Thanksgiving can be a hassle for most of us, what with all the cooking, traveling, and stilted family conversations to avoid politics and fisticuffs. But at least the grocery bill won’t knock the stuffing out of you this year. Consumers are estimated to spend only about 2% more on Thanksgiving dinner this year, compared with a whopping 14% increase last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. And some items are even cheaper, including the all-important turkey, whose prices skyrocketed last year amid an avian flu outbreak. Jerome Powell, who would rock a pilgrim hat, has got to be happy about that.
Morning Brief
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Crispr is finally out of the fridge.
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Wells Fargo is in hot water again.
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Hyundai is headed to Amazon.
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Healthcare
CRISPR Gene Therapy Gets First-Ever Regulatory OK
CRISPR, the game-changing genome-editing tool, is making its public debut.
UK drug regulator The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced on Thursday that it had authorized the use of Casgevy, a CRISPR gene-editing therapy, to treat people with two blood diseases: sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassemia.
Time to Run with Scissors
CRISPR is a medical technology that’s sometimes described as genetic “scissors” — it’s able to go into cells and clip out strands from your DNA. You may remember it from about a million news cycles ago, when Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui shocked the medical community in 2018 after he used CRISPR to create two genetically edited human babies — a revelation that appalled the medical community and earned him three years in prison.
It hasn’t been all bad press, though. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to two scientists — Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna — for developing the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, which the academy said would “lead to ground-breaking new medical treatments.” Well, it looks like those ground-breaking treatments just broke ground:
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People with sickle-cell and beta-thalassemia have difficulty producing hemoglobin, and often require blood or even bone marrow transfusions as a result. The MHRA said the aim of Casgevy is to edit the genes of the cells in patients’ bone marrow stem cells, essentially fixing them so they can produce hemoglobin on their own.
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The MHRA said that out of 29 sickle-cell patients who trialed the treatment, 28 reported they had been free of “severe pain crises” for 12 months following the treatment. For the beta-thalassemia trial group, 39 out of 42 said they hadn’t needed a blood transfusion for 12 months after starting treatment.
While the treatment holds plenty of promise for people living with those diseases, there is still something that could limit its impact: cost, which NPR said could run as high as $2 million per patient. Ken Shadlen, a professor in development studies at the London School of Economics, told The Daily Upside that the MHRA’s approval doesn’t automatically mean it will be available via the UK’s National Health Service. The desired price point of Casgevy’s makers, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, will determine whether British patients can access the treatment for free. “NICE [The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] needs to undertake a cost-effectiveness assessment and determine if it’s worth paying what Vertex wants,” Shadlen said.
Crossing the Pond: Casgevy is making headway with the US Food and Drug Administration as well. Two weeks ago, the FDA said the companies could monitor for safety risks once Casgvey is out in the wild, and according to Reuters, analysts were hopeful that the treatment could get the FDA greenlight by early December. That would be one heck of a Christmas present.
– Isobel Asher Hamilton
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Banking
Wells Fargo Gets Called Out for Lax Crime Prevention
(Photo by Griffin Wooldridge on Unsplash)
US banking regulators are starting to learn what Frances McDormand has known since 1996: Criminal activity is de rigueur in Fargo. In this case, make that Wells Fargo.
According to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday, watchdogs at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been badgering Wells Fargo about its lackadaisical approach to monitoring and preventing financial crimes. The news comes just as major banks across the US finally take action on a wave of scams exploiting the widely used Zelle digital payment platform.
Be Cool, Like Ponzi
Wells Fargo has been plagued by enough financial impropriety the past few years to fuel more than a few seasons of a prestige crime anthology series on FX. In 2016, a cadre of employees were caught creating millions of fake customer accounts to fraudulently hit sales quotas. Last year, the FBI caught a Las Vegas lawyer operating a nearly $500 million Ponzi Scheme through a Wells Fargo account.
Regulators, all the while, have been prodding the bank to get its crime-sniffing capacities up to snuff:
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According to sources who spoke with the WSJ, regulators have since last year issued orders known as “matters requiring attention” and “matters requiring immediate attention,” with a public penalty, such as a consent order, yet to be ruled out.
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After last year’s regulatory orders, Wells Fargo replaced its top executive charged with Bank Secrecy Act compliance in an attempt to shore up criminal oversight. A lawsuit filed against the bank for failing to identify the Ponzi scheme alleges that red flags raised by employees were ignored or overruled by senior staff.
I Can’t Believe You Zelle For That: Wells Fargo isn’t the only bank stuck cleaning up financial crimes. In fact, it’s one of seven major financial institutions that co-own Zelle, which has been abused by scammers often impersonating the government. Under pressure from Congressional leaders and watchdogs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Zelle recently began reimbursing users who have fallen victim to such scams, according to a Reuters report earlier this week. A Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring eight CEOs from from eight major banks, including Wells Fargo, is scheduled for next month, and if you’re wondering if payment fraud will be a topic of discussion, most industry experts would have two words for you: You betcha.
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First, Amazon came for the bookstores. Then it came for seemingly everything else except car dealerships. You see where we are going with this.
Hyundai said Thursday that starting next year it will sell its cars directly on Amazon, marking the first major auto brand to list on the massive e-commerce platform. We’re just hoping Amazon doesn’t come for newsletters next.
Hey Alexa, Check My Blind Spot
Online shopping and direct-to-consumer models have long been at play in the auto industry, with Tesla employing the latter, inspiring EV brands like Rivian and Lucid to follow suit. Meanwhile, a recent study from research firm Cox Automotive found that consumers who complete most of the car-buying process online tend to report the highest satisfaction results.
Hyundai’s e-commerce play will still loop in local auto dealers, rather than circumventing them entirely, allowing for something of a best-of-both-worlds hybrid approach, letting franchisees list their lot stock online and users to digitally window-shop vehicles in their area.
Established players in the ecommerce car space are already feeling the heat:
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Carvana, the online used car dealer and pandemic-era darling, saw its share price skid more than 5% following Hyundai’s announcement. Meanwhile, dealership giant Asbury Automotive Group’s shares plunged more than 8%.
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CarMax dropped 5%, while TrueCar fell nearly 7%. Ivan Drury, director of insights at the auto industry research firm Edmunds, told Axios that car sellers: “have all said, ‘We want to be the Amazon of car buying.’ Well, now Amazon is the Amazon of car buying.”
Also announced Thursday: Starting in 2025, all Hyundai cars will feature Amazon Alexa technology as part of the partnership.
Gone in 60 Seconds: In May, Hyundai settled a $200 million class action lawsuit, following complaints that the automaker failed to install appropriate anti-theft technology in millions of its vehicles, leading to a plague of carjackings. Now 17 US cities including Chicago, New York, and San Diego, are filing lawsuits of their own, saying that Hyundai cars represent a large portion of stolen vehicles in their jurisdictions. In other words, plan on being home when the Amazon guy delivers your new Kona — lest you fall victim to a particularly costly case of porch piracy.
– Brian Boyle
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Extra Upside
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No morning joe: Baristas at more than 200 Starbucks locations nationwide go on strike during Red Cup Day.
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Slow down: Federal agency wants speed-reduction tech in all new cars to mitigate collisions and crashes.
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