Gates, WEF Promoting Gene-Editing Technology 'To Read And Write The Code Of Life'

Scientists Sound Alarm as Gates, WEF Promote Gene-Editing Technology for Everything From Fake Meat to Designer Babies

 Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum are among the biggest promoters of CRISPR, a recently developed gene-editing technology, but scientists interviewed by The Defender warned about the technology’s flaws and risks.

CRISPR, a recently developed gene-editing technology is promoted as a potential solution to numerous diseases, to food security and climate change — even as a way to deliver “designer babies” and bring extinct mammals back to life.

The technology has attracted significant investments and the attention of actors such as Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

But many scientists express concerns about the technology’s potential harmful effects.

In interviews with The Defender, Dr. Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London, and Claire Robinson, managing editor of GMWatch, provided insights into the flaws of this technology, its potential consequences and the risks associated with not regulating it sufficiently.

CRISPR — which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats — acts as a “precise pair of molecular scissors that can cut a target DNA sequence, directed by a customizable guide.”

Put differently, this technology allows scientists to edit sections of DNAby “snipping” specific portions of it and replacing it with new segments. Gene editing is not a new concept, but CRISPR technology is viewed as being cheaper and more accurate.

Notably, Gates, the BMGF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), collaborated in 2019 on a $200 million, four-year project to launch clinical trials to investigate “gene-based cures for HIV and sickle cell disease” in Africa — including CRISPR.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, touted the potential to “save hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs” if an HIV cure is ultimately found via this project.

Gates, in his blog, wrote that “CRISPR has fundamentally changed my thinking about what’s possible for improving the health and nutrition of families in poor countries — and how quickly,” adding that the BMGF is investing in CRISPR-related projects including:

Gates’ investments in CRISPR go beyond his joint project with the NIH. For example, he was an early investor in Editas Medicine — which, according to Business Insider, was one of the first companies to attempt to use CRISPR technology to treat and eliminate human diseases 

The WEF named Editas a 2015 Technology Pioneer. According to Forbes, one of the company’s lead investors is bng0, a select group of family offices led by Boris Nikolic — who was previously a science advisor to Bill Gates and also named as an executor of the late Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Gates is one of the backers of bng0. Google Ventures is another.

Gates also worked with Intellia to “envision a simpler gene-editing procedure that doesn’t require chemotherapy, a hospital stay, or modifying cells outside the body,” instead using CRISPR “inside the body to edit a person’s blood stem cells.”

The BMGF, in turn, has provided grants to other CRISPR-related biotechnology firms, including CRISPR Therapeutics and Edge Animal Health, and to a firm known as Acceligen, which “provide[s] small-scale dairy producers in sub-Saharan Africa access to highly-productive and well-adapted cows to increase their income.”

Another of Gates’ CRISPR-related investments, however, involves both CRISPR and lab-grown meat. Memphis Meats, described by futurism.com as “a lab-grown meat outfit,” has received funding from Gates and Richard Branson to “create real chicken and beef tissue” — and has received a patent for this purpose.

WEF touts ‘CRISPR’s potential’ to contribute to ‘quest for human perfection’

In 2015, a WEF article described how CRISPR has “changed genetic research,” while a 2016 article on the WEF’s website asked if we are ready for genetically modified animals, and a 2019 article connected “CRISPR’s potential” to the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — and the “quest for human perfection.”

A 2020 WEF article listed “5 things to know about CRISPR and gene editing in the COVID era,” describing CRISPR as “the search engine for biology,” adding that “precision medicine is playing a key role in helping scientists understand COVID-19” and that “CRISPR-based diagnostics will help rapidly and accurately diagnose a wide range of diseases.”

The same article suggested that “biotechnology will become a top strategic priority for many governments, as an ability to prevent and mitigate a pandemic is an enormous political and economic advantage” and that “the focus on infectious disease will continue beyond the pandemic.”

The WEF has also partnered with one of the primary biotechnology firms involved with the CRISPR technology, Mammoth Biosciences, claiming that “Through the discovery and development of novel CRISPR systems, the company is enabling the full potential of its platform to read and write the code of life.”

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