Speaker 1: We are defined in large part by the genomes that
Speaker 1: we happen to come to the table with. So what
Speaker 1: does it mean when we can edit our own genomes?
Speaker 1: What does this have to do with viruses or copy pasting,
Speaker 1: or whether we are going to modify the story of
Speaker 1: our own species. This is in our cosmos, and I'm
Speaker 1: David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford And
Speaker 1: in these episodes we sail deeply into our three pound
Speaker 1: universe to uncover some of the most surprising aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives. Today's episode is about the remarkable situation we
Speaker 1: find ourselves in, which is that we now know how
Speaker 1: to read our biological inheritance. Now, this is very easy
Speaker 1: to take for granted because for most of us this
Speaker 1: has been true for our whole lives. But it's a
Speaker 1: very recent ability for our species. It only began in
Speaker 1: the second half of last century. In my postdoctoral fellowship,
Speaker 1: I worked with Francis Crick, who was the co discoverer
Speaker 1: of the structure of DNA. In April of nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: he and James Watson published a paper in Nature, and
Speaker 1: in just over a page they proposed the double helix
Speaker 1: structure of DNA, explaining how genetic information is stored and copied. Now,
Speaker 1: there's something about this paper that always makes me tear
Speaker 1: up when I read it, because the insight changed our
Speaker 1: world and almost certainly the future of our species. What
Speaker 1: they realize is that DNA is made of two complimentary
Speaker 1: strands wound around each other, and the bases are which
Speaker 1: just means A on one strand always links with T
Speaker 1: on the other, and C with G. And this gives
Speaker 1: a mechanism for making a xerox copy of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: because you just unwind the two strands and then each
Speaker 1: serves as the template for sticking on new bases in
Speaker 1: the right spots. But what I want to emphasize is
Speaker 1: how new this is. Nineteen fifty three, isn't that long ago?
Speaker 1: World War Two was over, Eisenhower was president of the US,
Speaker 1: and by this point we already had automatic transmission in
Speaker 1: cars and color television and microwave ovens. But we had
Speaker 1: no idea why your ears look like your father's ears,
Speaker 1: or your eyes look like your mother's eyes. Just imagine this,
Speaker 1: before the discovery of the DNA code, how difficult it
Speaker 1: was to understand how inheritance actually happens biologically. People floated
Speaker 1: all kinds of wacky hyppods disease about it, like maybe
Speaker 1: each sperm cell contained a super tiny embryo. But everyone
Speaker 1: knew these models didn't work. And even while people were
Speaker 1: driving cars and watching TV and microwaving, they knew that
Speaker 1: inheritance was a total unknown in science. And then that
Speaker 1: all changed with that very short paper that laid the
Speaker 1: foundation for modern genetics and molecular biology and ultimately technologies
Speaker 1: like gene editing, and so that puts us where we
Speaker 1: are now. For as long as animals have walked this earth,
Speaker 1: we have been shaped by forces beyond our control, by
Speaker 1: the slow hand of evolution, by the accidents of mutation,
Speaker 1: by the blind winnowing of natural selection. The twisting helix
Speaker 1: of our DNA has been sculpted by nature's chisel. But now,
Speaker 1: for the first time, we are holding the chisel in
Speaker 1: our own hands. Just in the last nanosecond of evolutionary time,
Speaker 1: we now command gene editing technologies, things like crisper and
Speaker 1: single base pair editing tools and epigenetic editing tools and
Speaker 1: tools yet to be imagined, and these give us the
Speaker 1: power to rewrite the code of life itself. We can
Speaker 1: correct genetic disorders, we can eliminate inherited diseases, and we
Speaker 1: can presumably even enhance ourselves, pushing beyond the biological boundaries
Speaker 1: that we would have recently assumed are fixed. The rules
Speaker 1: of genetic inheritance were once immutable, but now they are revisable.
Speaker 1: So obviously, with this power comes deep questions. If we
Speaker 1: can edit our genetic destiny, what should we choose to become?
Speaker 1: Do we cure only what ails us? Or do we
Speaker 1: optimize ourselves enhancing features like intelligence and strength and longevity.
Speaker 1: How close are we to doing any of this? Does
Speaker 1: anything happen to the meaning of human struggle? When suffering
Speaker 1: can be edited away? Will we remain the same species
Speaker 1: once we begin sculpting ourselves? And who decides is it
Speaker 1: the scientists at the lab bench, the policymakers and government,
Speaker 1: the parent holding their newborn in their arms. What are
Speaker 1: the ethical and social and existential questions of putting our
Speaker 1: genetic future in human hands? So in today's episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to step into the frontier of gene editing. What
Speaker 1: does it mean to be human when we are no
Speaker 1: longer bound by the limits of our biology. What stories
Speaker 1: will future generation tell about the choices that we make?
Speaker 1: Now the code of life is no longer written in stone,
Speaker 1: so what will we write? So I called my friend
Speaker 1: Trevor Martin, who is the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: Mammoth Biosciences, which is based here in the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Bay area. They are building the next generation of Crisper
Speaker 1: products for editing the genome. If you've never heard of
Speaker 1: Crisper or aren't sure what it is, hangtight because we'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. But the quick preview is,
Speaker 1: how do you build a platform to read and write
Speaker 1: the code of life? How do you make tools? So
Speaker 1: you get something like a word processor for the genome
Speaker 1: where you say, look, I just want to hit control
Speaker 1: X to cut a piece of the genome, or control
Speaker 1: V to paste it, and control F to find some
Speaker 1: sequence inside the genome. So here's my conversation with Trevor Martin.
Speaker 1: Technology is some of the most amazing technology we have,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't actually invented by humans. It was merely
Speaker 1: discovered by us. So tell us about that, tell us
Speaker 1: about Crisper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, similar to how we have immune systems, actually
Speaker 2: bacteria and small microbes and just teny little organisms. They
Speaker 2: have to defend themselves against invasion as well. Typically viruses
Speaker 2: actually much like us, and one of the ways that
Speaker 2: they evolve to do this is this thing called crisper
Speaker 2: that has become famous, of course for its ability to
Speaker 2: do genetic editing. But fundamentally nature has used these crisper
Speaker 2: type systems to protect themselves from viruses, very similar to
Speaker 2: how our adaptive immune system protects us from viruses.
Speaker 1: And we've kind of ripped that out.
Speaker 2: Of nature and done a ton of engineering on top
Speaker 2: of it to turn it into these technologies that can
Speaker 2: do genomic engineering. But that's kind of fundamentally where it
Speaker 2: came from. And I think it's this beautiful example of
Speaker 2: leveraging billions of years of evolution and combining that with
Speaker 2: human ingenuity and a lot of hard work from a
Speaker 2: lot of scientists.
Speaker 1: So let me get straight. So, so crisper if fits in,
Speaker 1: Let's say a single cell organism, a virus injects some
Speaker 1: DNA and it's got to figure out, hey, that's not mine,
Speaker 1: and then it cuts it up exactly.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of complicated steps there. First, it
Speaker 2: has to recognize Hey, that's not mine. Then it has
Speaker 2: to cut it up. And then actually there's a third step,
Speaker 2: which is, hey, I should remember this came and i'd
Speaker 2: want to make sure I protect against it in the future.
Speaker 2: And it's actually funny, that's where the name crisper itself
Speaker 2: comes from, is that I want to protect against the future.
Speaker 2: So CRISPER is actually an acronym stands for clustered regulatory
Speaker 2: interspace short palindromic repeats and this is actually kind of
Speaker 2: the memory of the cell that the crisper systems used
Speaker 2: to say, Hey, these are viruses that have invaded me before,
Speaker 2: and I want to make sure they don't do it again.
Speaker 1: And this happens in unicellular organisms. That's so incredible, Okay,
Speaker 1: And so you started this company Mammoth with the idea
Speaker 1: to take these crisper systems and I prove them from
Speaker 1: what nature has done or search for other ways of
Speaker 1: doing it. So give me a sense of how you
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So probably the most famous Chrisper system is this thing
Speaker 2: called CAST nine. And this was what one of my
Speaker 2: co founders, Jennifer Dalna, won the Nobel Prize for a
Speaker 2: few years ago. Was the work in terms of really
Speaker 2: characterizing and developing this into a geneomic engineering technology. And
Speaker 2: CAST nine was just one example from a certain class
Speaker 2: of bacteria of this type of crisper technology. And one
Speaker 2: of the fundamental insights of Mammoth is that actually, there
Speaker 2: are all sorts of Christopher technologies out there, because these
Speaker 2: are present and all sorts of microorganisms, bacteria, even large
Speaker 2: viruses archaea. And our insight was, hey, we should look
Speaker 2: through all of these alternative versions of crisper that are
Speaker 2: not CAST nine and do a lot of work to
Speaker 2: develop those, and that could actually have a huge benefit
Speaker 2: for building genomic medicines, for building diagnostics, for improving agriculture.
Speaker 2: And that was kind of a fundamental insight that was
Speaker 2: maybe obvious today, but at the time people were so
Speaker 2: focused on CAST nine that people weren't really looking beyond that.
Speaker 1: So you're looking for things that have already been discovered
Speaker 1: by nature elsewhere, and you're looking for versions of that
Speaker 1: that do what you want in terms of gene editing.
Speaker 2: So the trick there is that you use nature as
Speaker 2: a starting point. And the unfortunate truth is that when
Speaker 2: you take these things and you rip them out of nature,
Speaker 2: actually usually they don't work at all, but they give
Speaker 2: you a starting point. And one of the fundamental insights
Speaker 2: we had was it's not enough just to go into
Speaker 2: nature and to say, ah, okay, what other alternative crispers
Speaker 2: are there? You have to do that, and then you
Speaker 2: have to do a ton of engineering. And we actually
Speaker 2: have a whole floor of our building that has these
Speaker 2: liquid handling robots. They're just running tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: experiments at a time and you just kind of grind
Speaker 2: away and you can use the latest AI techniques combining
Speaker 2: it with the latest and microfluid candling is what those
Speaker 2: robots are called. And it's only with that combination of
Speaker 2: all of that, with this kind of usually very wacky,
Speaker 2: kind of natural starting point. That's the secret sauce one
Speaker 2: or the other is not enough. You have to really
Speaker 2: have both together. And that was the unique insight as well.
Speaker 1: Oh great, okay, And so they're looking for these smaller systems,
Speaker 1: and what's the reason to have them smaller?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of the giant challenges of the field
Speaker 2: is how do you deliver these systems to the cells
Speaker 2: that need it the most. So when you and I
Speaker 2: think about genetic medicine, what comes to mind, it's going
Speaker 2: to be things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, you know, these
Speaker 2: really debilitating disorders where they can be basically a death
Speaker 2: sentence and you something that's kind of known in your
Speaker 2: genome from birth. And the big problem though, has been
Speaker 2: what the genetic medicine, the crisper field has been focused
Speaker 2: on is a tiny subset of diseases that are typically
Speaker 2: not that and that's amazing for those patients that have
Speaker 2: diseases that are like blood disorders or like certain liver disorders,
Speaker 2: and there's amazing progress in this field, like for example,
Speaker 2: there's now an approved therapy using Crisper for sickle cell
Speaker 2: disease in beta talasmia. Those are overlook diseases with underrepresented
Speaker 2: populations and that's a huge win for the field. But
Speaker 2: the proms of genetic medicine is not just blood disorders
Speaker 2: and liver disorders. The promise is to go to any
Speaker 2: cell in the body and do any kind of edit.
Speaker 2: And that really is what guides us at Maamath that
Speaker 2: means you need to go to the muscle, you need
Speaker 2: to go to the brain, you need to get to
Speaker 2: the heart. And that has been a gigantic challenge, and
Speaker 2: it's because CAST nine is actually a big protein. So
Speaker 2: obviously it's small relative to us, like all proteins, but
Speaker 2: it's really really big on a kind of molecular scale.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that we did is we said, hey,
Speaker 2: could we create a crisper system that's not just a
Speaker 2: little bit smaller than CAST nine, but it's way smaller.
Speaker 2: And that resulted in a thing we called nanocasts nano
Speaker 2: and that was really exciting and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: skepticism in the field, which is great for our patents,
Speaker 2: people like, oh, these will never work. And it required
Speaker 2: a ton of work and a lot of these robots
Speaker 2: doing a lot of work overtime with our scientists. And
Speaker 2: what's cool though, is that now we actually have data
Speaker 2: showing that in monkeys, which is a really high bar.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, cell lines or mice, we actually
Speaker 2: get extremely good editing either equivalent or better than CAST
Speaker 2: nine with these really really tiny systems. And these really
Speaker 2: tiny systems, unlike CAST nine, can actually be delivered anywhere
Speaker 2: in the body, so that's a seed change in terms
Speaker 2: of what's possible.
Speaker 1: And they can be delivered by a virus for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a classic way that you can deliver to
Speaker 2: muscle or brain, for example, would be with a thing
Speaker 2: called AV which is another acronym that stands for adno
Speaker 2: associated virus. And one of the big limitations of this
Speaker 2: is that it has a very strict size limit. Like
Speaker 2: you can think of it as like a semi trailer
Speaker 2: truck where you can only fit so much in the
Speaker 2: back and cast nine is just way too big to
Speaker 2: fit inside it. But these nanocast style systems don't just fit,
Speaker 2: but they actually have a ton of room to spare.
Speaker 2: And the room to spare is really important as well,
Speaker 2: because when you're a scientist you can start to think
Speaker 2: really creatively about how do I use that. And one
Speaker 2: of the key ways that we use that is to
Speaker 2: fit in the machinery to do different types of edits.
Speaker 2: So people may have heard of things like base editing
Speaker 2: or writing or epigenetic editing. These are all techniques that
Speaker 2: take the fundamental Chrisper system and say, hey, what if
Speaker 2: instead of editing the genome as this like word document
Speaker 2: and only being able to delete sentences, what if we
Speaker 2: could add a paragraph, What if we could spell check
Speaker 2: a word? What if we could italicize a sentence. These
Speaker 2: are all kind of different types of edits you can
Speaker 2: do in the genome, and they require delivery have even
Speaker 2: more machinery, and that means that Mammoth has really been
Speaker 2: the only company that's been able to actually deliver not
Speaker 2: just anywhere in the body, but also deliver any kind
Speaker 2: of edit anywhere in the body. And I think it's
Speaker 2: you have to do both of those if you really
Speaker 2: want to address all genetic.
Speaker 1: Disease, and any kind of edit means reading or writing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we also had a lot of work we did
Speaker 2: on diagnostics as well, and during the pandemic we actually
Speaker 2: got emergency use authorization for a Chrisper based COVID test.
Speaker 2: So we're super proud of the work we did there.
Speaker 2: The focus of the company today is very much on
Speaker 2: the writing side, but definitely I think there's huge potential
Speaker 2: on the reading side.
Speaker 1: As well. Give us an example of the reading side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so basically there, instead of using the Chrisper systems
Speaker 2: to change the DNA, you can use the Chrispher systems
Speaker 2: to send out some signal that there's a certain sequence present,
Speaker 2: so to say, hey, I found the word potato and
Speaker 2: it'll glow green if it finds potato, and it won't
Speaker 2: show any color if it doesn't. And that's a very
Speaker 2: powerful kind of concept, and that means you could do
Speaker 2: really low cost, high accuracy style molecular testing, and that's
Speaker 2: something that we're very bullish on long term. But as
Speaker 2: a company, obviously you have to focus on a certain area,
Speaker 2: and already, you know, trying to tackle all genetic diseases
Speaker 2: a limited set of focus to begin with, So that's
Speaker 2: kind of kind of where we're focusing our efforts otherwise.
Speaker 1: Right, So let me come back to something you said. So,
Speaker 1: as far as the writing goes, you can write single
Speaker 1: base pairs, you can write something longer. You can write
Speaker 1: whole genes or collections of genes. Ice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could have all insert an entire gene. You
Speaker 2: could kind of change a single base pair out of
Speaker 2: all the billions of base pairs in your genome. And
Speaker 2: that's an important philosophical point as well, because I think
Speaker 2: in biotech we often get so enamored with technology, so
Speaker 2: we always think in terms of like, ah, this is
Speaker 2: a base editing technology, or this is a gene writing technology,
Speaker 2: This is like Deuvile's trand break if you're patient. You
Speaker 2: don't care, Right, I have a disease and I don't
Speaker 2: care how you're doing it. I just want you to
Speaker 2: cure or treat my disease. In our case, we can
Speaker 2: actually cure it. And I think that's where our philosophy is.
Speaker 2: Will actually develop many techniques, all the techniques, and actually
Speaker 2: be able to deliver them. And then for any disease,
Speaker 2: we might try a couple of different ways of doing it.
Speaker 2: We might say, ah, there's like a way to do
Speaker 2: it by base editing, there's a way to do it
Speaker 2: by epigenetic editing. We're not sure which one's gonna be
Speaker 2: the best, but we'll try both and see which one
Speaker 2: actually works well. And that's very different from philosophy from
Speaker 2: typical biotech, where you try and create like ten companies
Speaker 2: whe each company is doing a different method and I
Speaker 2: think that's all fine and well in some ways, maybe
Speaker 2: also from like how do you maximize like investor involvement
Speaker 2: in different companies, But from a I think long term
Speaker 2: company building and from a patient perspective, I think that's
Speaker 2: very much like the wrong way to go about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell us about diseases in the brain and
Speaker 1: what you're thinking of, is the future of those maybe
Speaker 1: in give me a sense of three years, ten years
Speaker 1: where we'll be with that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So to start with a specific example of one that
Speaker 2: I think kind of is frankly a condemnation of the
Speaker 2: genetic medicine space is Huntington's disease. So this is a
Speaker 2: disease that was mapped, Oh my god, not just decades ago,
Speaker 2: like half a century ago, like I think in like
Speaker 2: the late eighties, and it was mapp They mapped it
Speaker 2: with microsatellites, I believe, on giant gels that were in
Speaker 2: the lab. Right, this is like, you know, not pre computer,
Speaker 2: it's like Wexler, right, Yeah, but you know, very very
Speaker 2: early technologies, and we have understood, you know, fundamentally kind
Speaker 2: of the genetic base of Huntington's for a very long time,
Speaker 2: and still today people die from this every single year,
Speaker 2: and it's a horrible disease where basically, if you have
Speaker 2: a certain genomic sequence, then you know, typically in your thirties,
Speaker 2: you'll have the accumulation of a certain protein and you'll
Speaker 2: pass away. And it's infuriating, honestly that we understand the
Speaker 2: genetic cause of this and we can do nothing about it.
Speaker 2: So I think the genetic medicine space and Crisper in
Speaker 2: particular will have arrived and will have really I think,
Speaker 2: done a hallmark deliverance of like what the true potential
Speaker 2: is the day the last Huntington patient dies?
Speaker 1: Agreed? When is that? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, I think it's definitely within sight. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to give a specific.
Speaker 1: Three years or five or ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably not three, but it better not be ten. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think in general, like you can kind of see
Speaker 2: the steps that you need to take and it's a
Speaker 2: matter of walking down the path.
Speaker 1: Got it? And what has been the problem? Given that
Speaker 1: we have Chrisper cast technology and that we have known
Speaker 1: the gene for Huntington's it's monogenetic, what has been the
Speaker 1: hold up? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I think there's a lot of things you have
Speaker 2: to think about. One is what type of edit are
Speaker 2: you going to do? Like can you just knock out
Speaker 2: the whole Huntington gene or do you have to think
Speaker 2: more creatively about modifying it in a more subtle way.
Speaker 2: Then the second one is can you actually get the
Speaker 2: editing machinery to the cells of interest? Can you actually
Speaker 2: get this into the brain, and those are two of
Speaker 2: the most obvious problems. I think that we've really thought
Speaker 2: deeply about mammoth and like the general sense, not just
Speaker 2: running to the before any brain disease. And I think
Speaker 2: that's where the technologies we've developed, like these ultracompact systems
Speaker 2: and having all these different editing modalities I think can
Speaker 2: make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: Potentially got it and so it sounds like you've got
Speaker 1: the can we get it to the right cells? It
Speaker 1: sounds like you've got a beat on that. But as
Speaker 1: far as what edit to make is that something you're
Speaker 1: experimenting with, well, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's definitely something where we have a lot of
Speaker 2: great ideas for any about like different types, and that's
Speaker 2: where we're very unique because we can actually try different
Speaker 2: methods and we can say, hey, this is our hypothesis,
Speaker 2: prove it out or not, but not have a hammer
Speaker 2: and everything else to look like a nail, which is
Speaker 2: very very classic not just a biotype but a deep
Speaker 2: tech in general. And you know the classic startup advice
Speaker 2: of like find the problem first and then figure out
Speaker 2: the solution. There's a lot of reasons why that doesn't
Speaker 2: work in deep tech right, Like, sometimes you really do
Speaker 2: have to kind of build the thing and then figure
Speaker 2: out what the best application is. But that being said,
Speaker 2: the more you can mitigate that, that's a very powerful
Speaker 2: idea to get away from hammer, you know, squint at
Speaker 2: everything until it's a nail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me make sure I understand. What's the way
Speaker 1: that you can test out these different hypothesies. Do you
Speaker 1: have an animal model of Huntington's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna so not speaking specifically about Huntington's, but
Speaker 2: just generally in terms of different diseases. Some diseases you'll
Speaker 2: have an animal model that's really good, and that means
Speaker 2: you can actually try it out like in mice or
Speaker 2: maybe even monkeys, and like really get a lot of
Speaker 2: confidence for others. Honestly, you don't have anything. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: no animal models, so like you have to try it
Speaker 2: out in cell lines and then kind of make your
Speaker 2: best guess about what's going to work.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: So it's very varied, i'd say, across different diseases and
Speaker 2: across different tissues, but you want to have as many
Speaker 2: shots on goal I think as possible because then when
Speaker 2: you go to humans, maybe you'll find something surprising, Like
Speaker 2: you only had cell line work and then it doesn't
Speaker 2: work in humans. And if you only have one technique,
Speaker 2: you're kind of out of luck. But if you have,
Speaker 2: like you know, a backup or a backup to the backup,
Speaker 2: that means you can actually go in and you know,
Speaker 2: do something for patients after that.
Speaker 1: Got it. So that gives us a good sense of
Speaker 1: what the challenge is with something like Huntington's. Now, Huntington's
Speaker 1: is one gene. If you got it, you're getting Huntington's.
Speaker 1: But what about other diseases, whether it's Alzheimer's or schizophreny
Speaker 1: or whatever, that are polygenic, I can involve lots of machines.
Speaker 1: Does that make the problem exponentially harder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a really really good question. So kind
Speaker 2: of building on your point about monogenic disease, the diseases
Speaker 2: where there's a single gene that causes it, there's depending
Speaker 2: on how you count, let's say about four thousand of
Speaker 2: those that we kind of are well understood, and that
Speaker 2: means you have a lot of you have your work
Speaker 2: cut out for you just in monogenic disease, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of work to be done there. And
Speaker 2: the one thing I'll mention before moving on to the
Speaker 2: polygenic is that one of the beauties of the kind
Speaker 2: of crisper technology is that, unlike a lot of previous
Speaker 2: things that have happened in biotech, the first therapy you
Speaker 2: build with a crisper technology is the hardest, and then
Speaker 2: the second one gets easier, and the third one gets easier,
Speaker 2: and the fourth one gets easier. And that's very different
Speaker 2: from a lot of things, like you know, small molecule development,
Speaker 2: where every drug you kind of go back to the
Speaker 2: starting board and you're like, Okay, well I got to
Speaker 2: kind of go through the whole process again, and I
Speaker 2: haven't you know, obviously I've learned something, but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to like shorten the process for the second small
Speaker 2: male the third small molecule I make. And with Christopher,
Speaker 2: that's very very different because you're using the same technology
Speaker 2: and you're switching out this thing that's called a guide RNA.
Speaker 2: You can kind of think of it as like you
Speaker 2: go to Google and you type into the search engine
Speaker 2: and the guide RNA is what you're typing. So it's
Speaker 2: very kind of facile to switch these things out. And
Speaker 2: I think that means that even though there are four thousand,
Speaker 2: you know where monogenetic diseases, I think we have a
Speaker 2: real shot at tackling them all because the first one
Speaker 2: is the hardest and it only gets easier from there.
Speaker 2: And that's very different from classic biottech.
Speaker 1: Now, how about the polygenetic diseases.
Speaker 2: Right So on the polygenic side, I think the main
Speaker 2: challenge there is in an exciting way, going to become
Speaker 2: what to edit. So there are limitations to what we
Speaker 2: call multiplex editing. Right now, I think the state of
Speaker 2: the art would be, you know, you could reasonably do
Speaker 2: maybe three to five edits in one go, depending on
Speaker 2: which lab you want to kind of take a queue from,
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of progress that can be made there,
Speaker 2: of course, But even for these things where you're trying
Speaker 2: to edit multiple genes, it's often very unclear. Even if
Speaker 2: you want to edit five things and you said, hey,
Speaker 2: I can go edit five things, like which five you
Speaker 2: should edit can be very very tricky, like schizophrenia being
Speaker 2: a classic example, even things like type two diabetes, and
Speaker 2: there I think there's a lot of progress that could
Speaker 2: potentially be made in terms of mapping these diseases and
Speaker 2: really understanding even like are these edits additive, Like if
Speaker 2: I edit five things, am I getting just the full
Speaker 2: benefit of every edit? Or maybe is there a sequence
Speaker 2: of edits that's going to be more beneficial if I
Speaker 2: do them in a certain kind of cohort together. And
Speaker 2: these are very complicated statistical questions, right, and it's very
Speaker 2: non obvious kind of what the answer is for many
Speaker 2: of these diseases. And that's where I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of additional kind of statistical work that could be done.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it, But you've got the technology now to
Speaker 1: go in there and do these experiments. What do you
Speaker 1: see as the ethical issues about a society that knows
Speaker 1: how to edit genes? As we move forward, Let's say
Speaker 1: we're thinking ten years in the future, two twenty years,
Speaker 1: what do you see is the issues there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the exciting thing is that we're quickly
Speaker 2: going to live in a society where we're better at
Speaker 2: making edits in any cell in the human genome than
Speaker 2: we are understanding what to edit, which also has to
Speaker 2: read out on. Yeah, your question about the ethics of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's move beyond monogenetic disease. Let's even move beyond like
Speaker 2: the classic polygenetic diseases like schizophrena, type two diabetes. I
Speaker 2: think these are relatively non controversial things where of course,
Speaker 2: if you have an ability to cure people, yeah, you
Speaker 2: probably should, or at least I feel very strongly personally
Speaker 2: that you should. And then it gets into the realm
Speaker 2: of I think, you know, people like to think about, oh, well,
Speaker 2: what about things that are not necessarily diseases, but maybe
Speaker 2: you want to improve, like whether that's uh, you know, kids,
Speaker 2: athleticism or intelligentism and intelligence.
Speaker 1: These are the classic ones.
Speaker 2: And as someone that did a lot of work on
Speaker 2: the kind of genetic side of the equation, I think
Speaker 2: one thing that's often lost here is that there's no intelligence.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, Like the gains you can get
Speaker 2: even from doing a lot of it, it's on the
Speaker 2: intelligence side are kind of shockingly minimal.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Although, although if we fast forward twenty years and
Speaker 1: you've figured out, hey, polygenetically, here's some very clever AI
Speaker 1: way to test this and try that, maybe we'll find
Speaker 1: out Oh it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely definitely possible. I think there's a bit
Speaker 2: of a holy war in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 2: environmental component versus the innate genetic component.
Speaker 1: But the innate genetics doesn't hurt right.
Speaker 2: Right, So let's put that aside for a second and say, okay,
Speaker 2: let's just same. There's been progress made, and we have
Speaker 2: some better understanding maybe of at least what are the
Speaker 2: best possible dits you could make. I think there it's
Speaker 2: going to be really interesting because if you zoom out,
Speaker 2: I feel like this is, first of all, this is
Speaker 2: a question beyond any individual and beyond any company. It's
Speaker 2: really kind of a society level question where there's you know,
Speaker 2: religious and you know, ethical and kind of personal and
Speaker 2: of course corporate kind of viewpoints here. But I think
Speaker 2: you've seen this in other deep tech areas. You see
Speaker 2: it with AI right now, every country is going to
Speaker 2: have kind of a different view on this. And I
Speaker 2: think the really interesting thing when you start thinking about
Speaker 2: human biology, which we all share, of course, is that
Speaker 2: these decisions very much are not in isolation, right, And
Speaker 2: it does make you wonder if one country is more
Speaker 2: willing to kind of go down some of these paths
Speaker 2: that other countries might find less ethical, does that create
Speaker 2: an imperative for other countries just to fall along to
Speaker 2: stay competitive. And I don't know what The answer to
Speaker 2: that is, but I think that's the part that seems
Speaker 2: like it might be most complicated, honestly, is different countries
Speaker 2: will come to different conclusions, and there's definitely been a
Speaker 2: lot of work to try and come to like international
Speaker 2: consensus around these things. But in general, I think that's
Speaker 2: going to be the trickiest pressure is that even if
Speaker 2: let's say in the United States, we make, you know,
Speaker 2: certain decisions around this is the line, We're not going
Speaker 2: to do edits for intelligence, but we are going to
Speaker 2: do edits for anything that's you know, classified as a disease.
Speaker 2: Maybe another country decides, hey, actually I want to give
Speaker 2: my population super charging powers to whatever extent I can,
Speaker 2: and maybe it's a minimal extent, but we're going to
Speaker 2: try our vest I think that creates a pretty interesting
Speaker 2: situation geopolitically about like how do you handle that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, once we're a species that knows how to
Speaker 1: modify our code. Yes, So the geopolitical things, what do
Speaker 1: you think it means just in terms of what it
Speaker 1: means to be a human? How does that change? I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say we're thinking fifty years in the future here,
Speaker 1: and you get to choose everything about your kids and
Speaker 1: perhaps yourself in some ways. But how does that change society?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it brings to mind one of my
Speaker 2: favorite movies, Gatica. I'm sure you've seen it.
Speaker 1: I have seen it, but I thought that was it
Speaker 1: was silly in the sense that, just as a reminder
Speaker 1: to the listeners, your genes predispose you to some particular
Speaker 1: career in that movie, and if you have these genes,
Speaker 1: are going to be this kind of janitor or whatever
Speaker 1: as opposed to the astronaut. And of course, with the
Speaker 1: nature nurture debate, that's totally dead because it's always both so,
Speaker 1: but yeah, tell me why it reminded you of Ghika.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the part there was most salient to me,
Speaker 2: I think was this idea that let's say one child
Speaker 2: was kind of quote unquote natural born, the other child
Speaker 2: was given these certain advantages to whatever degree at birth,
Speaker 2: and more to the point, being natural born was just
Speaker 2: a disadvantage you weren't allowed to apply to be like
Speaker 2: an astronaut, like doors were just closed to you, basically,
Speaker 2: And I think that is a very kind of concerning
Speaker 2: world to live. I don't want to live in that
Speaker 2: world in all honesty and I think you could maybe
Speaker 2: have like some rationalist argument about why maybe you should
Speaker 2: do that, but I think just morally and ethically, that
Speaker 2: feels just really horrible to me. And the whole point
Speaker 2: of the movie was that actually, no matter how good
Speaker 2: the sciences at that point, there's just certain factors that
Speaker 2: make that a silly choice, just the resilience of the
Speaker 2: individual and their ability to overcome the challenges they had genetically.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a very that's a message that
Speaker 2: really resonates with me, because I think even fifty years
Speaker 2: from now, there's gonna be many things we don't understand
Speaker 2: about our biology. And I think if you try and
Speaker 2: overrationalize these things and shut doors because like oh, someone
Speaker 2: had this genotype and not that one, just inherently you're
Speaker 2: going to be missing things and you're not going to
Speaker 2: be actually as rational as you think.
Speaker 1: Well, that's true, but maybe one hundred and two years
Speaker 1: from now will be less bad at that. It would
Speaker 1: be just by Devil's advocate. It would be like saying,
Speaker 1: you know, athletes are on anabolic steroids won't ever be
Speaker 1: better than natural athletes, but they will be they can
Speaker 1: lift more and so on. Well, yeah, now, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be the Enhanced Olympics. I suppose, yeah, exactly so. But
Speaker 1: but that doesn't affect the career choices like in Gatica.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's where I think where I get
Speaker 2: missed squeamashes when it comes down to like the individual choice,
Speaker 2: because going on the athletics example, you can choose to
Speaker 2: take performs enhancing drugs or not, right, and that either
Speaker 2: shuts through a pensors for you. I think the thing
Speaker 2: that's more human to me is you don't choose how
Speaker 2: you're born, right, That's a choice that's made for you
Speaker 2: in a lot of different ways. And I think that's
Speaker 2: where the type of world that I don't want to
Speaker 2: live in is where things that are truly outside of
Speaker 2: your control in terms of like your your genome before
Speaker 2: you even born, determine kind of how you live. And
Speaker 2: that's that's not something where I can reconcile personally.
Speaker 1: I mean, interestingly, we're already in that situation, right, which
Speaker 1: is that there's a genetic lottery and you show up
Speaker 1: in the world with advantages or disadvantages. But now it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of whether your parents did the right
Speaker 1: payments and edited.
Speaker 2: Well and I think that's an important point as well.
Speaker 2: I don't want to live in a world where there's
Speaker 2: a massive stratification between the rich and the poort, not
Speaker 2: just from like a starting point of like, okay, these
Speaker 2: are the opportunities available to you in terms of schooling,
Speaker 2: but oh, this is the starting point for you in
Speaker 2: terms of your genome. Yeah, and that's something that we
Speaker 2: talk about the inheritance of wealth. Well, you literally inherit
Speaker 2: your genes. Yes, So that's something that could be a
Speaker 2: very durable advantage in some ways if it's not, you know,
Speaker 2: something that we think about very deeply before we go
Speaker 2: down that path. If we go down that path.
Speaker 1: So following up on that, can we change features in
Speaker 1: adults as in you make a change again in the
Speaker 1: future where you decide, hey, now I want to be
Speaker 1: like the equivalent of performance enhancing drugs and do that
Speaker 1: at any age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's kind of where the most
Speaker 2: of the focus is now, is like, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: for disease, of course, you know, let's say someone was
Speaker 2: born with Huntington's and now they're in their twenties, like
Speaker 2: you want to help them out and really, you know,
Speaker 2: prevent them from how any problems in their thirties. I
Speaker 2: think for a lot of diseases, one of the key
Speaker 2: questions you have to answer is like when do you
Speaker 2: have to intervene For some diseases, maybe it could be
Speaker 2: very early in life. Maybe there's certain biological processes that
Speaker 2: just take place early in life and you need to
Speaker 2: do the edit before then, or else maybe you have
Speaker 2: to come up with some other way of reversing the disease.
Speaker 2: I think, fortunately for seems like maybe most diseases you
Speaker 2: can edit an adulthood and that can actually have a
Speaker 2: very material effect on the disease. But that isn't going
Speaker 2: to necessarily always be true.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it. And so coming back to this conversation
Speaker 1: about what society will become, it may be that some
Speaker 1: of it is not an issue that you're born with
Speaker 1: and you have to deal with, but that you make
Speaker 1: a choice, just like anibolic steroids, that people are doing
Speaker 1: it that way. Do you suppose that people are going
Speaker 1: to be looking for things that involve longevity as one
Speaker 1: of their first aims with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of interest
Speaker 2: in longevity. I have a personal interest in living a
Speaker 2: healthy life. For a long time anyway. I think I'm
Speaker 2: definitely fall more on the spectrum of like health span
Speaker 2: versus life span. If I'm living to be two hundred,
Speaker 2: but i'm you know, de crefit and can't remember my kids,
Speaker 2: that's not a life I personally wanted to live. But
Speaker 2: if I live to a very healthy one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten and where you know, I die in my sleep,
Speaker 2: that sounds great to me. So I think longevity is
Speaker 2: definitely an area where gene editing could play a huge
Speaker 2: role in terms of you know, what are the processes
Speaker 2: is like, you know, some sort of mutation accumulation in
Speaker 2: certain areas that's like causing these cells to age in
Speaker 2: the way they are, and could we reverse that with
Speaker 2: genetic editing approaches. I think that is a very reasonable
Speaker 2: and potentially promising line of research. I think that in general,
Speaker 2: some of the biggest longevity things we can do though
Speaker 2: today is like, you know, heart disease like cancer obviously
Speaker 2: being a big one, and those are of course directly
Speaker 2: addressable by genetic editing as well. And it goes to
Speaker 2: interesting questions of like, should we edit millions of people
Speaker 2: in the US to reduce their risk of heart disease
Speaker 2: by thirty percent. That could say tons and tons of lives.
Speaker 2: It's a relatively large in invention for them. So obviously
Speaker 2: you'd have questions about safety. So far, crisper seems to
Speaker 2: be very very safe at least based on the trials
Speaker 2: and humans so far. So that's something we could do.
Speaker 2: Is that something we want to do as a society?
Speaker 1: What would be the pros and cons?
Speaker 2: So the pro would be you reduce let's say hard
Speaker 2: tech and it all cause mortality essentially and a huge
Speaker 2: segment of the population. The con would be there's going
Speaker 2: to be some expense associated with that. Do we want
Speaker 2: to pay that expense as a society? Maybe it saves
Speaker 2: us money in the long term because both people are
Speaker 2: more productive and you're also spending less and kind of
Speaker 2: in stage care in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And then see that as a government program that's paid
Speaker 1: for as opposed to individuals saying, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay for this.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a very interesting question as well,
Speaker 2: and I think you could see stratification there of maybe
Speaker 2: you know, frankly wealthier individuals choosing to get a lot
Speaker 2: of these types of technologies, whereas you know, is that
Speaker 2: available to everyone. That's the kind of choice for society.
Speaker 2: And then of course the big one would be safety.
Speaker 2: You only want to do that if it's extremely safe, right,
Speaker 2: because you're trying to prevent disease kind of an aggregate,
Speaker 2: so it needs to be extraordinarily safe for each individual.
Speaker 1: Do you think if you're interested in longevity, do you
Speaker 1: think you're going to see this in your lifetime where
Speaker 1: there are edits that can be made Let's say forty
Speaker 1: years from now, where you say, hey, this is great,
Speaker 1: I'm going to live longer. I'm going to expand this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 2: there's things that can maybe get you ten to twenty
Speaker 2: percent further along. Are we going to see like a doubling.
Speaker 2: I mean, that'd be great. Sure, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be root against it. I would be surprised. Frankly, we've
Speaker 2: run a natural experiment. There's billions of humans on Earth
Speaker 2: with all sorts of genomes. No one seems to live
Speaker 2: over one hundred and ten hundred and twenty. Let's say
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean you know, it's not possible, but I
Speaker 2: think that one of the areas where I think we'll
Speaker 2: see way more progress on is like health span within
Speaker 2: that period. So like if you can live to an
Speaker 2: extraordinarily healthy one hundred ten where you're hiking mountains and
Speaker 2: you're having fun with your kids, that's already a huge
Speaker 2: extension of that's like a twofold extension of life relative
Speaker 2: to what a lot of people really kind of practically experience.
Speaker 2: And I think glip ones and things like that, the
Speaker 2: obesity drugs from the Lili and Novo and others, I
Speaker 2: think that that's also kind of u shown that there
Speaker 2: can be these kind of giant mass markets in biottech.
Speaker 2: And longevity is the other one that everyone always kind
Speaker 2: of thinks about, but there's others as well. You can
Speaker 2: imagine things that mitigate like alcohol consumption or you know,
Speaker 2: other areas. I don't I don't think glip ones are
Speaker 2: going to be the only kind of trillion dollar drug
Speaker 2: in biotech, but I think it's the first, and I
Speaker 2: think hopefully that kind of inspires everyone else in biotech,
Speaker 2: including us at Mammoth, to really think more broadly and
Speaker 2: more fundamentally about, Okay, what are the things we can
Speaker 2: do that actually change society for the better overall, not
Speaker 2: just necessarily for specifical you got to start with specific
Speaker 2: things and knock out rere diseases. But I think in
Speaker 2: terms of like the long term vision of Mammoth, I
Speaker 2: think that becomes very very exciting.
Speaker 1: And I've been throwing out numbers like three years, five years, ten,
Speaker 1: But what you see, given your incredibly specific view on
Speaker 1: what is happening right now, what you're capable of doing,
Speaker 1: what is that time scale that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean, going back to the beginning of
Speaker 2: the conversation, Already, today people are being treated for sickle
Speaker 2: cell disease using crispers.
Speaker 1: That's today.
Speaker 2: I think over the next five years, for the tissues
Speaker 2: that are kind of most easily accessible, like blood and liver,
Speaker 2: people are going to be shocked at how much progress
Speaker 2: is made at curing rare diseases in those areas. And
Speaker 2: these are kind of things where it's like it happens
Speaker 2: slowly and then it happens all at once. It's very
Speaker 2: much like that. And then I think over the next
Speaker 2: ten years, you're gonna, because of you know, Mammoth, be
Speaker 2: able to see us knocking out diseases and like muscle
Speaker 2: and brain and all the other tissues of the body,
Speaker 2: and I think it's going to take time, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Of diseases to go through.
Speaker 2: But I think if we're sitting here a couple decades
Speaker 2: from now and people are still suffering from rare disease,
Speaker 2: we've done something incredibly wrong, Like things have gone off
Speaker 2: the rail somewhere, and that's insane. Like to live in
Speaker 2: a world where genetic disease is really a thing of
Speaker 2: the past would be transformative for those patients, but also
Speaker 2: I think for society generally. And I think once you've
Speaker 2: done that, that's when you in parallel, because now you're
Speaker 2: showing the safety, Now you're showing that this is an
Speaker 2: effective technology. I think you can start to dream even bigger.
Speaker 2: You can start to think about, like, you know, how
Speaker 2: do you go after reducing cardiovascular risk, how do you
Speaker 2: go after even more esoteric things like thinking about health span,
Speaker 2: Like there's certain people that have short sleep and they
Speaker 2: actually only need to sleep like three to four hours
Speaker 2: a night, Like what if we could all do that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like just really thinking about how do we transform society
Speaker 2: for the better and kind of more aggregate ways. That's
Speaker 2: really long term where I get very excited.
Speaker 1: Unlike traditional medicine, which addresses symptoms of disease, gene editing
Speaker 1: technology in general could change really fundamental aspects of who
Speaker 1: we are. And so what do you think this does
Speaker 1: to personal identity? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think to your point, this is a very different
Speaker 2: way of doing medicine. Like often medicine is treating symptoms,
Speaker 2: often very effectively, but really treating symptoms, whereas this is
Speaker 2: going into the core, into your DNA and really solving
Speaker 2: the problem at it.
Speaker 1: Right, But I mean not just helping with disease, but
Speaker 1: enhancing humans, changing who we are. So yeah, what does
Speaker 1: that do to our sense of personal identity? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think it's definitely something where we have a deep
Speaker 2: kind of personal identity obviously in terms of how we think,
Speaker 2: how we act, how we dress, and I think long term,
Speaker 2: just truly thinking like one hundred years here, maybe we
Speaker 2: start to think more of our genomes as our clothing, right,
Speaker 2: Like we think of our clothing as representing our personal identity.
Speaker 2: And that's fine, and that's something people embrace, and people
Speaker 2: of all sorts of different styles and things they do.
Speaker 2: But right now, that's not very much how we think
Speaker 2: of our genomes. But if genomes become malleable, and they
Speaker 2: become something where you really do have this option of
Speaker 2: kind of choosing what things you want to keep or change.
Speaker 2: Maybe we start to see that more as kind of
Speaker 2: extension of ourselves. That's not core in the sense of
Speaker 2: it can never change, but core in the sense of
Speaker 2: I want that to reflect who I am as an individual,
Speaker 2: and I have the choice of how that looks.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's great. Yeah, in the same way that someone
Speaker 1: might go off and get blonde hair for a while
Speaker 1: and red hair and dark hair and change color their
Speaker 1: eyes or whatever. There are ways of doing the stuff now,
Speaker 1: and there's can be better ways or more direct ways
Speaker 1: of doing it. What do you suppose that means in
Speaker 1: terms of motivation and earning something like, for example, I
Speaker 1: go to the gym and I lift weights. It's really hard.
Speaker 1: But if I could go and.
Speaker 2: Sure you get your miostatin gene blasted and you just
Speaker 2: have a huge muscles from setting home on the couch.
Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting question at the society level,
Speaker 2: because why do we care about muscles? Why do we
Speaker 2: care about other things? Like at other times in society,
Speaker 2: having pale skin has been something that people value. I
Speaker 2: mean still today in many places, and it's because oh,
Speaker 2: you don't have to go work in the farms, and
Speaker 2: that means you're a high class individual with a lot
Speaker 2: of money. Or in some societies even today and in
Speaker 2: the past, being very overweight was a sign of high
Speaker 2: status because you're not starving. And I think that what
Speaker 2: that could mean, and this is just like you know,
Speaker 2: purely hypothesizing, is maybe being healthy remains an important thing,
Speaker 2: but it's not a reflector of status in the same
Speaker 2: way it is today, which would be awesome, Like what
Speaker 2: if actually everyone is walking around super healthy, Yeah, amazing,
Speaker 2: But maybe that means that there's less of a status
Speaker 2: differentiator of oh, this person has time to go to
Speaker 2: the gym and they work very hard, so something else.
Speaker 2: But you're humans, right, we love Frankly, it seems to
Speaker 2: stratify ourselves based on status. So some new thing will
Speaker 2: come up and it'll be like, oh, they have a
Speaker 2: blue hat. That's the sign of, you know, high status,
Speaker 2: and we could pass the judgment on whether that's good
Speaker 2: or bad. But I think that's probably what would happen,
Speaker 2: is that it just means that a society is better
Speaker 2: off overall because everyone's very healthy and has the right
Speaker 2: amount of muscle, but there's a different status game being
Speaker 2: played in terms of you know, when you go to
Speaker 2: the club on a Friday or whatever.
Speaker 1: That was Trevor Martin, co founder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences,
Speaker 1: We talked about the emerging tools that allow us to
Speaker 1: edit life at its most fundamental level, the conversation and
Speaker 1: the tools he's building. This allows us to look at
Speaker 1: the near future in which we can slice out chunks
Speaker 1: of the genome, or rewrite individual letters, or even fine
Speaker 1: tune the expression of genes without altering the sequence. And
Speaker 1: eventually this gives us finer and finer control over our
Speaker 1: biological destiny in ways that we're only beginning to understand.
Speaker 1: Because these technologies are not going to only give us
Speaker 1: the chance to fix mutations, They're going to expand what
Speaker 1: is possible. They will read find the relationship between who
Speaker 1: we are and who we might become. Where we stand
Speaker 1: now is in a field of question marks that no
Speaker 1: single thinker can answer alone. Questions about the line between
Speaker 1: therapy and enhancement, between responsibility and hubris, between embracing the
Speaker 1: malleability of life and respecting everything. We don't understand about it,
Speaker 1: Only one thing seems certain. At this point, we are
Speaker 1: no longer just passengers on evolution's very long and winding road.
Speaker 1: We are taking the wheel, and with that power comes
Speaker 1: a great responsibility, the weight of choices that are going
Speaker 1: to ripple through generations, the weight of choices that will
Speaker 1: shape the genetic landscape of those who come after us.
Speaker 1: In the end, our role is going to be to
Speaker 1: learn how to annotate the book of life with great care,
Speaker 1: to correct its most tragic errors while preserving the poetry
Speaker 1: of its imperfections. We now see the genome not as
Speaker 1: a finished book, but instead as a draft in progress,
Speaker 1: and that compels us to constantly ask ourselves, how much
Speaker 1: of the story should we change? What kind of story
Speaker 1: do we want to tell? And how can we be
Speaker 1: the most careful custodians of the possibilities. Go to Eagleman
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast for more information and to find
Speaker 1: further reading. Send me an email at podcast at eagleman
Speaker 1: dot com with questions or discussion, and check out and
Speaker 1: subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of each
Speaker 1: episode and to leave comments. Until next time. I'm David Eagleman,
Speaker 1: and this is Inner Cosmos.