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A Genetic Hail Mary That Ended in Death | GeneBrief #006

A Genetic Hail Mary That Ended in Death | GeneBrief #006

Terry Horgan was promised a one-of-a-kind genetic fix. What he got was a fatal outcome.

Mario S
May 31, 2025

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The CRISPR Trial That Ended in Death

Terry Horgan was 27 when he became the first person in the world to receive a CRISPR therapy built for a single human: himself.

He had Duchenne muscular dystrophy — a devastating genetic disease that eats away at every muscle in the body. There’s no cure. Most patients don’t survive past their twenties.

But he still had something left: hope.

His older brother, Richard Horgan, refused to accept the timeline. He founded a nonprofit — Cure Rare Disease — and rallied scientists from Harvard and Yale to engineer a one-of-one gene therapy, precisely tailored to Terry’s unique mutation.

It was science at its most ambitious. Personalized CRISPR. A cure made for one.

In 2022, the FDA gave the green light. The therapy was infused into Terry’s bloodstream.

Days later, he was gone.

No one knows exactly what caused it. Was it the delivery system? An immune overreaction? Or something inside the edit itself?

The data is still being analyzed. The trial was shut down.

Can CRISPR Be Used as a Bioweapon?

In 2017, scientists rebuilt an extinct virus — horsepox — using mail-order DNA and a public recipe. It cost just $100,000.

Today, with CRISPR kits available online, gene editing is no longer rare — and the line between medicine and weapon is vanishing fast.

CRISPR lets scientists edit DNA with extreme precision. In theory, someone could build a virus that targets people by their genes — immune traits, ancestry, even cognition.

The U.S. Department of Defense is already preparing. DARPA has funded “genetic security” programs. Intelligence reports warn about CRISPR-enabled bioweapons designed to infect only certain groups.

But the scariest threat might not come from enemies. It might come from well-meaning researchers. Many labs use CRISPR to study how pathogens evolve — by making them stronger.

One lab leak. One mutation. One mistake — and we could face a pandemic designed by human hands.

So yes — CRISPR can be weaponized.

CRISPR Turned These Hamsters Into Tiny Monsters

In 2022, researchers used CRISPR to knock out a gene in hamsters linked to serotonin signaling — the same brain chemical that regulates mood, aggression, and empathy.

The idea?
Remove the gene, reduce aggression.

Instead, they got the opposite.

The normally docile Syrian hamsters became hyper-aggressive. They attacked each other. Fought over territory. Showed sudden bursts of rage — even toward familiar cage-mates.

The gene in question was Avpr1a, a receptor linked to social behavior. Scientists expected that disabling it would make the animals more relaxed.

But biology had other plans.

What this revealed was unsettling: Even with a deep understanding of the brain, gene edits can have unexpected, system-wide effects. Tweak one trait… and you might trigger a cascade you never predicted.

So why does it matter?

Because we’re already talking about editing genes linked to behavior in humans — for things like autism, anxiety, depression, and aggression.

But if CRISPR can turn a calm animal violent with a single misplaced edit…
what happens when we start editing human behavior?

This wasn’t just an experiment.
It was a warning.

🧠 The Brief Byte

CRISPR wasn’t invented in a lab. It was discovered in yogurt bacteria defending themselves from viruses — long before scientists realized it was a genetic scalpel.

Spotlight

Prolific Machines

What if you could grow a steak without ever raising a cow?

That’s the radical question driving Prolific Machines, a California biotech startup using light to grow real meat — without animals.

Most startups rely on fetal bovine serum — a costly, controversial ingredient harvested from unborn calves. Prolific skips it entirely.

Their secret? Optogenetics — a technique that uses targeted light to flip genes on or off. With it, they can tell cells how to grow, divide, and become muscle — using no animal input.

That means fewer chemicals, fewer ethical trade-offs, and a massive cut to production costs.

It’s not imitation meat. It’s biologically real — just made with code and cells instead of cows.

With backing from Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Prolific is positioning itself as the deep tech engine behind the cultivated meat revolution.

Their meat isn’t on shelves yet. But if it scales, it could reshape the food system from the cell up.