Editor’s Move Sparks Backlash
By David Cyranoski,
Nature News
| 02. 21. 2012
The field of bioethics is embroiled in a period of soul-searching, sparked by a startling career move by one of its biggest names.
Glenn McGee is the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), the most cited bioethics journal, which he founded in 1999. Since December 2011, he has also been president for ethics and strategic initiatives at CellTex Therapeutics in Houston, Texas, a controversial company involved in providing customers with unproven stem-cell therapies. A CellTex press release says that “Dr McGee’s responsibilities will include ensuring that all of the firm’s work, centered on adult stem cells, will meet the highest ethical standards of the medical and scientific communities.”
Although McGee has said he will leave the journal on 1 March, many bioethicists have criticized him, the journal’s editorial board and its publisher, London-based Taylor and Francis. They argue that in holding both posts, McGee has a conflict of interest between his responsibilities to the journal and his new employer’s desire to promote the clinical application of stem-cell treatments that are not approved by the US Food and Drug...
Related Articles
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian | 02.28.2024
Doctors say a man in California who contracted blood cancer while living with HIV is in remission from both potentially fatal illnesses thanks to a treatment they are hailing as remarkable and encouraging.
Paul Edmonds is only the fifth-known person...
By Victoria Gray, Uduak Thomas, and Kevin Davies, The CRISPR Journal | 02.14.2024
In July 2019, medical staff in Nashville dosed the first U.S. patient in the exa-cel therapy trial, sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. That first patient was Victoria Gray, a mother of four from Forest, Mississippi, a sickle cell...
By Adam Zewe, MIT News | 02.07.2024
A tiny device built by scientists at MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology could be used to improve the safety and effectiveness of cell therapy treatments for patients suffering from spinal cord injuries.
In cell therapy, clinicians...