When I say “gene edit” or “genome editing”, what’s the first thing that pops in your mind? It will depend on who you are. For many lay people until a few weeks ago when the world heard about He Jiankui‘s claim of CRISPR’d babies they may not have had anything pop in their heads when […]
Context for my Nature piece on redefining “gene edit” to be more precise 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 »
When I was a little kid I played this game called “connect the dots” or “dot-to-dot”, where you draw a line from dot-to-dot in numerical order and at some point a picture starts to emerge. I think kids and even some adults still play this today. They even come in extreme versions with hundreds or
Trying to connect the dots on CRISPR baby story paints a dark, cloudy picture Read More »
Reports are out that a scientist in China has been working to make a CRISPR baby for some time and supposedly has made twin genetically modified babies. I see this work as unethical and dangerous. Just a couple years ago when I published my book GMO Sapiens on potential use of CRISPR in a heritable manner
Why CRISPR baby production (if it happened) was unethical & dangerous Read More »
There’s the batmobile for Batman, right, but what about a stem-cell-mobile? Every so often someone sends me some wild new stem cell clinic thing that they’ve seen that is both real and almost unbelievable at the same time. The latest is a mobile stem cell “clinic” business called RegenMed of Florida, which is what I’m
Cell on wheels: ‘stem-cell-mobile’ delivers unproven therapies Read More »
Stem cells are always in the news so what’s up in the last week or two? CIRM News The dialogue over CIRM’s future is picking up a bit of steam. The San Francisco Chronicle did an in-depth piece on CIRM some weeks back and then opined that they didn’t feel supportive of another round of
News bites: CIRM, anti-MSCs, & human eggs from stem cells Read More »
Stem cells for arthritis and pain are hot topics these days and I’m getting an increasing number of patients reaching out with questions and sharing their situations related to arthritis or pain (or usually both together). I asked one arthritis patient who reached out to me if they would be OK with me sharing their
Arthritis patient with pain’s email on stem cell clinic & my answer Read More »
Who decides whether a stem cell therapy is “good” or “bad”, and should that kind of a judgment be more focused on direct patient perspectives such as their stem cell therapy reviews as consumers or based on biomedical science? Both? I’ve written before about how stem cell patients are increasingly thinking of themselves as consumers
Stem cell therapy reviews: knees, lung, autism, & Regenexx Read More »
It’s an odd confluence of events this week that (A) the Nuffield Council, an ethics think tank, gives a thumbs up in a new report to heritable human genetic modification that would probably include using CRISPR in the same week that (B) a new paper reports that CRISPR can cause unpredictable genomic damage and several other concerning reports
Mixed Nuffield Council Report Too Aspirational on Human Genetic Modification Read More »
“If I’m going to the trouble of cloning myself, I want the clone to be a copy of me!” I’m imagining what someone might say if they were told that their expensive and ethically dubious personal cloning efforts produced a clone that was somebody else instead of them. Even if the clone was very similar
Surprising reason why human cloning may produce someone else Read More »