HoldsUp

George Church

Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

George Church, PhD, is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of health sciences and technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work centers on genetics, gene editing technology, and synthetic biology, and he contributed to the Human Genome Project. His published research spans topics including genome editing design, DNA synthesis, spatial transcriptomics, synthetic cellular circuits, genetic recoding, and adult genomic sequencing.

53 claims checked on air: 3 context 3 overstated 38 supported 9 unverified

What they said on air - overstated

2 citing their own research

0:31:55overstatedmoderateGeorge Church, PhD: Rewriting Genomes to Eradicate Disease a

The speed and cost-efficiency of reading and writing DNA has improved exponentially by 10 to 30 million-fold over the last decade or two, doubling at least once a year and sometimes by a factor of 10 per year.

"How fast? It doubles at least once a year, sometimes we'll get a factor of 10 per year, as measured by both reading and writing DNA. Most of the 10, 20, 30 million-fold has occurred within the last decade or two." (said at 0:31:55)

While the throughput and cost-efficiency of DNA sequencing (reading DNA) improved by roughly 100,000-fold to several million-fold following the introduction of next-generation sequencing in the mid-2000s—temporarily outpacing Moore's law with annual 5- to 10-fold gains—DNA synthesis (writing DNA) has advanced at a substantially slower rate (typically several thousand-fold for standard gene synthesis rather than tens of millions-fold). Bundling both reading and writing together under a 10- to 30-million-fold improvement over the last two decades overstates the progress achieved in DNA synthesis.

1:01:56overstatedvery lowGeorge Church, PhD: Rewriting Genomes to Eradicate Disease a

Gene therapies using follistatin and telomerase reproducibly improve hallmarks, biomarkers, and diseases of aging across mouse models.

"experiments with follistatin and telomerase, so that affects the ends of the chromosomes, the telomeres. Follistatin is mostly muscle-aimed. But each of these has, you know, reproducible impact on hallmarks of aging, biomarkers of aging, and diseases of aging." (said at 1:01:56)

While telomerase (TERT) gene therapy has been shown in pre-clinical mouse models to improve select aging biomarkers and extend median lifespan (e.g., Bernardes de Jesus et al., 2012), claiming that follistatin and telomerase gene therapies have established, reproducible impacts across hallmarks, biomarkers, and diseases of aging overstates the current scientific evidence. A widely cited study reporting simultaneous lifespan extension and reversal of aging hallmarks using CMV-delivered telomerase and follistatin in mice (Dabke et al., PNAS 2022) was subsequently retracted due to concerns regarding data integrity. Outside of established animal work on follistatin for muscle mass and specific TERT gene therapy models, evidence across broader aging hallmarks remains preliminary, unverified in humans, and limited by non-reproducibility.

1:26:16overstatedmoderateGeorge Church, PhD: Rewriting Genomes to Eradicate Disease a

Vitamin A deficiency causes approximately 1 million deaths per year worldwide.

"Golden rice is an example of something where vitamin A deficiency kills a million people a year" (said at 1:26:16)

While vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a well-established cause of increased morbidity, visual impairment, and child mortality—and large trials demonstrate that supplementation significantly reduces all-cause child mortality—the claim that it causes 1 million deaths per year substantially overstates current global mortality figures. According to Global Burden of Disease (GBD 2021) data, annual global deaths attributable to VAD were estimated at approximately 188,500 in 1990 and have fallen to approximately 17,400 in 2021. The figure of 'one million' appears in older scientific literature either as a combined estimate of global deaths together with instances of blindness, or as a combined mortality figure across multiple micronutrient deficiencies (such as vitamin A and zinc combined).

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