‘Tainted money can be used for good’: Epstein-backed Harvard geneticist George Church plans DNA-based dating app to wipe out all disease
- George Church, a Harvard geneticist, received money from Epstein in 2005-07
- He said he should have known more of Epstein but had left vetting to other staff
- Church’s app is intended to wipe out disease by giving people the ideal match
- He has already edited DNA in mice and is trialing slowing aging in spaniels
George Church of Harvard University attends the Genius Gala 7.0 at the Liberty Science Center on May 11, 2018 in Jersey City, New Jersey
A Jeffrey Epstein-backed Harvard geneticist has plans for a DNA dating app which will eliminate disease.
George Church, a pioneer of DNA mapping and gene editing, recently apologized for associating with Epstein, who he had met with even after the millionaire was convicted of soliciting a minor.
Explaining his dating app, Church told 60 Minutes: ‘You wouldn’t find out who you’re not compatible with. You’ll just find out who you are compatible with.’
He believes that by making the correct matches the human race could wipe out disease.
Church, whose research also intends to halt aging, conceded ‘we need to be very cautious’ especially when dealing with a rapidly moving technology.
Elizabeth Yuko, a Fordham ethics professor, said Church’s app sounded like a Nazi eugenics program, telling The Daily Beast: ‘I thought we realized after World War II that we weren’t going to be doing that.’
Church’s research, as with other Harvard colleagues’, was boosted by Epstein’s donations from 2005 to 2007.
Church has admitted that he continued to meet with Epstein after he pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor in 2008 and was placed on the sex offenders’ registry.
The scientist told 60 Minutes that he regretted not knowing more about the donor, but added, ‘Tainted money can be used for good… like, the tobacco money was used for good things.’
Adding genes to give mice faster reaction times, better cognition and repair damaged tissues has already been accomplished by Church’s laboratory at Harvard.
And reversing aging in humans is now in clinical trials in dogs. ‘So, that veterinary product might be a couple years away and then that takes another ten years to get through the human clinical trials,’ Church told CBS.
Church previously revealed that he had met Epstein through his literary agent John Brockman in around 2006.
Epstein had his own interests in genetics and had twisted ideas of furthering his own genes by impregnating 20 women at his New Mexico ranch.
Church told 60 Minutes that he regretted not knowing more about the donor, but added, ‘Tainted money can be used for good… like, the tobacco money was used for good things.’
‘I never heard anything about it,’ Church told Stat News earlier this year, ‘I think people tend to behave themselves around me.’
Church said that he had not been aware of Epstein’s conviction and had been relaxed in leaving the donor vetting process up to his administrators.
He added: ‘There should have been more conversations about, should we be doing this, should we be helping this guy? There was just a lot of nerd tunnel vision.’