it is very different because those people have already met, right. And Church even responded to this by saying, if you do it after you've already fallen in love, it's mostly bad news. By that point, a quarter of kids will be diseased. If you can go back in time before they fall in love, you get a much more positive message. And not everyone wants kids, George.
Not everyone wants kids. Not everyone frankly wants kids the way you want them. It really is putting a lot of your decision making on random people.
Yes, yeah, it's not great. So Digit Date's motto is science is your Wingman, which I think makes it clear that their desired clientele is more on the tech pro side of things. That said, they've also sought to go he'd after what he was described in an ad as an untapped market at one point, which is communities around the world who do arranged marriages or only within a limited cast or tribe, right, like we can make sure that you only marry Brahmins with Brahmins in India or whatever.
And this is this is what people were led to believe by a job ad posted on Digitate's website, and Church later claimed that post was an error and that no, no, no, we'd never help anyone with that sort of thing. That's obviously unethical.
Maybe that's really smart to go that route, because I'm so ignorant, I just presumed that he was going at like young singles in the city it's like, no, you need nasty conservatives, sort of like principles that have already been established.
Got to get the Saudi royal family, heir, yeah to agree to this. Yeah, oh man, And it's like yeah, he says, that's not what we wanted to do.
I don't know.
We'll see, We'll see. So Digitate does still seem to exist in twenty twenty five, although it has not gotten a lot of press since the initial uproar, and it seems to be on George's back burner since the diet Wolf stuff. Apparently the company is now more focusing on like general dating planning and health planning and stuff like that. Yeah, I kinda I don't know that they actually have a
much of a product. So let's talk about another company George is involved with, this time as a board member and expert advisor, but not a co founder, and this
company is bio Viva. They are a US biotech startup that sells anti aging therapies and may have twenty twenty one, stat News reported that the CEO, Elizabeth Parrish, was awaiting data from a human study of six patients who received experimental gene therapy for Alzheimer's in Mexico the year before, these were supposed to be six people with dementia who were getting an experimental like Tilomeri's like lengthening therapy that
would help deage their brains. Now, Langston, you've been on the show a while, Sophie, you've been on every episode. You all know that when we're talking in this show and say the words experimental therapy and Mexico, something not great is about to be right.
Yeah, there's a reason there's small of a sample size, and this because they're doing something pretty fucked up.
Yeah, pera write up by science journalist and formal molecular cell biologist Leonid Schneider on the website for Better Science, the gene therapy these Alzheimer's patients received was an aDNA associated virus AAV carrying the telomeres enzyme TERT, which may have zero effect on rejuvenation, but is known to be a potentially cancer transforming ONCA gene, which makes these clinical tests even more exciting, especially because Bioviva's CEO Parish announced
in July twenty eighteen in a lifestyle magazine to have had turned AAV injections herself quote over a period that lasted well into the night. There would be more than one hundred injections in her triceps and thighs and buttocks and even her face just below the cheek. And again, we don't know that this has any impact on aging, but we do know it can cause cancer. Yeah, weird thing to shoot yourself up with one hundred times. WHOA, I love it when these people self experiment.
That's nuts because that's full red hulk shit. You're really yes, you're doing something freaky.
Fuck Now. The basis of this experiment was that, once again, it seemed like it worked on mice. Right, Perish is an outspoken believer, and the fact that if a scientific study shows benefits and animals, human patients should be allowed to volunteer to receive it. The issue is again and again, first off, that's not good that's not ethical or good science.
That's not enough, right. You don't just jump immediately to putting it in people because you get a study that shows maybe this helps animals, Like, that's just not enough, right. It's certainly not enough to let volunteers pay to get it, which is kind of what she's saying. The issues again, yeah, that's.
All is where it gets icky is like, there's plan is never to put it like, uh, put it in people, you know, for for the greater good. It's put it in people because you have funding to do.
Want this to be profitable. Yeah, and again, these enzymes can cause cancer. Now, the fact that that fact has made it very difficult to get approval to conduct these studies. And so the inventor of the treatment, a guy named Bill Andrews who worked at a different company before Bioviva, tried to conduct a trial with this other company in Mexico in twenty seventeen in which participants with mid to late stage Alzheimer's would pay eleven million dollars to attempt
this treatment. Wound up not being able to find anyone with Alzheimer's who was willing to pay that, probably because their families had control of the money and were like, I don't know, I kind of want that. Eleven million for me was pretty old.
I be here not long.
No, No, I'm gonna keep that money in half.
Yeah.
This proved impossible. So they tried to recruit patients for another trial in Colombia for just one million dollars each. I don't think that worked either, as far as I know. No, evidence of it. Now the technology is in Bioviva's hands, and it's unclear how much they charged participants to be guinea pigs here. For his part, Church was asked in twenty sixteen about ties to Biovia, and he said I wouldn't call them ties. I advise people who need advice,
and they clearly needed advice. He has been on the board of the company since twenty fifteen. This isn't like informal you're on the board, man, this is public.
Ties on the board is a tie?
All right?
Do I have ties to iHeart Media. I've advised them on podcast, to them every two weeks. You know, they don't pay for my healthcare or anything, right.
I drink blood with them every once in a while. It's not yes.
Do I drink a little human blood? Is it the only way I can stay alive? Am I allergic to the son, of course? But I'm not a vampire. That'd be weird to call me a vampire.
You're being crazy. You're honestly being crazy.
When asked about the risk of causing cancer through this treatment, Church replied, I think that's still an issue with Tila Murres. I would not sugarcoat that so I'm not sure that it's time for that just yet, but it's close. It's extremely close. Meanwhile, bioethicist Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota set of Bioviva's study using this dangerous treatment, everything I'm seeing indicates the involved parties are not conducting a
credible clinical trial with appropriate safeguards. Now, despite Church being Cagy whenever someone asks, hey, don't you work with that like sketchy anti aging firm. In twenty twenty two, Church published a scientific article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences alongside Elizabeth Parrish and like ten other authors.
So he's one of a bunch of authors on this article that suggests that you can vape a gene therapy vector called CMV in order to if you like, vaporize it and let a mouse inhale it, it will increase their lifespan by forty one percent without increasing the risk of cancer.
Uh.
The article concludes the impact of this research on an aging population cannot be understated, as the global aging related non communicable disease burden quickly rises. So the article is like, obviously, if it extends a mouse's life, we'll count extend human lives by forty one percent just by having people vape this thing, right, Like, that's what they're insinuating.
You remember when when they were climbing that vapes were were like killing people, that everybody was dropping dead from vaping.
Like vapes make you immortal.
Yeah, Now all of a sudden, this technology is not going to make you drop dead. It's going to make you live forever. Yeah.
It's just weird that you just got to put the right thing at it, you know, you just got to throw the right thing at it.
You have those knotty cartridges. We're gonna put really tap top shit cartridges in the.
Yeah yeah, yeah, the good stuff, right, but we'll throw some Delta eight in there too, fuck it, you know.
So.
But it's also like, yeah, obviously Church is a real site. Some of the people on this are scientists. Maybe this is a thing you could vape to. Why not, let's
look into it a little further. So. That write up by Leon and Schneider notes that this study was allowed to bypass the normal peer review process at pnas P and as the journal, and that George Church was listed as a contributor without noting that he and multiple other authors of this article testing something Bioviva's like advocating, all were employed by Bioviva in various capacities and you're supposed to do that. They had to like update the article
¶ BioViva: The Anti-Aging Venture
to be oh, by the way, like all these people work at this company that's got a financial interest in the Sorry, sketchy, sketchy, we don't have time to discuss all the different shady life extension companies and schemes that George Church is tangentially connected to. But I would be
remiss if I didn't bring up his colleague Aubrey de Gray. Now, if you've ever been interested in the size, so if you pull up a picture of Aubrey de Gray real quick, if you've ever been interested in the in the scientific quest for immortality right for people or at least massively extending human lifespans, you've come across Aubrey to Gray. He was a major name in the in the field for a very long time.
He was the former God.
Yeah, he looks like fucking rasp buttant. Yeah, And like I get that sometimes that he really looks like rasp buttant. Like, look at that rasp buttant as he's doing a rasp buttant In that picture, he's got his hands out in a prayer poster. I'm sorry, what else is that supposed to be?
He looks like he's turning into a wise old tree.
Yes, hissing in face. Yes. No. Yeah. If an Int was a sex criminal, that's not an idol comment.
And I don't appreciate that in a sentence with ens, because ens are great.
Well, you don't know about all of the ants, Sophie. One of those iNTS that attacked Eisngard had to have like a problematic That's why the wives left, Sophie. They're gone for a reason. I won't take Sanders bounced and we don't know why. One of those ends knows why.
Jesus Christ so.
Aubrey de Gray was the former head of an organization called the SINS Research Foundation SCNS. Schneider described SINS as quote an anti aging eugenics club for the very rich. And this is like a big thing in the earlier to mid aughts. A lot of I think Peter Teel at least had some tangential. A lot of like very rich tech guys were super into this because the promises to Gray was making and he did a ton of media.
He was very similar to like George Church in that he was really good at getting a lot of media. George Church is an actual scientist in a way that Aubrey wasn't. But Aubrey has since been revealed as per Schneider, a disgusting sex predator and pimp. And yeah, yeah, pimp, let's talk about that. So Aubrey de Gray has been accused by multiple women of various kinds sexual harassment and abuse,
women who worked with an at SINS his colleagues. You can find a lot of gross stuff about the guy online, but I'm going to just read one account because it reveals something important about the culture of the Immortality for Rich People movement and the organizations associated with it. Quote SINS funded much And this is from a woman who claims that Degray abused her. And she's going to explain how SINS funded much of my undergraduate and graduate work, and as such I was often paraded in front of
their donors. The role of my attractiveness and discussions with donors, almost always older men, was made explicit by SINS executives. At one such dinner, I was sat next to Aubrey by a SINS executive. I was told to keep him entertained. Aubrey funneled me alcohol and hit on me the entire night. He told me that I was a glorious woman and that as a glorious woman, I had a responsibility to have sex with the SINS donors and attendance so they
would give money to him. Who cool. All right, great guy, Aubrey, Maybe we'll talk about him more.
We need you to bone a few people in here so that I can make money.
Yeah, that's just like pimping for fucking VC money. Yeah, attempted pipping. Now, victims have alleged that sexual harassment of this type was normal within the SINS Foundation in practice by more men than just Aubrey to Gray, and was routinely covered up. Now, there aren't allegations that George Church participated in this, but he was on the SINS Scientific
Advisory Board while Degray worked there. They were colleagues. He worked for this organization with a very shady history of doing this with a guy who had a shady history of doing this, And I don't know, you look at that, and you look at the Epstein stuff, it's just a lot of times where you're really close to some people doing questionable things man, and I haven't separated yourself from it.
Pimp me once, shame on you.
Yeah, Well, think if like he'd been the guy who blew the whistle on Aubrey to Gray or whatever, but like he didn't you know, I don't know, I.
Don't know, multiple sex traffickers, right, I mean right right?
Yeah.
I think after a while it starts to feel like that's a thing you're into.
Yeah.
Kind of a weird that it happened twice situation Now. The SINS Foundation represented the crest of a wave and hype for anti aging research and functional immortality that seems to be on a downswing at the present, largely because none of the promises people like Degray were making around twenty ten seem any closer to coming true. Schneider suggests that being a smart guy, doctor Church realized this early on and started pivoting to anti agent cures for pets
because there's just as much money there. But you're not at any risk, right, Like, it's just a safer business to be in. In fact, I would say the primary genius George Church has exhibited over the last twenty years since his real scientific achievements has less to do with science and genetics and more to do with branding and merchandising.
He understands the same thing Elon Musk used to understand, which is that if you're good enough at announcing sexy new products that go viral, even if you only deliver like five percent of the time, people will think you're a genius as long as you keep enough of those stories in the media, right, and you can get very rich doing that. This brings us back to the dire wolves.
Right, We're back. They're back.
We've come around full circle.
Baby.
I don't know they were coming back. I thought maybe they were going for good. Yeah.
Church's whole point is that they're coming back, baby. So let's talk about his whole crusade to the extinct animals. When the first claims of this went viral, they were focused on, obviously, Neanderthals, and George and his lab at Harvard started working on a scheme to clone and bring back the wooly mammoth in twenty fourteen. This was a
micro budget endeavor for like a decade or more. George claims they spent about one hundred grand on it prior to twenty twenty one, quote, which is way, way less than any other project in my lab, but not through lack of enthusiasm. It's by far the favorite story. We've never done a press release on it in all those years.
It just comes up naturally in conversation. And that may be true, but he talks about it in a lot of these media appearances, like he talks about this kind of shit de extinction in that twenty fifteen interview, and that's his pr. He doesn't need to put out press releases because he's mastered the art of using journalists as his PR right, and that's what he's doing with this
Direwolf thing. The way Church tells it. In twenty one, Ben Lamb, who's the CEO of Colossal Biosciences and his co founder, kind of came out of nowhere to throw money behind the idea and help him start a company. Quote Ben came out of the blue, I think, inspired at a distance from what he was reading about this very charismatic project which was very underfunded. He and Ben met at Church's lab in Boston, which acts as an
incubator and advertisement for his different business ventures. Lamb, being another serial entrepreneur, gets involved and Colossal is Lamb's sixth startup. His first was acquired for a fortune when he was twenty nine, and the others he's created did well enough that he's got He's worth like a fourteen or fifteen million dollars, so he's like rich, but he still hasn't. He's not a success by Silicon Valley standards, sure, right,
so we're still looking for his big hit. His past ventures are all pretty standard, chasing the zeitgeist tech stuff. He had an e learning company, a mobile app development studio, a gaming company, and a Hypergiant, an enterprise AI software company that once had Bill Nye on the board. In twenty nineteen, Hypergiant announced a world changing product, the EOS Bioreactor, which was meant to use AI to optimize algel growth to sequester carbon, and they were like, it's a climate
change solution. You can sequester more carbon per square you know, acre or whatever than you can with like a forest using this by optimizing algae growth. Sounds great right now. I know you're wondering is that real though? Like, is that a real product? I like?
It crossed my mind, Yeah, cross my mind.
I can't say no. Legally, it was acquired by Trive Capital in twenty twenty three. But a former employee on Glassdoor noted, and this is from an article called Colossal lyre for the blog for Better Science, there's no secret sauce, there is no product, there is no money, just hype. And another former employee commented, this isn't a software company, it's VC marketing hype. So those people claim there's no real product. Who worked there?
Yeah, the people who work there saying we're not doing any work is really awesome.
This is not a real company. Nothing really here now for this stage of George's plan, right like the Colossal Bio Sciences stage. Once they announced this company. His pr rep of choice was a journalist for CNBC who got the first big scoop. And when they put out this first big article about there is this new company they're going to bring back the mammoth in six years. Four years ago, one part of their article reads it could take as little as six years for Colossal to create
a calf. George told CNBC the timeline is aggressive. He admitted, when people used to ask me that question, I said, I have no idea, we don't have any funding. But now I can't dodge it. I would say six is
not out of the question. Now, obviously there's no evidence that they're any closer to doing this here, and if you actually read these articles, George isn't even really saying that they're trying to clone a wooly mammoth, right, just like the dire wolf is just a wolf with a couple dial wolf Jens kind of pluck in there here and there. What they're trying to do is alter the DNA of an endangered Asian elephant so it can withstand colder temperatures and then release a bunch of mutated Asian
elephants in Siberia. When he was interviewed by The Times, Church even allowed that calling it a wooly mammoth was probably a bad idea. An Arctic elephant is a better term, Right, That's not what you're calling it, right, you're calling it a holy mammoth at all of the press coverage.
Yeah, and also so we can skip past the fact that you're not actually helping the existing elephants, you're just trying to create a new species that'll mirror the old one.
Yeah, it's like if you go to like a family who's like like living on the edge and about to lose their Section eight housing, and you're like, I'm going to fix everything for you. Give them all haircuts that they don't like or didn't ask for. You're like, problem solved. Look at you guys.
Right, guess what all of you guys got the Rachel? Ain't that nice?
Isn't that good?
You all got the Rachel?
Anyway? Bye. Here's what his business partner Ben Lamb told CNBC in that same article. All goal is the successful de extinction of interbreedable herds of mammoths that we can leverage in the rewilding of the Arctic. And then we want to leverage those technologies for what we're calling thoughtful disruptive conservation. First off, using leverage twice in two sentences, that's a bad guy. That's just a bad guy. Disruptive conservation not what conservation is.
So first, we're gonna leverage these people over here, and that's going to allow us to swoop in and leverage these people over here is the weekend.
Yeah, So you know how conservation is trying to stop species from going extinct and save ecosystems that are threatened. We're going to disrupt that by just making new shit and dropping at random places.
We're gonna fuck up the elephants in a new kind of way. Isn't that exciting?
That is disruptive. Yes, a bunch of random elephants being in Siberia would disrupt things.
If you think you know what elephant's problem is now, yeah, you are going to be so surprised by the problems we're about to introduce.
Oh, that are going to have a bunch of drunk Russians sniping them like all sorts of shit they don't
¶ Aubrey de Grey and SENS Foundation
have to deal with right now. So that article is a masterclass in what I call hype journalism, which primarily exists to pump up the perceived value of tech companies. It's like Pharheno style shit, right. And again they make the clan that like, well, this could stop climate change by slowing the melting of the permafrost. And I think that because they say it's like proponents of the project say this, I think it's just George Church right. And I wanted to look into like, is there even any
evidence this would work? And I found an article in the Journal of Medical Sciences that says, quote, according to Colossal, the reintroduction of these animals into the environment, the ancient mammoths would change the environment from tundra wooded to step stabilize the permafrost and thus combat global warming. It's quite difficult to take these claims seriously now. The article goes on to note, it's we don't even know if they can modify an Asian elephant.
Right.
Modifying a wolf is one thing. There's a lot into like let alone, it's not there's nowhere near being able to clone a fucking mammoth.
Right.
Modifying an Asian elephant with mammoth genes is also a major undertaking, and they explain why. This presupposes the availability of early embryos of an Asian elephant, whose nucleus would be eliminated and replaced by that of a cultured pseudo mammoth cell. After a few divisions, this embryo would be implanted in the uterus of a female Asian elephant and
would develop until the animal is born. This is the pattern that led to Dolly's birth in nineteen ninety six and since then the cloning of many other animals, but this is not an option in this case. The Asian elephant is an endangered species, and given the low success rate of cloning generally less than one percent. Obtaining the many embryos needed and using dozens of surrogate females is not possible, not only for ethical but also practical reasons.
This is what is indicated in the work plan presented on the Colossal website. But it seems that Church and his company are moving towards the use of induced pluripotent stem cell iPSC lines that would be obtained from the somatic tissues of the Asian elephant and could be used
for cloning. These lines have yet to be obtained. The next step is to ensure the development of the embryos, which according to Church's recent interviews, could involve the use of an artificial uterus that avoids the use of female carriers. But of course this artificial elephant uterus has yet to be invented. It does not currently exist for any species,
even if work is being carried out with a subjective. Again, their first plan is illegal because you would be destroying a ton of embryos and endangering a lot of females of an endangered species. Your second plan, you've done none of the actual work to acquire what you'd need. And your third plan, again, the science doesn't exist, and there's no evidence that you're getting closer to making it.
And also as you just saying all right, we'll just make an elephant synthetically, is fucking nuts.
That's hard. No, we don't know how to do that.
Yeah, that's not cool.
And like bbing, like I'm just going to make a car that runs on water easy enough. Hydrogen power is potentially a thing, and it's like, well but you alays, try it. It's really difficult. It's really hard. When Colossal was brand new, doctor Church talked constantly about their ambition
to create an artificial womb. But as the years have gone by, this goal was evidently no closer to reality, and so Colossal and its marketing have shifted to focus on promising other easier kinds of de extinction Perschneider's article and for Better Science. Church's problem is that its business investors and admirers in the media keep asking about the progress of his mammoth project. One has to throw them
a stick to chase after. So here's Church's colossal new plan to de extinct the thylacine, also known as that Tasmanian wolf for tasm Mani and tiger. This Australia apex predator the size of a smallish dog, got wiped out in the nineteen thirties. Incidentally, it is a marsupial, meaning it doesn't just state in a womb. Aren't real or artificial for very long? You know, in case the artificial
womb isn't working. Detracting that yapping media and investors with a stick was a good idea, but even better to throw them two sticks. So after Mammoth and Thylacine, Church and his company Colossal announced in January of twenty twenty three to de extinct the Dodo, the giant flightless pigeon from Mauritius, which was exterminated centuries ago. Birds don't need wombs to gest state. So again we see the first pivot away from like, fuck, we can't figure this out.
We're not doing a mammoth. It's not going to work. Let's talk about this tucking Tasmanian tiger. Let's try to get these Dodos back.
Yeah, what about that bird that we beat the shit out of? Yeah, it was walking down the street.
Right about that, Yeah, yeah, that one. We can bring that guy back right now. If you're trying to bring back the Dodo, and again they dad, recently could be possible, right, we might be able to do that someday, someday, just like it's possible someday a mammoth. Maybe, who would you bring what's the most serious scientist that you could bring on as an advisor to your project to bring back the Dodo?
The most serious scientist I mostly can think of scientists who should not be there, right.
Right, right, Well, I'll answer because obviously the answer is Paris Hilton. Right, that's what you bring on as an advisor for the Dodo project, right, I mean obviously, Yeah, there's a fucking of course she's advising the company, a.
¶ Church's Branding and Colossal Hype
Person deeply connected to both science and Dodo birds. Of course you need Paris Hilton.
Of course you need Paris. And again she she announced that she had been made an advisor in a post about their Series B funding. My guess is she just helped fund this thing, and so they're like, yeah, you're an advisor now, Paris, great science. I should also note that during this fundraising round, Coloss was found to have stolen Dodo artwork from another artist for their pitch deck. Very funny anyway, moving on, Yeah.
And even we didn't even draw a Dodo make.
Sure fucking Dodo level.
Yeah.
So this brings us back to the start of the episode in Colossal's first and only real success, the dire Wolf. In their press release, they call this the world's first de extinction and a revolutionary milestone and scientific progress that would lead to the de extinction of other species. Robin Ganzert of the Humane Society cheered that this would make extinction a thing of the past, which is nonsense for
a lot of reasons. Actual scientists, like cell biology expert Paul Kepler at the UC Davis Medical Schools had this to say. The direwolf genome likely differs from that of the gray wolf in millions or tens of millions of ways. Editing fourteen genes is interesting, but it's not a reconstruction or de extinction. It's not even close. The three produced grey wolves with fifteen genetics, making them genetically a smidge more like dire wolves are not a de extinction event.
Bin Lamb responded with anger at this, saying everyone just wants to argue about what to call these things. No one got deep into this science of how we created new models, range and DNA extraction and that's because Colossal has not been very transparent about telling people how they
did that, because that's not what they're interested in. Those are company secrets, right, They're more interested in putting up photos with Like George R. R. Martin, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, however, been made it clear that the company does have plans to profit from this nonsense. And this is where shit gets really this is like
a Tesla con right. As for de extinction projects, to the extent they contribute to efforts at conservation, we just give them to the world for free, Lamb told me. But he also foresees marketing biodiversity credits to other companies, similar to the environmental regulatory credits that Tesla sells to automakers without its zero emission footprint, revenue from which enabled it to report a profit for the first quarter of twenty twenty five this week. So he's like, you know,
the animals are free. What we're selling is credits to companies that just like throw more fake dire wolves out there, and like you know what, Chevron, buy some wolves and suddenly you can offset your carbon footprint. Yeah, yeah, there we go.
That's the con that's the con these aren't just wolves. You're gonna like keep and take care of you. Really, Yeah, you're gonna leverage these wolves.
Yeah, I'll admit when I first read the direwolf article, I did I called something being wrong. I did not call carbon credit scheme. No, that's really that I didn't get.
Yeah, it's really awesome if you think about it. It's like this ground such a long game for being able to not pay taxes everywhere else.
You got to You gotta have the long game if you really want to avoid the most taxes. So that La Times article does a good job of puncturing the myth these are animals are dire wolves. One thing they point out is that, like they talk to a scientist about this, there's visible skin around the ears of these animals. You can see pink skin. Arctic wolves and other Arctic mammals have very thick fur around their ears because they need to survive and have their ears function while being
constantly exposed to freezing temperatures. Right, And they also point out that like, well, dire wolves wouldn't have all looked had white coats because they're not all Arctic animals actually,
¶ The Mammoth and Arctic Elephant
like they lived in a lot of places, but they didn't just live in freezing temperatures, and all of these are like the Like the Direwolves they made look pure white, because that's how one are the dire Wolves, and Game of Thrones looked like That's probably what's going on is they were like, ah, people will buy this better, right, The arguably.
The most famous dire wolve in Game of Thrones was white, so right.
Yeah, Megham look like ghost. He also notes suspiciously Colossal cannot stay consistent with how much direwolf DNA they sequenced. According to Colossal's preprint, they achieved three point four x and twelve point eight x sequence reads of the genomes from two different direwolf. It is also claiming fifty five x times more and seventy x more if they only sequenced two individuals as they claimed. Why am I seeing
three differing figures? I don't know. That seems sketchy. There's a lot that's interesting about Colossal based on recent reporting, like the fact that doctor Church has no ongoing equity in the company he co founded. Maybe he just only cares about the science, or maybe he's kind of a cash upfront guy because he doesn't see this one lasting
I don't know. Lamb has been the one to go on the Joe Rogan Experience to talk about their dire Wolf, where he responded to the criticism this way they live in the sort of this is his critics, this sort of fortune and glory world where it's a popularity contest. So one of the things people bitch about is they're like, you guys, don't write scientific papers for everything you do. We're not an academic university. I don't have to write
a paper on anything. Ever. If we wrote scientific papers for every single thing we did that went through peer review, like we would have three thousand papers and no mammoths, Like you don't have any mammoths, Like whom mammothless? There's man, there.
Hasn't been a single mammoth. Then I guess yeah, dear. Other point is kind of moved.
Yeah, like that, Like it's one of those things you could start making. Maybe if if you were making that statement sit next to a man, I'd be like, well, shit, he does have a fucking mammoth, but he doesn't. That said, his company is now worth ten billion dollars, based largely on the strength of how viral those dire Wolves meant this is not real money.
No, they have not.
This is based on everyone getting hyped up about the dire wolves. There is so much more sketchy shit here. The company also claims to have cloned the nearly extinct red wolf, but they're red wolves are just coyotes with a few red wolf alleles stuck in there. Right and confusingly, Colossal claims that they have more red wolf DNA than any actual animals in the real red wolf recovery program, which isn't true because the red wolves in that program are not coyotes.
Right.
Quo.
They don't have coyote mixed in, so they can't be less.
Yeah. No, And the final point I'll make in these episodes is about this kind of sketchiest thing about Colossal, which is the Trump administration has taken a lot of interest in their de extinction claims. Trump's Department of the Interior head Doug Bergham visited Colossal, and the Washington Post reports that he does like a big press conference talking about like this is why we need to get over the Endangered Species Act. We don't need it anymore. We
can de extinct animals, no need to protect endangered animals anymore. Right, Obviously this causes problems for Ben Lamb and a lot of people who had backed the company is like, oh, are they just going to use this as an excuse
to remove the Endangered Species Act? And Lamb goes on CBS and he's like, no, no, no, we need an Endangered Species Act, right, But you know, Doug Bergham still wound up on Colossal's website and to an extent, do I believe Ben Lamb really cares all that much as long as he stays a payper billionaire and his company
keeps getting investment dollars. I don't know. Is it possible Colossal would get in the business of selling credits that allow companies to create the illusion that they're keeping species alive while also destroying more environmental regulations. Maybe?
Yeah, that's the problem. It's just really hard to go back to like flying coach, you know what I mean, Like whatever, Yeah, whatever his lifestyle is, he's not going to sacrifice it for the greater good of tigers and you know, dodo birds or whoever they're trying to protect.
Now there's billions of dollars in fucking selling carbon credits to company or de extinction credits to companies who make more random wolves that they shoot into the world. Cool stuff.
I love it.
I love it.
This show is always a lot of fun and really sad.
Yeah, it's great stuff. I love it. Well, Agston, how are you feeling?
I feel great.
It's been a long one. I'm sorry.
No, this is great. I'm happy that we got to do it, and frankly, I'm devastated to know that there's a new man to be afraid of out there.
There's a new hearted man to be frightened up.
Really scared of him, and also don't care to look at him. But but here we are.
Yeah. Well, everybody, uh, you know, until next time, try not to take any of Jeffrey Epstein's money. Although if he's found a way to cheat death, I don't know. Maybe he's like a sith lord or something. Maybe I don't know. Whatever, You find your own ethical line, Langston, Oh wait, you need to play your plugbles.
Oh yeah, yeah. Listen to my podcast. It's called my Mama Told Me. I host it with my friend David Borio, is about black conspiracy theories. Watch Everybody's Live on Netflix with John Mulaney. I was a writer and performer on that show. And you can watch my special it's called Bad Poetry. It's also on Netflix, and I'm really proud of it.
And that's it.
Follow me at Langston Kerman on all social media platforms.
Follow Langston Kerman and and uh yeah, if you see a dire wolf, no you literally didn't.
No, You're good.
¶ Pivot to Easier De-Extinction Targets
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