Valuetainment - December 20, 2023


Gene Editing： How CRISPR Will Change EVERYTHING & Create Designer Babies

Topics
CRISPR therapy for sickle cell disease fetal gene therapy gene editing concerns
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
CRISPR Victoria Gray Terry Horgan McKinsey Universal Soldier Shukart Mitalipog Samart Kulkarni Huntington COVID-19 Statista Duchenne Jiangui Restart
Henry Kissinger Legacy： Hero or Villain？ Global Shipping Crisis： Houthis Terror Attack on U.S. & Israel Causes Red Sea Trade Route Shutdown

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

198.22

Word count

2,216

Sentence count

190

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

CRISPR gene editing has been approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of sickle cell disease and other genetic diseases. This is a revolutionary technology in the field of genetics that allows scientists to precisely edit genes with organisms. CRISPR is used to make specific changes in the DNA of plants, animals, and humans. This includes adding, removing, or altering sections of the DNA sequence.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 How much are you following what's going on with gene editing with this company called CRISPR
00:00:03.500 that just got this new approval by the FDA on December 8, 2023?
00:00:08.160 CRISPR gene editing drug for sickle cell disease has officially been approved.
00:00:12.380 So imagine what this whole gene editing means.
00:00:14.000 Let's just say, you know how nowadays people say,
00:00:16.000 I don't want to just have one baby, I just want to do it once and I want to have three babies.
00:00:19.680 You couldn't do that before, that's normal now.
00:00:22.040 What if you can go to the doctor and you say,
00:00:24.080 okay doc, here's the menu, what would you like?
00:00:27.040 I want them to be 6'5".
00:00:28.780 No, no babe, that's too tall, 6'3 1⁄2".
00:00:31.400 He's going to be 6'3 1⁄2".
00:00:32.720 What color eyes do you want him to have? 0.98
00:00:34.500 Green eyes.
00:00:35.420 Green eyes it is.
00:00:36.540 How big arms do you want?
00:00:37.900 How about shoe size?
00:00:39.400 I'd like him to end up having 13 1⁄2". 0.99
00:00:41.180 Oh, that's exactly what he's got.
00:00:42.440 How about hair?
00:00:43.380 Blonde? 0.98
00:00:43.700 No, not blonde. 0.88
00:00:44.460 Can you imagine if you could do that?
00:00:45.960 By the way, that's the direction we're going.
00:00:47.340 This company, CRISPR, gets started in 2013, goes public in 2016,
00:00:51.080 becomes almost a $200 share company.
00:00:53.100 Right now it's around $60 to $68, give or take, $4.5 billion company.
00:00:56.660 And while you're listening to this, and you're saying,
00:00:59.520 Pat, this is craziness.
00:01:00.700 There's no way we're going this direction.
00:01:02.560 Well, apparently, CRISPR can cure cancer, blood disorders, blindness, AIDS,
00:01:08.920 cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, Huntington disease, and COVID-19.
00:01:14.080 And by the way, you want to know a little weird thing, what's going on with China?
00:01:16.620 In 2020, a U.S. intelligence report showed that China conducted human testing
00:01:21.860 on members of the People's Liberation Army, PLA,
00:01:26.000 in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities
00:01:30.920 similar to movies like Captain America, Bloodshot, and Universal Soldier.
00:01:35.980 That's the direction we're going to today.
00:01:38.440 This simple patent that was started by somebody in UC Berkeley,
00:01:43.040 this lady who starts it, but the credit to the patent ends up going to Harvard and MIT, 0.89
00:01:48.800 and they're the ones that own this concept called CRISPR.
00:01:51.680 So we're going to talk about that today.
00:01:53.260 Very weird. Stick around.
00:02:02.100 If you get value out of this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
00:02:05.240 Let's get right into it.
00:02:06.140 Again, CRISPR. What does it even stand for?
00:02:08.200 Clustered, regularly, interspaced, short, palindromic repeats is what CRISPR stands for.
00:02:16.140 Now, according to Statista, the market size for this in 2023 is $2.4 billion,
00:02:22.720 but in 10 years, they're predicting for it to be shy of $33 billion.
00:02:27.480 This is a revolutionary technology in the field of genetics.
00:02:31.640 It's a tool that allows scientists to precisely edit genes with organisms.
00:02:36.220 CRISPR is used to make specific changes in the DNA of plants, animals, and humans.
00:02:42.000 This includes adding, removing, or altering sections of the DNA sequence.
00:02:47.740 The reason why I have a smile on my face is because you're pretty much playing God is what you're doing.
00:02:53.600 What kind of a human being do you want to build?
00:02:56.020 What kind of an animal do you want?
00:02:58.080 What kind of a plant do you want?
00:02:59.600 They can even fix your salad, the flavor, the taste.
00:03:02.380 They can make a carrot taste like cherries.
00:03:04.240 They can do all this.
00:03:05.340 This is not just like out of a movie.
00:03:07.420 This is actually reality, what we're going to right now.
00:03:10.380 So CRISPR-Cas9 edits genes by precisely cutting DNA and then harnessing natural DNA repair processes
00:03:17.800 to modify the gene in the desired manner.
00:03:22.080 The system has two components, the Cas9 enzyme and a guide RNA.
00:03:28.000 Now, here's what's important.
00:03:28.980 I mean, this company, CRISPR, got started 2013, goes public 2016.
00:03:32.100 It's worth around $4.5 billion.
00:03:33.860 Their CEO is somebody that's been at McKinsey for nine years, Samart Kulkarni.
00:03:38.640 So that's somebody that's connected.
00:03:40.040 When you're with McKinsey, you know you have connections with everybody.
00:03:43.180 So imagine the contact of, hey, we're trying to get this product into this McKinsey relationship.
00:03:48.840 Countries, foreign, other companies, investments.
00:03:52.320 It's the right lineage of opportunities for this company.
00:03:56.800 And they've already, as of 2023, more than 200 people have been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies.
00:04:03.380 I'll give you a couple of testimonies and stories here.
00:04:05.380 First one is Victoria Gray, 37-year-old survivor of sickle cell disease, spoke about her transformative experience with gene editing treatment.
00:04:12.660 When she described a childhood and adolescence marked by severe symptoms and dreams deferred, after receiving a transfusion of genetically edited cells from her bone marrow, which she calls supercells, she felt an immediate sense of rebirth and gradually saw significant health improvements over seven to eight months.
00:04:31.500 Her story, marked by newfound enjoyment of life, deeply moved the audience, including typically stoic scientists.
00:04:38.220 What's important to know is, some of maybe, so is this stem cells?
00:04:41.700 Is that what you're talking about?
00:04:42.320 Because everybody's talking about stem cells.
00:04:43.540 Stem cells are something you add.
00:04:44.600 Either you can take it from your own body and give it back to yourself, or you can take it from somebody else and put it in yourself.
00:04:49.760 This is, they're taking a part of your gene out.
00:04:52.080 They're editing it, putting a new one in there to manipulate it, in other words.
00:04:55.780 And that's what they did with Victoria Gray.
00:04:57.340 Here's another one.
00:04:57.920 In October 2021, CRISPR Therapeutics gave preliminary results for individuals with lymphomas who had been treated and followed for at least four weeks after treatment.
00:05:07.200 Side effects were not severe, and the safety profile was superior to other CART products.
00:05:12.240 In these patients, almost 60% showed a positive response to treatments, with 21% showing no signs of disease for six months after a single treatment.
00:05:21.220 That leaves 19%.
00:05:22.180 Does that mean the other 19% turned into zombies?
00:05:24.280 They didn't tell us what happened to the other 19%. 0.85
00:05:26.080 But apparently, 60% showed positive response.
00:05:28.780 So you got to keep this in mind.
00:05:30.140 21% showing no signs of disease after six months after a single treatment.
00:05:34.820 That's one in five no longer have cancer?
00:05:37.860 What?
00:05:38.540 How many people do you think would want to say, I want to be part of that 200?
00:05:41.300 But again, not enough research.
00:05:43.140 That's what's only 200, but let's continue.
00:05:44.780 2017.
00:05:45.240 Team of researchers, led by Shukart Mitalipog, a genetic at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, reported that human embryos carrying a mutation could be repaired using this method.
00:05:59.720 The researchers generate embryos from a union between two cells, a sperm carrying a mutation that can make it harder for the heart to pump blood.
00:06:08.920 But in an egg with a healthy version of the gene, the doctor and his team used CRISPR-Cas9 to cut the broken copy of the gene to see if the intact version would guide its repair.
00:06:21.040 They reported the experiment a success and published it in the journal Nature.
00:06:25.460 This is pretty wild.
00:06:27.280 If you think about what it's saying, you go to the doctor, the doctor tells you your baby has a 70% chance of being Down syndrome.
00:06:35.520 These guys can use CRISPR-Cas9 to cut the gene and edit it with the right gene so the kid will be okay, won't end up being Down syndrome.
00:06:47.740 So this is personal to me because we've gone through it in our family.
00:06:51.020 Think about the possibilities of what this could do.
00:06:53.560 Again, you are playing God, but the capabilities are unbelievable.
00:06:58.380 Here's another one for you, adverse results.
00:07:00.240 27-year-old Terry Horgan was participating in a clinical trial for a CRISPR treatment aimed at Duchenne muscular dystrophy, tragically passed away.
00:07:10.500 Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a fatal condition characterized by progressive muscle degeneration, the exact cause of Terry's death.
00:07:17.800 And whether it was related to the CRISPR treatment remains unclear.
00:07:22.020 By the way, the other negative adverse results of this could be the wrong arrangements of DNA.
00:07:27.260 So imagine they're rearranging the DNA and all of a sudden the sequencing is off, which could lead to random mutations by error.
00:07:35.340 You don't know what that's going to look like.
00:07:36.920 There's obviously big risk for that.
00:07:38.460 So maybe a person that's willing to use this is on the last straw and they're saying, look, I'm willing to be tested for this because the alternative is I'm dead.
00:07:45.400 I'll test this out.
00:07:46.220 Yes, but there's also adverse risk to what's possible because they're barely learning about this stuff.
00:07:50.300 Here's another crazy story for you.
00:07:51.700 This one, brace for impact because it's a little too crazy.
00:07:54.260 So fetal gene therapy in 2018 when he, Jiangui, a Chinese scientist, used the technology to yield the world's first gene-edited infants.
00:08:05.460 But it doesn't end there.
00:08:06.480 The experiment was widely condemned as irresponsible and dangerous in large part because many of the ways in which CRISPR-Cas9 can affect cells remain poorly understood.
00:08:18.360 The doctor was found guilty of conducting illegal medical practices in China and was sentenced to three years in prison.
00:08:24.800 Apparently, he said these infants are built in a perfect way where they'll never have AIDS.
00:08:30.720 How are you going to know if they're never going to have AIDS?
00:08:32.360 This is the part where this technology in the wrong people's hands, what are they going to do with it?
00:08:36.740 And can you imagine?
00:08:37.320 Well, no, we're just going to do all good.
00:08:38.740 There's a lot of weird people in the world, those scientists that sit in the lab and they're like, I'm going to test all this stuff out.
00:08:43.260 What are they going to be building?
00:08:44.320 That's another one of those things that concern certain people.
00:08:46.860 So here's the thing.
00:08:47.660 There's a couple of ways you can think about this.
00:08:49.180 None of this should surprise any one of us.
00:08:50.720 If you saw Fly, the movie, that's gene editing.
00:08:53.060 If you saw X-Man, the movie, that's gene editing.
00:08:56.280 They were capable of doing some crazy stuff.
00:08:58.180 You think that's just a movie?
00:08:59.400 Like one day somebody won't be able to do that?
00:09:01.540 If you saw Jurassic Park, gene editing, Elysium, gene editing, Star Trek.
00:09:06.000 I can give you a lot of different movies.
00:09:07.360 You know these movies, gene editing.
00:09:08.760 It's not abnormal that this is taking place and people are inspired.
00:09:12.780 A lot of these movies are predictive programming that one day someone's going to be doing this.
00:09:16.500 The question then becomes is the following.
00:09:18.320 You saw the movie Oppenheimer and you're sitting there like, okay, we invented something that can destroy the world.
00:09:23.700 Just so you know, we have it today.
00:09:25.080 If you and I wanted to destroy the world today, the world has it today.
00:09:28.660 It's not like we haven't had it.
00:09:29.540 We've had it for a long time.
00:09:30.600 How come the world hasn't been destroyed?
00:09:32.460 Well, so far, somebody evil hasn't yet pressed the button.
00:09:36.500 Does that mean someone's not going to do in the future?
00:09:38.240 Of course not.
00:09:39.200 It just means we haven't yet.
00:09:40.520 Does it mean somebody can take this and grow it to a level where we lose control of it?
00:09:44.660 Well, that's the problem with AI, right?
00:09:46.280 What if you keep building AI and the battle between Elon and some of these other folks,
00:09:50.300 the humanists and the guys that are thinking we ought to build AI?
00:09:52.780 What if robots become stronger than us?
00:09:54.260 What if this gene editing creates a gene where it's so powerful that you lose control of it?
00:09:58.780 What do we have to do, capture it, arrest it?
00:10:00.960 All these thoughts that you think about, right?
00:10:02.760 Where it can go, it's endless stories.
00:10:05.520 However, it is concerning.
00:10:07.280 There's a lot of good that can be done with it.
00:10:09.160 When guns were invented, everybody thought it was it.
00:10:11.360 It was terrible.
00:10:12.160 It protected others from bullying others.
00:10:14.440 Bullies were now afraid to go break into a house.
00:10:16.540 The good, the bad, the ugly is there here with this.
00:10:18.680 But this is the closest thing to us playing God if we go in this direction.
00:10:22.600 And if there's a God, I don't know if God's going to be happy about this.
00:10:25.240 If we're not sitting there, you know, saying, hey, this is good what you've done so far,
00:10:29.240 but we're going to take it to a whole different level because we got something you never know how to do.
00:10:33.860 If there is a God, he's going to say, okay, relax.
00:10:36.020 Here's what I'm going to do.
00:10:37.000 Boom.
00:10:37.520 Go.
00:10:38.600 Restart.
00:10:39.380 What?
00:10:40.060 Yes.
00:10:40.740 Again, if there isn't, we'll see that as well.
00:10:43.640 There's a lot of this that can be deeply concerning with what direction it goes to.
00:10:46.940 I think it's just the beginning.
00:10:48.320 But if you think this is not going to be happening or it's not going to be around,
00:10:51.500 you're also naive and you're fooling yourself. 0.82
00:10:53.020 Having said that, if you got value out of this video, give a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
00:10:57.020 I did a video on China's demographics.
00:10:59.100 If you've never seen this, imagine if China uses gene editing to increase the number of girls or boys
00:11:04.700 that they want to have with their population to catch up.
00:11:06.780 Who knows?
00:11:07.140 If you've never seen it, click here to watch the video.
00:11:09.480 Take care, everybody.
00:11:10.280 Bye-bye.
00:11:10.520 Bye-bye.
00:11:10.620 Bye-bye.