Update: June 27, 2025
I did not realize that Dr. George Church is now 70 years old. He refuses to slow down and has been in the news a lot recently due to his being a co-founder of the company that created woolly mice. The below new 1.5 hour podcast interview with Dr. Church is gold. Thankfully, one viewer comment mentions CRISPR and a hair loss cure, so I have a better excuse for updating this post.
April 6, 2016
On very rare occasions, I write posts covering biological or medical subjects and breakthroughs that are either:
a) Groundbreaking, but entirely unrelated to a hair loss cure. Or:
b) Potentially related to a hair loss cure in the long run.
This post on Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church falls under the second category.
Dr. George Church
I have briefly discussed Dr. George Church a few times on this blog before. In my opinion, there is a good possibility that he will be known as one of the 20 greatest scientists the world has ever witnessed when all is said and done. Interestingly enough, Dr. Church got an F on one of his graduate program college courses at Duke University in 1976, and he has proudly posted that letter of rejection from Duke on his current Harvard University website.
Dr. Church was adopted as a child. In his own words, he has had “early-onset health problems (insurance companies take note): heart attack, carcinoma, narcolepsy, dyslexia, pneumonia, motion sickness.”
Several days ago, a new interview (more like a speech) of Dr. Church was posted on YouTube, and I was very impressed by the range of subjects that Dr. Church covers in this monologue. The title of this video is “The Augmented Human Being.”
Hopefully, this augmentation will imply a full head of hair for all, even though that is probably the last thing that Dr. Church is thinking of when he discusses things such as CRISPR and genetic therapy in the video.
It is quite revealing that the above video only had a little under 500 views when I embedded it in this post, despite being online for two days. In sharp contrast, the one week old gorilla enclosure video now has 13 million views. Dr. George Church could bring back that now dead gorilla back to life, just like he will the extinct woolly mammoth.
Dr. Church is currently 61 years old, but from the looks of it, I doubt that he will retire anytime soon despite his health problems. He is a vegan, dyslexic, narcoleptic workaholic. And towers at a height of 6 feet 5 inches.
During the past few months Dr. Church has been all over the news almost every single day. Some highlights:
Will all of this turn into what Huxley or Orwell predicted?