A tech entrepreneur named Cathy Tie is talking about eventually making gene-edited babies in the U.S. via something she is calling the Manhattan Project.
What should we make of this?
The fact that she recently married He Jiankui who made those three CRISPR’d babies is relevant here even if they may have recently also gotten divorced.
I believe that trying to make gene-edited babies anytime soon, even to try to prevent genetic diseases, is a terrible idea. It may never be a wise thing to try. Established embryo screening technologies can accomplish almost all of the same potential goals and in a much safer manner. The safety of heritable human CRISPR is largely unresolved at this point.
Who is Cathy Tie and could her new Manhattan Project actually attempt heritable human CRISPR in the near future? Could others head down this path?
Cathy Tie and Josie Zayner: Los Angeles Project
I first became aware of Tie when I saw that she and biohacker Josie Zayner had formed something called Los Angeles Project. The primary goal there is to make gene-edited animals, perhaps starting with glowing bunnies or frogs with unusual traits. Then maybe even try to make unicorns or dragons.
How might things go wrong? Extensive gene editing of animal embryos is becoming more common, but it’s not trivial.
Such gene editing is frequently done in a careful manner in science labs trying to advance knowledge. There are also agricultural applications such as making animals with improved traits. But if the goal is just to make big money and in the process you may produce some deformed animals or the resulting animals get mistreated, is that ethical? Keep in mind here that the animals in question would not be research animals but rather novelties or playthings.
This “project” is already promoting (see image above) what I think of as whimsical gene edits of frogs. For example, editing to make them twice the normal size, lose pigment, or have extra digits. Such gene editing done at home or schools could spark interest in science such as by kids, which is the potential upside here, but it also makes me wonder what will happen to these frogs. What happens if the gene edits go awry too? It’s easy to see how this could stray into unethical territory leading to animal suffering.
How does this push toward animal editing for fun and profit relate to possible CRISPR of humans?
Cathy Tie, heritable human genome editing, and He Jiankui
Tie seems to want to do both.
Of course, trying heritable human gene editing, even to prevent disease, is far riskier and raises more ethical issues. We saw this become a reality with the three babies produced by He Jiankui.
He landed himself in jail in China for three years. Now He’s trying to make a comeback. Someone is funding him to run an independent lab in Texas. And he’s still talking about heritable human gene editing, mostly on Twitter.
As I said, He Jiankui and Cathy Tie reportedly were briefly married.
Manhattan Project
Also, the Tie-He connection seems relevant to Tie’s “Manhattan Project” even if He is not a part of that.
The goal is to make heritably edited human babies who could have lower risks of genetic diseases. Or no risk at all. The firm says it will not pursue trait modification, which also sounds good in theory. Things are not that simple though.
On NPR, Tie said of the effort:
“Manhattan Project will explore how to do gene correction in human embryos more safely. But we want to be the company that does this in the light, with transparency and with good intentions…I think there are so many diseases that have no cures and there’s not going to be a cure for them for many more decades. And I think that we have the responsibility to talk about this with patients that do have those heritable diseases and see if they want the option to not pass that on to their future generations.”
Frankly, a key question is whether we can rely on Tie to do this in the light and with careful ethical consideration. I’m very skeptical this can be handled well.
It’s also possible that none of this will get off the ground.
Tie leads the Manhattan Project with Eriona Hysolli, a former leading scientist at Colossal Biosciences, the controversial de-extinction company.
A role for ethics?
Who will provide Tie and Hysolli with expert ethical guidance? Neither seem to have expertise in bioethics.
I asked Stanford Professor Hank Greely about this project and he replied:
“I was asked to consider providing ethics advice and, for various reasons, declined. As I said in my book, CRISPR People, if someone were to prove heritable human genome editing is safe and effective — a long and arduous task —I still don’t see any significant need for it. it might help those few couples who want to have a genetically related child but both have the same the highly penetrant autosomal recessive disease, or one has two copies of genetic variation that causes a highly penetrant dominant disease.”
Hank’s right about all of this.
The project has an ethics page on its website, but it seems mainly focused on arguing that there’s an ethical responsibility to pursue heritable gene editing to prevent diseases.
You can also see the video above of Tie introducing the Manhattan Project, which raises more questions.
How serious are they about this path?
Will He try it again on his own? Tie will separately pursue heritable human editing?
More CRISPR babies in coming years?
At some point on Twitter, He recently started posting in a new unusual way and making outrageous statements. Reportedly, Cathy Tie had some role in these odd posts. An example of the over-the-top style was a post that said, “Good morning bitches. How many embryos have you gene edited today?” There were many such posts.
Humor is an important part of science, especially during tough times, but this stream of wild, sometimes self-aggrandizing statements. seemed like something different.
Why take this stuff seriously?
Technologies that could make attempts at heritable human genome editing more feasible continue to arise. For instance, I recently wrote about stem cell IVF, an emerging technology that someday could be used to make human embryos from stem cells, including gene edited ones. Such methods could also be used to attempt human cloning.
The fact that Tie now has both Los Angeles Project and Manhattan Project illustrates the inevitable parallels between efforts in animal gene editing and possible similar efforts with humans.
More generally, some folks believe that there should be a reproductive right to gene edit their future babies. Some pronatalists embrace this path.
Make no mistake, even if this isn’t what drives Tie, for many people the attraction to heritable human genome editing is less about disease prevention and more focused on trait enhancement attempts.
These kinds of ideas and efforts are not going away.
Need for more healthy dialogue
Last week I reached out to Tie to invite her to do a Q&A hoping to talk to her about heritable human gene editing but have not heard back.
Just one of the questions I’d like to ask her is how what she plans with heritable human genome editing is better than just embryo screening such as PGD/PGS. Then there’s who she will rely on for ethics advice moving forward. If you have any other ideas for questions, please leave comments.
If Tie is serious about making CRISPR babies to lower transmission of genetic diseases, she should be open to dialogue and even debate. Even with skeptics as that’s part of healthy transparency.