Search Results for: lovell-badge

Counterpoints to Lovell-Badge & Daley’s CRISPR baby rationales

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CRISPR-baby

Two prominent scientists, Robin Lovell-Badge and George Daley, have been amongst the most outspoken proponents of leaving the door open to heritable human genetic modification via CRISPR. While they each have articulated their reasons in somewhat different ways at times, their core reasons arguing in favor of future heritable CRISPR appear largely the same. In […]

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Response from Drs. Braude & Lovell-Badge to My Letter on Mitochondrial Transfer, 3-Parent Technology

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3-parent-baby

The following is a response to my Open Letter to the UK Parliament on mitochondrial transfer/3-parent technology from Drs. Peter Braude and Robin Lovell-Badge. Dear Professor Knoepfler, We read your open letter to the UK Parliament and the Science and Technology Committee with interest and concern. We are two scientists, like you, with particular interests

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Weekly reads: He Jiankui disappoints, ALS, Vor Biopharma

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He Jiankui

I’m sure many of you remember He Jiankui, the guy who made CRISPR babies. He ended up serving three years in jail in China. He seems to be trying for something of a comeback since his release. Were He Jiankui invitations a mistake? Some prestigious places have even invited him to give talks, which seemed

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Weekly reads: escape to New York, CRISPR baby patents, ISSCR guidelines, pubs

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the high line in manhattan

My to-read list this weekend includes a range of papers along with various news & media including a report of two US research groups aiming to get CRISPR baby patents. More on that below. At long last a trip + fun thing to do in NYC Last week I took my first trip in more

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Risks rise as ISSCR drops strict 14-day rule on human embryo growth in the lab

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mouse embryos grown outside the lab

Something called the 14-day rule on growing human embryos in the lab helped keep a tough question in check for a long time: when is it ethically wrong or just practically unwise to continue growing a human embryo for research? There is no good answer based on science or anything else. ISSCR moves beyond strict

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Perspectives on CRISPR baby guy He Jiankui (贺建奎) going to jail

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Jiankui-He-who-claims-CRISPR-baby-production

Scientist He Jiankui(贺建奎) has been sentenced to 3 years in prison by Chinese authorities. Two collaborators also will go to jail. A piece in Science by Dennis Normile on the sentencing of He Jiankui ID’d the other two: “His collaborators were identified as Zhang Renli, of a medical institution in Guangdong province, and Qin Jinzhou, from a Shenzhen

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CRISPR baby moratorium grows likely with rising tide of support including from biotech

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CRISPR-gene-edit-vs-mutation-1

Trying to make a CRISPR baby any time soon would be a really bad idea. How bad? Last December 3rd I penned a piece for STAT News arguing for a moratorium on the heritable use of CRISPR in humans. This potential future, radical application of “gene editing” is now often colloquially referred to as “CRISPR

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7 tech hurdles to human germline CRISPR

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Human-crispr-challenges

Human germline CRISPR raises major bioethical considerations, but what about technical issues? Setting aside the many ethical issue about the general idea of human modification itself, could this really work? Yes in theory it could, but there are some very tough technological challenges that could and likely would cause failures or unacceptable outcomes at many steps

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Synthetic embryo or embryo model tech reported in Science: how big is this?

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progression-for-cgs_bs-1-e1488559282646

Can you make a synthetic embryo, also called an embryo model? Developmental biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz has long been on the trail of this seemingly almost uncatchable quarry. With her team’s publication in Science today they took a big step forward on this path even if some major hurdles remain. You can see her discussion of

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