January 8, 2024
Genetic Ethics
January 3, 2024
Thermo Fisher Says It Has Halted Sales of DNA Technology in Tibet
(Wall Street Journal) – Instrumentation maker Thermo Fisher Scientific said it no longer sells certain DNA-based human-identification products in Tibet, building on a similar halt of sales to China’s Xinjiang region of technology that human-rights groups allege can be misused … Read More
January 3, 2024
23andMe Tells Victims It’s Their Fault That Their Data Was Breached
(TechCrunch) – Facing more than 30 lawsuits from victims of its massive data breach, 23andMe is now deflecting the blame to the victims themselves in an attempt to absolve itself from any responsibility, according to a letter sent to a … Read More
January 2, 2024
The Plan to Put Pig Genes in Soy Beans for Tastier Fake Meat
(Wired) – In June 2023, Moolec revealed that it had inserted genes from pigs into soy plants in order to make soybeans that expressed porcine proteins. The experiments were carried out at the company’s greenhouses in Wisconsin. In some of … Read More
December 29, 2023
A New Edition of The New England Journal of Medicine Is Now Available
December 26, 2023
Sickle Cell Patient’s Journey Leads to Landmark Approval of Gene-Editing Treatment
(NPR) – Gray’s transformation is the result of the landmark medical experiment that she launched and which culminated in December with a milestone: The Food and Drug Administration’s approved the first treatment that uses gene-editing to alleviate a human illness. … Read More
December 26, 2023
A New Edition of European Journal of Human Genetics Is Now Available
December 22, 2023
Gene Editing Had a Banner Year in 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – Perhaps no technology has more power to transform medicine, and its vast potential is just beginning to be realized. Gene editing can be used to delete, insert, or alter portions of our genetic code. We’ve been … Read More
December 21, 2023
Cancer-Fighting CAR-T Cells Could Be Made Inside Body with Viral Injection
(Nature) – Researchers are closing in on ways to produce CAR T cells in the body, raising hopes that the notoriously expensive and bespoke cancer therapies might one day become more accessible. In CAR-T treatment, immune cells called T cells … Read More
December 21, 2023
One Man’s Longevity Obsession Now Includes Fountain-of-Youth Injections
(Bloomberg) – About a million tourists descend upon Roatán each year. The island, just off the coast of Honduras, boasts a large barrier reef ideal for scuba diving and snorkeling, and it has the beaches, jungles and slow pace of … Read More
December 20, 2023
After ‘SNL’ Skit on Sickle Cell CRISPR Therapy, Advocates Cite Errors and Stereotypes
(STAT News) – he sketch reverberated around the sickle cell community the next morning. To many advocates, patients, and doctors, it seemed to perpetuate falsehoods and stereotypes that had harmed sickle cell patients and held back progress for decades: that … Read More
December 20, 2023
A New Edition of Journal of Medical Ethics Is Now Available
December 18, 2023
A New Edition of Hastings Center Report Is Now Available
December 15, 2023
In a World First, a Patient’s Antibody Cells Were Just Genetically Engineered
(Wired) – Our B cells help prevent us from getting sick. Their job is to make antibodies, immune system proteins that fight off viruses and other foreign invaders. And they make a lot of antibodies—thousands of them every second. What … Read More
December 15, 2023
Vertex Developed a CRISPR Cure. It’s Already on the Hunt for Something Better.
(MIT Technology Review) – The company that just got approval to sell the first gene-editing treatment in history, for sickle-cell disease, is already looking for an ordinary drug that could take its place. Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a 50-person team working … Read More
December 15, 2023
Sickle Cell Affects More Families in Africa and India, But New Gene Therapies Are Out of Reach
(Associated Press) – But experts say the one-time treatment is out of reach in India and Africa — places where the disease is most common. Vast inequities cut much of the world off from gene therapy in general. While access … Read More
December 15, 2023
A Former Harvard Professor Is Accused of Using His Sperm to Secretly Impregnate a Patient
(Associated Press) – A former professor at Harvard Medical School and founder of one of the nation’s largest fertility clinics is being accused of secretly impregnating a patient in 1980 after promising the sperm would come from an anonymous donor, … Read More
December 14, 2023
Vertex Will Pay Tens of Millions to License a Controversial CRISPR Patent
(MIT Technology Review) – Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a dominant CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease. The agreement … Read More
December 14, 2023
Jennifer Doudna Believes Crispr Is for Everyone
(Wired) – Right now, though, it’s still a rarefied treatment. “It’s expensive,” Jennifer Doudna, the pioneering biochemist who won a Nobel Prize in 2020 for her work on Crispr, told WIRED’s Emily Mullin at the LiveWIRED conference this week in … Read More
December 13, 2023
Gene Therapy Offered This 7-Year-Old Freedom. The Price: A Grueling Year
(STAT News) – Fewer than 15 other people with beta thal have started the Zynteglo process, but gene therapies for the far more common sickle cell disease, from Bluebird and from Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics, were approved in the U.S. … Read More
December 12, 2023
‘It’s All Gone’: CAR-T Therapy Forces Autoimmune Diseases Into Remission
(Nature) – Engineered immune cells have given 15 people with once-debilitating autoimmune disorders a new lease on life, free from fresh symptoms or treatments. The results raise hopes that the approach — called CAR-T-cell therapy — might one day be … Read More
December 11, 2023
Gene Editing Could Be a Game Changer for Patients with Sickle Cell Disease
December 11, 2023
New Sickle Cell Therapies Will Be Out of Reach Where They Are Needed Most
(New York Times) – The Food and Drug Administration’s approval on Friday of two groundbreaking gene therapy treatments for sickle cell disease has brought a rare moment of hope and celebration to people with the agonizing blood disorder. But there … Read More
December 11, 2023
A New Edition of The American Journal of Bioethics Is Now Available
December 8, 2023
FDA Approves World’s First Crispr Gene-Editing Drug for Sickle-Cell Disease
(Wall Street Journal) – The gene-editing revolution is jumping from the lab to the marketplace. The U.S. has approved the world’s first medicine employing Crispr technology, a Nobel Prize-winning discovery that promised a powerful new tool for modifying genes to … Read More
