Brian Bishop's keyboard in Austin, Texas was literally smoking. A nationally recognized speed typist, he prepared a polite request for a famous futurist from the UK. Wanted advice on my "design babies startup". Over the years, the 29-year-old programmer and bitcoin investor has left many comments on the Internet about “improving” a person. He is a transhumanist, that is, he believes that people can be improved with the help of technology. He has long urged others to do something with the current state of people.
And so, he decided to do it on his own.
Designer babies: genetically modified babies
In May, Bishop and his business partner Max Berry, a former research scientist at a biotech company, "started a company focused on the production of designer babies and the genetic engineering of the human germ line." He noted that "the laboratory work has begun" and "we already have the first client in the person of the parent."
He said he wants ethical advice to support the distinguished geneticist George Church of Harvard University, whose list of potential genetic enhancements - a list of genes including PCSK9 and CCR5 presented in dozens of papers - has been dubbed a posthuman "wish list".
Bishop hopes to make these possibilities a reality. A copy of his business proposal says his venture plans to allow parents to have transgenic children who can “build muscle without weightlifting,” who have either long-living genes or AB + blood, meaning they can get transfusions from anyone.
In November, a Chinese biophysicist announced that he had created the first babies with edited genes. The news caused a global outcry and led to China's tough measures against the scientist. Ever since He Jiankui's initiative was unveiled, science leaders have been quick to speak out about unethical research. Some wished to impose a moratorium on the creation of genetically modified children. Others say that detailed technical criteria and medical guidelines are needed so that IVF embryos can be changed safely and for purposes that the medical community agrees with. Gene editing experts from China, the United States and the United Kingdom are planning to create another committee to oversee all of this.
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While the new guidelines and public censure may keep professional scientists with government grants in check, they have nothing to hold back people like Bishop, a "relatively famous self-taught biohacker" (as his resume says), who spends thousands of dollars promoting his own visions of creating genetic superpowers for newborns.
A few weeks ago, Antonio Regalado, a reporter for the MIT Technology Review, received several fundraising slides outlining Bishop's business proposal: projections of billions of dollars in revenue from creating hundreds of thousands of improved children. The person who sent the slides wished to remain anonymous, but could not express confidence in whether this was "nonsense" or "terribly plausible." The man expressed concern that transhumanists are ready to translate these ideas into reality and decided to rivet a denunciation on Bishop.
According to Bishop's slides, design people will not be created the way they were in China, by injecting gene-editing molecules into the egg at the time of fertilization. Instead, in the biohacking process, gene therapy will be performed on the testes of a male volunteer. Thus, the sperm containing the enhanced DNA can be used to fertilize a woman. According to the plan, Bishop and Berry decided that with $ 2 million, they could quickly move from animal testing to the first volunteer. “The result: the first person with transgenic sperm, and we are starting to collect pre-orders,” says the funding slide.
“I think this is a largely flawed and deeply disturbing approach to the genetic modification of humans,” says Gunes Taylor, a fellow at the Francis Crick Institute in London, who also reviewed the proposal. "It is also extremely disturbing that they claim they already have a first member."
Others say this idea borders on absurdity. For example, these two entrepreneurs say their target market is “the entire future of humanity,” and they propose a plan to spread a gene therapy virus that contains all the cumbersome useful information about genetic instructions. “My reaction is that I’m wondering if it’s worth taking it seriously at all,” says Samuel Sternberg, assistant professor at Columbia University. He wonders if Bishop's real goal is to be provocative and in the spotlight.
Other people familiar with Bishop's plans also think that this is mostly empty talk, however, there may be something behind it. "It's much less advanced than Jiankui He, who had substantial capital and knew what he was doing," says Church, a genetic engineer at Harvard who spoke to Bishop. Church admits that the sperm approach is technically feasible, but will require "significant debugging."
"It can definitely happen - so we need to talk about it." The geneticist, who holds an advisory position to a large number of companies and genetic ventures, says he would not agree to such a role in Bishop's case. He told Bishop to seek ethics advice and get FDA approval, and conduct proper clinical trials. “I give advice to just about anyone, especially if I think they need it,” Church says.
Dude with cue ball
Bishop and Berry declined to name a potential client or to say if one of them plans to volunteer during a telephone interview. Bishop - with a barrel shape and two meters in height - said he would like to include a weight-controlling gene in the improvements. The men said they had just begun preliminary animal studies and were not close to trying to have a baby. Bishop says it will take several years. “We haven't taken on people yet, but we think it's ethical,” he says. “People are now on a witch hunt to find the culprit. I'm afraid they won't find them."
Bishop is already well known in the cryptocurrency space: until recently, he worked for LedgerX, a bitcoin exchange, and even added a couple of lines of code to the underlying software that runs this digital currency. However, his most notable public roles are as a facilitator: he moderated discussion forums, appeared at conferences, published transcripts. He transcribes all telephone conversations. Noah Horn, administrator of Type Racer, an online typing competition, says Bishop is "in the lead of all English-speaking typists in the world" with a typing speed of 173.66 words per minute.
“I describe him as the person closest to artificial intelligence in human form,” says Andrew Hessel, CEO of Humane Genomics, a start-up gene therapy company that says he has known Bishop for several years. "He's a ghost in the car."
Regalado first met Bishop last May at a scientific conference called the Genome Project – Write, hosted by Church at the Harvard Medical Campus. This meeting brought together people interested in the futuristic applications of genetic engineering. Bishop told him that he was working on a design babies project, but what got Regalado's attention most was his involvement with Bitcoin, which then costs $ 9,072 per coin. He could have been obscenely rich even then. There was great logic in paying for CRISPR babies with Bitcoin.
There was no reason to take Bishop too seriously at the time. But that changed after news from China. Hardly anyone expected the first CRISPR babies to arrive so soon. It is now clear that the chance to improve the human genome is very attractive. Chinese researcher He ignored the advice of some colleagues, who warned him not to continue. At the same time, there were also signals of tacit approval. This summer, the UK's leading ethics council disagreed with conventional wisdom, releasing a report saying that there is nothing wrong with trying to "influence" the abilities, bodies or attitudes of children by altering their DNA.
Some Kulibin enthusiasts from the world of biology also do not believe that governments need to intervene in what happens to the genomes of people, and some of them have also begun to independently use untested gene therapy. These experiments were, for the most part, useless and calculated to attract attention. One of the entrepreneurs who stuck a syringe full of DNA into his thigh was later found dead in a sensory deprivation chamber. Another, Josia Zayner, injected himself with "gene-editing ingredients" during a 2017 conference in San Francisco.
In short, in the biohacker community, the idea that someone might try to change their own sperm-producing cells is not going to be strange. “If Brian said he intends to modify another person, I would say no, you're crazy,” Hessel says. "But if he wanted to do it to himself, I would say: well, okay …".
Mississippi cum
Regalado has never been able to determine whether Bishop is sitting on a fortune of bitcoins. He said that he "made and lost millions of dollars" on the volatile digital currency, but was skeptical about the time when coins were worth less, perhaps missing the chance for a true digital revolution. However, he remains a highly paid programmer who can make $ 600 an hour or more.
This means that Bishop has more money than other genetically engineered biologists, and can direct their efforts by buying equipment for them or giving them jobs. "A lot of biohackers have a pretty humble background," says Zayner, CEO of The Odin, which sells CRISPR kits to enthusiasts for $ 159. "He paid other biohackers to work for him."
One person Bishop recently brought in a job is David Ishee, a Mississippi oil worker and dog breeder who made the news for trying to genetically modify dogs. Working in a barn that became a laboratory, Ishi mixed jellyfish DNA and mastiff sperm in the hopes of creating glowing puppies. He has not yet succeeded, despite inseminating at least six dogs with modified sperm.
Ishi revealed that after meeting Bishop and Berry, he also tried to add DNA constructs to his own sperm sample. It was Bishop who sent money through PayPal for all the necessary reagents. “He paid me for some fluorescent DNA staining kits,” Ishi says. “It's a couple hundred dollars. It's expensive for me. It was like "if you need anything, let me know." Of course, I've never tried to impregnate anyone with this, haha."
Based on his experience with dogs, Ishi says that the amateur biologist has no chance of making a designer kid by working on the weekend. “Is DIY biology getting close to making CRISPR babies? Not even close,”he says. "But if some rich man pays a scientist to work, it will happen."
“We shouldn't talk about Brian, but about an invisible gray area, a layer of the gray market for biotechnology, where people with resources can get their way. Will Bishop and Berry handle it? I have no idea. Obviously they need a woman. I think they planned it. Because the question: do you want a mutant child - a strange start for a conversation."
Laboratory in Ukraine
Bishop and Berry pay for the services of a Ukrainian laboratory where they conduct research experiments on mice. It is part of the Institute of Gerontology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev. The virtual tour for Regalado was conducted by Dmitry Krasnienkov via Skype.
Bishop organized the tour after being asked to demonstrate the scientific basis of his project. Krasnienkov, dressed in white clothes, carried his laptop through rooms with lasers, micromanipulators and cell growing areas. He later said the site was shared by the institute and the private company Geron, which is researching telomerase, a biomarker of aging (not to be confused with the American company of the same name).
“This is a sleeping box in which we can sleep during experiments,” says Krasnienkov, turning the webcam.
“The Wi-Fi coverage in the lab is pretty good,” notes Bishop. He also interested in the tour, since he had not yet been to Ukraine. He paid for experiments by transferring bitcoins to Europeans.
“We are conducting operations here,” the Ukrainian continued.
Previously, Bishop had sent Regalado a photograph of an opened mouse lying on a microscope support, as well as a close-up of trace dyes injected into the testicles. Krasnienkov said that so far, experiments have been carried out on about 30 mice. In a few cases, researchers have had limited success in incorporating genetic material into animal testicles. This can be done by injecting invisible strands of DNA and applying an electric shock to the sperm-producing cells to take on the genetic burden. So far, no transgenic mice have been created.
During the dialogue, Krasnienkov said that he was not yet ready to see people changed through sperm - until more research was done. “I don’t want anyone to do it in a hurry; I don’t want to do it quickly.”
Unanswered emails
Ever since Regalado first spoke to Bishop in December, he and Berry began to question the sperm alteration approach. Berry, who has a bachelor's degree in biology, believes they should adapt the Velocimouse technique invented by a New York biotech company as a quick way to create mice with non-standard DNA. This method will include the processing of human IVF embryos: first, the removal of stem cells, and then, after carrying out genetic manipulations with them, their introduction into the second embryo. That would be a radical way to make a human child.
You can turn a blind eye to Bishop and Berry's attempts, as they may fail. But holding back people interested in creating designer babies will be difficult. “Will the FDA start putting a spoke in the wheel if we provide this technology to parents in private with parental consent? Berry asks. "I expect there will be legal battles that I hope we can fund and support." Currently, the creation of genetically modified children would be illegal in the United States, but in other countries - like Ukraine - the conditions are not so strict. Bishop is skeptical of the law - a lesson he learned from his work with bitcoin, a digital currency that is not controlled by any central bank.
In general, the scientific community reacted negatively to the experiments in China, but biohackers like Bishop and Zayner believe that He did not deserve this because he was trying to take the obvious next step in human history. During the Hong Kong International Summit in November, when He was explaining himself to the people, Bishop was among a million people who watched the science event online.
Bishop said that none of the ethicists he sent letters to answered him. Anders Sandberg, the futurist Bishop asked for advice last May, says he should have answered. “I'm honestly saying that improvement can be a good thing and that really is the goal of medicine,” Sandberg says. However, he believes that programmers like Bishop suffer from a kind of pride. “Everything looks like code to them. These are just letters - how can they be complicated? But most biologists know these poor guys will find it’s not that simple.”
“Brian doesn't seem crazy to me - I think he's a reasonable person. If he has a company that offers something, he must show that he can provide it, and it will be difficult. If I wanted to apply this technology to my child, it must be very well documented; I don't want to be the father of a guinea pig. It will be difficult to prove that this works. I really hope we can get the right designer babies, but getting it too early or too bad will lead to backlash. We are not ready for this."
Eventually, Regalado wondered what Bishop's motives were. He spoke openly about his ideas, but fell silent when asked about his family. No one knows why he became so deeply obsessed with human cultivation. Bishop said his motivation is very difficult.
And he added:
Do I need to fight this?
Vladimir Kishinets, Ph. D., coordinator of the Russian Association of Futurologists, shared his opinion:
And personal opinion “not as an expert, but as a woman” was presented by Natalia Seraya, from the LeadRoom lead generation agency:
As you can see, not everything is so simple.
Ilya Khel