Based Camp - Manufacturing Our Designer Babies (Feat. Jonathan Anomaly)

00:00:00.000 hello i am excited to be here today because today we can talk about something that we have had to

00:00:04.680 keep quiet for years which is if you know the collins family lore it's that we did a large

00:00:12.180 batch of embryos because we had to simone was unable to get pregnant naturally and we then 0.99

00:00:17.960 did genetic sequencing on them to decide the order in which we did the implantation now for a long

00:00:25.320 time we just had to say that we did this with a group of scientists and when people were like well

00:00:30.240 so people use this company or this company we say well the company that they should probably be using

00:00:34.700 isn't out there yet and the reason why this is really important when we're talking about independent

00:00:40.920 companies with good genetic data on humans is as time has gone on the genetic data that is held in

00:00:49.580 the public sphere by scientists and everything like that is decreasing in quality and specifically

00:00:56.460 what i mean by this is there was a famous case where the national biobank in the uk ended up closing

00:01:01.980 off their genetic access to a lot of publishers because one scientist accidentally found that

00:01:08.140 one group within the united states was having children within the uk within the uk yeah in the

00:01:13.160 uk something like 14 000 the rate of any other group and that was a naughty fact and so now they're like

00:01:19.080 now we need to screen all research for anything that could be naughty facts the problem is is that

00:01:24.040 naughty facts are the facts we really need for humanity to move forwards which includes things

00:01:29.600 like genetic correlates to intelligence and the reason why i have been so impressed by this company

00:01:35.600 and it's the reason we're going to be doing this and talking about this not just about their work

00:01:39.360 around intelligence and their work around the correlates to intelligence was really interesting because

00:01:43.140 almost everything is correlated with intelligence so if you're selecting for if you're like i as a

00:01:47.020 country will not allow people to select for intelligence i will only allow heart health you

00:01:51.060 are also selecting for intelligence because these things are highly correlated with each other so we're

00:01:54.680 going to go into that we're going to go into intelligence associations with social behavior

00:01:58.680 patterns and everything like that because obviously that's important and we're also going to go into

00:02:02.800 oh gosh i was going to say that now anyone can do this so if you're anywhere in the world even if

00:02:08.680 it's illegal to do within your country because pgdpa is legal to do in almost any country they've got a

00:02:13.680 unique technology that allows you to transfer pgdpa stuff into full genomic stuff so we're going to

00:02:18.940 move ahead with johnny anomaly an old friend of ours who is working with these guys yeah so johnny anomaly

00:02:24.520 is the director of research and communication of harosite which finally we can say is the company we've

00:02:31.200 been working with on all these things that has been taking what we think is the most conscientious

00:02:36.080 thoughtful science first detailed autistic in the best possible way approach to this johnny anomaly is

00:02:44.380 a background as a bioethicist and he's just an overall awesome guy he's a major proponent of this

00:02:49.320 technology and he's kind of the the gateway person to anyone who wants to enter this sphere and learn

00:02:56.240 more about it so we're really grateful to you joining us today johnny thank you so much and also we have

00:03:00.960 a little bit of time to the end of this i'd really love for you to dive in or maybe we could even start with it

00:03:05.800 just because it's like salacious drama some drama that played out this week between sort of not just

00:03:13.240 harosite and nucleus genomics another company that gives polygenic risk or data to parents but also

00:03:20.160 nucleus genomics and genomic predictions which is another polygenic risk or company so just maybe to

00:03:25.980 start would you mind just telling us because it helps us understand sort of how harosite is different

00:03:30.640 and what other companies in the space are doing possibly wrong what what played out on x this week

00:03:37.060 about nucleus genomics another company in the space yeah well thanks for having me guys and yep we've been

00:03:43.760 working together and we have many common friends here in austin and other places where i am but let's

00:03:49.720 see here so there was quite a bit of drama and i didn't get into this business for the drama as as you

00:03:54.400 know i i wrote a book about this i was an academic i'd been interested in this topic long before i i

00:04:00.420 went into the private sector and joined this company a few years ago so i really want things to be done

00:04:06.740 well and we stayed in stealth for a really long time you know more than three years and the reason is

00:04:12.420 we knew that first of all this is a nascent science so the the science of polygenic prediction

00:04:18.440 that is using genomic data to predict traits about let's say embryos or and by the way this is why

00:04:25.560 it's not mysterious or using it to we might say retroject traits about past people so for example

00:04:32.500 the reich lab at harvard david reich wrote a book called who we are and how we got here and he recreates

00:04:39.440 the ancient past and migration patterns and and even and even makes inferences about the traits that

00:04:45.440 people have in the past based on polygenic scores that's so this is not mysterious technology we use

00:04:51.420 it all the time in history and and going forward in personalized medicine and now for embryos nevertheless

00:04:57.580 i understood it was a nascent science it's it's pretty new it's very complex you need some of the

00:05:03.160 world's best statistical geneticist and i'm not one you know i studied economics and philosophy that's

00:05:08.980 what i thought but we hired some of the best and it takes a while right to lure him from academia they

00:05:13.660 knew alex young for example who's our true superstar he's still at ucla but you know he got in a little

00:05:20.400 bit of hot water as soon as he announced that he was with us even though it's like what are we doing

00:05:24.960 we're reducing disease in the world and maybe marginally increasing intelligence a bit but that's

00:05:30.400 considered controversial so anyway that's just the background of why we were in stealth why we wanted

00:05:35.860 to hire the world's best first do the best research validate our predictors and we can talk about

00:05:41.840 how that's done later and it was only then that we emerged from stealth nevertheless a company that

00:05:48.220 had been around for a little while called nucleus decided to launch just before everyone knew we were

00:05:55.080 about to come out of the closet and yeah they had done that a few months ago just about a month or two

00:06:02.240 before us and announced they were now going into doing embryo scoring and we took a look at some of

00:06:08.500 their reports and found them let's just say lacking and so we decided when we launched we were going

00:06:15.940 to launch with a white paper and oh i love hearing baby sounds only on your podcast is it one of the

00:06:23.260 babies yeah i love it this is beautiful and we'll talk about maybe pronatalism later too but

00:06:29.580 anyway we before we launched we really wanted to make sure that we had validated the best predictors

00:06:35.520 on the planet made it really clear how we did that etc and as part of our initial validation paper

00:06:42.140 we have an appendix showing what nucleus genomics was up to and it was it was not kind but it was

00:06:48.400 accurate scott alexander picked up on it and scott also had talked about you know using us and and that

00:06:55.160 sort of thing and he didn't want to be too partial i mean it was a partial endorsement of us but really a

00:07:00.460 survey of the landscape like what is the state of the art when it comes to this and anyway that kicked

00:07:06.140 off the initial controversy but last week last week some anonymous blogger i guess he's a chinese guy

00:07:12.200 who lives in in the bay area called sichuan mala like bad sichuan yeah he decided to do a pretty

00:07:20.620 thorough takedown of nucleus some of it was citing our earlier work and then apparently nucleus found our

00:07:26.980 work so good our white paper that they decided to more or less copy and paste it without citation

00:07:32.140 as as their own and so you know it's i'm not gonna say too much about that but i guess that's a great

00:07:39.460 honor for us that they decided to do that so so i'll say this you don't need to worry about getting

00:07:44.120 yourself in trouble so basically what it came down to if you read this guy's takedown is this other

00:07:48.320 company launched with a largely plagiarized version of this other company's white paper but with just

00:07:54.820 worse data pasted in yeah like where because you know how when you plagiarize something you gotta

00:07:58.840 change a couple things but like the stuff they changed just made it strictly worse i'm i'm just

00:08:04.660 in case there's you know any legal risk i'm not going to use you know whatever words that might get

00:08:10.100 me in trouble i'll just say you can read the papers and compare them for yourselves but the

00:08:14.140 allegation was certainly plagiarism and i think the more easy yeah go ahead malcolm where this matters to

00:08:19.940 me is how because i think this is this is relevant to especially our audience which is going to be

00:08:25.060 more skeptical how did you guys get such good information you must have been getting access

00:08:33.420 to populations or data that other companies didn't have access to how is that sourced yeah and how is

00:08:42.380 your data so much better and how can parents know who to trust because also like yep none of us are

00:08:48.200 experts you know who are who are doing this you know even like people who are doctors who are using

00:08:52.120 herosite like it can be hard for any of us outsiders to know like oh i i nucleus is i don't trust them

00:08:59.860 but herosite they have their act together like what what makes you guys different yeah good so let me

00:09:03.940 answer that let me put a bow on the last point for 30 seconds and then answer the two of your

00:09:08.600 questions together because that is the most important question it's not even just where do you get

00:09:12.640 your data although happy to tell you that it's how do you justify and validate your

00:09:17.340 predictors what really matters is not how you create things but how do you prove that they work

00:09:22.480 and i'll mention that in a second but to put a bow on the previous point yeah apart from the

00:09:28.460 allegations that this blogger made about plagiarism and you know and and sort of sloppiness by nucleus

00:09:34.920 i mean one of the funniest bits that i saw i've been kind of a third party i've stayed out of it for

00:09:40.300 the most part but you know nucleus apparently had these reviews that were either ai generated one of

00:09:46.400 them was like from an ll bean catalog and and yeah like the photos of reviewing parents on their

00:09:52.600 website were just photos of people of testimonials where it was like stock photos from the internet

00:09:58.720 and then sometimes it would be a black guy but then another time it would be like an indian guy

00:10:03.560 with the same review but they like face swap them and somebody said yesterday my favorite commentary on

00:10:09.720 it was you know why are people mad at a genetics company that has actually changed the race of

00:10:15.160 someone that shows how effective they are yeah how powerful good point good point but anyway i so i

00:10:22.160 don't want to get into the drama i will say that everyone should listen to alex young again who's

00:10:27.540 our superstar at ucla he's going to be on the show that was debated yesterday on twitter i guess it was

00:10:34.240 this anonymous poster cremeu against kian from nucleus genomics so kian didn't agree to debate but

00:10:41.420 they did do a side by side first they had cremeu on then they had kian on now they're going to have

00:10:47.120 alex in studio next week and alex is again one of the world's authorities on this topic and

00:10:53.800 statistical genetics now having said that let me just say never just take someone's authority for

00:11:00.440 granted alex is an authority and he's you you can read his work but what really matters is not the

00:11:06.480 person it's the method how do we justify and validate our score so first of all it's worth

00:11:12.760 saying like how do you build a polygenic risk score or what is one it's the tool that we use to make

00:11:18.900 predictions about either individuals who are born now like what's your susceptibility simone to

00:11:25.840 alzheimer's disease or malcolm how tall are you and you know we you know we can't do this perfectly

00:11:32.220 but we can get it more or less close to where you are using polygenic risk scores and the idea is

00:11:38.100 all of these traits that you really care about not not tay sachs disease that's caused by one gene

00:11:43.780 right not sickle cell anemia also caused by two copies of the same variant but rather height

00:11:49.620 intelligence schizophrenia all these things are caused by thousands or even tens of thousands of

00:11:54.520 small genetic variants that add up to an overall risk which is why it's called a polygenic risk score

00:11:59.600 or just polygenic score so those are the things that we're using to to measure your likelihood of

00:12:05.940 developing a trait or a disease as an adult but similarly since embryos are just bundles of genes

00:12:11.880 just like you are and the genes don't change over time our audience will be aware of all of this

00:12:16.900 yeah okay good what i think our audience is more interested in is how did you get more accurate

00:12:22.300 polygenic scores yeah yeah so let me let me get into that i just wanted to define what a polygenic score

00:12:26.100 was first so good yeah so the first thing you need to do to construct a good polygenic score

00:12:30.800 everyone has to do this is access biobanks right and one of the things that we were a bit surprised

00:12:36.600 by because these other companies you know we're a bunch of nerds who were in stealth for a few years

00:12:41.620 and yet we had applied to just about every biobank we could possibly apply to in the world

00:12:47.220 sometimes you get denied but we often got access because well a you need a phd

00:12:52.300 you need to justify why you have access and what you're studying usually it's disease and so on

00:12:57.740 and so that's the first thing is we have access to a lot of biobanks a lot of companies don't seem

00:13:04.040 to even apply to very many which is a little surprising to us it's partly one of one of our

00:13:09.100 theories about why is there is a public catalog of polygenic scores that anyone can use the problem

00:13:16.220 is those are usually five years old they're not nearly as good as the state of the art because

00:13:21.160 academics don't have an incentive a market incentive to really just like ramp up the value

00:13:27.300 of those scores because they're not they're not they have no profit incentive so anyway

00:13:30.380 for step one is access as many biobanks as you can step two is hire the talent that it requires

00:13:37.920 to actually interpret that data and then step three is when you're validating the data and this is what

00:13:44.040 alex young is most famous for is using within family studies and what you're really trying to do when

00:13:49.560 you're making embryo predictions you're not predicting traits about random people in a

00:13:54.100 population you're predicting traits about potential siblings and then choosing which sibling will be

00:14:00.000 born and the idea is if you're doing that the way to validate your scores is run them through adult

00:14:06.780 siblings just imagine this you have you know 12 brothers and sisters which hopefully your children

00:14:12.140 will have and and we say look if we can take their dna and predict how tall are they or do they have

00:14:19.440 schizophrenia or whatever and we can do this across tens of thousands of sibling pairs then there's no

00:14:25.340 question the scores work the only question is how well do they work and how well do they work across

00:14:29.840 ancestry groups and just to put that put all those little pieces together when you're thinking about

00:14:35.260 embryo selection remember that embryos have the same relationship to each other and to their parents as adult

00:14:40.900 siblings do to each other and their parents so if you can predict scores really well for adult siblings

00:14:47.320 then first you can predict them well for embryos and second you don't need to wait a hundred years

00:14:53.660 for an army of of embryos to be implanted and then they grow up and they develop alzheimer's or not

00:14:59.640 you simply don't need to do that i mean it's a nice closing touch to absolutely prove mathematically this

00:15:05.840 works but it's actually it's actually too much of a demand for rigor to say that well we can't know

00:15:11.760 anything about this or whether it works until all these people are born no no no as i said you can

00:15:17.820 prove it on adult siblings and david reich at harvard already uses these to reconstruct the ancient past

00:15:23.780 nobody bats an eye they're like well that's cool nice finding dude you know and so so really the only

00:15:29.720 reason i think that there's a lot of controversy around this is a some companies are not doing

00:15:35.380 this properly and b it is morally controversial as you know at least among some people and so some

00:15:41.320 scientists are looking for any excuse to just say like this doesn't work yeah which i found very

00:15:47.520 interesting i i know a the the the scientists will go out there and just be like oh there's no

00:15:51.420 correlation i i had a like a blow up with telemundo i don't know if the interview has gone live

00:15:56.200 the mexican tv station so this clip actually did somehow go live yesterday and it went viral on

00:16:04.540 twitter and some other platforms it was crazy you've said things like black women are biologically 1.00

00:16:11.900 different than white women they they yes they have uh different fertility windows they have a higher 1.00

00:16:17.360 rate of fertility complications 50 there's no scientific evidence to prove that a black woman and a white 0.92

00:16:23.680 woman are genetically different right this is like what are you talking about no no literally there 1.00

00:16:29.700 are genes that code for their skin color what there are genes again this is i mean this is like

00:16:33.760 government data this this is me right this is the national institute of health this is the american

00:16:37.880 medical association like there there is no scientific evidence to prove that and that's a big problem

00:16:42.920 right because no no no no no there's no something and that's why i asked like iq differences black people are

00:16:49.180 genetically different from other populations i'll say that again there's it there is at least there is 0.99

00:16:56.060 no scientific evidence to prove that right and as people that no no no i'm sorry i'm stating do you

00:17:01.280 want to ask an ai if there's scientific evidence to prove that no i want to ask yeah because what you're

00:17:05.200 stating is just factually incorrect humans are genetically diverse it's not a bad thing that you know i'm not

00:17:10.200 i'm not saying it's a better or a good thing i'm saying there is no scientific evidence and i'm saying that as a

00:17:17.000 factually he's saying that there is scientific there is scientific evidence there is overwhelming scientific

00:17:21.560 evidence based on in this basics no no no this is like saying the sky is not blue like it is genes that code their skin

00:17:29.080 color right those genes are obviously different in them than they are in us how is that not science that's just like a basic fact the genes that code their skin color their level of melanin production

00:17:39.080 level of melanin production are different from my genes and that's precisely why i was asking this question

00:17:44.340 because i think for some people that do believe like you that people are genetically different

00:17:49.000 that has historically been used to promote racial hierarchies right and that's why i'm asking you because

00:17:54.560 yeah yeah so i was talking with them and i was like you know of course i'm not saying

00:18:05.940 you know that that any s ethnic like like that there's any sort of genetic correlation between 0.97

00:18:11.760 ethnic groups tied to intelligence i'm just saying that there are obvious genetic differences between

00:18:16.220 ethnic groups and she goes no there isn't and i was like wait what do you mean there's no genetic

00:18:21.080 difference between ethnic groups and she's like you know malcolm we can cite our own paper alex young

00:18:26.300 was on the definitive paper two months ago along with peter visher who's one of the most famous people in

00:18:31.220 the field in oxford and they published a paper using mexican biobank data showing that type one

00:18:37.320 diabetes is almost entirely a genetic phenomenon you know and specifically the indigenous in the more 0.97

00:18:44.060 indigenous components of the mexican population are the ones that are most susceptible we already 0.98

00:18:49.400 suspected that for years but they proved it beyond beyond any doubt so wow olamundo is just wrong and it's

00:18:54.980 it's demonstrably wrong but yeah that was that was a very fun i wish i hadn't known that one off the top of my

00:18:59.840 head i just got into like more blaine stuff i was like wait so do you think that like black people

00:19:04.140 are taller because they're less privileged like that's not like weird like joseph smith's logic

00:19:11.000 there right like totally forget cognitive traits just look around at physical traits

00:19:15.180 the melanin is a reaction to systemic racism floor up because of the racism and just

00:19:23.040 like weird lamarckian evolution that i'm dealing with here yeah well you've got that especially

00:19:30.640 below the neck they're like that but like you say if you just point out traits like height or

00:19:34.540 sprinting ability or whatever and and just look at ethiopians versus kenyans i mean as you know

00:19:39.400 there's more ethnic or genetic diversity in africa than the rest of the world combined huge genetic

00:19:44.380 and so what you find is eastern africans are really good at long distance and west at short

00:19:50.260 distance and everyone else sucks you know and that's that's you know what i was was unaware of 0.78

00:19:55.620 and we have a whole video on this this might be too controversial to even talk about here because we

00:20:00.180 talk about in this video but did you know that european populations are genetically closer to

00:20:05.280 neanderthals than we are to the cosine well that makes sense there's more neanderthal admixture

00:20:10.880 in european population no no i mean like like not that we are sorry i i'm not just the admixture

00:20:16.020 you're saying yeah not just the admixture i mean in terms of i forget the word it's like ipi or

00:20:20.700 something like total nucleotide arrangement they are a closer ethnic group to us than the cosine are

00:20:28.820 to us yeah and i was shocked to learn that i didn't know that they split off before the cosine did

00:20:33.640 but the cosine had more genetic drift since the split than the neanderthals had had because i didn't

00:20:40.180 know that it makes sense i mean neanderthals are a pretty relatively recent you know branch of of our

00:20:45.460 species so yep yeah lots of fun stuff there but let's jump in to intelligence related stuff go

00:20:52.700 into the things that cross correlate with intelligence and in terms of like how it affects

00:20:57.800 society as you are messing with this stuff good yeah let's let's do it from two different directions

00:21:04.720 one is gonna i'm gonna kind of harness the insights from people like stewart ritchie and russell warne and

00:21:10.400 really kind of the history of of intelligence research at least in the last few decades

00:21:14.700 and on the other end i want to i want to address the plyotropy question which is if you select for

00:21:20.140 higher intelligence along with other traits as well do you get some unwanted side effects that are

00:21:25.540 either good or bad for the kid i think both are pretty interesting and we found some some some cool

00:21:30.780 stuff so yeah something that is not original to us even though we are selecting we're offering the

00:21:37.040 ability select for intelligence the kind of consensus of intelligence researchers show that

00:21:41.820 you know as you move up the or let's just say to the right hand side of the bell curve for

00:21:47.260 intelligence you get a lot of really interesting outcomes and some of those outcomes are things like

00:21:52.380 lower rates of addictive disorders whether it's smoking drug abuse alcohol abuse and there's no reason

00:21:58.180 to believe that smarter people are any morally better or that they have more genes that predispose them

00:22:04.980 to resist addiction per se it's not that addictive genes are differentially distributed it's rather

00:22:11.100 that you know intelligence is correlated with a bunch of interesting things like self-control and

00:22:16.100 time discounting and so smarter people on average you know when you go across a large number of people

00:22:22.040 they tend to think about the future they set goals and they tend to be a bit better at sticking to

00:22:27.040 their goals not massively better but better enough that systematically for example

00:22:32.500 on average you know steve jobs is an exception you know he he went to some quack doctor when he had 0.69

00:22:37.660 cancer and died because of that probably but generally a brighter person will not only be able to

00:22:42.700 sift through the relevant information better but they'll keep their appointments it's really simple

00:22:47.480 to think about that i mean why wouldn't you keep your appointment but the truth is smarter people do

00:22:52.080 they tend to keep their appointments pay their bills on time set plans and then and then follow through

00:22:57.620 on them and that may seem rudimentary but in in in the course of a life that means better health and

00:23:03.040 better outcomes better jobs and so on on the other hand there's also the usual stuff which is like

00:23:08.680 slightly higher income more scientific achievement the maybe racier findings and this is something that

00:23:14.640 you know i first learned from garrett jones and then we published a paper together maybe you can post

00:23:19.100 it it's called cognitive enhancement and network effects why individual traits or rather why individual

00:23:25.820 welfare depends on group traits and what garrett jones showed and we argued is when you take a group

00:23:31.200 of of bright people they actually tend to be more cooperative and the reason for that again is not that they

00:23:37.740 have morally better motivations but they can see the benefits of mutual cooperation in the short run

00:23:43.160 for their own long-term gain and from a national level from a company level from from a neighborhood level

00:23:50.360 that means weird things like less corruption why because corruption is often like look i can get an

00:23:56.340 immediate payoff now and fuck the whole institutions over in the long run because i'm just thinking about 0.55

00:24:02.500 my short-run payoff or i can actually follow these short-run rules for mutual gain in the long run and 0.98

00:24:09.000 that makes all of us better off including myself and so what we find is it's really amazing i mean

00:24:15.100 there are very few bad things about being brighter i can tell you one thing that might be the case okay

00:24:21.140 yeah and that is let me find let me first say something that's been claimed but not replicated

00:24:27.480 and that is karpinski in 2018 et al they argued that brighter people are a little bit more prone to

00:24:33.980 depression and actually all the other findings have have said that's wrong and all the findings both

00:24:41.240 before and after and it looks like that's really a function of a very small sample set of specific

00:24:47.720 mensa members in a specific chapter in la oh i imagine that like yeah if you live in la and have

00:24:53.800 joined mensa also it just seems like most mensa members are just very they're already sad yeah exactly

00:24:59.080 there's a selection but all the other research suggests the opposite the one thing that has not been

00:25:05.820 settled is it may be the case and some within our company actually do think this is true and some

00:25:11.340 don't it may be the case that when you go really far toward the right hand side of the bell curve you

00:25:16.340 select for asperger's some have said there's about a 0.2 correlation with that now that's not bad in and

00:25:22.380 of itself if that corresponds with low functioning autism then it would be bad but actually you've actually

00:25:28.940 you've looked at maybe how to like look at you've looked at potentially including scores in herocyte

00:25:36.060 for autism right like i don't know if you do yet or if you ever will but my understanding was the

00:25:42.220 low functioning autism is just autism plus low iq am i wrong with that yeah that's probably wrong and

00:25:49.580 actually one of the things that we screen for first of all autism is almost certainly multifactorial

00:25:54.620 there's definitely genetic components yeah there's and also autism is a asd is a collection of

00:25:59.900 different things exactly yes yeah we were probably better off when it was two separate things like

00:26:05.100 yeah but yeah we do have a full timer who's working on this and and we do now have a predictor that we

00:26:11.020 just call neurodevelopmental disorders or neuro risk and the idea here there are rare but sufficiently

00:26:17.980 common variants and you know let's call it 10 20 percent of the population that genetic variance that is

00:26:23.900 that correlate with low functioning autism various other neurological disorders including even dyslexia

00:26:29.900 and so on and so yeah we do have a predictor for that we're still not really close to cracking the

00:26:34.860 full story of autism but we can select against some forms of low functioning autism having said that

00:26:41.180 to go back to the previous point too and i'm glad you mentioned that someone so we did a comprehensive

00:26:46.460 study on plyotropy and that's this idea that sometimes one gene or a set of genes will encode for

00:26:51.740 multiple phenotypic effects and you know maybe one is good but another one's bad so you're selecting

00:26:57.660 for a high iq but maybe there's some horrible thing like i don't know increased risk of breast cancer 0.93

00:27:02.460 that you're going to get as a side effect yeah as it turns out and this was tobeas who who led this

00:27:08.620 study we looked at 31 traits that you might target for embryo selection things like 31 traits that we have

00:27:15.660 good scores for like intelligence breast cancer height and then we looked at the genetic associations with

00:27:22.220 thousands of other known diseases more than a thousand anyway wow and what we found is plyotropy

00:27:28.220 where it exists at all is overwhelmingly positive or neutral meaning that when you select against one

00:27:34.700 disease you actually get fewer of other diseases too and when you select in favor of intelligence you get

00:27:40.300 better mental health overall there's very few exceptions and i'll go through one you know one

00:27:46.460 is an interesting one and that is high iq is a bit associated with anorexia why is you guys have a

00:27:53.820 suspicion about why do you like yes i think it's about exerting too much control like it's where it goes far

00:28:04.140 because i mean you were also talking about the correlation between higher iq and lower disease risk

00:28:08.940 because it like you're so conscientiously like i'm gonna go to my appointments i'm gonna pay my

00:28:13.260 bills and in this case it's like i'm gonna control what i eat every step on the treadmill i'm gonna

00:28:18.620 count and you know explain the the high iq correlation with other forms of body dysmorphia like gender

00:28:24.140 dysphoria yeah possibly it's also if i remember from the research it's been shown to correlate well just

00:28:29.500 anecdotally you walk around silicon valley where all like the brilliant programmers are and like

00:28:33.660 there's so many there's so many like i don't know you go to manifest and like half the chicks are

00:28:38.700 dudes so it's it's kind of hard yeah yeah they're also like asian so they pass and they look great 1.00

00:28:43.500 so who cares it's all good you know i agree and if you read the book neurotribes that's that's a big

00:28:49.020 part of the story is like silicon valley there's a selection effect that attracts programmers who are

00:28:54.060 obviously going to be more likely to be you know asperger than than not and so on and then they pair up

00:29:00.140 and have children and so obviously through assortative mating you're going to get higher rates of

00:29:04.540 of at least asperger's if not low functioning and yeah i mean no doubt that's true you're

00:29:08.940 going to find it in fields like math and so on but yeah i mean back to that point simone i think

00:29:13.500 you're entirely right i'm not a psychiatrist so i don't want to give a definitive statement it sounds

00:29:17.740 plausible but that's a case where you know it's not that the genes that cause intelligence are causing

00:29:23.740 you to have bulimia or whatever it's rather that again they're causing these general traits which are

00:29:29.500 basically great but do you have some risks in some environments that they'll well that's where

00:29:34.380 a hair site can be really helpful to parents because if you know that that's a risk like

00:29:39.820 and polygenic risk or selection with embryos is not just about choosing birth order and selecting

00:29:44.940 which embryo to start with it's also about understanding the risks that you should be

00:29:49.340 screening for and preparing for and because we know that for example things like autism and eating

00:29:53.900 disorders are risks for our children we we prepare for them in ways where when you intervene early you can

00:29:58.940 make the difference between someone having an eating disorder that manifests poorly versus one that's

00:30:03.900 manageable and like it took my parents too long to figure out how to make my anorexia manageable

00:30:10.860 where like it's totally not a problem for me like so now there's irreversible osteoporosis and

00:30:16.220 fertility problems but because we know now how to manage it and how that need for control can be exerted 0.82

00:30:23.740 we don't have to worry about that in our own kids and parents who are concerned about that and

00:30:27.420 they know their kid has that risk and just prepare to do that i also wanted to point something out

00:30:31.980 here for for watchers of our show who are like oh this is you know choosing which embryos end up

00:30:36.860 getting implanted and which ones don't get implanted which is you know killing embryos which is it was the

00:30:42.700 current science factually we're sort of past that part of history while some people will use it that

00:30:48.220 way we have now had successful germline gene editing used to resolve serious genetic conditions that were

00:30:55.260 spotted through technology like this specifically there was a case where so far it's healthy a fetus

00:31:02.060 that had been born the conceived with an extra chromosome had the extra this this would have

00:31:06.620 had down syndrome had the extra chromosome successfully removed now a a human who would have lived their

00:31:13.340 entire life with down syndrome will not live their life was down syndrome because of this kind of

00:31:20.780 technology which is scanning for this stuff and as we get further with this technology i i'm not i'm

00:31:26.300 talking even a few years because a lot of our followers are younger if you are not using this

00:31:32.140 kind of technology and one of your kids was fated to die at three of cancer and that could have been

00:31:36.620 resolved through a germline intervention which we're also funding right that that you're responsible for

00:31:43.420 that that that was sort of your moral vanity spent the life of your child just as much as jehovah's

00:31:52.060 witnessed it refused a blood transfusion because it was unnatural or it doesn't work perfectly every time

00:31:58.380 or you know if god wanted them to die if you look at that person who refused the blood transfusion for

00:32:03.820 their kid and you look at them with moral revulsion be aware that there are people in the future maybe even

00:32:12.380 your own children who will look at you that way as this technology continues to develop so while

00:32:18.220 we're just at the beginning now and even i agree i see it as morally sketchy to say which which we are

00:32:23.900 not saying we're going to use some of our embryos and not others we're just using it for ordering

00:32:27.020 but we are entering an era very soon and we've already entered this era officially where that's not

00:32:33.820 the only use case or potentially even the core use case of technology like this yeah good let me address

00:32:38.380 both of those points first i really like simone's point about you know in the rare cases where we do

00:32:44.140 have negative or antagonistic pleiotropy they're very rare but they're going to be there it may turn

00:32:49.820 out that there is a really small correlation for example between intelligence and and autism and and

00:32:55.820 if that's true just like there is between height and heart conditions when you get really really tall

00:33:01.660 you are more likely to have you know various kinds of cardiovascular problems and

00:33:06.060 we can obviously understand why right the heart has to support a bigger body

00:33:09.580 in cases like that you know the truth is like maybe i would like an extra inch or two of height but

00:33:15.340 you know our ceo and founder michael i mean he's six seven

00:33:21.100 he wants to select for shorter kids why because you know when you're when you're at the fertility

00:33:26.700 clinic and not in the mating market you're thinking about the health of your kids not just like how sexy

00:33:31.580 they are or whatever you know are they just taller than average so so the truth is like actually even

00:33:37.500 in those rare cases of antagonistic pleiotropy it's actually good for parents to know about it

00:33:42.220 so they can then select accordingly and optimize and to your point malcolm yeah exactly i mean look

00:33:48.620 one point i like to make is natural sex natural pregnancies about half of them result in spontaneous

00:33:54.060 abortion you guys know this you've talked about it most of those aneuploidy cases are not mere downs i

00:33:59.580 mean we all recognize if you have down syndrome you know you should not only be respected you should

00:34:04.220 be honored you can live a good life with down syndrome but the vast majority are not downs they're

00:34:09.260 actually completely incompatible with life and so if you think that the body is flushing those out

00:34:14.620 naturally which it is in many many cases there's no difference between separating out those embryos

00:34:21.100 in the lab ahead of time and thereby increasing the chance that you'll have a successful pregnancy 0.80

00:34:26.300 then you know having a bunch of miscarriages and then doing it the so-called natural way so

00:34:31.980 you know that's that's my view of that situation i mean apart from the moral status of embryos i'm

00:34:36.460 going to debate that on louise perry's show pretty soon here but oh you are well have you have you

00:34:41.180 heard my long debate on this because i i talk about it a lot on this show but when i'm talking about

00:34:45.900 it on the show i'm often talking about it to a different audience than you're used to me so yeah

00:34:49.980 the arguments i often use that i do not see used enough is first that if god if it was the case

00:34:58.060 that the installment happened at conception then identical twins wouldn't exist and human chimeras 0.69

00:35:03.740 wouldn't exist because if that's the case then identical twins have the same soul they are humans

00:35:09.100 sharing a soul because embryos twin in other words like let's say a week after you've created the embryo

00:35:14.380 the body has created them sometimes by sheer accident when they're when the cells are dividing

00:35:19.340 the embryo basically accidentally becomes a twin and it's like at that stage do you now have two

00:35:24.780 souls or one or five right and i've never seen a good and and human chimeras are when two embryos

00:35:31.260 combine into one embryo and a person might have parts of their brain half a soul right yeah yeah they

00:35:37.260 have how does this work right so i think that the that if and it's important to note is animals

00:35:43.980 mammals have children that are chimeras or identical twins at different rates some mammals have no

00:35:50.220 identical twins or human chimeras in some mammals it's like 40 of them are human are chimeras this

00:35:55.740 is in some primate species if god had wanted humans to not have chimeras or identical twins he could have

00:36:01.820 made that the case if god had wanted to say i knew you when you were conceived in your mother's womb

00:36:08.780 instead of before you were conceived in your mother's womb he could have had that written as

00:36:13.900 well and yet the bible very clearly says before which is why many of the early even catholic thinkers

00:36:20.860 so augustus of hippo and thomas aquinas i remember one was pretty concretely and solomon happened seven

00:36:25.580 days after an embryo begins to develop and the other just didn't have an opinion on this yet and i will

00:36:30.380 note here that people say well you know the church has always been against the killing of children

00:36:36.540 however a child is defined even loosely and i completely agree with this the or even forms

00:36:42.460 of abortion right um which i also agree with since the church has historically looked down on that

00:36:48.060 however the problem is that depending on when insolement happens you are killing a child by not

00:36:55.260 using this technology potentially because it also finds things like cancer risk and stuff like that

00:37:01.340 you can potentially kill a child by not using it if it turns out that insolement happens after

00:37:08.300 conception and if you told these early thinkers that a child could die because this is not used

00:37:16.380 i think that that's where this becomes a more morally tricky argument even within the context of the early

00:37:21.500 church but i when when they begin to develop opinions on this the opinions that the church developed didn't

00:37:28.220 really get solidified into both pious the knights i mean this was only about 200 years ago and if you

00:37:33.420 go to the early catholic thinkers and you're like yeah so you know we could through using this technology

00:37:39.180 prevent a child from dying at like two or have a healthy child instead i don't think any of them would

00:37:43.980 be like oh yeah you you should you should sacrifice the life of the the sickly child they simply they 0.89

00:37:49.580 simply didn't know a lot of this biology too i mean obviously and you know the truth is you know i i i have

00:37:56.140 great respect for for catholicism and and christianity and many of my friends are catholic but the truth

00:38:02.300 is as you guys know i mean a lot of them will call the current pope like a commie you know like they

00:38:06.940 don't listen to him actually right we were just talking about that and they know they know as we all do

00:38:13.020 too you know god may be perfect but his representatives on earth are imperfect and they're partly political

00:38:19.900 appointments right bishops elect them through a democratic election and you know apply your curtis yarvan

00:38:25.740 analysis to that so i mean you know it's not clear like you know what one pope says

00:38:33.020 is the pope who solidified the life begins at conception thing and he's the pope who ripped

00:38:38.620 the penises off of all the statues but he's the pope who wrote the syllabus of errors that called for a 0.83

00:38:44.300 catholic caliphate you know he he wasn't exactly you know i i think a a from my perspective he sort 0.95

00:38:50.940 of represented catholicism's drift towards islamism as as like by the way islam recognizes ivf is

00:38:58.540 completely fine so interestingly to the you know we mention this all the time when we're on news shows

00:39:03.900 so we do news in italy and france and germany and in all of those countries you basically cannot do ivf

00:39:09.500 because you can only do live transfers and i always tell them i go i don't mind that you're going to be

00:39:14.380 muslim majority soon because i would be legally allowed to have kids under sharia law and i am

00:39:19.980 not legally allowed to have kids in your country as it's structured right now we had one listener

00:39:25.100 write us angrily and they go they're you know what was it infertility is not permanent and i'm like no

00:39:31.340 some forms of infertility are pretty permanent yeah and another another argument on that front on the

00:39:36.860 infertility front you know are you going to blame a generation of men for having lower sperm counts and

00:39:42.540 testosterone they didn't deserve that and it's not you know it can't be just genetic change that

00:39:48.220 you know our grandparents had how are 40 higher rates clearly it's the environment and clearly

00:39:54.140 if that can do it in one generation it's reversible so if you're infertile now you should still be having 0.55

00:39:59.500 children right unless you're passing along some horrific you know life-ending disease it's probably

00:40:04.940 more that you're like mom microwaved all your food in plastic bags yeah yeah microplastics who knows what

00:40:09.820 it is so there was a study done on this that showed that by 2060 50 of men in the developed

00:40:15.260 world are going to be infertile so cultural groups that refuse to use fertility assisted technology are

00:40:20.940 going to really struggle exactly genes and cultures co-evolve and i always like to say like look guys

00:40:26.780 first of all we all know that china will be using this technology so will singapore you know right now

00:40:33.020 it's still new they haven't heard of it necessarily but they already subsidized ivf to boost their birth

00:40:38.140 rates israel does the same thing israel and the emirates also subsidized genetic testing for people

00:40:45.500 who are doing ivf or forming a union in the uae and so this is just the next step and the idea that the

00:40:52.620 moral landscape just is going to be as it is right now and not evolve you know i mean it just ignores

00:40:59.500 history like the catholic church's position will absolutely evolve on this issue it did in our lifetime

00:41:05.340 or our grandparents lifetimes remember initially they were against for example adding respirators

00:41:11.820 because what were you doing like if you were dying you know that was god's will respirators were playing

00:41:17.340 god oh now it's mandatory now you're playing god if you remove a respirator and so like these things

00:41:22.460 evolve and i'm not mocking the pope or the catholic church i'm just saying we all recognize these things

00:41:27.900 evolve and you know it's not clear that what the stance is right now is just sort of god's word or he

00:41:33.580 would have put it in the bible yeah no absolutely anyway i didn't mean this to be a sermon from any

00:41:40.460 of us but yeah it would have been easy to put something in the bible other than i knew you

00:41:44.460 before you were in your mother's womb right like yeah it would have been incredibly easy that's like 0.99

00:41:49.100 a huge oversight and by that he means the soul whatever the soul is he doesn't mean a specific

00:41:53.900 sperm cell or embryo or something like that memories are being created and destroyed all the time

00:41:58.700 naturally so we go deep on this and some of our stuff but yeah no so one i might have to run to

00:42:03.420 get the the kids for their to a therapy speaking early interventions so i might i did i'm just warning

00:42:08.940 that i might bounce but malcolm's gonna stay on in case i have to leave early but so we want to get

00:42:13.980 also to the the global element of this where if you're outside the us and you can't necessarily have

00:42:18.380 your embryo sequenced how can you still get polygenic scores for your embryos yeah so our big

00:42:25.580 innovation one of the reasons that we stayed in stealth a bit longer than originally planned

00:42:30.700 is we have a patent pending on this who knows if it'll be honored but i think it will

00:42:35.900 and that is this idea that we can take data from a common genetic test that's offered at every ivf

00:42:41.340 clinic in the world you could be in italy you could be in the us you could be in china and we don't serve

00:42:47.660 every country in the world we'll get into that but you could technically do it from anywhere in the world

00:42:51.740 and the idea is you can get this pre-implantation genetic test for aneuploidy this test for chromosomal

00:42:58.700 problems like downs anywhere in the world and what we can do is ask you to request your raw genetic

00:43:05.260 data from that test which it's your hipaa right here it's gdpr rights in europe and other countries

00:43:10.780 have similar have similar laws where you own your genetic data and the data of your your embryos

00:43:15.500 and since that test is offered anywhere but it's very low coverage genetic data what we do is we

00:43:22.620 patented this this algorithm thanks to alex young and and others on our team where we we do short and

00:43:29.100 long read sequencing on the parents we get a really deep genomic sequence of the parents and then we can

00:43:34.620 put that together with the pgta data to get an idea of the whole genome of each discrete embryo which

00:43:40.540 of course are different from each other and in and of itself that's just kind of a cool mathematical

00:43:45.340 puzzle and the way it works is basically you're inheriting large chunks of dna from mom and dad

00:43:50.540 and if if you know something about the start and stop points for those blocks and then a little bit

00:43:55.260 in between then you can sequence the parents and fill those in those values it turns out it's a lot

00:44:01.580 harder to do mathematically than it is to describe the way i am and you know that's why i'm not on the

00:44:06.620 science team i'm you know i'm sort of on the comms team and doing some of the other things in the

00:44:11.100 company but but anyway that allows people i'll give you an example somehow someone heard about

00:44:18.620 our x thread when we when we launched in mongolia on the radio people were local influencers were

00:44:24.540 doing tiktoks or whatever it was and they called us up and they're like hey can you service in mongolia

00:44:29.500 and no other company can do that because they need to have a partnership with the clinic and then

00:44:35.340 maybe whole genome sequence the embryo or do some other method but we can just be like yeah no no

00:44:40.540 problem like as long as as long as the laws there allow you to select an embryo of your choice

00:44:45.580 we can serve you now i will say a caveat here as usual europe is way behind and so we don't serve

00:44:51.820 europeans directly like if they want to fly that's fine they can come to california they can go to cyprus

00:44:57.180 and it's all legal there but even though we technically could serve europeans

00:45:02.060 very easily through this process i just mentioned we don't right now because we don't want to get in

00:45:07.580 trouble with with european governments we do however urge your followers wherever you are in

00:45:13.020 the world to assert your rights and make sure your governments are saying like look there's a choice

00:45:18.860 here either we get to select our embryos either we own our genetic data or the government does and

00:45:24.860 you guys have heard as much as i do the word eugenics thrown around here who's engaged in coercive

00:45:29.980 government-sponsored eugenics is it seriously is it no so what we point out is the data

00:45:37.580 let you use the data to make your decision or is it rather the government who's saying no

00:45:42.060 we're gonna by force of law prevent you from accessing your own data the coercive eugenicists not not us 0.66

00:45:49.820 right so i think i think a better way to make this argument is to point out that you know where this

00:45:54.300 technology is going is germline gene editing right and it's clearer who the eugenicists is when we are

00:46:00.220 talking about the legality of germline gene editing because that is a government saying that people with

00:46:05.420 specific genetic patterns do not have a right to exist and they will coercively prevent those human

00:46:12.700 beings existence because of what their genes said that is just plainly eugenics and these are people who your

00:46:20.540 kids will know and interact with and they'll be like yeah i'm not allowed to exist in france or

00:46:25.500 germany or whatever and my favorite point on this is everybody oh oh oh do you really like when i when

00:46:30.780 i talked to you know i was like the problem because i was talking to a german reporter about this do you

00:46:34.940 think we were mad at the nazis because they wanted to make people healthier we were mad at the nazis

00:46:38.940 because they were controlling who could have kids and how and she responded murdering people yeah do you

00:46:44.140 you really think yeah do you really think like 1950s americans were were fighting in war war ii

00:46:51.260 with the hope of like scientists being able to genetically augment a human to be stronger and i said

00:46:56.540 the very face of anti-nazi propaganda was captain america a human whose scientists augmented to be

00:47:03.500 better this is this has always been what this side of the fight has been about against the the opposite

00:47:10.540 side of the fight it's silly and i you know i i make that point as a rhetorical one yours is partly

00:47:15.180 rhetorical too about you but of course you know in my academic career i mean as a philosopher i mean

00:47:20.700 i was asked for example to participate in a debate and i wrote a paper called defending eugenics but of

00:47:25.420 course what i meant by that and i was absolutely clear by it is of course individual eugenics where you

00:47:31.180 can make choices to improve the welfare of your children you know i always use leonard darwin's

00:47:36.700 definition of eugenics he he was the president of the eugenics society and son of leonard of

00:47:41.260 charles darwin and he said eugenics is the study of heredity as it may be used to improve the mental

00:47:48.380 and physical well-being of humanity and it's like well if that's how you define it great and then the

00:47:53.820 only question is who gets to decide so you know i don't have like an interest in like oh this this is

00:47:59.740 or isn't eugenics who cares that's just a word it's like it's like settling or trying to settle the

00:48:04.620 abortion debate by just saying well i'm pro-choice and like are you against choice well that okay now

00:48:10.220 you're just using rhetoric like obviously the question is what's the moral status of the fetus

00:48:14.540 and is this you know is the mother in the best position to decide or the state same thing here 0.70

00:48:19.180 so i don't really like you know engaging these debates about eugenics but again if they're gonna

00:48:23.980 levy that charge against us and then just drop the mic it's like hold on here dude we're the ones who

00:48:29.900 are arguing that individuals and parents have the right right you guys are the ones arguing for

00:48:34.700 restriction so don't take the moral high ground on us exactly yeah okay i'm gonna i'm malcolm if

00:48:40.860 you can wrap this up with i'll wrap it up you don't have to wrap it up fast i'm just i have to run

00:48:45.340 to get the kids simone i i would like to try to do beef orange beef tonight and i will bring back

00:48:51.260 the ingredients for the sauce it's just cooked the way we've been doing the beef every other night

00:48:54.780 pan frying except the sauce uses an orange and a bit of orange rinds that i'm gonna pick up from

00:49:00.220 the grocery store when i get some beer we have clementines can i use that we have orange in the

00:49:05.580 show by the way but we have clementines sorry we always oh clementines yeah you can use clementines

00:49:10.780 that's fine then you don't need to go to the store anyway i'm i'm jumping and you guys can wrap up here

00:49:14.780 and yes order received malcolm i sent the ingredient the list on whatsapp or you can look up a recipe okay

00:49:20.700 okay perfect and johnny thank you so much i'm sorry for bouncing early but i'm so glad you're on

00:49:25.740 the show and we're really excited to run this so yeah okay carry on great to see you thanks yeah

00:49:32.620 great okay so any any final things you wanted to go over

00:49:36.700 i don't really have any particular agenda what are you what are you thinking about was the

00:49:39.900 leith perry show is this your first time doing it no it was on a couple years ago but yeah i mean

00:49:44.220 she wanted she just had diana fleishman and lyman stone two people that i know you know as well

00:49:48.940 yeah yeah yeah debate eugenics which is of course partly a semantic debate partly a substantive one

00:49:54.860 but then she wanted someone to do specifically pgtp pre-implantation genetic testing for polygenic 0.98

00:50:00.140 traits i'm obviously the face of that in in a sense even though i'm not you know the the best scientist

00:50:05.580 on our team but i've been kind of the spokesman so i'm the obvious choice and we're looking for an

00:50:09.900 opponent and you know have a really healthy debate so yeah well do you guys have an opponent our audience

00:50:15.820 skin yeah i mean she's looking she's asked someone so we'll see we'll see what they say but yeah i

00:50:20.780 mean what i'm excited for like for our company and the space because i'm not necessarily here to show

00:50:25.500 us of course we always like customers it's great you know you can go to hair site.com but i'm i'm

00:50:30.700 actually much more excited just about the whole space i think the idea of you know reducing disease

00:50:37.020 in the world that that's bad is ridiculous like all of us spend so much time worrying about health and

00:50:42.140 you know going to the gym and whatever eating right and so like i just think this is a really 0.78

00:50:47.420 fucking great tool like we're gonna increase health marginally increase intelligence and 0.74

00:50:53.340 obviously there's a great bridge technology like you said i mean i've written about it in my book like 0.96

00:50:58.140 i'm super excited about the future i think this is one of the few things we should be excited about

00:51:03.420 like there's been so many great inventions you know basic plumbing you know reduce disease risk

00:51:09.020 antibiotics etc and to me biotechnology when it's done right and genetics when it's done right

00:51:14.780 this is going to be the biggest boon to human welfare and personally you know just to just to

00:51:19.980 add another thought on that i'm not personally a transhumanist i'm not someone who wants to upload

00:51:25.020 my brain into the cloud i know some people who do and that's fine but at the very least surely

00:51:29.980 we can agree that it's better if we can live like longer healthier lives be a bit brighter a bit

00:51:35.100 more creative etc and i just think this is step one to doing this and you know you might worry about

00:51:41.340 yeah go ahead it's an interesting technology to think about because it's not a technology

00:51:45.500 that is going to be used by the next generation and the way it was used by this generation because

00:51:50.380 germline gene editing will presumably be mainstream and inexpensive by the time we have the next generation

00:51:57.100 in which case this technology will move to a preventative and associative technology to germline gene

00:52:02.860 editing actually we'll probably be combining the two of them because i think you're still going to

00:52:07.180 have like if you do the equivalent of ivf or rather ivg which i'm sure you've talked about you know you

00:52:12.620 take an adult cell turn it into a whatever you know you're still going to have a range of different

00:52:16.780 outcomes and a basic sort of you know you might call it a genetic deck and then you stack it by first

00:52:22.540 selecting one of the embryos and then secondly touching it up with editing i actually think like

00:52:27.500 it may be a little ways longer than many people think i don't have strong views but i talk to

00:52:31.340 people at the church lab and and the brode institute and i think massive multiplex editing

00:52:36.460 which is what you would really need like hundreds or thousands of genes to really get big effects

00:52:40.860 that may be a ways away but you know what's what's also coming very soon after that and maybe even

00:52:45.740 before and that is creating entire chromosomes from scratch i mean that may sound science fictiony but

00:52:51.660 there are many people working on this now and when you think about it gene editing is a really

00:52:56.460 delicate thing you've got billions of base pairs and to like edit one by one and not have off-target

00:53:01.580 effects it's harder than you might think it might actually end up being easier in the long run to

00:53:06.780 just create entire genomes from scratch as well i think it changes a lot of the probabilities in this

00:53:12.780 space where historically i would have agreed with you but now i'm sort of of the perspective

00:53:17.420 as ai continues to develop ai's ability it turned out there's been some research on this that ai is just

00:53:23.100 very good at predicting genetic effects and modeling genomes and so it turns out that we're

00:53:28.220 probably going to get you know five ten years from now the ai will probably be fairly accurate

00:53:32.540 at this stuff but we still need a good editing system so the problem with crispr and i'll tell

00:53:36.780 all of its descendants is off-target mutations and again if you're even if you had like a three

00:53:42.380 percent probability of that okay it would be good to fix a single broken gene right but not not

00:53:47.260 hundreds or thousands and so you know there's going to be some stuff that has to be worked out and

00:53:51.420 whatever but i'm all hopeful for it i know you are too i i thought i would say one more thing i

00:53:56.300 mean if we're if we're closing i mean a lot of people worry about egalitarian objections and you

00:54:01.260 know i'm not an egalitarian so i'll just say that and you know i i agree more with nietzsche that mankind

00:54:06.460 is judged by its highest specimens you know not not just mere life you know that's not what that's not

00:54:12.060 what is what's important but you know even from an egalitarian standpoint i am sympathetic to some

00:54:17.580 extent you know when you think about what really impedes people's ability to to really flourish in

00:54:23.260 life i mean one of the main things is just having a poorly functioning immune system my my grandmother

00:54:29.180 had a bunch of autoimmune diseases and she couldn't leave the house and yet she was the smartest person

00:54:34.060 in our family by far so the idea is look to the extent that we have inequalities a lot of them not all

00:54:40.860 of them are genetic and who's going to benefit the most from this technology in the long run it's

00:54:46.220 actually those people who have the worst genetic luck i mean in a sense they're not going to be

00:54:52.060 born instead a sibling that's a lot like them would be born but when we're talking about the distant

00:54:57.100 future or future people you don't just have some abstract right to be born i mean there's a trillion

00:55:03.020 potential combinations of eggs and sperm right yeah the idea is to create future people that are

00:55:09.100 basically on average going to be healthy and thrive and and i mean to me like that's just really great

00:55:15.740 and if we have a few more von neumann's in the population we have more inequality but we also have more

00:55:21.980 cool shit in the world and in the and in the end we also are going to get in some ways less inequality 0.57

00:55:28.940 not that that's the only thing i care about simply because a lot of these this low hanging fruit 0.99

00:55:34.380 you know really low intelligence or really bad diseases are simply going to be cured and so like

00:55:40.380 i just see that as a as a win-win it's going to be a better world yeah yeah no i i mean i'm i'm

00:55:45.820 excited for for the technology that's coming down the pipeline right now it's really cool um and i and

00:55:49.740 i it's funny the people who are mortified by this technology they always assume that everyone else on

00:55:56.300 the right is going to be mortified by this technology and i think they're often quite surprised that no most

00:56:01.740 people just do not care especially in their private lives people want the best for their

00:56:05.820 children whatever they publicly say to my knowledge nick fuentes was born via ibf you know famous pro

00:56:11.180 catholic anti-ibf guy right like i don't i don't want to be on nick fuentes team but okay that's true

00:56:16.300 by the way can i can i say something you know i don't know if you're going to mention

00:56:20.940 pro natalism i know this doesn't have much to do with it but the truth is

00:56:24.700 you know i i agree with you i'm really worried about birth rates i think any reasonable person would

00:56:29.180 be if you if you love humanity you you want us to survive and and you know we've we've had many

00:56:35.260 customers already by the way and and many are religious or on the right as well who are going

00:56:40.860 to have a kid that they wouldn't have had if it weren't for polygenic selection and the reason is

00:56:46.220 they have a family history of disease or they were infertile especially the the former you know we've

00:56:51.100 had real people worry like look i don't want to have a kid if it means that they're going to have

00:56:56.940 these horrible diseases but if i can embryo select they're much less likely to so we're going to have

00:57:02.060 more kids like this is actually a pro natal pro family technology and i know not everyone's going

00:57:07.740 to agree with us on that but like it is it's objective no i mean it creates more humans and

00:57:12.460 healthier ones so more more adult humans people can say well do you consider an embryo human but it

00:57:17.180 creates more adult humans and i and i would note i do consider most embryos humans just not at the

00:57:22.140 exact like i consider potential humans myself but like yeah we can parse words yeah but but in

00:57:28.460 terms of like living adults which is the thing that prenatalism is concerned about obviously this is

00:57:33.020 we get more of them yeah exactly but yeah it's been great to have you on great to catch up yeah any any

00:57:38.540 new projects you're working on yourself well no basically we're trying to spread this to to the

00:57:43.740 world and and find ways of doing this but obviously i'm always writing we we just put on our website

00:57:50.140 and ethics of embryo screening paper and what we really want to do next is in addition to offering

00:57:55.740 more and better traits we're always trying to do that including potentially personality or severe

00:58:00.780 depression that you could select against we're especially interested in doing more of these

00:58:05.020 plyotropy studies my worry always was as an academic like look this is probably going to be net good but

00:58:12.060 maybe there's all this hidden plyotropy where we're going to get all these bad unexpected effects but

00:58:16.380 the more we learn about it the more we learn that's not true and and yeah i want to dig into

00:58:21.180 this because i think it's really good news and it's really important for people you know doctors

00:58:27.420 a lot of people in the industry the fertility industry they just don't keep up with genetics and

00:58:31.660 so the more we discover about it and the more we publish in mainstream journals the more attention

00:58:37.020 they're going to have to pay and just change their views so i really want to be on my soapbox and

00:58:41.100 like make the arguments and kind of be part of the epistemic change in the world that makes us more

00:58:46.780 acceptable well great great to have you on thanks for having me great to catch up

00:58:51.260 is this indy's first time seeing snow yeah i think so oh are you guys making snow angels

00:59:07.180 get up octavian look at the angel you did a really good job actually

00:59:09.820 what do you think girl is it kind of cold it's just professor girl hey fessor

00:59:25.260 it's still snowing out today yeah hey you want me to get the chickens today so you don't freeze

00:59:30.140 see that's the yellow snow that's what i said yeah we should not eat that yeah don't eat the yellow

00:59:52.300 snow right guys wow that is so beautiful you're a good girl

01:00:05.820 no not right now buddy

Based Camp - December 24, 2025

Manufacturing Our Designer Babies (Feat. Jonathan Anomaly)

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