Gene Editing Controversy Reminds Us Just How Much Money Influences Science
By Kristen V. Brown,
Gizmodo
| 07. 06. 2017
Recently, a kerfuffle in the world of CRISPR illustrated just how easily money—and our perception of it—can impact science.
In late May, a paper came out questioning how effective the gene-editing technology really is. Working with mice, researchers found that edits made with CRISPR can also result in thousands of unintended changes to a genome. The study cast serious doubt on whether CRISPR is ready for prime time.
The fallout was swift. Stock prices of three CRISPR companies—Editas Medicine, Intellia Therapeutics and CRISPR Therapeutics—tumbled. Scientists affiliated with those companies fired back, questioning the study’s methodology. Stocks bounced back. The scientific world was set atwitter, questioning not only the validity of the initial study, but how to trust a rebuttal against that study when it came from those who stood to lose the most from its publication.
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 10.29.2026
At the beginning of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s blockbuster documentary You Can See Everything, Billy Evans (partner of Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes), says that they decided to do the film for one purpose: “radical transparency.” As they work on “Theranos 2.0,” Evans and Holmes want to show the public that she has been misunderstood –– painted as a liar and a fraud in the public imagination (and the courts) despite, as she claims in the...
By Jennifer Denbow, Guest Contributor
| 10.29.2026
Almost every day I am reminded that we are in the midst of a fertility panic. Whether it’s the Vice President exhorting Americans to have more babies or The New York Times running yet another story about the fertility cliff, fear about falling fertility rates is everywhere. While centrally concerned with declining rates of childbearing, Anna Louie Sussman’s new book, Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, is a welcome antidote to the panic.
Sussman has written...
By Jan Grue, The Guardian | 10.27.2026
For a very long time, I dreamed of being cured. I was born in 1981. I learned to walk early enough, but I stumbled and fell more easily than other children. My parents began to worry that something was wrong...
By staff, We Are Egg Donors | 10.21.2026
Michelle Lambrechts is a police officer and one-time egg donor in Belgium. She is also the founder of Ik Zit Met Een Ei, a Belgian nonprofit that advocates for egg donors. (The name is a Dutch play on words...
