Bigger Than Elvis.
The Weekend Edition.
1. The Future Coming at You:
Since the start of 2025, Cathy Tie, the Canadian serial entrepreneur and self-styled “Biotech Barbie”, has launched three separate biotech companies and lived in three different cities (Los Angeles, Toronto and New York). She tried to live in a fourth (Beijing), only to discover that she was banned from China – the country of her birth – while she was en route to begin a new life with her Chinese husband. This time a year ago, Tie had just married one of the most notorious scientists on the planet, the biophysicist He Jiankui, who served three years in prison after he illegally created the world’s first gene-edited babies.
Last summer, Tie arrived in New York with little more than a suitcase and her shih-tzu, Charlie, to announce a new venture: a startup that will conduct the same kinds of procedures that had earned her ex the nickname “China’s Dr Frankenstein”. Tie wants to edit the genes of embryos – to alter the building blocks of human life – to prevent diseases including cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s and hereditary cancers. Unlike He, she says she wants her work to be done openly and transparently, with the blessing of regulators – and powered by the rocket fuel of venture capital investment.
The hardest thing about genetically engineering a baby is getting permission to do it; the technical part is not particularly complicated. Ever since the Crispr-Cas9 gene editing tool was invented in 2012, so long as you know the sequence of DNA in a genome that you would like to change, you can seek it out, then alter or delete it. It’s a bit like using the find, copy, cut and paste functions on a computer. You don’t even need to be a very experienced molecular biologist to do it.
If you edit the sequence of DNA of germline cells – the eggs, sperm and very early embryos that form the first stages of human reproduction – the changes you make will be reproduced in all the other cells of the human being ultimately created from those cells. And not just that particular human: every generation of their descendants will inherit those changes. Of all the possibilities presented in biotechnology, this is arguably the one with the highest stakes for humankind. That’s why the use of germline gene editing for reproductive purposes (rather than research) is banned in the UK, the US and China, and there is widespread international agreement that no research should be conducted on embryos that could grow to term and be born as babies.
“This is obviously the most consequential technology of our generation, because it fundamentally impacts and changes our understanding of what we can do with our species,” says Tie. (Read the rest. Source: theguardian.com)
2. For decades, an annual gathering of oncologists has featured drug trials that were run mainly at American and European hospitals. But at this year’s meeting, which is being held in Chicago this weekend, the signs are everywhere of China’s ascendance as a powerhouse in drug development — and of the threat that many believe it poses to American biotechnology. The clearest sign: In what appears to be a first, one of the conference’s five coveted headliners will be a presentation of a clinical trial conducted only in China. That milestone at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, reflects the dizzying growth of China’s biotechnology sector. In just a few years, it has transformed from a sleepy industry into a juggernaut rapidly inventing and testing cutting-edge medicines. (Source: nytimes.com)
3. The death rate of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is between 30% and 50%, the World Health Organization has said, as its head arrived in the country to support efforts to contain the disease. Anaïs Legand, from the WHO’s high threat pathogens team, said the revised death rate estimate is based on confirmed cases. “It’s huge. It means that up to five out of 10 people are likely to die,” Legand told reporters in Geneva. She also said that a patient had recovered from Ebola and was discharged from a health centre in the DRC on 27 May after two negative tests, the first recovery to have been confirmed in the outbreak. (Sources: theguardian.com, linkedin.com)
4. William Usher:
This is where things stand at the end of May 2026: a ceasefire that neither side fully observes, a framework that neither side fully accepts, and a set of core demands that neither side shows any willingness to abandon. The war has settled into a costly stalemate—military operations paused but not ended, economic damage compounding daily, and the political clock ticking in Washington. Realistically, Trump now faces three options: (1) Declare victory and walk away, (2) Cut a deal, or (3) Restart the war.
