Assertion Partly supported
Church: Chinese government likely knew about CRISPR baby experiment
“I wouldn't characterize it as a solo effort. I've seen the author list. It's quite long, and I also find it unlikely that a government as technically astute and as engaged in observation would be unaware of such an important thing.”
Opinion
Church: Targeting HIV via CRISPR is more justifiable than Mendelian diseases
“Yeah, I think that we want an example of a disease that is very common, and most of the gene therapies are rare, whether they're editing or not, and we want something that's very serious, and certainly HIV falls in that category, So it struck me as a plausibly…”
Insight
Church: CRISPR is gene damaging rather than precision editing
“So what CRISPR does well, it's often described as editing. It really is damaging, is what it is. It's not really that good at precision editing.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Off-target edits appear low in first two CRISPR babies
“So the amount of off-target and mosaicism so far for these two babies seems to be low, but time will tell.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Embryo selection avoids Mendelian diseases without CRISPR editing
“Ignoring the fact that if you're in an IVF, PGD clinic anyway. To do your CRISPR editing of your Mendelian disease, you could just do selection for most of these things.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Church: Gene editing moratoriums will accelerate research rather than halt it
“Well, there probably will be something that looks like a pause, but it will probably be an acceleration.”
Insight
Church: Regulators favor breakthrough therapeutic platforms over incremental updates
“To some extent, I think they like new technologies more than they like the old ones. The old ones tend to fail because they're so incremental that they're no longer compared to the placebo, they're compared to whatever they're in increment over, whatever thera…”
Insight
Church: Genetic testing less than whole genome sequencing gives false assurance
“Which is not, there are a very small number of companies that provide whole genome sequencing because everything else, anything less than whole genome sequencing is not medically powerful enough. Anything less than that misses, gives you false assurance.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Dor Yeshorim has eliminated Tay-Sachs via genetic matchmaking
“And this actually works. So, Dorya Shurim has eliminated significant meningitis disease like Tay-Sachs by practicing a version of this that probably isn't perfectly generalizable, but there are versions of this that could keep a great deal of privacy.”
Opinion
Church: Genome sequencing must cost zero dollars for mass adoption
“The cost should probably be zero dollars.”
Insight
Church: The Church Lab prioritizes niceness over genius when recruiting researchers
“So then the biggest filter for me, and I tell this in the first interview, the first conversation I have, is we're looking for people that are nice. We're not necessarily looking for geniuses. We got plenty of geniuses. We're looking for people that are nice.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Genetic recoding can render any organism resistant to all viruses
“Biocontainment using recoding is a way that we can make any organism resistant to all viruses and horizontal transfer. Most of these things now work.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Lab achieved 10,000 gene edits in a single cell
“So we set the record of 62 edits in the pigs, and we now have edits, so we have 10,000 edits in a single cell.”
Insight
Church: Mammoth project aims for ecological hybrids, not true de-extinction
“But for the mammoth, there are lots of reasons. Both for the environment and for enriching the diversity of a living endangered species. So this is not about de-extinction. This is about making hybrids, and many of the species are already hybrids of multiple s…”
Assertion Partly supported
Church: 20% CRISPR T-cell edit efficiency is sufficient in adult HIV trials
“So first of all, in the approved clinical trials on adults that have HIV AIDS, there is a lot of mosaicism. It's considered part of the clinical trial, and maybe as little as 20% are properly edited, meaning double nulls. That's enough though, because all the …”
Opinion
Church: Regulatory agencies smooth technological progress out rather than slowing it
“They are not agents of slowing things down. They're actually agents of smoothing things out.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Only 1% to 4% face severe Mendelian genetic risks
“It's this strange thing where one to four percent of the population will have a very big impact on their life. And the bottom line for their care providers, millions of dollars, huge impact on the whole family, if you're one of the unlucky four percent.”
Insight
Church: Strong encryption lets individuals refuse genomic subpoenas
“And if it's encrypted so that even you can't hack it, then you can just say, sorry, it's out of my hands. I don't have my genome. If you want my genome, you're going to have to steal it from me. Right? And I think that's where we are today, finally.”
Opinion
Church: Most medical data sharing for research is an inaccessible silo
“What a lot of people call sharing, even to this day, you know, 13 years later, they call sharing medical data for research is really a silo that's hard to get into. Unfortunately, it's not impossible to get into. It's not really encrypted the way you would wan…”
Insight
Church: Lead researchers should sometimes serve as test subjects in studies
“Sometimes it's important for the top researcher to also be a guinea pig in the study.”
Assertion Supported
Church: Double-null CCR5 mutations increase susceptibility to West Nile virus
“That is correct. So there's a risk for almost every preventative and therapy, and this is the risk in this case, in most populations that's considered a smaller medical risk.”
Assertion Partly supported
Church: NIH and NCI allocate only 1-5% of budgets to prevention
“If you look at the pie charts for a number of government agencies, including the NCI, NIH in general, is preventative is sort of in the one to five percent of the pie chart, but its payback is enormous.”
Insight
Church: Labs should avoid competition by collaborating or leaving crowded fields
“You try not to compete with other labs if you can avoid it. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but you can avoid it by inviting them to work with them. Leaving alone fields where there's plenty of momentum and a lack of interest in collaboration.”
Insight
Church: Multidisciplinary teams require hiring people who are already multidisciplinary
“I mainly recruit people who are multilingual, multidisciplinary, because I found it's hard to build a multidisciplinary team From disciplinarians. You have to have a lot of people who already have done two things, and even if you get two people who have done t…”
George Church