A 'family spat' spills out in public, as scientists debate effort to build a human genome
By Andrew Joseph,
STAT News
| 06. 04. 2016
Untitled Document
NEW YORK — Harvard Medical School’s George Church and Stanford University’s Drew Endy are top scientists who have expanded the boundaries of biology with their pioneering discoveries. They have written papers together and even cofounded a synthetic biology company.
But over the past month, they have been cast as the opposing spokesmen in the debate over whether scientists should try to build human and other genomes from scratch, a project that could transform our understanding of the basic building blocks of life but that is fraught with ethical issues.
...
But the project raises thorny ethical questions. Although it’s not a goal of the project, in theory, brewing up a complete human genome could lead to the formation of an actual person, sans parents. The effort, in other words, picks at the most fundamental question of our identity: What does it mean to be human?
Continue reading on STAT News
Image via Wikimedia
Related Articles
By Darren Incorvaia, Fierce Biotech | 07.16.2026
Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., the Nobel Laureate best known for co-inventing the CRISPR system that has become the foundation for gene editing, is dipping her toes into a new, buzzy field: AI-powered protein design.
In a new paper, published today...
By Risa Cromer, The Conversation | 07.17.2026
By Emily Packard Dawson and Lainie Friedman Ross , The Hastings Center for Bioethics | 07.16.2026
Major news outlets recently reported – based on a bioRxiv preprint – that scientists had edited genes in human embryos with “startling precision.” The scientists’ decision to release this work ahead of peer review, coupled with the extensive media coverage...
Media coverage of recent developments in embryo gene editing might seem to suggest that gene-edited babies are close to becoming a reality. As tech billionaires eager to profit off of techno-eugenics invest in “designer baby” technologies, attempts to normalize heritable genome editing – which remains unsafe and raises significant ethical and societal concerns – are especially dangerous. It’s worth taking a closer look at these developments and what they mean, in a way that pushes back on narratives normalizing the...
