Fertility Inc.: The Embryo Editing Dinner

Hey, it's Jess.

And Ryan, tickets for our live show in Los Angeles

are on sale now.

Join us Tuesday, April 28th at the LRA Theater at 8 p.m.

There'll be special guests, conversations

about the business of Hollywood,

and afterwards, we'll stick around to meet you all.

Find a link in our show notes

to get your tickets before they sell out,

which they did very quickly last time.

See you there.

Let's travel back to the summer.

It's late July.

We're in the Bay Area in San Francisco

at this ultra-luxury restaurant called Quince.

Our colleague, Emily Glazer,

is describing a dinner she learned about a while ago.

She talked to some of the people who were there.

There was a whole group of Silicon Valley elite

and scientists that were in a private room

at the back of this restaurant,

which had vintage finish furniture.

At the center of the group was the evening's host.

Brian Armstrong is there,

wearing all black, kind of holding court.

Brian Armstrong is the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Coinbase.

The US's biggest crypto company.

And the evening kicked off

with a central question for the attendees.

How might they bring the powerful and highly debated

medical technology known as embryo editing to fruition?

Embryo editing.

Going into an embryo and tweaking its DNA.

In other words, genetically engineering a baby.

This was the idea that was on the table that night,

along with the farm to table cuisine.

There was basically called the embryo editing dinner.

It was called the embryo editing dinner.

Yes.

Well, a calendar invite that I reviewed

that went out to attendees

described as embryo editing dinner.

We asked Brian Armstrong for an interview

but through a representative he declined.

But the topic of the conversation to be clear was,

should we edit an embryo or can we edit an embryo?

You know what? It was actually neither of those.

It was we are going to edit an embryo.

So one more big picture question

before we dig into the details.

What's at stake here?

Life as we know it?

Welcome to the journal.

Our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knutson.

It's Friday, March 27th.

Coming up.

One final story from the fringes of the fertility industry.

And this one is very fringe.

Today, Silicon Valley's quest

to genetically engineer a baby.

This episode of the journal is presented

by Intuit Enterprise Suite.

If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it,

if there's one entity here and one here and one here and one here,

if scaling your business feels like starting over,

you need the Intuit ERP.

Intuit Enterprise Suite.

The AI Native ERP is here.

From the makers of QuickBooks,

learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP.

For adults with Crohn's disease

or ulcerative colitis symptoms,

every choice matters.

Trampaya offers self-injection

or intravenous infusion from the start.

Trampaya is administered as injections under the skin

or infusions through a vein every four weeks,

followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trampaya,

proper training is required.

Trampaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults

with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease

and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

Serious allergic reactions

and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur.

Before treatment, your doctor should check you

for infections and tuberculosis.

Tell your doctor if you have an infection,

flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine.

Explore what's possible.

Ask your doctor about Trampaya today.

Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more

or visit trampayaradio.com.

When it comes to reproductive technology,

we are on the threshold of a new frontier.

Today's gene editing techniques allow scientists

to cut, edit, and insert DNA with remarkable precision.

It's now possible to rewrite a child's genetic code

before they're even born.

But while this has been technically possible for a while now,

it's only known to have been done once by one scientist.

A Chinese researcher has shaken the international science community.

He claims to have created the world's first genetically edited babies.

Dr. Headey.

There is a Chinese scientist named Hu Jien Kui,

who in 2009, was a scientist who was a scientist

who was a scientist who was a scientist

who was a scientist who was a scientist

who was a scientist who was a scientist

who in 2018, claimed to have done embryo, et.

He shocked the world with this news

that he had produced children genetically altered as embryos

to be immune to HIV.

The embryos were then implanted into the mother

and Lulu and Nana were born earlier this month.

As you perhaps could imagine,

there were a lot of people that were very upset about this

for a wide variety of reasons.

Promanent scientists denounced her.

I mean, I think it's very disturbing.

It's inappropriate.

It goes against all of the guidelines

that were established.

Hajin Kwei was sentenced to three years in prison

by Chinese authorities.

And today, many scientists and doctors remain convinced

that embryo editing is not ready to unleash on the world.

As recently as 2025,

there was this whole coalition of scientists,

biotech companies, patient advocates

that called for a 10-year moratorium

on trying to bring an edited embryo to term,

unless there's a whole global regulatory framework

and consensus on ethical and safety issues.

Why are people concerned about this technology?

All right, there's a bunch of things that play here.

Number one is, what could pass on to future generations?

When you edit an embryo, it changes that person's DNA.

But tweaks made at the embryo stage

can also be heritable.

Meaning, scientists aren't just messing around

with one person's genetic code,

but potentially they're kids too, and they're kids' kids.

So if any of those edits goes wrong,

the impact could be huge.

This whole idea, they call it off-target genetic consequences.

But there's another concern,

and it's less to do with the science of embryo editing

and more to do with what it could mean for society.

Many boosters of embryo editing talk about it

as a way to eliminate debilitating genetic diseases

to prevent human suffering before it even begins.

But critics, like the supporters of that moratorium,

worry that once the technology is out of the bag,

people won't stop at just carrying diseases.

Even in this moratorium that they wrote,

they talked about how it could potentially be applied

for personal enhancement.

They use the term designer babies,

and they even say in this moratorium,

the possibility of eugenics,

which they describe as the programmed enhancement

of offspring for a privileged few,

shaping or even bifurcating evolution.

Hmm, right, there could be some group of people

that are enhanced, and therefore smarter,

better, stronger, faster,

and then they could pass that on to their own offspring,

and then suddenly you have like a new class of human.

Embryo editing with the intention

of bringing a baby to term is illegal

in many countries around the world, including the US.

Today, the Food and Drug Administration

can't even consider applications for clinical trials

if they involve creating a pregnancy

with an edited embryo.

But that hasn't stopped powerful people in Silicon Valley

from wanting to do just that,

including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Brian Armstrong is one of the most outspoken people

in the tech community on all this.

Armstrong has told people that he thinks gene editing technology

could produce children that are less prone to heart disease,

that have lower cholesterol,

that have stronger bones to prevent osteoporosis.

Armstrong has made it clear he's interested in edits

that would prevent diseases,

but he's also expressed interest in the exact thing

those scientists were worried about,

designing better humans.

It's what some Silicon Valley referred to as enhancements.

That was a word that came up a bunch with my sources,

enhancements.

Yeah, well, here's some diseases,

and we'll also get some taller, more handsome people

with full heads of hair.

Yes, and they might talk about that more like muscle mass

or stronger hearts.

He has made comparisons to the movie,

Gatica, the sci-fi classic.

First of all, if you haven't seen Gatica, highly recommend.

The movie stars Ethan Hawke, Umeth Thurman, and Jude Law,

and it's set in a future where embryos are carefully screened

and selected to produce the best babies.

I've taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially

prejudicial conditions, premature baldness, myopia,

alcoholism, and addictive susceptibility,

propensity for violence, obesity, et cetera.

We didn't want, I mean, diseases, yes, but...

Armstrong seems to have taken some inspiration from the movie.

In a tweet last April, Armstrong wrote about his vision

for an IVF clinic of the future,

powered by a combination of technologies

that he described as, quote, the Gatica stack.

He has referenced that it's out in the open,

he's not necessarily trying to hide it.

Among the tools he envisioned in this Gatica stack

was embryo editing for, quote, disease prevention,

or enhancement.

People who were at that embryo editing dinner

told Emily that enhancements were a topic of conversation.

And there was also some thinking out loud about strategy,

how to introduce embryo editing to the world.

One plan that Brian Armstrong had floated

was for a venture to work in secret

and then reveal a healthy, genetically engineered baby

before the scientific and medical establishment

had a chance to object.

And it was almost like this leap that was meant to shock

the world into acceptance.

A spokeswoman for Armstrong said that he did mention

the idea of working in secret,

but that he also said it was someone else's idea

and that he and others at the dinner agreed it was a bad one.

To Emily, it wasn't immediately clear how serious

this dinner conversation had been.

Was this all just talk or something more?

And then she got a tip.

I distinctly remember getting a phone call one day,

I was sitting in the Wall Street Journal Newsroom in New York

and one of my sources called me and said

that there was a company, like there really was one.

An actual embryo editing company.

And not only that, but one of the biggest names

in Silicon Valley was connected to it.

Open AI CEO, Sam Altman.

And that gets your attention.

Yeah, I actually got up from my desk

and I awkwardly power walked slash jog, slash ran

to our investigations editor's office

and grabbed the deputy editor.

And I was like, you guys will not believe what I heard.

This thing is real.

That's next.

This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

The right hire can make or break your company,

especially if you're a small business

and relying on luck to find that person

isn't really the best strategy,

but you know what is using Indeed sponsor jobs.

You can use it to boost your job post

to make sure it reaches more people

with the right talents, certification, location and more.

Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed

are 95% more likely to report a hire

than non-sponsored jobs.

Spend less time searching

and more time actually interviewing candidates

who check all your boxes.

Less stress, less time, more results.

When you need the right person to cut through the chaos,

this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit

to help get your job the premium status

that deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast.

Disco to Indeed.com slash podcast right now

and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed here.

Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply.

Hirey now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs.

This episode is brought to you by Alexa Plus.

Say hello to Alexa Plus

and see how Alexa can do more for you.

Need tickets to that last minute show?

Craving your favorite restaurant?

Sit back, relax and talk naturally, Alexa's on it.

Alexa learns your preferences

to create a personalized experience.

And now Alexa Plus is free with prime

on your Amazon devices, like Echo and Fire TV.

Learn more at Amazon.com slash Alexa Plus.

Emily and her colleagues wanted to know more

about this mysterious embryo editing company,

but they didn't have much to go on.

Just that it had an office in the San Francisco we work

and that it had hired somebody from a prestigious lab.

Emily didn't even have a name for the company.

So one of her colleagues started digging

through corporate filings.

And she was able to find the likely company in filing

and the name was preventive.

And we were just like, what is this, but also jackpot?

It initially had a website with just its name,

a logo, and essentially like a coming soon announcement.

Emily and her colleagues were able to confirm

that both Sam Altman and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong

were investors in preventive, though they weren't able

to find out how much they'd invested.

And when it came to preventive's plans,

we learned a few things.

One was that they had been searching for places

to experiment to do their work since it's illegal in the US.

And one of those places was the United Arab Emirates, the UAE.

The second thing is that they had identified a couple

that was interested in doing embryo editing

to prevent a hereditary disease

and that that couple was interested in participating.

So preventive is, sounds like they're doing real stuff.

That's what we understood to be happening.

Like this was not just some, you know,

Delaware corporate filing and a company had been created.

There were, as far as we knew, some discussions,

like really taking place about work being done tied

to embryo editing.

It wasn't just some pie in this guy idea.

Emily and her colleagues also heard from a couple scientists

who said they'd been personally pitched

on getting involved in embryo editing.

We learned that Brian Armstrong and people around him

had approached a lot of different scientists

around embryo editing.

And in some cases, it was like a joke among some of them

that they couldn't find people like willing to do this

because there was so much concern about it.

Just before Emily and her colleagues were about to reach out

to the company directly, it came out of stealth mode

and made a big announcement.

And what did they say?

So they say when they announce themselves,

that their mission is to, quote, determine whether

the newest generation of gene editing technologies

can be used safely and responsibly to correct devastating

genetic conditions for future children.

If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing

could be one of the most important health technologies

of the century.

Hmm, so there are in other words, they're saying,

we want to use this technology to prevent diseases.

And to do it really safely and responsibly.

How did the company respond when you and your colleagues

put the question to them about what you had found,

which is that they were talking to a couple

that they were looking at the UAE

and they were actually taking these active steps?

So Lucas Harrington, preventive CEO said it was completely false

that the company had identified

it was working with a couple on editing your embryos.

He said the company's focused on research

to prove the safety of embryo editing

before attempting to actually bring a baby to term.

Hmm.

So the company says that we're still in the research phase.

We're not actually like taking active steps

toward doing it.

He also did say that preventive is compelled

to work outside the US because the food

and drug administration prohibits reviewing applications

for human trials that involve embryo editing.

After Emily reached out to Armstrong and his representatives

for comment, he posted on X that he was excited

to be an investor in preventive.

More than 300 million people globally live

with genetic disease, he wrote.

It is far easier to correct a small number of cells

before disease progression occurs.

In a statement, Sam Altman's husband,

Oliver Mulheron, said that he was the one

driving the couple's investment in preventive.

Because, quote, I care about research

that helps people avoid disease.

The last regional has an extraordinary reporting out

that a small company has spent months pursuing

a secret project for a genetically engineered baby.

When Emily and her colleagues published their story,

it resurfaced fears about safety and eugenics.

Scientists and bioethicists reiterated their concerns

that embryo editing is unsafe and accused preventive

of working on, quote unquote, baby improvement.

But that pushback hasn't slowed preventive down.

What we've actually seen more recently

is that preventive has hired more scientists.

On LinkedIn, we saw someone else started there

in January, 2026 listed as a senior scientist.

Another person started in December, 2025.

That company is growing since we reported on it.

It's far too early to tell whether preventive

or other future projects like it will succeed.

But they may not need to.

Because at the same time that tech titans

like Brian Armstrong are investing in embryo editing,

they're also investing in another technology,

one that's arguably a lot easier to pull off.

And one that could achieve a lot of the same aims.

That technology is embryo screening.

After screening, we are left as you see

with two healthy boys and two very healthy girls.

If you think back to Gatica,

the scientists in that movie weren't actually editing

embryos, they were screening them,

testing them for disease risks and other traits,

and then using that information to decide

which embryo to implant.

All that remains is to select the most compatible candidate.

That future is already here for some parents.

For a long time, people doing IVF

have had the option to screen for diseases

like cystic fibrosis and TASAX.

But a new crop of embryo screening companies

are promising much more than that.

A bunch of new startups are claiming

that they can help prospective parents

be able to choose more traits with the embryos

that they create.

Some offer eye color, baldness.

It's not just cosmetic,

there's also more screening for different diseases

beyond what you could traditionally get.

One of these startups is a company called Orchid,

which focuses on screening for disease risk.

Like, I think business sex is for fun

and embryo screening is for babies.

That's the company's CEO and a promotional video.

It's going to become insane,

not to screen for these things.

Orchid provides information on a wide range of diseases,

including complex conditions influenced by lots of genes,

like Alzheimer's, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

They charge 2,500 bucks per embryo.

Brian Armstrong is one of Orchid's investors.

But while Orchid focuses on diseases,

other startups go much further.

We look at something like height,

even eye color, hair color, intelligence.

Intelligence.

We give you acne, acne.

We give you the full range of insight.

There is to know about your future child.

That was a CEO of a startup called Nucleus.

It's services started about $10,000.

The company recently ran an ad campaign

in New York City subways that included the tagline,

have your best baby.

Scientists and bioethicists

have accused some of these startups

of essentially marketing eugenics.

They've also questioned the accuracy of some of these tests.

But unlike embryo editing,

embryo screening is perfectly legal in the US.

In some screening companies say

their lab developed tests aren't subject to FDA regulation.

I definitely get the concerns,

but as a parent who wants what's best for your kids,

I can see how this can be really a learning.

Absolutely.

I think that's a big question, right?

Who's going to be that person to say,

why wouldn't you want to help eradicate diseases?

And I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone

who doesn't have some kind of personal connection

to someone somewhere who knows someone

who died from a genetic disease.

And if you said, I can help cure this,

who's going to say no to that?

But the question though is,

where do you draw the line?

And there's just so much morality tied up in that.

How could there not be?

It also seems in a lot of ways that this story

is like a case study in how the medical community

and Silicon Valley just approach problems very differently.

Yeah, I mean, if you take a step back,

it's almost like comparing the perhaps lower case

see conservative nature of academia

to the other extreme of tech entrepreneurs.

One group wants to study every last thing

and the other one wants to rip off the band-aing,

start doing it.

Just try it and see what happens

and then learn from your mistakes.

Ask for forgiveness later.

You know, Elon Musk sends rockets up in space

and he'll do it quickly and the rocket might blow up

but then he'll learn from them.

But some scientists are saying,

you can't do that with a human life.

This is the last of our stories

digging into the fringes of the fertility industry,

at least for now.

To your previous episodes,

check out the Spotify playlist linked in the show notes.

That's all for today, Friday, March 27th.

The journal is a co-operator of the

Amazon, which is the most popular

in the world in the world.

It's the most popular in the world.

It's the most popular in the world.

It's the most popular in the world.

It's the most popular in the world.

The journal is a co-production of Spotify

and the Wall Street Journal.

Additional reporting in this episode

by Catherine Long and Amy Doxer-Marcus.

The show is made by Catherine Brewer,

P.A. Gedkari, Isabella Jipal, Sophie Codner,

Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Laura Morris,

Enrique Perez-Dela Rosa, Sarah Platt,

Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers,

Pierce Singy, Jivika Verma, Catherine Whalen,

Tatiana Zamice, and me, Ryan Knudsen.

This episode is produced by Annie Minough

and edited by Colin McNulty.

Our engineers are Griffin Tanner,

Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard.

Our theme music is by So Wiley,

and is remixed for this episode by Peter Leonard.

Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson,

Peter Leonard, Bobby Lorde, Nathan Singapok,

Griffin Tanner, So Wiley, and Blutot Sessions.

Fact checking this week by Kate Gallagher

and Mary Mathis.

Thanks for listening.

See you Monday.

Ever seen a musical so good you didn't want it to end?

Like you could live inside it forever.

Then you're going to love Schmegadune.

Get your one-way ticket to Broadway musical Paradise.

Have you ever felt trapped at a musical

like you literally couldn't escape?

Then you'll hate to miss Schmegadune

because you'll never want to leave and you can't.

But the important thing is you'll never want to.

Get tickets at SchmegaduneBroadway.com.