Dr. Beth Shapiro and Dr. Andrew Huberman discuss gene-edited humans, embryo screening for traits like height and IQ, and the CRISPR treatment that cured a child.
Dr. Beth Shapiro, PhD, is an evolutionary biologist and Chief Science Officer at @Colossal Biosciences. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine and host of the Huberman Lab podcast.
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Timestamps
00:00 Gene-Edited Babies In China
01:...
What Andrew Huberman said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Andrew Huberman discussed human gene editing, starting with the case of a Chinese scientist who edited babies' genomes to disrupt the HIV receptor, noting the uncertainty about whether it was benevolent or a eugenics experiment. He observed that since then, at least four companies have launched for deep sequencing of embryos, both IVF and non-IVF, with some screening for disease and others optimizing for traits like IQ and height. He argued that genetic selection is already happening through mate choice and is now at the level of sequencing, leading to ethical debates. He praised the interviewer's public education on ancient DNA, noting that height genes in Northern Europe came from steppe people 4,700 years ago. He compared gene editing to AI and smartphones, saying it's not going away, and emphasized using tools for positive outcomes. He cited the case of baby KJ, cured of urea cycle deficiency with a bespoke CRISPR medicine, and argued that such medical interventions are not 'playing God' but 'playing human,' as humans have always influenced evolution, like domesticating wolves and corn.
Key takeaways
At least four companies have launched for deep sequencing of embryos since the Chinese gene-edited babies case.
Baby KJ was cured of urea cycle deficiency with a bespoke CRISPR medicine, delivered three times as a six-month-old.
Using gene editing to cure disease is 'playing human,' not 'playing God,' as humans have always influenced evolution.
Height genes in Northern Europe were introduced by steppe people 4,700 years ago, and height has plateaued there.
Numbers and commitments
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4,700 years ago
when steppe people introduced height genes to Europe
We have this thing called IVF, where people can make embryos and select what are deemed at this point healthy versus unhealthy. So people are doing genetic selection in humans through technology, right? People don't really stop too often and think, oh yeah, you know, how is that disrupting the human ecosystem in any different number of ways? But a few years back there was a guy in China actually who had been a postdoc at Stanford who decided to use gene editing to modify the genome of some babies, disrupted the HIV receptor. And there are two stories about this, I don't know which one is true. One story is that they did it for benevolent reasons to prevent these babies from getting HIV from either an infected parent or to just protect them against — the father was HIV positive. The other story that was running in parallel was that this modification might have some impact on hippocampal or other brain circuit function that might make them hyper intelligent in one dimension. So this was kind of more of like a eugenics experiment. That was the idea. And it was very interesting how this emerged, not in the general public. Like that was interesting in its own right. But there was this short moment of about a week where it wasn't clear if this guy was going to win a Nobel Prize [laughter] and be celebrated or was going to be put in prison.
Yeah. There were these emails that suddenly came out and it was very clear like people were kind of tap dancing around this guy like what's going to happen to him? Do I want to be associated with this and glean some of the benefit or is he going to be demonized in which case I want nothing to do with this guy? He's like he's blacklisted. It turns out it was the latter, right? And the Chinese government said, "Yeah, we're going to shut down his lab. He's going to be punished. I don't know what's happening if he's running experiments or if he's in prison or what's happening." But this was so interesting, right? Because since then there's been no fewer than four major companies launched for deep sequencing of embryos.
Both from IVF but also non-IVF babies. And I have people coming up to me saying, "Hey, guess what? We just got to screen these embryos and we were told which of them is going to have the highest IQ and which of them is going to be tallest and which of them is going to be this and which of one and that." And so some of these companies are geared towards ruling out disease, right? Others are geared towards trying to optimize for best possible outcome, right? Now this gets people riled up because it's very expensive at this point. So that has other implications, right? And it's easy to say, oh well that's like eugenics. But when people select who, assuming they do it voluntarily, who to have children with, they're selecting on the basis of a number of features. Some physical, some emotional, some resource related, some cognitive, you know, and so there's a lot of this happening, happens in the animal kingdom and in humans it's happening now at the level of genetic sequencing. And I think we're headed for big discussions about ethics about changing quote unquote ecosystems, right, through genetic selection of humans. It's started. It's happening.
6 more exchanges in this transcript
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Huberman, A. (2026, October 10). The Truth About Human Gene Editing | Dr. Beth Shapiro & Dr. Andrew Huberman [Interview transcript]. Huberman Lab Clips. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3028600/
MLA
Andrew Huberman. "The Truth About Human Gene Editing | Dr. Beth Shapiro & Dr. Andrew Huberman." Huberman Lab Clips, 10 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3028600/.
BibTeX
@misc{huberman2026_3028600,
author = {Andrew Huberman},
title = {The Truth About Human Gene Editing | Dr. Beth Shapiro \& Dr. Andrew Huberman},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Huberman Lab Clips. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3028600/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
