bioethics Archives

More on Church & Epstein, how simple “no” could have been, making amends?

March 10, 2026 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

There have been more revelations about connections between George Church & Epstein in the past few weeks from the new Epstein files document drop. Church & Epstein I wrote earlier about how Jeffrey Epstein interacted with a team at Harvard/MGH. This included George Church and his colleague at the time Joe Thakuria. There were discussions […]

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Neuralink on the brain: another person gets implant

August 8, 2024 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

Neuralink has had a rollercoaster ride in the last few years with many ups and downs. They just recently deployed a brain implant into a second clinical trial participant. So it’s a good time to update where things stand. This more general area of science is often called brain-computer interface (BCI) research. The implants are

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Pros & cons of dead celebrity genomics

March 28, 2023 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

Are there any guidelines for genomics studies of famous dead people like sequencing their genomes? It doesn’t seem like it. I remember when I first heard of the idea of trying to clone John Lennon from an old molar. Fortunately, as far as I know no one ever tried that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if

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‘We don’t want to freak people out’: about that Jacob Hanna human embryo model startup

August 18, 2022 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 5 Comments

Stem cell biologist Jacob Hanna has a new startup called Renewal Bio. Its goal is to harvest cells or tissues from human embryo or fetus models for clinical use. I believe that their commercial ambitions have so far outstripped careful thought and discussion in the broader community of researchers. There are major risks here for

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Perspectives on Biohackers and DIY CRISPR

November 24, 2020 / Mina Kim / 1 Comment

How should we view biohackers and their DIY use of CRISPR outside of the traditional industry or academic lab environment? Introduction to “Biohackers” and DIY CRISPR Who are biohackers exactly? They are people who “hack” their own biology by transforming their bodies through the insertion of technology or modification of their DNA. More rarely, biohackers

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Stem cell blogging dilemmas: patient disclosures, lawsuits, & more

November 11, 2020 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 7 Comments

After all this time writing on The Niche here since 2010, I still haven’t entirely resolved certain blogging dilemmas including when a patient discloses something. It’s kind of a jungle out there on the internet. What kinds of tough blogging dilemmas do I face? I’m just going to give you some examples of the more common

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New stem cell pubs including artificial human embryo work

July 7, 2019 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

Fig-4d-Nat-Cell-Bio-2019-Simunovic-et-al

In this post I list some recent interesting stem cell and science pubs including artificial human embryo research. Engineered human embryo research continues. Scientists for years have been advancing the types of embryo-like structures made from both human and other creature’s cells. In a new Nature Cell Bio pub entitled, “A 3D model of a

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Weekend Stem Cell Reads: Naked mole rats, geckos, brain gel, & more

November 3, 2017 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 1 Comment

Here are some stem cell reads for the weekend, ranging from media to research articles. TGIF! What are your stem cell or other science weekend reads? Let’s start with how difficult it is to make IPS cells from naked mole rats! Naked Mole Rat Cells Have a Stable Epigenome that Resists iPSC Reprogramming. It takes more than

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Why Mitalipov’s ‘magic’ room for human embryo CRISPR may give us pause

October 3, 2017 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 7 Comments

The debate over whether the main conclusions of the Nature paper on human embryo CRISPR led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) are correct remains unresolved. Note that Nature just added an editorial alert just above the references section to their paper: “Updated online 02 October 2017. Editorial Note: Readers are alerted that some

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Six questions as FDA takes new shot at stem cell clinics

August 28, 2017 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 7 Comments

The FDA issued a historic statement today promising to more clearly define its regulatory policies on stem cell therapies and to take strong action on some stem cell clinics that it views as “bad actors”. I’ve never the FDA use such clear-cut language before. I give big kudos to new FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. It already

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