Programming The Code of Life With CRISPR — With Trevor Martin, CEO of Mammoth Biosciences

Trevor Martin is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences, a $1 billion company that develops CRISPR technology to edit genes. Martin joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how CRISPR is working in production today — not in some distant future — and what the ethical ramifications of this technology will be as it gets more advanced. You can find Trevor on Twitter: twitter.com/martintrevor_ And here's Mammoth Biosciences: mammoth.bio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, one of the most exciting technologies in the world today is CRISPR. It is the technology that is talked about in abstract often, but starting to be used in some real practical cases when it comes to editing genes, actually getting in there and changing the genetic makeup of people and other things. And I think this is a technology that we're going to start hearing so much more about in the coming years. And this show today, we're going to preview to you exactly what's going to happen. Our guest today is Trevor Martin. He is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience.

• 2:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  He founded it with Jennifer Doudna, who's the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And Mammoth today is bringing this technology to market in ways that you're going to find incredibly surprising. So we're going to hear about what's going on with CRISPR today. And then we're going to talk about some of the interesting ethical implications. Trevor, welcome to the show.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 2:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great to have you. We've talked about this in the past. I find it to be one of the most fascinating topics in the entire world of technology, totally overlooked, I think, by the popular media. So let's get into it. The first thing I want to ask you is what is gene editing and what is CRISPR? You know, to most people, I think it's this futuristic thing that's, you know, going to happen at some point in the future where you're going to make, you know, these babies that are like seven feet tall, you know, that are perfect and all that stuff and brilliant. But it's actually being used today. So what is, what is gene editing? What is CRISPR?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so CRISPR itself refers to what we call a protein. So your body's full of these proteins, and that's one of the key elements of what makes life possible. But it's a very special protein, and you could actually fit it in your hand. You could put a bunch of them on your hand. You wouldn't be able to see it, of course. But it's a very special protein because it can be what we call programmed, very similar to how we program computers, actually, to do things that we want them to do. And what's really special about how you can program the special CRISPR proteins is that you can program them to go to the code of life, so DNA and RNA, and to bind really specific, what we call sequences of that code of life. And when you do that, that really opens up a lot of doors for many,

• 3:35Speaker 01

  many things in terms of this messy space of biology that we usually don't think of as like a place you can engineer. It opens up the door to therapies, like what if you program this protein to go somewhere to cure a disease or to diagnostics? What if you program this protein to go somewhere and say, hey, like this COVID-19 sequence is present and beyond, like agriculture, biomanufacturing? So that's really the core of what CRISPR is.

• 3:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  So these CRISPR proteins exist in our body now. And is it true that what you're doing, what your company is doing, and what the cutting edge of science in this regard is, is sort of manipulating these CRISPR proteins to actually change the way our bodies work?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Well, these CRISPR proteins are originally part of often like bacteria, for example. And what's really cool is that the CRISPR systems themselves originally came out of this actually immune system for bacteria. So you and I have immune systems, right? And when we get sick, our immune system tries to fight off, you know, various diseases. And what's really cool is it turns out organisms like bacteria that we usually, you know, don't think of as necessarily that complex also have immune systems and they have to fight off like viruses and other things that are trying to invade them and make them sick, right? And actually, the CRISPR systems originally evolved in these bacteria, for example, to enable them to fight off their own infections.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  But what's really exciting is that it turns out we can develop these systems into these tools that allow us to actually engineer the code of life itself. But the origins of it are very interesting as well in terms of just like how bacteria fight off their own diseases.

• 5:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so I want to seize on something that you said, engineer the code of life. What does that mean in practical sense? And can you tell us some cool things that you can do once you're able to actually get in and manipulate these CRISPR proteins to do your bidding?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think one of the clear ones that people have been excited about is genetic disease, right? So there's many diseases that are caused by changes to our genetic codes. That's the DNA that's in all of our cells from the moment we're born. And these diseases can be incredibly debilitating.

• 5:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can you name some?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, one example would be something like sickle cell disease, right? This causes the misshapen blood cells in many individuals. And what if we could actually go in and actually modify that DNA so that you can cure that disease or treat that disease? And I think that's a really, really powerful concept. There's thousands and thousands of these diseases and until now, you know, there's many of them that have some treatments developed, but not, you know, necessarily cures. And I think that would be really transformative for patients if you could actually do that type of engineering.

• 6:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So, so, and with CRISPR, with your, with the work that you do, you could actually get in and reprogram the genes to actually say, we don't actually want to give this person this disease. Is that true?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you could change the DNA in various ways so that

• 6:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  the disease actually is not, it doesn't have a phenotype. So it actually removes the kind of pathogenesis of that disease. And that would be really transformative for people that live with these genetic diseases.

• 6:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Yeah. And then, yeah, what about cancer? You know, I have a friend who, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. And one of the things they look for in terms of whether it's, you know, they ask if it's genetic, right? So I imagine that there's also probably genes that are, make you more prone to, you know, getting cancer. And can something like CRISPR actually, you know, wipe those genes out? Maybe it's too simplistic of, of.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think you're totally right that there are certain genes that can predispose you to cancer. There's certain genes that then determine how you might treat a cancer. And definitely, I think CRISPR has a role in many different ways. And yeah, treating cancers and like really enabling people beyond what we call simple monogenetic diseases. So there are things where there's a single gene and your whole genome that is kind of dominantly causing a disease. I think that's where often we start in CRISPR because those are the more tractable ones. It's like very clear what you need to engineer in the genome. It's like that one gene or that like one allele. But I think long-term, that's what's really exciting is that there's this even larger universe of, you know, hundreds of thousands of diseases that are not monogenetic. And they aren't so obvious exactly like the

• 8:06Speaker 01

  one thing you have to change. And I think that's where, you know, it's obviously more difficult, but that could be really transformative. If you could like lessen the chance of like cardiovascular disease or other things like that, that could help people live longer, healthier.

• 8:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cancer, cancer's in play there also.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and cancers and yeah, I mean, yeah, they're really, the sky's the limit, right? Because many diseases have some sort of genetic component.

• 8:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so what do you do? Do you just send the CRISPR proteins to like go in there into the DNA sequence and then nuke the bad gene?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a bunch of different techniques. The kind of original flavor of the technique is that you program the CRISPR system to say, hey, I need you to go to this gene that's causing, let's say, this like monogenetic disorder. And when it gets there, the CRISPR protein, one of the things that makes it really cool, aside from the programmability, is it actually comes with kind of like built in scissors as well. Molecular scissors that can cut the

• 9:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  No way.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  So DNA RNA, like little, you know, kind of cleavers.

• 9:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it can just snip out that bad gene?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the simplest way you can imagine would be that you make some sort of cut in that gene and you can just remove, you can knock it out entirely, right? So you can just remove the functionality of it and that sometimes can be enough to cure or treat a disease. So that would be like a very simple approach. There's now, you know, many additional approaches on top of it in terms of like, yeah, maybe you insert a different sequence after you've cut. So that you can actually add, or maybe you're just making a really targeted change, like a single base pair. Or maybe you're not cutting at all. Maybe you're actually just localizing some sort of machinery that can like kind of turn on the gene more or turn off the gene entirely.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  And there's new techniques being developed all the time, but I think that's what's exciting is that it's really this way of programmatically interacting with biology and this guy's the limit in terms of how you think about what that can enable.

• 10:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, it turns, it can basically turn us into essentially computer programmers. You know, where like you might try to code out a virus on a computer. It's a, is it a similar thing where like, you know, once we are able to unleash these programs and, you know, manipulate the code of the body, which is DNA and RNA. You can start to program humans as well.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think in terms of like what it enables us to do is really to hopefully get to the core cause of many of these diseases, right? Rather than treating the symptoms, like what is like the really pathogenesis of it in terms of the genetic code?

• 10:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the pathogenesis means like where is, what's the origin of?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like what's really causing the disease and not just the symptoms.

• 10:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's, it's really so amazing. The other thing that people talk about when it comes to CRISPR is editing like humans traits and characteristics. So what about, does CRISPR allow us to go in and like create like taller, smarter, better looking people?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's often, I guess, where the conversation can head. I think in general. Those types of things, I mean, there's obviously a huge ethical component and

• 11:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're going to talk about that in the second segment for sure.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I think that's a broader conversation for society, honestly, on that. I think one of the things that people miss, though, is that CRISPR is also just one part of a larger equation. Right. And it's an extremely enabling tool. But I think people often also overestimate our ability currently to kind of, even if we wanted to change many of these traits, right? Like, I think something like height is an notorious example where there's not just some height gene in the human genome that you update and it, you know, determines someone's height. Right. There's all these environmental factors. There's all these, you know, multifactorial genetic factors across probably hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of locations in the genome. They often determine these traits that people like to talk about.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And that really becomes a much more broad and difficult problem around like, what, you know, even would you edit? And is it even really genetic? So I think that's part of the conversation that's often missed is that even if that was something that was possible in terms of engineering, like, what are the locations that you're actually changing? And that's true for more complex disease as well, right? And that's one of the barriers to tackling more complex diseases.

• 12:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So a lot of people talk about CRISPR as something that's going to happen in the future. You know, it's a thing of science fiction novels that will be able to edit babies and, you know, make them designer children. But this stuff is actually out in the wild now and actually being used to cure diseases, which I don't think is something that's really on the mind or front of, you know, that people are paying attention to. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what sort of diseases this is being used to cure today and maybe some stories about how that actually happens in reality?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think that is one of the things that's exciting is that this is, you know, not just total science fiction. There really is a ton of progress that's been made over the last, you know, 10 years and even the last few years in terms of bringing this technology closer and closer to patients. I think right now, A lot of the focus has been on what we call ex vivo applications and that's where rather than doing the editing in the body, we're doing it outside of the body. So a classic example of that would be, you know, any sort of like blood-based disease. So we can actually take the blood out of the body and then put it back in. So that's has certain advantages in terms of like the technical

• 13:40Speaker 01

  capabilities and like the ease of doing these types of therapies. So that's where a lot of the initial work is in other areas in like the eye, for example. And that's because

• 13:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  What can you do with the eye?

• 13:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Because the eye is actually pretty accessible relative to other places in the body. And then finally, some of the initial, what we call in vivo works, that's like in the body, is being done in the liver. For example, so

• 14:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what diseases is that attacking?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a variety of diseases. Often these are rare genetic diseases. So there's like a very particular gene that is causing some sort of disease. And like you know, if you target that gene and even specific spots in that gene, then you can actually help that patient. But the hope is that over time, like in addition to helping those patients, you can go after more and more complex and prevalent diseases as well. And yeah, I mean, a good example is there's a lot of groups working on something like sickle cell where there is a very clear genetic basis and that could really be transformative for the lives and health of people with that disease and it's can be done in a blood-based manner.

• 14:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Is your company or is any company actively working like curing people's diseases like sickle cell? Diseases, for instance?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there are some examples of now, you know, trials that are being run where people, for example, for these blood-based diseases like are seeming to have great.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  You know, performance and obviously like you have to look at these things over time. But yeah, I think that's what's really exciting is that these are moving closer and closer to patients and it's not just necessarily in animals.

• 15:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I always had the thought, and maybe this is because I'm reading about those designer babies that like, you know, you, the way that this stuff works is, you know, you get to the embryo or whatever it is, or a fetus and start to edit their genes and they come out a certain way when they're coming out of the womb. But you could actually, you know, help fully grown adults essentially.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I think that's what's more exciting.

• 15:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, everyone always likes to think about babies and stuff, which is a very different, and that's not what people are really working on in the space at all. And I think people don't realize, because that's often kind of how it can be talked about, is that really what's transformative is the idea that for even an adult that has some sort of disease, you could really help them live a healthier life. And it's not like it's too late, or you know, it's not like it's intractable. And I think that is extremely powerful, right?

• 16:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Trevor Martin's with us. He's the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences. We've talked in this first segment about where the practice of CRISPR stands today. Obviously, it's a lot further along than a lot of folks imagine. Second segment, we'll be back to talk about what we should do once we can do it. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire

• 17:04Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 17:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Trevor Martin. He is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience. And we're talking about CRISPR, right? What happens when you can start to edit the code of life? As Trevor put, did you put a code of life?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  The code of life?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  DNA and RNA, what happens when you can actually? And again, not just babies, but fully grown adults. You can get in there and start manipulating their, you know, their, their life code and solve diseases. But you could also do a heck of a lot of other stuff potentially. Let's talk about that. So to go back to the example that I keep seizing on, because it is the one that the popular culture seems to keep talking about editing children. Trevor, what's your thought on tailor-made kids? You know, first of all, are they possible? Second, are they advisable?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just speaking from a personal standpoint, I guess, like, I think that in general, there's so much need elsewhere, like in terms of like genetic disease or agriculture, like all these other areas that it's definitely super low on my list of things that I think could be necessarily transformative. I think where the conversation becomes more interesting to me personally is around especially like really debilitating inherited disorders and things like that. But in general, I think that it's interesting to talk about, I guess, from like a philosophical point of view, but from a practical point of view, I definitely think that the impact that we can have from, you know, people that are already adults and people that have these diseases walking around.

• 19:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Is just so much higher that looking at it from some sort of utilitarian perspective. Yeah, like it's a no brainer to me where we should be focused.

• 19:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  On top of that. That being said, that being said, this is going to be, look, the money is, okay, this is just sort of the way it usually works. Extremely rich people want to use this technology to build super kits. And so they will put money towards this application, even though it's not the most philosophically advisable thing. So.

• 19:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just like talk about, if you can, the science, is it feasible to actually help, you know, create smarter, better looking, stronger kids? And then ethically, you know, what do you think about the fact that we could be creating like, you know, super, super people with this technology?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll start on the ethical side. I think there, it's actually an interesting, I do like how you put it into two parts, right? There's the technical feasibility and then there's the ethical side. And I think there can also be misconceptions about both. But on the ethical side, I think the interesting thing there is that it's often kind of framed as like, oh, like, you know, is it the decision of like one person or whatever, like, you know, one organization? And I think this is one of those things where it really is on all of us, like whether that's like doctors and patients and like, you know, religious leaders or politicians. And I think one of the things that has to happen as the technology advances, of course, is that there has to be some consensus.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Well, you know, wherever that consensus ends up landing, whether it's like more on favorable side or unfavorable, that actually includes all those different voices. And that's super tricky, right? Because it can be hard enough to get like a bunch of scientists.

• 20:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no one's ever gonna agree on that.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  And or hard enough just to get politicians, right? So I think that's one of the interesting things. Whenever you have like a really powerful new technology, there has to be this like coalescing of consensus. And it can also be different around the world, right? Like, maybe there's one consensus in the United States, there's another consensus in Canada or wherever it is, right? And then how do we think about that? Especially in terms of, and it doesn't just have to be, you know, the classic example of human edited babies or something like that. I think we even see it in places like agriculture, right? Like, are we okay with GMO plants? I think it actually kind of shows that we can end up with these differences around the world, whether that's in the US or Europe or Asia. And

• 21:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, isn't there already a scientist in China who claims he's used CRISPR to edit children?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there was a famous kind of controversy where, yeah, there were some claims that were made unclear kind of where that actually catches out, but it's, I think, inevitable, right? That as this technology becomes more accessible around the world, people are going to try different things, right? And you know, it's very hard to control what everyone does. So I think that's where having that kind of, I mean, hopefully it's international, right? But at least having some consensus around what's the Overton window of accessibility can help guide, you know, what people are actually working on.

• 22:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I, I hear you on this, Trevor, but I'm not going to let you talk your way out of it because I want to hear your opinion. Because you are, what do you think? Should, should we be able to make tailor-made children?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think in terms of what we should be doing in terms of like, you know, what we, the way we usually divide it is somatic and germline editing. So somatic is these edits we do, for example, in adults, and these are not passed down to children, like if they were to have kids, whereas germline edits are explicitly passed down.

• 22:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  So once you edit that person's genome, the kids will have that.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Passed down from there on to their children. So really, the distinction is more somatic versus germline editing. And my personal opinion is that, yeah, we honestly should really be focused on somatic editing because I think that's where the benefit is. I think from my personal ethical standpoint, I think there probably are types of germline editing that could be really beneficial around disease. I think where I get personally more worried is when we start talking about, yeah, like these, like super babies or whatever it is. And I think that is really more driven by accessibility, right? Because even when we're treating diseases, we're often thinking about like, oh my God, like, is everyone going to be able to get this treatment, right? Like, how accessible is it to like everyone in the population? Or is it only for people that are wealthier?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And I worry a lot when things are passed down like heritably, that you're now kind of exacerbating that, right? So I think the key thing for me there, even if it was, you know, treating disease in this like charitable manner would be, is there a way we, where you can really make sure it uplifts everyone and is really accessible to everyone? That's one part. And then the second part is, are we really making it right? Like, that's a much more, I think,

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Kind of core proposition around like, okay, this is something that's going to be around, right? And it's not something that won't be passed down. So I think the bar has to be much, much higher in terms of like, the change that's being made and being really, really certain that that's something that we want to do. So I think there's two

• 24:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  There are one in terms of just, um, almost the, yeah, like accessibility ethics, um, side of it. And then the other one on, okay, even if you overcome that bar, like, okay, is this really something that you think is long-term beneficial?

• 24:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's, let's do a, um, an exercise here. So, and you're gonna have to suspend disbelief a little bit to run this one, but just, just run with me on it. Okay. A, a hypothetical competitor of yours, Dino Bioscience, has, um, has successfully edited and created a super child. That's gonna be, you know, seven feet tall, has a propensity to, you know, add a lot of muscle, will have an IQ of 150, um, and doesn't have any, you know, genetic, disabilities or whatever like that. Uh, it's not gonna be hampered by genes that cause diseases. Your head of communications comes to you and say, okay, Trevor, we're gonna

• 25:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  either have to cheer this on, or we're gonna have to condemn the fact that a child has been edited this way. What type of statement do you release?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, for me personally, it's easy, like condemn, like this

• 25:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no, and I think the scenario is interesting in the sense that, yeah, the world is a big place, right? And people are gonna try a lot of things. Um, I think, I mean, it's from multiple directions, right? Like one, on the ethical side, like if this is something that's done in secret, like it really, I'm very much in favor of making sure that we have consensus on like what we think is the appropriate use of tools, right? So that's like, number one. But

• 25:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh huh.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Number two, you have to wonder what the value to society is, right? Like there's all these like really debilitating diseases we go after, and they help people, um, eat somatic editing. And yeah, that that's like what's been focused on, you know, that just doesn't pass the sniff test to me personally. So

• 26:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, cool.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  That's actually a pretty easy answer.

• 26:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe this will be a little harder. Um, what's your, what's your evaluation right now?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  So a bit over a billion dollars.

• 26:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  A billion. Okay. So here's another scenario. One of your engineers has been working on a side project at home and comes into your office and says, you know, hey, Trevor, look, I'm familiar with this technology. I've been messing around with it. I think I have a way to create super babies in a way that's accessible. And we'll raise Mammas market cap from a little bit over a billion to a hundred billion overnight. If you put this into into action. What do you say to this engineer?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the same answer.

• 27:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Condemn?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's more, okay, like, how can we leverage? Like, it's transparency, right?

• 27:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I think that's the core thing.

• 27:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Okay. New tool development is going to happen, right? And that's incredible for scientific progress. But then it's like, how do you handle that tool development, right? Do you surreptitiously go out and like, do something? Do you immediately go after the things that maybe have less consensus around like beneficial use of it? So it's not that the tool development is good or bad. Like, you never condemn tool development, right? That's just scientific progress. It's more, okay, what do we do with it now? So I think that's where the key.

• 27:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you do with it?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  What?

• 27:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you do?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, I think.

• 27:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you you go out to the bar, you wake up the next morning, you're like, all right, we got an issue.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think you publish, like, you make sure that people understand how like, these tools can be used. And then you leverage like all the different stakeholders to figure out what the best benefit is. And that, you know, is the key step is that, like, okay, transparency, like, this is what's possible. Like, how can it benefit society the most? And that's the step that often gets skipped, I think.

• 28:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, how does that change society when some we're, I mean, if this is something that becomes feasible, we'll obviously have these people walking around that are super humans and people walking around who haven't had the benefit of being crisp or edited.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think here is where it definitely gets more to sci fi for sure because of that technical side of it in terms of like, do we even know what you'd want to edit? Like it maybe it's like a ton of edits that can be very difficult to do together. So I think there it is not something that's like now for sure.

• 28:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, yeah, this is future stuff.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  But yeah, no, I think that's one of the things where hopefully as a society like you have to have these conversations around like what we want to do and what we don't want to do, right? And people might reach different conclusions around the world and hopefully that decision is some is robust to what others do to your point, right? It's not so localized. It might be, you know, one country decides to do something, another country decides to do something else.

• 29:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Is that decision influence? Do those decisions influence each other? So I think there the hope would be that there could be a worldwide consensus for sure. That can be difficult.

• 29:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  I love your idealism, Trevor. You're like, yeah, US and Russia and China.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm optimistic in that regard.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Admittedly, that can be very difficult, right? So then I think it comes down to what's a consensus that can be reached, you know, on any scale that's internally like consistent. It's not just reactive, right? It's not just, oh, what are other people doing? What's technically possible? Okay, that's what we're going to do now, right? Like something that's more foundational in terms of like, what do we value as a society? What do we think is important? How do we want to help people? And yeah, those are conversations that can be hard to do.

• 29:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Does it become a national security issue where like, for instance, let's say, okay, we already spoke about China. Let's say China gives the go ahead for look at this scientist, you know, who said he's edited stuff like maybe it's not him, maybe it's other people. It gives the go ahead to try to make, you know, a super generation of babies in the country. You know, does that then put other countries that are competing or rivals to China at a disadvantage and does it become a national security issue? And I know I'm way into sci fi territory, but does it become a national security issue to like not have these hackers for babies?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Point broadly is interesting, right? Like especially as these tools for biotech and biology advance and biology does become more like engineering. It does raise these questions of like, you know, how can they be used in ways that aren't necessarily are, you know, it's not just benefiting people in certain ways, but it's like, maybe it's actually tried to use adversarially, right, directly. So yeah, no, I think these do become really important conversations. And that's where I think similar to how people think about, I don't know, like computer science and like security in that space. I think transparency honestly is a big part of it, right? Like if, like, I think security through obscurity is very difficult, especially as biology becomes more and more democratized.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  So I think there it comes down to, yeah, really the people that are developing the tools, making sure people are aware of like what's possible and what's not possible as well. And like, you know, when things could become possible. And yeah, I think it does become a core part of understanding, yeah, national security and things like that. Just how do you,

• 31:33Speaker 01

  you know, make sure that the tools are being used in the appropriate ways and knowing what could be done and like, you know, making sure you can maybe monitor against like a adversarial use of it and things like that.

• 31:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I think it really does, it has to be part of the conversation every time.

• 31:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's interesting. It does get into these Black Mirror scenarios, right? Where like, you know, that thing that you condemned earlier, you know, maybe one country decides to go ahead and, you know, push full force with this stuff, even if it's not fully approved or not fully proven. And then you get into this arms race situation where another country is like, well, we better get on this and even pushes the envelope even further. It's like, does this worry you?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think long term, these are definitely the things that we have to grapple with.

• 32:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  It's definitely sci fi territory, but I think that as we develop tools further and further and like we are able to engineer biology, I think that's like the Kind of downside scenario for sure.

• 32:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Um, and I think there, I mean, it's the same with any technology that that's where I think the hopeful part of it, right, is that, you know, it's not like this is the first time we've encountered things that could have both positive and negative benefits, right? And we don't always necessarily have like the cleanest path as a society towards like managing these things. But, um, yeah, I think the encouraging thing is that there are precedents for, uh, new technologies that can have both incredibly beneficial and, you know, adversarial uses and being able to sort out a way that, um, the benefits outweigh any risks.

• 33:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Is it crazy that I keep thinking about nuclear energy as sort of a parallel?

• 33:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  I always end up going to that, right? Cause the scientists couldn't help, you know, but develop the power to explode cities with nuclear bombs. And, you know, when it came to it, they said, well, we could have a good and a bad use of it. And the sweetness, the the actual quote from Oppenheimer is the sweetness of discovery is something that I couldn't, you know, who worked on the bomb that we couldn't, you know, possibly stay away from.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's less risks, honestly, but, um, I think it's a good example of a technology that had dual use, right?

• 33:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. We talk about Facebook on this podcast all the time, too. I mean, there's another one.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, faith. Yeah, that's very interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. But yeah, there's like, obviously connecting people, right? And then there's like misinformation.

• 33:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And I think some of these we've navigated better than others, of course, but, um, yeah, no, in general, uh, tools are agnostic and they're tools and they'll continue to be developed. And it's really like society's job broadly to make sure they're used in the best ways.

• 34:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  It kind of, it's so crazy to me that like, you know, we're talking about this with, I mean, I'm just kind of still pinching myself that we're talking about this with straight faces, you know, you know, we're not two stone guys in a dorm room somewhere talking about, yo dude, what would happen if you could like edit people? This is actually something that's happening. And, you know, you, someone who's working as a practitioner in this field, you know, are seeing these things and not responding, yeah, that's crazy. But you're saying, hey, actually we do need to think about this stuff.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think it's better to think about these things like sooner rather than later, of course, because that's how you can actually build a good foundation. Yeah, to be clear, some of these things definitely are sci fi, but they're definitely things that as, you know, tools develop, they're, you know, things that we'll have to grapple with, right?

• 34:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I want to talk to you about self modification because one of the things, you know, we know, okay, so we've talked a little bit about these theories, the ways that companies, the way that countries, you know, might be able to go out and modify people. And of course, we talked a lot about babies, but one thing we know for sure is that humans love to, you know, hack their own bodies, you know, whether that's going on the keto diet or doing intermittent fasting or taking supplements or doing some other crazy workout regimen. I mean, look at professional sports, the rise of performance enhancing drugs is another key example. So I'm curious if you think there's, you know, following that pattern, there are going to be people

• 35:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  who are going to see what's happening with gene editing and want to modify themselves. And you talked about how this is programming your own body. Maybe there's some sort of hacking your own body that people might try to do to, to, you know, take their own selves up a notch.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I guess there's this kind of biohacker movement, especially in places like the Bay Area, maybe that really have embraced this ethos.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that is an interesting thing that could happen. There's already some examples of, I mean, even during the pandemic, like people trying to create their own like vaccines or people, yeah, like just really pushing the limits of like, you know, small scale biology.

• 36:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we're not allowed to talk about ivermectin on this show, otherwise Spotify will take us down. No, I'm kidding. Sorry, go ahead.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people will definitely try. I think the barriers are pretty high at the moment in terms of that being effective, to be honest with you entirely. I think it'll be a while until that is something that actually can happen. But I think it does raise one of those foundational questions around like, okay, like in the future, like as these tools develop and become more accessible potentially, like in the long future, in this case, um, yeah, like, how would we want to handle that as a society? And is it something where it's like your choice? Um, is it something that could have negative externalities that so maybe it needs to be more regulated?

• 37:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. You could end up having that genetic gene that gets passed down.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So you're really making a choice for future generations potentially. So yeah, and these are questions that can't be answered by like science necessarily, right? It's really more of a call of the society level of, you know, what we think is important. So I think, yeah, it's definitely not something that is necessarily happening now. I think it's yeah, more on like the keto side and stuff. Those are things that are more tractable, of course. But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if over time people get more and more interested in these tools in that way.

• 37:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  What doesn't it seem like, like there's so much wasted potential with humans? Like we have a brain that has a lot of capacity, but we don't use most of it.

• 37:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, we have this great body, but we have so many defects in it. It seems like there's so much more potential for a human being and maybe this stuff unlocks it.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think from my perspective, I mean, one of the key things is just generally this idea of health span. Like people like to talk about lifespan and stuff, but I think the core there is like whether you're 20 or you're 50 or you're 100 or you're two. I mean, there's, yeah, like hopefully things that we could do with technologies like CRISPR that would just make life better and like more disease free and like, yeah, just make it so that more people can realize their potential, whatever that is, right?

• 38:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Like it's science or arts or anything.

• 38:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  About just, yeah, being there for family and, you know, having the capacity.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, community, right?

• 38:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And I think that's what is really exciting to me, less like, oh, can we live like 500 years or whatever? There's huge technical limitations to that, of course, but I think that's like incredibly motivating and exciting. Like what if we could have the same lifespan as we do now, but we're really healthy and like giving back to others and like really productive and doing the things we love during that period? That is super exciting.

• 39:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if you believe in evolution, and I do, there's this thing called natural selection, right? Where we have survival of the fittest and over time, the universe or whatever it is selects for the strongest traits and those get passed on. Does this bring forward a era of unnatural selection in some way? Does it change the whole process of evolution from a way that it just never has been in the past?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's interesting question. Let's actually start with stuff like plants, right? So when we're modifying plants to give them these traits, they can be things like, oh, they grow better in an arid environment, right? And that means that you can have them actually create crops and like hardy yields even in a global warming environment, for example. And is that, I don't know, like, how does that interface with natural selection? Clearly, they're fit to their environment, right? But maybe they would have taken them too long to evolve to adapt to that, so they would have gone extinct. So I think there's, it's an interesting question on like a philosophical level.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  I think practically, we've been cross reading like plants for years and years and years and like, that's how we get traits into them, right? Except for now, we can just more directly say, insert a gene or modify something. So it's just a faster way of getting to a very similar result. So is one of those like better than the other becomes like almost like a philosophical question? I think more broadly, I think it's honestly less relevant to like other areas. I think there's a million things we as a society do that like change, you know, natural environments, right? We build cities, like we have a supermarket, like there's all these things. So I think it's honestly, in my personal opinion, it's like so de minimis compared to like how we shape the environment in other ways, right?

• 41:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  That it's maybe like more philosophical and less like, oh, is this actually changing something?

• 41:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're here on the Big Technology Podcast with Trevor Martin. He's the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience. So let's see, we did two segments so far. First one, what is this about practically to the ethics? Let's take another break and come back and talk a little bit more about plants and also talk about accessibility. I think the accessibility issue is important. So you're not going to want to miss the third and final segment here on Big Technology Podcast. Stick around, we'll be back right after this.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 42:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back for one final segment here on Big Technology Podcast with Trevor Martin. He's the CEO of Mammoth Bioscience out of the Bay Area. Trevor, I want to ask you about the access question. So, we live, I mean, I appreciate the idealism in the second segment, but we live in the world right now. And we know that wealthy people, wealthy societies tend to have access to much of the scientific advancements. First, take mRNA vaccines, for instance, that made its way around North America and Europe first. So, what do you think about when it comes to doing things like curing disease, making super people,

• 42:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  or whatever it is, and the accessibility issue? It seems to me that it will never be perfectly accessible, but does the prospect of actually, in the long term, changing things make it worth having an accessibility gap in the beginning? Or are there things that you can do to make this more evenly accessible to the population?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I have a couple of thoughts there. The first one is the intention, right? I hope that people start with the intention that they want to make it accessible, right? I think that's super important because some people might not start with that intention, right? So, I think that's a big part of it. So then, once you've aligned that, okay, it's important to us that this is something that can be accessed by the population at large, then it becomes a question of, okay, what's the path to get there? And there's some pretty popular concepts, like double bottom line and things like that, where...

• 43:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's that?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Can you align financial incentives with access incentives and things like that? There's a lot of interesting business models that are built around there. I think fundamentally... One thing you often see with new technologies is that it does start at a certain part of the market. And then as like it gets adopted, it kind of can become more and more accessible over time. Where like, you know, one example can be like cars, right? So like there's the Tesla model, it starts the expensive side. And then as like production ramps up and like it becomes more clear how to manufacture and the scale of what's being manufactured, then it can drop in price point, right? So I think there's things that can be learned from other industries in terms of like how you get that path to accessibility.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  But I think fundamentally, some of the things that can drive it are things like scale and things like, you know, how is the manufacturing done and how accessible is the technology? Just from like a cost of goods perspective and things like that.

• 44:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, well, I hope we get there. Another thing that that you've told me in the past that I kind of think is so interesting and worth bringing up is that you have this belief, I think, that we're better at engineering biology than understanding biology. You want to elaborate on that? I kind of think that's fascinating.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think increasingly as tools like Christopher develop very rapidly in very exciting ways that can help patients. I think it raises the bar of terms of like, understanding what should be edited. And I think it goes back to one of the things we talked about at the beginning in terms of like monogenic disease versus polygenic disease.

• 45:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And monogenic, is that like one?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  There's a single gene that's dominantly responsible for causing the disease versus polygenic. There could be hundreds, if not thousands of genes of small effect even maybe involved in it. And I think those are very, very tricky problems and people have been working on them for a long time. And there's been progress, to be sure. There's things like what we call genome-wide association studies. And that's where you find a huge population of people and you sequence them with a disease, say, and without a disease.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  When you do that, there's potentially genetic differences between the populations. And that can help you map like, okay, maybe these hundred locations were the ones that were enriched for changes in the population with the disease versus some control population.

• 46:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hundred gene locations?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, or a hundred locations in the genome, and you kind of hope

• 46:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  genes there, but many times maybe it's not a gene, right? Maybe it's actually a regulatory region of the genome that's maybe turning a gene on or off somewhere else in the genome, right? And that's really tricky. And previously, there's all this talks about like dark DNA or like DNA is understood. And I think in general, probably most regions, if not all regions of the genome are functional one way or another is like probably a more popular theory now because otherwise likely they would be removed or like reduced in some way or another.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  So even if it's in a region that doesn't have a gene, maybe it's regulating something. And how do you make that change or understand what change to make, right? Like, is it up or down or doing something else entirely? So I think it becomes this very multifaceted, very complex problem to map disease itself. And that can definitely be a bottleneck in terms of, okay, like, let's say we have perfect editing and perfect ability to engineer. And that can also feed in there as well in terms of figuring that out. So let's say we don't know what regions of the genome we want to edit, but we have very good editing tools. Maybe you can build a system that tries to edit different locations and then learn if those were the right ones, like going to sell or something like that. And so people are trying things on that end as well.

• 47:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting how much of it is sort of like, you know, you kind of blindfolded, you shoot, you try again, you know, you're shooting the name, shooting the name.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think right now, definitely, there's a huge class of diseases where it is very clear and that's like really exciting, but I think there's that larger area of disease where just identifying the targets can be quite difficult.

• 47:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and we're about to hit the end, but I would be remiss if I didn't speak about plants, or if we didn't speak about plants, really if you didn't speak about plants. Because we're obviously in a situation right now where we are in a fairly unsustainable moment for the planet. Our climate is changing, we are overpopulating without a doubt, and we're going to need some new ways to source and consume food, maybe even meats, all that stuff. Is there a way that this can help tackle the problem? Especially like, what happens if you start using this technology on plants, which you hinted at earlier?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it could be really transformative, honestly, especially as things like global warming continue to go on, well, hopefully not, but assuming that's the case. I think that the environment can potentially change, right? And that means crops that normally were growing somewhere might not grow there anymore. And one way that you can help mitigate the effects of that is that you can modify crops so that they are more suited to whatever that new environment is and that they can still thrive. And that could be really, really important. And more generally, I think this idea of engineering biology can help mitigate the effects of things like climate change potentially.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And obviously, it's not our first choice, it shouldn't even be our third choice, but it's good to have the option of doing these things in these situations. I think also, kind of zooming out a bit to some of the other things you mentioned around even like synthetic meats and like, how do we reduce the agriculture usage for things like cows or otherwise? And I think there, yeah, like when you're engineering these cell lines to be like, you know, different flavors of meat or other things like that, I think definitely these engineering biology tools have a huge role to play there as well.

• 49:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it looks like with the global warming stuff in particular, and we've talked about it on the show, we're definitely going to need technology solutions there because after watching what happened with COVID, there's no way we're going to cooperate as a society to fix global warming, we're going to need tech solutions. So this is an interesting one.

• 50:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  What is the argument against doing this? Because there's definitely a movement against genetically modified food.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for a long time now, there's been, yeah, like a lot of controversy around GMO foods and things like that. Here personally, I'm obviously like maybe this is how I was like very in favor of.

• 50:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you're Mr. Gene modification, so.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  I think it can help, you know, not just millions, but billions of people around the world live healthy lives. But I think I can also understand where people are coming from in terms of like, oh, is this natural? Is this something that like it's fully understood? And I think that's where I go back to like, regulation is actually can be a good thing and like showing and transparency, right? Like, I think the more people understand, maybe my optimistic belief is that the more people understand technologies and they know what's going on and there's not any black boxes. I think people can understand, like, understand, oh, okay, yeah, that is beneficial. And like, that is great. And like, okay, it's not necessarily something that like, happens naturally,

• 51:14Speaker 01

  but that still doesn't mean it's not something that can't benefit nature and humans and like, you know, society at large.

• 51:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  So I think I take an optimistic viewpoint that really it's more about being transparent and education.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  But I think in general, it can be difficult, once there are these kind of battle lines drawn, of course, to step across the aisle, but I think that's what has to happen because I think it is so foundational to like, how do we feed the next billions of people on the planet that we do that?

• 51:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, it is interesting. Every time we get into these sort of genetic questions that there is this, you're right, battle lines drawn. I mean, the mRNA vaccine, like, how did you feel when that that came out? Is that similar technology, by the way? I mean, obviously, it's been, you know, a little controversial where.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Different technology, but again, I guess on this train of like, you know, advances in biology and like new tools development and. People think of these things as overnight successes, but obviously people have been working on these for decades, right? And it's not something that just came along necessarily. And in general, though, I think, I mean, I'm just blown away by how like science has been able to help,

• 52:25Speaker 01

  in the pandemic, whether that's on the diagnostic side or that's on the vaccine side. I think maybe the deep irony is that because science has been able to like really bring forth some amazing solutions that have like mitigated the impacts, like it leaves room for, you know, these debates to happen. Whereas if we didn't have these scientific advances, we'd be in a very bad situation.

• 52:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  In the street with the COVID stuff. Yeah. Did it does seem maybe, I mean, you know, it's funny to ask you this question, but I'm going to ask anyway. It does seem like some of the biggest breakthroughs that we're going to have, you know, in our lifetime to come, when it comes to human health, bioscience, treatment is going to be focused on the genes. Where in previously, it was just kind of a pipe dream.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think the last like, you know, 30 years has been very software and computers focused. And that'll continue, of course, like I'm extremely bullish on that. But I think over the next 30, 100 years, what we're going to see is like the way that biology can like positively impact our lives. Right. Whether that's foods or whether that's therapies or diagnostics. I think we're going to have huge advances in biology that'll really transform the way we live in a positive way.

• 53:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, let's, let's end with like kind of a small little lightning round.

• 53:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think in your lifetime, you will use CRISPR technology on yourself?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, probably. In terms of like, if I have a disease or something like that later in life, I definitely think that CRISPR could play a huge role.

• 53:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wild. And how about your kids? Do you think you might use it to change traits in your children?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  I personally wouldn't do it, but yeah.

• 54:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Over, under is 2050. The first human clone successfully, do you think that will happen under, you know, before 2050 or after 2050? Because come on, it's gonna happen.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  I'm not as much of an expert in this space, but let's say after.

• 54:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. All right. Sounds good. Trevor Martin, thank you so much for joining us. Really great chatting with you as always.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me. It was really fun.

• 54:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Where can people check out, you know, your work and your company's work if they want to learn more?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Sure. My Twitter handle is at Martin Trevor underscore. And then the website for Mammoth is mammothbio.

• 54:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, terrific. Well, thanks again. Really appreciate it. And, you know, like we said, this is going to be the big stuff over the next, you know, couple of decades. So, you know, fingers crossed, but I'm hoping we can get you back on the show as this science continues to improve.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 55:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Awesome. Well, thank you, everybody for listening. Thank you, Nick Guatani, for editing and doing all the audio mastering. Appreciate it every week. Appreciate your hard work. Thank you, Red Circle, for hosting and selling the ads. Appreciate you guys. And then, of course, all of you, the listeners, thanks for coming back week to week. It's really a pleasure to be able to do this show, and it's all because of you. If you haven't yet, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. And actually, guess what? Now you can rate on Spotify as well. Seen a couple of ratings there, but everyone really makes a big difference in terms of discoverability. I do hope you take a minute and give us the five stars on either one of those platforms or both, if you're feeling generous. That'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast this week. We hope to see you again next week for another,

• 55:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  another show with the tech insider outside agitator. Until then, take care.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.