Why Gene-Edited Babies May Be Closer Than Ever

A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, made a shocking announcement to the world in 2018: He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies. The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and unethical by the scientific community. That’s because, among other things, the CRISPR gene-editing technique Jiankui used was so new. NPR science correspondent Rob Stein https://www.npr.org/people/146944972/rob-stein has been following the controversial world of gene-editing and human reproduction, including some companies’ recent quests to push gene-editing technology forward. Read more of Rob Stein’s reporting on the topic here https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/08/06/nx-s1-5493448/gene-editing-human-embryos-designer-babies. Interested in more science news? Let us know at [email protected]. mailto: [email protected] Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ atplus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:19Regina Barber?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:24Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers, Regina Barber here. A year before the pandemic hit, a scientist in China made a shocking revelation to the world. He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Two beautiful little Chinese girls named Lulu and Lana came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago.

• 0:46Regina Barber?

  The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and unethical by the scientific community because, among other things, the CRISPR gene editing technique the scientist used was so new. My colleague, Rob Stein, is here to tell us about that now infamous announcement of the world's first gene-edited babies, known as CRISPR babies. Hey, Rob.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Hey, Gina. Yeah, and I've been continuing to follow all this, including when China imprisoned the scientist for three years for violating medical regulations. His name is He Zhenkuai. And I continue to follow this world of gene editing and human reproduction. And this stuff, I just find it fascinating. Not only is the science just amazing, it also raises all kinds of provocative social, legal, moral, and ethical issues.

• 1:31Regina Barber?

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, this is very controversial, and there's so many questions.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Right. Would it ever be safe? Would it be ethical? Why would someone want to make gene-edited babies? To prevent diseases? Or even go further?

• 1:44Regina Barber?

  Right, like that movie, Gattaca, making so-called designer babies?

• 1:48Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's just a few of the tough questions. If this ever really became possible, how would it affect society? Our sense of family? Our relationship with our own genes?

• 1:59Regina Barber?

  Yeah, and you've been investigating a new piece of all this that's unraveled in just the last few weeks, right, Rob?

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I've been on the case, and I recently discovered that the quest to produce gene-edited children appears to be getting a reboot.

• 2:15Regina Barber?

  Like all the movies we've been seeing.

• 2:18Regina Barber?

  Today on the show, the new movement to jumpstart the pursuit of genetically modified babies. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 3:41Regina Barber?

  OK, Rob, I have so many questions. First, tell me, what prompted a story about this now?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so earlier this summer, I started hearing about an unexpected new development. It involved scientists, Silicon Valley startups, East Coast entrepreneurs, and even some so-called "pronatalists." Those are the folks who fear declining birth rates pose an existential threat to humanity. Turns out, they're kind of forming a coalition of forces eager to try to accelerate the creation of more gene-edited babies.

• 4:12Regina Barber?

  A coalition, wow.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  I talked about this with Alta Chara. She's a lawyer and bioethicist from the University of Wisconsin, who's actually was sitting next to the Chinese scientist at dinner the night before he made that big announcement in Hong Kong.

• 4:26Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, and she's been following this, too, and is now consulting with governments and private companies.

• 4:32Speaker 05

  You've got a convergence of people who are thinking that they can improve their children, whether it's their children's health. Or their children's appearance, or their children's intelligence, along with people who are comfortable using the newest technologies, and people who have the money and the chutzpah, the daring to try and do this through starting companies that would bring these forces together.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  So then I went out and, you know, I started talking to some of these Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were trying to decide whether there are any companies out there that they could invest in, or whether maybe they should just start, try starting up a company themselves. And I found out that a prominent cryptocurrency billionaire publicly had announced that he wanted to start an embryo editing company. And there were rumors swirling that a startup was getting going in California. And just as I was about to put my story on the radio, guess what happened?

• 5:26Regina Barber?

  What, what happened?

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Well, there's this woman that I've been trying to interview. I found out she was just about to reveal that she was starting the first company to publicly announce plans to pursue editing human embryos.

• 5:40Regina Barber?

  Wow, so this is starting up again.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a real thing. And so I quickly finally scored an interview with that woman to break that news. Her name is Kathy Thai. And what she was announcing was her latest startup, a fledgling company based in New York City that, and get this, she was calling the Manhattan Project.

• 6:01Regina Barber?

  Wow, that is, that is something.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And Kathy Thai says she chose the name deliberately because she thinks the scale of what she wants to do is just as bold as the original Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb.

• 6:17Regina Barber?

  And just as controversial, apparently.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 06

  Manhattan Project will explore how to do gene correction in human embryos more safely. We want to be the company that does this in the light with transparency and with good intentions.

• 6:31Regina Barber?

  Okay, I mean, in the light and good intentions, it all sounds good, but like, what exactly is she saying she wants to do?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  You know, Thai says her Manhattan Project plans to test newer, potentially less risky gene editing techniques than CRISPR. You know, that's the techniques that Chinese scientists use.

• 6:48Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  So she founded the company with Ariana Heisoli. She headed biological scientists at another company called Colossal Biosciences.

• 6:57Regina Barber?

  This is the company that wants to de-extinct

• 7:02Regina Barber?

  Mammoths and dire wolves, all that.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, these are the folks that are using gene editing in the hopes of kind of bringing back extinct animals, like you said, like the wildebeest mammoth.

• 7:14Regina Barber?

  Okay, so I think this is a good place to pause and just like talk about what CRISPR is exactly.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Sure, it's a relatively new technology that allows scientists to modify DNA much more easily than ever before. And many scientists think CRISPR will revolutionize scientists, that it maybe already is, because it's already led to new treatments for inherited diseases like sickle cell. But CRISPR can be kind of messy. So scientists are exploring newer gene editing techniques that could be more precise for this sort of thing, like a technique known as base editing.

• 7:48Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  And so Ty and her colleagues hope to prove that one of these newer gene editing techniques would be safe to modify embryos to make babies, babies that wouldn't be born with diseases like cystic fibrosis, maybe Alzheimer's, by editing out disease-causing mutations at the embryonic level.

• 8:08Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  There are so many diseases that have no cures, and there's not going to be cure for them for many more decades. And I think that we have a responsibility to talk about this with patients that do have those terrible diseases and see if they want the option to not pass that on to their future generations.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  But you know, Gina, some investors and other folks are talking about going further with this sort of thing.

• 8:30Regina Barber?

  Right. I mean, where do you draw the line?

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's part of the problem. That's a very fuzzy line. But some people are saying that if this does turn out to be safe, they say parents should basically just have the option, have the freedom to use it in all sorts of ways.

• 8:47Regina Barber?

  Right, like physical features?

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. And this is where that odd coalition I was talking about earlier starts to come in.

• 8:54Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  I talked about this stuff with Malcolm Collins and his wife Simone. They're vocal pronatalists.

• 9:01Regina Barber?

  Okay, so they think people should be having more kids?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And they're funding many cutting-edge reproductive technologies.

• 9:10Speaker 07

  People can say, "Well, you're playing God by using this type of technology." And I'd say people would say that with any technology of the past. They'd say, "You're playing God with glasses." They say, "You're playing God with blood transfusions." I'm really excited for a future within human history where there are some people that have decided to really lean into technologies like this.

• 9:27Speaker 08

  We fundamentally believe in reproductive choice, and we also very much support parents' rights to give their children every privilege they can. And if people would like to start to do that at a genetic level, they should have every right to do so.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Now, I think it's really important to point out that, you know, many scientists do not endorse that point of view. They do endorse researching genetic modification of sperm, eggs, and embryos, however. And the reason for that is they think it could lead to big discoveries about basic human biology and reproduction. And that could have lots of benefits, like leading to new ways to treat infertility, maybe prevent miscarriages.

• 10:05Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  I talked about this with Dr. Paula Amato. She works on embryo editing at the Oregon Health and Science University. And she says it's tough because the federal government doesn't fund this kind of work.

• 10:16Speaker 09

  NIH doesn't typically support human embryo research. So if the technology bros are interested, that would be welcome in the field.

• 10:26Regina Barber?

  Oh.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but as long as they make safety the top priority, she says, and at least initially would only try to edit out diseases. She knows this kind of work has to be done very carefully and with strict oversight.

• 10:40Regina Barber?

  Okay, but even if tech people in Silicon Valley like want to do this, I thought they couldn't because it's illegal to try to make gene-edited babies.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is prohibited in many countries. And in the United States, US regulations would prohibit trying to make gene-edited babies out of genetically modified embryos. And several leading scientific organizations just recently called for at least a 10-year moratorium on anyone trying to make gene-edited babies,

• 11:06Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  including Tim Hunt. He's the chief executive officer for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine.

• 11:13Speaker 10

  Human heritable germline editing is quite clearly a terrible solution in search of a problem. If you make a mistake, the mistake passes on to all future generations. So that's a pretty big ethical roll of the dice.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  But some wonder whether this could change. I talked about this with Glenn Cohen. He's a lawyer and bioethicist at Harvard.

• 11:38Speaker 11

  There's a president who has some advisors and some political forces whispering in his ear that have a decidedly prenatalist bent that are interested in these technologies. All of that is opening up a moment where some of what would have been unthinkable may now become possible.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  But all of this is setting off lots of alarm bells, as you might imagine.

• 11:58Regina Barber?

  Yeah, like, tell me about those alarm bells.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  So I talked to Hank Greeley about that. He's a bioethicist at Stanford.

• 12:05Speaker 12

  Move, Fast and Break things has not worked very well for Silicon Valley and healthcare. When you talk about reproduction, the things you are breaking are babies. And I think that makes it even more dangerous and even more sinister.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  And Greeley, you know, he's far from alone. I talked with a bunch of bioethicists who agree that renewed interest is making them very worried. And they argue that this movement is today's version of eugenics. You know, that long discredited pursuit of supposedly genetically superior people.

• 12:36Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  And I talked about this with Katie Hassan. She's the Associate Director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a genetic technologies watchdog group.

• 12:45Speaker 13

  We're going to mass produce genetically engineered human beings. And I think that's a very dangerous way to approach these technologies, right? I'm very worried, right, that all of this together is, you know, means that we're headed straight into a new era of high-tech, market-based eugenics.

• 13:05Regina Barber?

  Yeah. What do the folks like the founders of the Manhattan Project say about all this?

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they agree that safety has to be the number one top priority and would only move forward if they can show that it is. But the Manhattan Project's high solely argues the potential benefits of editing human embryos could be huge.

• 13:24Speaker 14

  If you have the tools to actually correct the pathogenic mutation that can be passed down to. Other generations, is it sort of like ethical to do it or not to do it? And I would argue it would be more ethical to stop that mutation.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  And remember the CRISPR baby scientist?

• 13:39Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Since getting out of a Chinese prison, he's gone from repentant to defiant and is vowing to resume working on genetic babies too.

• 13:47Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  But it turns out that Thay, that Manhattan Project co-founder, was briefly married to that scientist.

• 13:54Regina Barber?

  What? What?

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, I know. But she says they recently divorced and that he has nothing to do with her new human embryo gene editing company.

• 14:04Regina Barber?

  Wow, OK.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. Well, it's kind of a small world in many ways. But she's already assembled a small scientific team and developed protocols to start working on a methodical set of experiments in a Manhattan lab. The team plans to start by studying mice before moving on to primates and then human cells before ultimately, they hope, working with human embryos. And the project's first goal would be to produce enough evidence to hopefully convince the federal government to fund this kind of research and also persuade the Food and Drug Administration to authorize them to keep going.

• 14:42Regina Barber?

  Oof. Well, Rob, you've given me a lot to think about today. Thank you so much for bringing all of this to Short Wave.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Anytime. It's always great to be here, Gina.

• 14:57Regina Barber?

  For all of you listening, if you liked this episode, make sure you'll never miss a new one by following us on the NPR app or whatever podcasting platform you're listening from. And if you have a science question you'd like us to investigate, send us an email at [email protected].

• 15:14Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Shora and Rebecca Ramirez. Rob Stein checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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