Cathy Tie at Origin Genomics Aims to Legalize Editing Human Embryos

Cathy Tie has practically no scientific background, no intellectual property, very little funding but also some very shady and powerful connections.

Cathy Tie, a China-born Canadian hottie who calls herself “biotech Barbie” was named on the Forbes’ “30 under 30” list, but that’s just the first red flag about her. Cathy raises more red flags than People’s Liberation Army on parade…

The Forbes list has a significant subsection, “Forbes 30 Under 30 Pipeline to Prison.” At least 10 honorees faced criminal charges.

Convicted & Sentenced:

• Sam Bankman-Fried (2021 list, Finance) — FTX founder. Convicted of wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering. Stole billions in customer deposits. Sentenced to 25 years in prison.
• Charlie Javice (2019 list, Finance) — Frank founder. Fabricated user data (claimed 4.25M users, had ~300K) to sell company to JPMorgan for $175M. Convicted September 2025. Sentenced to 7 years, ordered to pay $300M+ restitution.
• Do Kwon (2019 list, Asia Finance) — Terraform Labs founder. TerraUSD/Luna collapse wiped out $45 billion in market cap. Sentenced to 15 years in prison (December 2025).
• Caroline Ellison (2022 list, Finance) — Alameda Research CEO. Pleaded guilty to fraud conspiracy alongside Bankman-Fried. Released January 2026 after ~14 months.
• Martin Shkreli (2013 list, Finance) — “Pharma Bro.” Securities fraud conviction, sentenced to 7 years. Separately infamous for raising Daraprim’s price 4,000%.
• Elizabeth Holmes (closely associated with the list) — Theranos founder. Convicted of wire fraud. Sentenced to over 11 years (later reduced).
• Trevor Milton (listed as honoree) — Nikola Corp founder. Convicted of securities fraud (including faking a truck demo video). Sentenced to 4 years, later pardoned by President Trump in March 2025.
• Nate Paul (2016 list, Finance) — World Class Capital Group. Pleaded guilty to making false statements to obtain $172M in loans using counterfeit documents.

Charged (Pending):

• Gökçe Güven (2025 list, Marketing) — Kalder Inc. founder. Charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and identity theft. Allegedly defrauded investors of $7M+ with fake books and forged visa documents. Faces up to 52 years.
• Joanna Smith-Griffin (2021 list) — AllHere Education founder. Charged November 2024 with defrauding investors of ~$10M. Claimed $3.7M in revenue when actual figure was $11,000.

The next immediate red flag about the Biotech Barbie – she was briefly (for a few months in 2025) “married” to the infamous Chinese scientist He Jiankui. In the 2018 scandal Jiankui claimed that he created the world’s first gene-edited babies, twins whose embryos had been altered to allegedly “resist HIV” (lol!). He was arrested and served three years in prison for illegal medical practices. Scientists say it remains unclear how the edits affected the children, who have not been publicly identified. Right. We shall never know how that “genetic edit” resulted in people not succumbing to HIV, since 99.9%+ of “unedited” humans don’t. Jiankui (is it pronounced “junkie”?) should have instead “genetically edited” these babies to grow noses in the middle of their faces! That would have shown the world the real power of genetic editing science…

Next flag: before her current start-up, Origin Genomics, received $15M in funding from Y Combinator, she opened and quickly shut another venture in embryo editing, with a modestly subtle name “Manhattan Project”. She claims it was shut down due to co-founder disagreement on strategy. I will address this a bit more in Part 2.

Additionally, Tie does not hold a university degree. She left the University of Toronto after less than one year when she was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2015, receiving a $100,000 grant to pursue entrepreneurship instead of completing her studies. She has no real scientific publications to her name (2 papers, one of them in Junior Science journal), yet, in November 2025, she authored a very high profile “opinion piece” in journal Nature promoting the case for CRISPR-based germline editing in humans! Wow, what a stratospheric rise in the world of science for a college dropout. After her brief “marriage” to Jiankui, Tie has been banned from China with no official explanation. If this doesn’t scream “asset” I don’t know what will…

Tie claims that the obstacle to gene therapies overall – the need to “edit” all trillions of cells in a grown human body simultaneously, will not pose a big problem, when “only eight” cells of the embryo are needed for a complete “edit”. However, just like other claims of genetic editing, this, too, is false. The number of cells doesn’t make a difference. Bacteria are single cell organisms, however, nobody has been able to functionally “edit” them either. I will expand on the technical issues further in Part 2.

There is no evidence there is any “genetic code”, GOF viruses are a hoax, and finally, even if there were “real” DNA molecules inside human cells – so what? The “synthetic DNA” which is utilized as “editing” substance is a toxic pile of chemicals, incompatible with anything alive! It would be safer to inject liquified Lego blocks as “edits” to “genome” vs. “the building blocks of life” the biotech charlatans pump out of their poison factories today.

When general education is abysmal and professional education amounts to brutally competitive obedience training, scammers like Cathy Tie and her ex have a perfect environment to rip off some rich and powerful idiots. And, of course, Cathy is not the only honeypot cosplaying “genetic scientist” out there.

According to the New York Post, a Silicon Valley startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong is pursuing research that some fear could lead to the birth of a genetically engineered baby — a step that’s illegal under US law and banned in most countries, a report said.

The company, Preventive, says its goal is to end hereditary disease by editing human embryos before birth, a claim that has ignited fierce debate over safety, ethics and the specter of designer children, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Preventive, founded earlier this year by gene-editing scientist Lucas Harrington, has raised $30 million and set up headquarters in San Francisco, where it is conducting research on modifying embryos to prevent hereditary disease.

As many readers will recognize, the likes of Sam Altman and other tech bros are obsessed with “transhumanism”, which includes a diverse range of cultish, pseudo-scientific, fantastical, delusional and outright stupid views on reality. In an average person, these degenerative ideas are typically kept in check and even corrected by the the need to encounter the real reality daily. Unfortunately, this is not so in the uber-rich in pursuit of yet another hairbrained plan to sire the Uber Mensch race on this or another planet! They typically have enough money to insulate themselves from the real reality.

However, the federal law prohibits the FDA from considering applications for human trials involving genetically edited embryos used to start pregnancies. Currently, the UK and Australia allow “mitochondrial replacement therapy” (MRT), while US does not. I will address MRT in more detail in Part 2. Suffice to say, MRT is not “genetic editing”. It involves first convincing people who seek in-vitro fertilization (IVF) that they have a “mitochondrial mutation” (via a PCR based computer model, same as diagnostics of “covid”, very fake), and then performing a risky and expensive procedure which merges an egg from one female donor with a nucleus of another female donor, creating a 3-parent embryo.

Just to close the loop on the regulatory issues associated with this, on October 29, 2015, the United Kingdom’s regulations on mitochondrial donation (UK 2015 Regulations) came into force.¹ This amendment to the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (the ‘HFE Act’) allows the use of mitochondrial donation techniques as part of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. Mitochondrial replacement therapies (MRT) aim at preventing the transmission of mitochondrial disease from a mother to her genetically related children. In the USA, the use of MRT falls under the oversight of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and its approval, which would require clinical trials under an investigational new drug application, has been currently halted through a rider included in the 2016 Congressional Appropriations Act.²

Even the mainstream pharma shills at Endpoints News are skeptical about Cathy Tie and her companies, which is evident from the Q&A with her they recently published. However, while displaying healthy skepticism, the article also points to how these hoaxers are going to overcome the 2016 Congressional prohibition on intentional creation of human genetically edited embryos:

Cross [EP journalist]: In addition to continuing work on human embryo editing, you’ve also added this new line of work on an older technology called mitochondrial replacement therapy. Why is that helpful to your goal of embryo editing?

Tie: In the early 2010s, when this mitochondrial replacement therapy first was discussed in the media, and also in Congress, that’s when the first misconception occurred. The media called it a three-parent baby, even though this technology was very valid in its ability to fix mitochondrial DNA in a mother’s egg before it gets passed down. That was the moment when all germline gene correction was banned. That’s the same change that still affects us to this day.

If it’s proven to be safe and effective and validated, then my goal is to offer a broad range of germline gene therapies that would also include mitochondria replacement therapy.

Cross: Since this is effectively banned in the US, there’s a political aspect that you have to overcome, which is sort of an unusual situation for a startup.

Tie: I don’t see this as just a startup. I think of this more as a movement to challenge what is not working in gene therapy and also what doesn’t serve patients. And that’s why I think it’s important to engage with regulators. It’s important to engage with patients. Next month, I’m doing a debate with the Deputy Dean of Harvard Law School, Glenn Cohen. Typically, in an early-stage startup, you don’t do stuff like that.

In [2018], Trump [signed] the Right to Try framework for experimental therapies. And under that framework, multiple bills have been passed in multiple states, and I have received a lot of interest from lobbyists and even patients who are interested in leveraging that framework for germline gene correction.

Oh! Of course Trump admin will fix the pesky regulatory/legislative obstacles to designer babies… trust the plan!

The transgenderism and use of powerful psychedelic drugs is another branch of the transhumanist movement. I recommend this very good discussion of how MAHA is tripping on psychedelics into the transhumanist agenda, posted by a reader.

https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/cathy-tie-at-origin-genomics-aims