FDA Approves Gene-Hacked CRISPR Pigs for Human Consumption

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Danzig

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a type of CRISPR gene-edited pig for human consumption.

As MIT Technology Review reports, only an extremely limited list of gene-modified animals are cleared by regulators to be eaten in the United States, including a transgenic salmon that has an extra gene to grow faster, and heat-tolerant beef cattle.

And now a type of illness-resistant pig could soon join their ranks. British company Genus used the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR to make pigs immune to a virus that causes an illness called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

It's the same technology that's been used to gene-hack human babies — experiments that have proven far more controversial — and develop medicine in the form of gene therapies.

The PRRS virus can easily spread in factory farms in the US and cause the inability to conceive, increase the number of stillborn pigs, and trigger respiratory complications, including pneumonia.

It's been called the "most economically important disease" affecting pig producers, since it can have a devastating effect on their bottom lines. According to MIT Tech, it causes losses of more than $300 million a year in the US alone.

Genus' gene-editing efforts have proven highly successful so far, with the pigs appearing immune to 99 percent of known versions of the virus.

Using CRISPR, the company knocked out a receptor that allowed the PRRS virus to enter cells, effectively barring it from infecting its host.

Beyond the respiratory illness, scientists are using gene-editing to make pigs less vulnerable or even immune to other infections, including swine fever.

But before we can eat a pork chop from a gene-edited pig, Genus says that it will have to lock down regulatory approval in Mexico, Canada, Japan, and China as well, the United States' biggest export markets for pork, as MIT Tech reports.

The company is hoping gene-edited pork could land in the US market as soon as next year.

But whether you'll actually know if you're eating meat from a pig that had a virus receptor turned off using a cutting-edge DNA modification technique is unclear.

"We aren't aware of any labelling requirement," Genus subsidiary Pig Improvement Company CEO Matt Culbertson told MIT Tech.

More on CRISPR: Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Says Ethics Are "Holding Back" Scientific Progress

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FDA Approves Gene-Hacked CRISPR Pigs for Human Consumption

Trump Admin Announces Plans to Build Database of Migrant DNA

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Danzig

A DNA helix is trapped behind a barbed wire fence.

Trump is ringing in his second term with a barrage of executive orders — and many are laying the groundwork for a massive genetic surveillance campaign targeting migrants.

That's according to analysis by award-winning National Security journalist Spencer Ackerman, who writes that "along with the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security will 'fulfill the requirements of the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005,' according to the 'Securing Our Borders' executive order," referencing one of the numerous presidential actions targeting migrants signed by Trump on his first day back.

"In other words," Ackerman continues, "[the] DHS and the Justice Department will create and manage a migrant DNA database."

Many crucial questions remain: how that database will look, who will have access to it, what data will be collected, and from whom. After all, many actual American citizens lack documentation of their legal status, like the poor and homeless — will their DNA be swept up in wanton collection efforts that trample the privacy rights of citizens and non-citizens alike?

With tech moguls lining up to pitch Trump on dystopian border tech, we can be sure the surveillance effort won't come cheap for American taxpayers.

It'll also almost certainly come with new cruelty. In addition to inevitable family separations, a rise in lost children, heightened processing time due to missed court hearings, documented and undocumented residents alike are going to be contending with aggressive new efforts at domestic surveillance.

"[The] DHS is empowered to use 'any available technologies and procedures' to adjudicate migrants' 'claimed familiar relationships' with people in the United States," Ackerman's analysis warns. "So this is designed to be not only vastly intrusive beyond the border, but a windfall opportunity for, say, artificial intelligence and biometrics firms."

Ackerman — who was among the Guardian team to win the 2014 Pulitzer for public service journalism for reporting on the NSA spying debacle — has noticed the rhetoric used in Trump's orders mirrors vague national security directives from the days of the War on Terror.

For example, the "Protecting the American People Against Invasion" order claims that "many of these aliens unlawfully within the United States present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans."

"Others are engaged in hostile activities," the mandate continues, "including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities."

To Ackerman, that last bit is striking, because in this context, "terror-related activities" have not been defined. Vaguely worded presidential decrees like this are crucial in that they allow agencies like the NSA or the DHS to operate with impunity — building the American surveillance state between the ink.

Though their power is increasing under Trump, these surveillance mechanisms are nothing new. Ackerman notes that the measure to harvest migrant DNA seems "reminiscent of the biometrics database created under the Bush administration for Muslim travelers known as NSEERS," a similarly troubling moment in American history which some of Trump's executive orders are predicated on.

More recently, Biden's approach to the immigration crisis was also a decidedly invasive one, thanks in part to the Customs and Border Patrol's CBP One app which rolled out in October of 2020. In 2023, that app got a controversial update: a Visa-lottery system for hopeful migrants to schedule meetings for processing into the United States.

That app came with a host of privacy concerns, not least of which was the harvesting of applicant biometric and geolocation data for case processing.

Rather than delete that data after an individual has been processed, as the TSA claims it does, the DHS collects it into two federal databases — the Traveler Verification System and Automated Targeting System. CBP One has since been shut down by Trump, canceling thousands of applicant's appointments and stranding them at the border, but the personal data its collected is likely still being held by the federal government.

It's likewise been reported that, as of 2020, the DHS has already captured data from over 1.5 million immigrants crossing the border in its Combined DNA Index System. That DNA harvesting program is laundered as a law enforcement index — though the collection includes hundreds of thousands of migrants who have only ever been administratively detained, and have never been charged with a crime.

Many immigrants report not being informed of the DNA collection, believing DNA swabs to be medical procedures, despite the DHS' internal guidelines mandating disclosure.

While Trump isn't the only electected official pushing to harvest the DNA of every incoming immigrant, his influence will certainly have the most impact as his nominees shape their agencies to his dystopian image.

More on mass surveillance: Billionaire Drools That "Citizens Will Be on Their Best Behavior" Under Constant AI Surveillance

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Trump Admin Announces Plans to Build Database of Migrant DNA

Fun New Mouth Swab Will Tell You When You’ll Die

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Scientists have devised a fascinating way to determine when you may die.

Known as "CheekAge," this new biological clock-reader developed by the company Tally Health is, according to a press release, a far less invasive version of so-called "epigenetic clock" technology scientists have been using for the past decade to help determine how fast people are aging.

While there are some "super-agers" who age particularly well, most folks' aging rates generally follow both genetic trends personal to them and their own lifestyle factors, including smoking, drinking, stress, and diet.

Paired with epigenetic factors — those that are "imprinted" on our DNA from ancestral factors ranging from proximity to environmental pollution to the full-body stress of dealing with institutional racism — scientists can, with a fairly high level of certainty, determine how fast you're going to age.

Put differently: scientists can tell you when you're going to die. In the past, however, the process involved either taking blood tissue samples or being subjected to a battery of tests that more resembled a physical assessment than anything else.

Seeking a less-invasive solution, researchers at the New York-based longevity company Tally Health not only came up with a new methodology but are likely intending to sell it to the public.

After sifting through data from a longitudinal aging study out of Scotland that measured elderly patients' DNA expression (otherwise known as "methylation") over time, the Tally Health team determined that they had acquired enough of a trove of biomarkers to create their own epigenetic clock criteria.

In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging, the Tally experts explained how they created what they're calling a "second-generation clock," which can detect DNA methylation most associated with mortality from cells obtained via a cheek swab.

"The fact that our epigenetic clock trained on cheek cells predicts mortality when measuring the methylome in blood cells suggests there are common mortality signals across tissues," boasted Maxim Shokhirev, the study's first author and head of computational biology and data science at Tally Health. "This implies that a simple, non-invasive cheek swab can be a valuable alternative for studying and tracking the biology of aging."

Because the research was funded and undertaken by a for-profit company, there is also clearly a financial benefit to this research.

Specifically, it appears that Tally Health is already selling its cheek swab tests, though it's unclear if the methodology boasted in this new paper is the same that's included in the $250 box kit advertised on its website, but we've reached out to the company for clarification.

More on aging: Scientists Figure Out Exact Ages Your Face Will Start Aging Like Milk

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