Transcription
Remember the tick situation that had everybody in an uproar? If you live in these parts of the country, you should start taping up your legs like this guy. They will actively hunt their prey. They are more hostile than other ticks. They move three times faster than the average tick. They can give you alpha-gal syndrome. The lone star tick. The lone star tick. Known as the lone star tick. We'll all thank Bill Gates. Yeah. That tick. I started digging on it about a month ago to see if Bill Gates was actually behind it. And in the midst of digging for truth, I came across a much more disturbing figure. This guy. He's been used in a few of the viral clips on the matter. Now, if your algorithm hasn't served you up the lone star tick story, don't worry, I'll get you caught up to speed. But I thought, let's see who this guy is and see if he's connected to Mr. Gates. His name is Matthew Liao, and he believes eating red meat is objectively wrong and is a problem that could be solved by making populations artificially allergic to red meat. The technology to do this is already here.
During a panel discussion featuring Matthew Liao, he said some pretty disturbing things. In fact, all the panelists said some stuff that made my hair erect. I don't like the way I said that. Like my arm hair, it stood up. How do people say that? What's the saying for that? He's proposing to create a human genome from scratch. Incels, germline modification of human beings. In other words, like creating babies that don't have biological parents because they are created from scratch. Right? I mean, I'm not I mean, ultimately that could happen. Topic, yeah. Okay. [laughter]
This is George Church, known as the father of modern genomics. He's the founder and associate of a couple companies that Bill Gates has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into. They are building DNA from scratch. You see, GMO is no longer just for corn. DNA editing is for mankind, the Homo sapien. And these lab coats are sitting around discussing the ethics of it. Is it right or wrong to edit the human genome? But there is one problem with these scientists, a problem that will prove itself to be the driver behind the inevitable future of wildly unethical procedures like human trait selection, human optimization, human enhancement, right? Get super soldiers. What happens when science catches up to God? Bear with me, I know that's a loaded question that assumes a lot. For example, I don't know who God is to you. But keep an open mind, you'll see where we're going with this. Let's go to the desk.
Ethics is the practice and examination of our standards for morality, what is right or wrong. That is influenced by culture, religion, life experience, personal values, and more. You can't talk morality without talking about religion, and you can't talk religion without talking about spirituality. So, you can't talk about human gene editing without addressing the tension of playing God. That is, according to the Innovative Genomics Institute, exercising a level of power that only God should have. Bill Gates isn't a scientist, but he's a filthy-rich enabler of science. He's invested in things like lab-grown breast milk and GMO mosquitoes, and now human gene editing. Scientific miracles. Bit of an oxymoron, ain't it? Something that was once associated with the divine and possible is now something that mankind can replicate in a lab. Is this a problem?
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Beneficial blood sucking. This is where we're going to start. This is a paper that is arguing for the weaponizing of the lone star tick in order to induce an artificial red meat allergy to the general public. The entry of this paper would go on to stoke a massive social media wave garnering millions and millions of views on the subject. We argue that eating meat is morally and permissibly. We argue that tick-borne AGS is a moral bioenhancer. If and when it motivates people to stop eating meat. AGS or alpha-gal syndrome is a meat allergy that is developed after a bite from a tick. Now, Bill Gates has invested undisclosed amounts of money into different lab-grown meat companies including Impossible Foods, Eat Just, Upside Foods, and the popular Beyond Meat. So, the accusation that ticks make you allergic to most red meats, which would then force you to eat Bill Gates' lab-grown meat if you want to still eat red meat.
This is Flutter, previously known as Oxitec. Flutter bioengineers mosquitoes. Yes, GMO mosquitoes. They use a technique called RIDL or RIDL to modify a male strain of mosquito. And once it mates, the offspring of the GMO male and regular female dies before mature. So, you got the GMO male, you got the female right here. You get an offspring that these two make, right? And then this guy just absolutely dies before it gets mature. I hate mosquitoes. The diseases they spread kill more than half a million people every year. Mosquitoes kill more people in one day than sharks kill in 100 years, according to Bill Gates. This was back in 2018, right? When everyone was happier and Bill Gates was lucky adored. Now, why are we talking about this? Because they started with mosquitoes, but you will soon see that this transitioned into something that is making Bill Gates look a little bit more like a culprit here when it comes to the lone star tick thing. There's been a steady tube feeding of funds from the Gates Foundation. The bioengineering company has netted somewhere north of 71.4 million since 2018 from the foundation alone. But it was in 2021 when all of a sudden Flutter was getting money from the Gates Foundation for a different reason. Flutter had just set out to see if they can create the world's first friendly tick. And with the same exact design, the offspring of the GMO male and regular female, this is the offspring, that sucker would die. And they were targeting the Asian blue tick. The Asian blue tick is considered to be the most consequential parasite in livestock worldwide. It transmits bovine babesiosis. It's a cow disease known as Southern cattle fever and it costs rural farmers billions each year in parts of Asia, Africa, Central and South America. So, if Flutter can deploy this modified GMO tick on a farm, then that means that its offspring is going to continually die, thus killing off the Asian blue tick in theory. This means less disease for the cows and a greater livestock economy. Are we talking about prospering farmers?
You see, Bill Gates is unlikely connected to the lone star tick problem. Because here's the thing, the molecule that gives you the allergic reaction to red meat, it's also present in lab-grown meat. It's a sugar molecule and the funny thing is that that sugar molecule is actually even more abundant in lab-grown meat, which means that if you get bit by the lone star tick, it's actually the lab-grown meat that will do you in even worse than traditional regular off-the-animal red meat. So, I say Bill Gates is off the hook right now, but that does not mean that someone is not trying to have a future where this Lone Star tick is weaponized.
"Climate change is a really big problem. We don't really know how to solve it, but it turns out that we can use human engineering to help us address climate change. People eat too much meat, and if they were to cut down on their consumption of meat, then they would it would actually really help the planet. So, possibly we can use human human engineering to make it the case that we're intolerant to certain kinds of meat to certain kinds of bovine bovine proteins. And there's actually analogs of this in life. There's this thing called the Lone Star tick where if it bites you, you will become allergic to meat."
In 2016, the World Science Festival brought up a panel of scientists to discuss the ethics of altering the human genome. "If you now can begin to augment humans like the size of humans, right? And what we care about is just the overall greenhouse gas emissions. You can have one large-sized child or two medium-sized children or three smaller children. It's In that context, it's much more liberty-enhancing."
In light of minimizing our greenhouse gas footprint, Matthew is painting a picture of what it'd look like to augment the human genome so that we produce smaller people by design. "Yeah, so on this panel, Matthew is kind of the crazy wild card little brother. You don't really know what he's going to say. He is the idealist, but in 50 years from now they're all going to say that he was a scientific prophet. We're laughing at him now, but wait till you are able to select your children off of a fast food menu and say you want three fun-size children instead of one big one. We'll see who's laughing then."
"So, if I'm an entrepreneur right now, this is great. I can go raise I can go raise a billion dollars to start a company to synthesize human genomes cuz there's trillion-dollar market opportunities, and you're just rattling them off."
And this is Drew Endy. He sees the business side of where we're headed, and he's concerned. "I think the primary discomfort for me arises with the way this is playing out, such that there's a veneer of some type of acceptability combined with a path that leads to open season entrepreneurship. We're looking at this trend right now within the realm of academia, smart people in lab coats. But there was another realm that is just as impactful, if not more, and that is smart people in business suits. It takes more than some brilliant scientist to thrust new technology into the hands of the general public. It takes savvy businessmen. Big Pharma, they will have a huge role in patenting, distributing, and normalizing human genome editing technology under the guise of medicine. Eventually gene editing will be something that is here by way of procedure or pill that our insurance can cover, and it will be ordinary, just like kitchen cabinets."
Well, this conference was 10 years ago, how far have we come since these conversations? This is KJ. He was diagnosed with a severe disease called urea cycle disorder. With this disease, KJ would have to spend his life virtually avoiding protein as his body doesn't have the necessary tools to rid itself of what's left after breaking down protein foods, nitrogen, a waste product. Nitrogen accumulates as highly toxic ammonia and significantly impairs his nervous system. KJ was on track for a devastatingly hard life when it was the bright idea of a researcher at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to try something that was never done before, editing the genes of KJ. Perhaps if they can develop an infusion drug that travels to the liver and edits its genes to get it to properly get rid of nitrogen, KJ could have a chance at a better life. And just after a few days of the treatment, KJ was able to tolerate more protein. The color returned to his cheeks, and he was normal.
The scientific tech used to heal KJ is known as CRISPR. CRISPR is the prominent front-running gene editing procedure that we're building scientific and medical infrastructure around. When we talk about playing God medicine, CRISPR is what we are often referencing. We've entered into a time of what scientists are calling their CRISPR revolution. CRISPR works quite simply. A benign bacterium carries a special enzyme straight to the DNA of the cell. Right, so what's the chauffeur? This enzyme is called Cas9. Cas9 is the VIP and synthetic RNA right instructor tells Cas9 to target a specific piece of the DNA and go in for a tiny little snip. And like molecular little scissors, Cas9 goes in to make a cut on the DNA. And that's basically CRISPR. The body's natural repair system is going to go ahead and patch up the cut and with that you just buffed out a bad gene. CRISPR has its obvious problems. An obvious effect, right? If I showed this to my now 8-year-old nephew, he's going to say, I'm going to ask him, "Hey, what's the biggest risk here?" He's going to say, "Well, what if Cas9 goes in and it mis-targets? Let's say that it [music] goes for something it wasn't supposed to go for." Wait, my nephew's 10. If Cas9 hits the wrong target, this is known as an off-target effect. Off-target effect, permanent change of the human genome inviting malfunction into the body. But then there are these these way down the road questions about what we might be able to do if we really got to the point that we're not creating a synthetic human genome in a cell, bringing people to life whose genomes we have synthesized. It gives us potentially a capacity to control the nature of these individuals, creating humans who are resistant to viral infection and resistant to cancer development. We have a capacity to begin to try to make people turn out the way we want.
This is Gregory Kaebnick. He's the final panelist and he uses words that they've all said some stuff. Honestly, if you guys have time, this is one of the most riveting conversations I've ever listened to. But he says some stuff here that worries me. Humans turning out the way that we want. Who is "we" and what is the human that we want? And I don't think we're talking about some lofty powers that be kind of figure when we reference "we" here. I think Gregory is talking about a future where we do have organs and tissues that are resistant to disease. They were intentionally tailored that way and with the use of this synthetic DNA and DNA editing. That's the human we want, right? Now, if there is a powers that be situation, I think we can examine a figure like Bill Gates who has a bit of a Wizard of Oz aura to them and this is again the largest private foundation in the world when we talk about Bill and Melinda Gates with unlimited amounts of money to throw at whatever they want. We're recognizing that Bill Gates is still an entrepreneur. Now, Bill Gates is just a front-facing archetype of this Wizard of Oz type powers that be type entrepreneur, but this isn't really specifically about Bill Gates. I believe there is a shared faith between a figure like him and these scientists and these idealists. Let's address that feeling you've had probably watching this entire video, that ick with the attention of playing God. The enormity of the power of someone like a Bill Gates is beyond most of our comprehension. They get to alter entire communities as they see fit by their moral code. And with a Bill Gates and these Wizard of Oz type entrepreneurs putting in significant jet fuel in the engine of these scientists who are running with the ideas, we have to ask, what is the moral code of a Bill Gates? In other words, who is his God? Bill Gates was asked this directly and we'll go over what his answer was. But first, are you going to choose the gender of your next baby?
In casual conversation following a basketball game with some friends, excuse the fact that we're dressed as Uncle Drew just for 2 seconds. Exhausted, we sat on the bench after some hoops and an expecting father among this group was asked by another, "Wow, it's really cool that you're about to have a baby girl. Are you going to choose the gender of your next baby?" Baffled, another friend of mine, they turned and was like, "Wait, we can choose the gender of our babies now?" Shout out my boy Alair, he's getting married. This is his retirement from the game. You see, we have a little ick when discussing GMO, gene editing, gene gender selection, lab-grown foods. Anytime we modify DNA, right, the code of life, the question must be asked, are we going too far? Here's the thinking behind the ick. Once you touch the code of life, designed and created by God, you are in error. I think most of us feel this ick, [music] right, even if we don't believe in God in the traditional sense, right, maybe we view the world from the lens of chance or we subscribe to something like metaphysics. Nonetheless, it doesn't matter, there is a problem with this playing God accusation. Can you spot it?
When the Rolling Stones asked Bill Gates about religion, his response was, "I owe it to try and reduce the iniquity in the world. That's kind of a religious belief." And asked if he believed in God, his response was, "Mankind felt the need for creation myths. Science has filled in some of the realm, not all, that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say it was generated by random numbers, it does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view. I think it makes sense to believe in God." That his >> [music] >> answer kind of teetered back and forth like a metronome. Now, I don't really care to speculate on Gates' explicit beliefs. Again, this isn't really about Gates. I'm just trying to insert a thought here that not explicitly believing in a religion does not mean that you have no religion. Is science determining right and wrong for our world leaders? If so, science is their religion. That means any scientific development, regardless of context, >> [music] >> is permissible if it's perceived as a net positive. So, if I take a human and I snatch a piece of DNA, and and they don't develop heart disease because I've optimized their genes, right, this is a good thing, all is well in the kingdom of science. What we have here is a group of scientists, idealists, and Wizard of Oz type entrepreneurs looking at science as their moral compass. It's not that these folks think that they are God, it's just that when you solve a God-sized problem with science and tech, the suggestion is that you begin to decline the function of God. The issue for these people isn't stepping on God's toes. The issue is stepping in God's shoes, displacing God. Because if science and technology can enhance our morality, as the writers of the benefits of blood-sucking paper says, then science and technology is what governs our morality, which I think makes us an objectively flimsy human.
But what does it mean to be human? What does it look like to exist in a world where the power to solve outsized problems is finally harnessed? How far do we go to end human suffering? And who is supposed to make that decision? Well, let's address the playing God tension head-on here. All the scientific investments shown on Gates' YouTube channel is life-altering and death toll affecting. And when I hear these scientists go on, they're advocating for a future of a more optimized human. We're looking to end human suffering and artificially create a better human. I don't know, is that a fair end game to assume here? In the pursuit of perfection, do we reach a point of self-destruction?
In the book of Genesis, there is the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind banding together to build a tower that could reach up into the heavens so that they could make a name for themselves. But God scattered mankind by giving them different languages to cease the building of the tower. Scholars go back and forth on exactly what the people were seeking. Did pride and hubris overcome them to think they could [music] be equal to God? Were they driven by curiosity to simply discover God? Did the people seek answers from the stars and the constellations, displacing God? See, we've advanced far enough to mimic God's creative systems. [music] But I argue he's no less God because we found a way to perversely uh copy after his >> [music] >> creative said creative systems. Maybe playing God bothers you because you have to forfeit your enchantment around the miracle of mankind. But I'd argue because we've learned to build a chromosome or two and learn to edit DNA does not necessarily mean that creation is less miraculous. I had a lot of fun writing on this subject because it's impossible to iron out my thoughts without challenging them. I didn't want to come across as a video like, oh, playing God, ew. Instead, I've expanded and reinforced my view of God as a confessing Christian myself. But, what do you think? Do you agree with where we currently are in science? Do you have some hesitations? Are you saying, hey, full throttle? Let me know below. I'm a good about you either way.