Despite intense criticism, Colossal Biosciences continues to claim de-extinction of dire wolves. The false claims and hype are such a big mistake. It’s not even necessary either.
The firm has a strong scientist in its scientific leader Beth Shapiro. It has George Church. To Colossal, I say that your firm should just say what it did and not exaggerate.
You made modern wolves with a few dire wolf-related gene edits, which is cool, but it’s not de-extinction. A statement like “we’ve made an unprecedented step toward de-extinction” is both accurate and exciting.
Instead, here’s a new tweet repeating the BS.
As I’ve said before, the pseudo-dire wolves are cute. No doubt. However, they just aren’t what Colossal is claiming.
Biomedical science is having enough other issues these days with the NIH, FDA, etc. that we don’t need more baloney.
Since the original launch of the pseudo-dire wolves, when Shapiro seemed to be on board with claiming they made dire wolves, she has seemed to backtrack somewhat just three weeks ago:
“It’s not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are grey wolves with 20 edits that are cloned,” Shapiro told New Scientist. “And we’ve said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they’re calling them dire wolves and that makes people angry.”
Who is the “they” and is the same one(s) who posted the phony June 9 tweet? Is there division inside Colossal Biosciences over the false claims? Hopefully, the hype will stop soon.
This week I’ve also still been thinking about RFK Jr. having gotten unproven stem cells in Antigua. It’s no surprise he did this, but it can’t be a good sign when the top healthy official in the entire country made such a choice. Unproven clinics might be anticipating making far more money soon.
Maybe they’ll invest it into crypto?
Recommended reads included stem cell crypto “fraud”
Speaking of which, this is an odd one with a big stem cell twist: SEC Scores $1.1M Victory as Accused Skips Court Hearing, CryptoNewsz. Okay, another case of truth being stranger than fiction in the stem cell world. From this Crypto news outlet:
“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission secured a $1.1 million judgment after the defendant failed to appear in court. On June 3, a federal judge in Georgia issued a default ruling against Keith Crews, who had ignored an SEC complaint filed in August 2023.
The court found that Crews violated federal securities laws through fraudulent activities tied to a digital token known as “Stemy Coin.” The 69-year-old, based in Kennesaw, operated through two entities, Stem Biotech LLC and Four Square Biz LLC. The SEC alleged that between October 2019 and May 2021, Crews misled nearly 200 individuals and secured over $800,000…The SEC said Crews lured investors by making false claims about advanced medical products and gold-backed crypto. He claimed his firm had working labs and biotech partnerships, but no such infrastructure or affiliations existed. Many participants were approached through church groups and community ties.
Stemy Coin had apparently claimed links to the legit stem cell industry, which it sounds like didn’t exist.
More recommended reads
- The case for germline gene correction: state of the science, Fertility & Sterility. Paula Amato from Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab is first author. It’s carefully written and things like this sound reasonable, “A responsible translational research path forward for heritable GGE requires prioritizing safety, ethical considerations, and public engagement, with a focus on rigorous preclinical research, clear regulatory frameworks, and ongoing monitoring of potential long-term effects” but I just don’t see a responsible path opening up any time soon based on the state of the technology, the great risks involved in even testing it in humans (making babies who could have birth defects, etc. due to the gene editing going wrong), and the unresolved ethical issues. There are also major risks of secondary, unethical uses enabled unintentionally by careful researchers advancing the technology. It’s really not so much of a stretch to imagine a He Jiankui 2.0 kind of situation in another country. I’m not saying the Los Angeles Project will do anything in humans, but it illustrates the high level of interest in gene editing to make and change organisms. Some of its leadership has toyed with the idea of human gene editing too.
- Circling back to the FDA, it seems the agency is going to rely too much on AI instead of human experts. Priorities for a New FDA, JAMA. Makary and Prasad outline their vision briefly here. It seems overly simplistic and puts too much faith in N=1 real-world data as well as AI. I just read another article on how the FDA leadership is supposedly going to use AI in place of scores of analysts and others who used to work at the FDA.
Blast from the past on stem cells for spinal cord injury
Stem cells for Spinal Cord Injury update. Wow, I did this post 15 years ago!