2016 Fear vs Hope: Gene Editing— Terrible turning point?
By Pete Shanks, Deccan Chronicle | 01. 01. 2017
The next year may represent our best chance to prevent the rise of a modern, uncontrolled and dangerously ill-considered techno-eugenics.
If new “gene editing” tools can be used to treat people who are sick, that would be a hugely welcome development. But applying them to human reproduction could all too easily open the door to a world of genetic haves and have-nots. Will it be possible for the distinction between responsible and irresponsible applications of human genetic technologies to hold, in policy and in practice? There is hope, but the signals from 2016 are very worrying.
One year ago, the U.S. National Academies Summit on Human Gene Editing ended with a consensus statement that proceeding with inheritable (germline) gene editing would be “irresponsible” until both the science was proven and there was “broad societal consensus about the appropriateness of the proposed application.”
It didn’t take long for that to seem wildly optimistic. Even before that announcement, and in complete secrecy, a rogue American scientist had defied authorities by using Mexican facilities to create a baby for a Jordanian couple using...
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After the heritable human gene editing headlines of late 2018, and considering that the stakes include the future of human biology and the prospect of a new high-tech eugenics, it is no surprise that discussions have continued. What was not widely anticipated, however, was the emergence of a connection between old-school transhumanism, mutated into biohacking, and modern cryptocurrency, in the service of monetizing “the production of designer babies and human germline genetic engineering.”
Antonio Regalado’s story in MIT Technology...
By Jim Kozubek, Scientific American | 01.21.2019
A Chinese researcher recently disrupted the CCR5 gene, which builds a protein that acts as an entryway that HIV uses to gain entry to T-cells, allegedly creating the world’s first genetically engineered baby. Chinese officials moved swiftly to condemn the...
