Out of jail, is the CRISPR-baby scandal scientist at it again?
By Natasha Mitchell,
ABC [feat. CGS' Katie Hasson]
| 03. 17. 2023
Chinese scientist Dr Jiankui He flouted the law and bioethics basics to create the world's first CRISPR gene edited babies. Now out of jail, he's on Twitter recruiting patients and raising funds for more trials, this time in adults not embryos. An unhelpful distraction or a cautionary lesson for the world's scientists? Dr Joy Zhang has an extraordinary insider view after a recent encounter with Dr He. Dr Katie Hasson is part of a global Coalition to Stop Designer Babies, and runs a Missing Voices initiative to diversify who gets a say about heritable genome editing.
Listen to the full episode at the link!
Guests:
Dr Joy Zhang
Founding director, Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice
University of Kent, UK
Co-author, The Elephant and the Dragon in Contemporary Life Sciences (Manchester University Press, 2022)
Dr Katie Hasson
Associate Director
Center for Genetics and Society, USA
Further information:
Looking Back into the Future: CRISPR and Social Values (University of Kent report from meeting with Dr He Jiankui in February 2023)
The Third International Summit on Human Gene Editing, London, 2023 (livestream videos via the...
Related Articles
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born...
By Nick Paul Taylor, BioSpace | 03.14.2024
A U.K. watchdog balked at the cost-effectiveness of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ CRISPR-based sickle cell disease therapy Thursday, recommending against funding the treatment unless uncertainties can be cleared up satisfactorily.
The U.K. became the first country to authorize Vertex’s Casgevy (exagamglogene...