Emily Glazer

This thing is real.

And she was able to find the likely company in filing.

And the name was preventive.

And we were just like, what is this?

But also jackpot.

It initially had a website with just its name, a logo, and essentially like a coming soon announcement.

One was that they had been searching for places to experiment to do their work since it's illegal in the U.S., and one of those places was the United Arab Emirates, the UAE.

The second thing is that they had identified a couple that was interested in doing embryo editing to prevent a hereditary disease and that that couple was interested in participating.

That's what we understood to be happening.

This was not just some Delaware corporate filing and a company had been created.

There were, as far as we knew, some discussions really taking place about work being done tied to embryo editing.

It wasn't just some pie-in-the-sky idea.

We learned that Brian Armstrong and people around him had approached a lot of different scientists around embryo editing.

And in some cases, it was like a joke among some of them that they couldn't find people willing to do this because there was so much concern about it.

So they say when they announce themselves that their mission is to, quote, determine whether the newest generation of gene editing technologies can be used safely and responsibly to correct devastating genetic conditions for future children.

If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of the century.

and to do it really safely and responsibly.

So Lucas Harrington, preventive CEO, said it was completely false that the company had identified or was working with a couple on editing their embryos.

He said the company's focused on research to prove the safety of embryo editing before attempting to actually bring a baby to term.

He also did say that preventive is compelled to work outside the U.S.