Re-Engineering Human Embryos
By Tom Ashbrook,
On Point
| 04. 28. 2015
[With CGS's Marcy Darnovsky]
Untitled Document
<span id="XinhaEditingPostion"></span>
New report out of China, with potential implications for the rest of human history. Human nature. Chinese scientists have used a new technique to “edit” the genes of human embryos. To snip and change the code. The recipe for human life itself. What gets inherited. They’re not perfect editors yet. But if and when they get it down, those edits will re-engineer human life. Maybe against disease. And for all kinds of traits. They’re searching for “genius genes.” Stronger. Faster. This hour on On Point: re-engineering human embryo genes. The implications, and the global moral debate.
Untitled Document
Guests
Carl Zimmer, science writer and columnist at the New York Times. Author of the books “Soul Made Flesh,” “Evolution” and “At The Water’s Edge,” among many others. (@carlzimmer)
Craig Mello, Nobel Prize-winning professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society.
Image via Earth Times
Related Articles
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Gerry Smith, Bloomberg | 03.12.2024
When Celenise Mahmood first learned about two new gene therapies that could cure sickle cell disease, she felt a wave of relief.
Her 9-year-old son, Navid, has the inherited blood disorder. By age 5, he’d had over 30 life-saving blood...
By Liz Baker, Debbie Elliott, and Susanna Capelouto, NPR | 03.06.2024
The Alabama State Legislature passed a bill Wednesday night granting civil and criminal immunity for in vitro fertilization service providers and receivers.
Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law within an hour of it passing the Alabama...
By Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.
But the couple...