My TED Talk on Designer Babies & CRISPR
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What’s it like to give a TED talk and could there be designer babies in your future as a parent? On Halloween I gave a TEDxVienna talk (click above) on giving consideration to the possibility that we may be headed toward a new reality in the next 15 years in which there are designer babies. …
What if I could make designer babies for you? My TED talk Read More »
I’ve written extensively about the potential use of CRISPR in humans, including in particular in the germline where it would lead to heritable genetic modifications. Research using CRISPR in human embryos strictly for research purposes (not reproduction) is proceeding and in the case of non-viable embryos, such work has already been published (e.g. here), but …
Yesterday’s report of human therapeutic cloning to make embryonic stem (ES) cell lines is a big deal. I support the work and I believe it is very important. People’s reactions to it vary wildly depending on their agendas of course. This post is a no-nonsense overview of the main points. My overall point. This is …
5 human therapeutic cloning talking points dissected Read More »
What if some legit place like The Mayo Clinic charged people just for the opportunity to talk to a doctor about possibly enrolling in a clinical trial? Imagine this kind of conversation. “Hey, Doc, I have this medical problem and heard you have a relevant clinical trial. Tell me about it.” Then the doctor fills …
Mayo Clinic charges patients just to talk about clinical trials? Read More »
A grand jury indicted Missouri state representative and assistant physician Patricia Derges for allegedly selling and injecting patients with fake stem cells. The injection was reportedly just of amniotic fluid, but Derges allegedly claimed it was a stem cell treatment. NBC News was one of several media outlets that broke the story here after the …
Lawmaker indicted for selling fake stem cells for COVID & more Read More »
Did Chinese researcher He Jiankui really CRISPR gene edit the CCR5 gene in two embryos producing twin baby girls? In my opinion the answer is “no”, but probably not for the reason you might think at first. He proclaims gene edits He claimed he had made twin baby girls with “gene edits”, which I feel is unethical …
He Jiankui didn’t really gene edit those girls; he mutated them Read More »
Over the years I’ve been keeping my eyes open for advertising by stem cell clinics and lately the trend is big splashy ads in mainstream media including large daily newspapers such as the SacBee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and now the Seattle times (see below from today’s). These kinds of big ad buys on front or …
Money talks: stem cell clinic ads mushrooming in mainstream media Read More »
What is the future of Genome Medicine? The meeting by that same name that I’m at down here in La Jolla is all about tackling this question and the line up of speakers today on the first day is amazing. I’m speaking about IPS cells as a basis for personalized medicine tomorrow morning so that’s exciting. …
Live blogging Future of Genome Medicine: great talks by Feng Zhang & others Read More »
Patient advocate Ted Harada is the recipient of this year’s Stem Cell Person of the Year Award. Congrats also to the runner-up, HD patient advocate Judy Roberson. The three of us together are pictured at left. You can read about the 20 nominees here and see the vote results that picked the 10 finalists here. …
Stem Cell Person of the Year 2016: Patient Advocate Ted Harada Read More »