(The Free Press) – I’ve spent hours talking to the ‘Chinese Frankenstein’ who says he’s opening a lab in Austin. His competition, in his quest to pioneer gene editing in the United States? It’s his ex.

I’m speaking to him because now, three years after getting out of prison in China, and despite being unable to leave the country, he’s plotting a comeback in America. When we first video-called last month—he was in Beijing, I was in New York—He told me he was on the brink of opening a lab in Austin, Texas. There, he said, he would do Alzheimer’s research—on monkeys and nonviable human embryos—in the hopes of figuring out how to one day edit human embryos in order to prevent the disease.

Or at least, that was the plan. (Read More)