Innovation and Equity in an Age of Gene Editing
By Charis Thompson, Ruha Benjamin, Jessica Cussins and Marcy Darnovsky, The Guardian | 05. 19. 2015
The first day of BEINGS2015, “A Gathering of Global Thought Leaders to Reach Consensus on the Direction of Biotechnology for the 21st Century”, in Atlanta, coincided with the announcement by the National Academy of Science and National Academy of Medicine of an initiative to look into “promising new treatments for disease,” given that “recent experiments to attempt to edit human genes also have raised important questions about the potential risks and ethical concerns of altering the human germline.”
It is the time of prizes and tussles over intellectual property and experiments on non-viable human embryos, and, calls for caution from CRISPR-CAS9 scientists (here and here and here). Also still in the air is the UK’s political vote, despite an EU consensus against germline genetic modification (was this the first step of ‘Brexit’?) to allow clinics to apply for permission to undertake IVF with mitochondrial DNA donation, a form of germ cell genetic modification that requires egg donation. These technologies are widely considered threshold technologies with unknown and irreversible consequences for individuals, humanity and the environment.
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When considering whether and how to proceed with regulating human germline gene editing, everyone supports public engagement. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and the Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) all recommend a robust public debate. But no one really knows how to conduct one, and all too many efforts lay a heavy hand on one of the scales.
The first step would seem to involve asking and answering the superficially...
By Rob Stein, National Public Radio | 09.24.2018
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive genetic modification through a complex species.
The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer mosquitoes with...
By Andrew Smith, The Guardian | 08.30.2018
The 18th of March 2018, was the day tech insiders had been dreading. That night, a new moon added almost no light to a poorly lit four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona, as a specially adapted Uber Volvo XC90 detected...
A wave of controversy about reproductive gene editing gathered force in response to reports in 2015 of the first CRISPR experiments on human embryos. That news provoked two kinds of reactions: on the one hand, hyperbolic claims about "editing humanity"...
