Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Baby God: how DNA testing uncovered a shocking web of fertility fraud

Arian Horton
The Guardian
Originally published 2 Dec 20

Here ate two excerpts:

The database unmasked, with detached clarity, a dark secret hidden in plain sight for decades: the physician once named Nevada’s doctor of the year, who died in 2006 at age 94, had impregnated numerous patients with his own sperm, unbeknownst to the women or their families. The decades-long fertility fraud scheme, unspooled in the HBO documentary Baby God, left a swath of families – 26 children as of this writing, spanning 40 years of the doctor’s treatments – shocked at long-obscured medical betrayal, unmoored from assumptions of family history and stumbling over the most essential questions of identity. Who are you, when half your DNA is not what you thought?

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That reality – a once unknowable crime now made plainly knowable – has now come to pass, and the film features interviews with several of Fortier’s previously unknown children, each grappling with and tracing their way into a new web of half-siblings, questions of lineage and inheritance, and reframing of family history. Babst, who started as a cop at 19, dove into her own investigation, sourcing records on Dr Fortier that eventually revealed allegations of sexual abuse and molestation against his own stepchildren.

Brad Gulko, a human genomics scientist in San Francisco who bears a striking resemblance to the young Fortier, initially approached the revelation from the clinical perspective of biological motivations for procreation. “I feel like Dr Fortier found a way to justify in his own mind doing what he wanted to do that didn’t violate his ethical norms too much, even if he pushed them really hard,” he says in the film. “I’m still struggling with that. I don’t know where I’ll end up.”

The film quickly morphed, according to Olson, from an investigation of the Fortier case and his potential motivations to the larger, unresolvable questions of identity, nature versus nurture. “At first it was like ‘let’s get all the facts, we’re going to figure it out, what are his motivations, it will be super clear,’” said Olson. 

Friday, November 20, 2020

When Did We Become Fully Human? What Fossils and DNA Tell Us About the Evolution of Modern Intelligence

Nick Longrich
singularityhub.com
Originally posted 18 OCT 2020 

Here are two excerpts:

Because the fossil record is so patchy, fossils provide only minimum dates. Human DNA suggests even earlier origins for modernity. Comparing genetic differences between DNA in modern people and ancient Africans, it’s estimated that our ancestors lived 260,000 to 350,000 years ago. All living humans descend from those people, suggesting that we inherited the fundamental commonalities of our species, our humanity, from them.

All their descendants—Bantu, Berber, Aztec, Aboriginal, Tamil, San, Han, Maori, Inuit, Irish—share certain peculiar behaviors absent in other great apes. All human cultures form long-term pair bonds between men and women to care for children. We sing and dance. We make art. We preen our hair, adorn our bodies with ornaments, tattoos and makeup.

We craft shelters. We wield fire and complex tools. We form large, multigenerational social groups with dozens to thousands of people. We cooperate to wage war and help each other. We teach, tell stories, trade. We have morals, laws. We contemplate the stars, our place in the cosmos, life’s meaning, what follows death.

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First, we journeyed out of Africa, occupying more of the planet. There were then simply more humans to invent, increasing the odds of a prehistoric Steve Jobs or Leonardo da Vinci. We also faced new environments in the Middle East, the Arctic, India, Indonesia, with unique climates, foods and dangers, including other human species. Survival demanded innovation.

Many of these new lands were far more habitable than the Kalahari or the Congo. Climates were milder, but Homo sapiens also left behind African diseases and parasites. That let tribes grow larger, and larger tribes meant more heads to innovate and remember ideas, more manpower, and better ability to specialize. Population drove innovation.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations.

Christie Wilcox
Quanta Magazine
Originally posted 23 April 20

Here are several excerpts:

The immediate benefit of sex for the algae is that they form resistant diploid spores that can outlast a bad environment. When better conditions return, the algal cells return to their haploid state through meiosis. But as Nedelcu and her colleagues point out, the process of meiosis also offers unique opportunities for genomic improvement that go beyond diversity.

Like all multicellular organisms, these algae have ways of healing small breaks or errors in their DNA. But if the damage is bad enough, those mechanisms struggle to accurately repair it. In those cases, having a second copy of that strand of DNA to use as a template for the repairs can be a lifesaver. “That’s basically what most organisms have by being diploid,” Nedelcu explained.

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Such indirect benefits may extend far beyond meiosis. “Sex also refers to copulation and sexual behaviors,” McDonough said. Researchers studying everything from crickets to mice are starting to see that having sex can have all sorts of unexpected upsides.

Unexpected, that is, because it’s generally assumed not only that sex is inefficient compared to asexual reproduction, but that it imposes an energy burden on the individuals involved. Producing eggs or sperm, finding a mate, the act of mating — all of it takes energy and resources. Consequently, there’s a trade-off between reproduction and other things an organism might do to survive longer, such as growing bigger or bolstering its immune system.

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Of course, those consequences go both ways: Cultural beliefs and views on sex influence how we go about studying and interpreting the results from research on other organisms. Our biases regarding sexual activity — like which kinds are or aren’t “normal” or proper — “have essentially affected what it is that we’ve deemed important to study in animals,” Worthington said.

McDonough agrees that our preconceptions of what sex should look like and the reasons why an individual should or shouldn’t have it have biased our understanding of animal behavior. They point to the research on same-sex behaviors in animals as a prime example of this. McDonough and their colleagues noticed that the scientific discourse surrounding same-sex behaviors involves a lot of weak or baseless assumptions — for example, that engaging in sexual acts is inherently costly, so same-sex sexual interactions must provide some overwhelming benefit, such as a large increase in lifetime reproductive output, for the behavior to arise and stick around through natural selection. But “in many situations, it isn’t costly, and it may have some kind of benefit that we don’t understand,” McDonough said.

The info is here.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

10 Years Ago, DNA Tests Were The Future Of Medicine. Now They’re A Social Network — And A Data Privacy Mess

Peter Aldhaus
buzzfeednews.com
Originally posted 11 Dec 19

Here is an excerpt:

But DNA testing can reveal uncomfortable truths, too. Families have been torn apart by the discovery that the man they call “Dad” is not the biological father of his children. Home DNA tests can also be used to show that a relative is a rapist or a killer.

That possibility burst into the public consciousness in April 2018, with the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, alleged to be the Golden State Killer responsible for at least 13 killings and more than 50 rapes in the 1970s and 1980s. DeAngelo was finally tracked down after DNA left at the scene of a 1980 double murder was matched to people in GEDmatch who were the killer's third or fourth cousins. Through months of painstaking work, investigators working with the genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter built family trees that converged on DeAngelo.

Genealogists had long realized that databases like GEDmatch could be used in this way, but had been wary of working with law enforcement — fearing that DNA test customers would object to the idea of cops searching their DNA profiles and rummaging around in their family trees.

But the Golden State Killer’s crimes were so heinous that the anticipated backlash initially failed to materialize. Indeed, a May 2018 survey of more than 1,500 US adults found that 80% backed police using public genealogy databases to solve violent crimes.

“I was very surprised with the Golden State Killer case how positive the reaction was across the board,” CeCe Moore, a genealogist known for her appearances on TV, told BuzzFeed News a couple of months after DeAngelo’s arrest.

The info is here.

Monday, December 30, 2019

23 and Baby

Tanya Lewis
nature.com
Originally posted 4 Dec 19

Here are two excerpts:

Proponents say that genetic testing of newborns can help diagnose a life-threatening childhood-onset disease in urgent cases and could dramatically increase the number of genetic conditions all babies are screened for at birth, enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment. It could also inform parents of conditions they could pass on to future children or of their own risk of adult-onset diseases. Genetic testing could detect hundreds or even thousands of diseases, an order of magnitude more than current heel-stick blood tests—which all babies born in the U.S. undergo at birth—or confirm results from such a test.

But others caution that genetic tests may do more harm than good. They could miss some diseases that heel-stick testing can detect and produce false positives for others, causing anxiety and leading to unnecessary follow-up testing. Sequencing children’s DNA also raises issues of consent and the prospect of genetic discrimination.

Regardless of these concerns, newborn genetic testing is already here, and it is likely to become only more common. But is the technology sophisticated enough to be truly useful for most babies? And are families—and society—ready for that information?

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Then there’s the issue of privacy. If the child’s genetic information is stored on file, who has access to it? If the information becomes public, it could lead to discrimination by employers or insurance companies. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), passed in 2008, prohibits such discrimination. But GINA does not apply to employers with fewer than 15 employees and does not cover insurance for long-term care, life or disability. It also does not apply to people employed and insured by the military’s Tricare system, such as Rylan Gorby. When his son’s genome was sequenced, researchers also obtained permission to sequence Rylan’s genome, to determine if he was a carrier for the rare hemoglobin condition. Because it manifests itself only in childhood, Gorby decided taking the test was worth the risk of possible discrimination.

The info is here.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

DNA genealogical databases are a gold mine for police, but with few rules and little transparency

Paige St. John
The LA Times
Originally posted 24 Nov 19

Here is an excerpt:

But law enforcement has plunged into this new world with little to no rules or oversight, intense secrecy and by forming unusual alliances with private companies that collect the DNA, often from people interested not in helping close cold cases but learning their ethnic origins and ancestry.

A Times investigation found:
  • There is no uniform approach for when detectives turn to genealogical databases to solve cases. In some departments, they are to be used only as a last resort. Others are putting them at the center of their investigative process. Some, like Orlando, have no policies at all.
  • When DNA services were used, law enforcement generally declined to provide details to the public, including which companies detectives got the match from. The secrecy made it difficult to understand the extent to which privacy was invaded, how many people came under investigation, and what false leads were generated.
  • California prosecutors collaborated with a Texas genealogy company at the outset of what became a $2-million campaign to spotlight the heinous crimes they can solve with consumer DNA. Their goal is to encourage more people to make their DNA available to police matching.
There are growing concerns that the race to use genealogical databases will have serious consequences, from its inherent erosion of privacy to the implications of broadened police power.

In California, an innocent twin was thrown in jail. In Georgia, a mother was deceived into incriminating her son. In Texas, police met search guidelines by classifying a case as sexual assault but after an arrest only filed charges of burglary. And in the county that started the DNA race with the arrest of the Golden State killer suspect, prosecutors have persuaded a judge to treat unsuspecting genetic contributors as “confidential informants” and seal searches so consumers are not scared away from adding their own DNA to the forensic stockpile.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Is biohacking ethical? It’s complicated. A new Netflix series explains why.

A baby’s hand sporting a UPC barcode on its wrist holds onto an adult’s finger.Sigal Samuel
www.vox.com
Originally posted October 22, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Biohacking raises a lot of questions with huge ethical implications. Should biohacking yourself be a human right or should your control over your own body be curtailed — possibly even criminalized — if it’s risky to you or others? (Many biohacking pursuits exist in a legal gray zone but are not yet outright illegal, or not enforced as such. Some new gene therapies profiled in Unnatural Selection, like Jackson Kennedy’s, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration.) Will biohacking enhance life for all of us equally or will it widen the gap between haves and have-nots?

Perhaps we’d do best to strictly limit the use of new technologies like CRISPR. But then again, given that people are dying and these technologies might help, can we morally afford to not use them?

Ethical objections to biohacking

While some people who engage with biohacking view themselves as part of the scientific establishment and often voice ethical concerns about technologies like CRISPR, others have a strong anti-establishment streak.

Unnatural Selection assigns uneven weight to different camps — proponents of the new technologies get more airtime than their critics, perhaps because it’s more visually interesting to watch people inject themselves with new DNA than it is to watch finger-wagging bioethicists warn about risks.

The info is here.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Super-precise new CRISPR tool could tackle a plethora of genetic diseases

CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing complex, illustration.Heidi Ledford
nature.com
Originally posted October 21, 2019

For all the ease with which the wildly popular CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool alters genomes, it’s still somewhat clunky and prone to errors and unintended effects. Now, a recently developed alternative offers greater control over genome edits — an advance that could be particularly important for developing gene therapies.

The alternative method, called prime editing, improves the chances that researchers will end up with only the edits they want, instead of a mix of changes that they can’t predict. The tool, described in a study published on 21 October in Nature1, also reduces the ‘off-target’ effects that are a key challenge for some applications of the standard CRISPR–Cas9 system. That could make prime-editing-based gene therapies safer for use in people.

The tool also seems capable of making a wider variety of edits, which might one day allow it to be used to treat the many genetic diseases that have so far stymied gene-editors. David Liu, a chemical biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts and lead study author, estimates that prime editing might help researchers tackle nearly 90% of the more than 75,000 disease-associated DNA variants listed in ClinVar, a public database developed by the US National Institutes of Health.

The specificity of the changes that this latest tool is capable of could also make it easier for researchers to develop models of disease in the laboratory, or to study the function of specific genes, says Liu.

The info is here.

Monday, September 9, 2019

China approves ethics advisory group after CRISPR-babies scandal

Hepeng Jia
Nature.com
Originally published August 8, 2019

China will establish a national committee to advise the government on research-ethics regulations. The decision comes less than a year after a Chinese scientist sparked an international outcry over claims that he had created the world’s first genome-edited babies.

The country's most powerful policymaking body, the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, headed by President Xi Jinping, approved at the end of last month a plan to form the committee. According to Chinese media, it will strengthen the coordination and implementation of a comprehensive and consistent system of ethics governance for science and technology.

The government has released few details on how the committee will work. But Qiu Renzong, a bioethicist at the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, says it could help to reduce the fragmentation in biomedical ethics regulations across ministries, identifying loopholes in the enforcement of regulations and advise the government on appropriate punishments for those who violate the rules.

The info is here.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Proprietary Algorithms for Polygenic Risk: Protecting Scientific Innovation or Hiding the Lack of It?

A. Cecile & J.W. Janssens
Genes 2019, 10(6), 448
https://doi.org/10.3390/genes10060448

Abstract

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies aim to predict the risks of complex diseases using proprietary algorithms. Companies keep algorithms as trade secrets for competitive advantage, but a market that thrives on the premise that customers can make their own decisions about genetic testing should respect customer autonomy and informed decision making and maximize opportunities for transparency. The algorithm itself is only one piece of the information that is deemed essential for understanding how prediction algorithms are developed and evaluated. Companies should be encouraged to disclose everything else, including the expected risk distribution of the algorithm when applied in the population, using a benchmark DNA dataset. A standardized presentation of information and risk distributions allows customers to compare test offers and scientists to verify whether the undisclosed algorithms could be valid. A new model of oversight in which stakeholders collaboratively keep a check on the commercial market is needed.

Here is the conclusion:

Oversight of the direct-to-consumer market for polygenic risk algorithms is complex and time-sensitive. Algorithms are frequently adapted to the latest scientific insights, which may make evaluations obsolete before they are completed. A standardized format for the provision of essential information could readily provide insight into the logic behind the algorithms, the rigor of their development, and their predictive ability. The development of this format gives responsible providers the opportunity to lead by example and show that much can be shared when there is nothing to hide.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

World’s first ever human-monkey hybrid grown in lab in China

Henry Holloway
www.dailystar.co.uk
Originally posted August 1, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Scientists have successfully formed a hybrid human-monkey embryo  – with the experiment taking place in China to avoid “legal issues”.

Researchers led by scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa spliced together the genes to grow a monkey with human cells.

It is said the creature could have grown and been born, but scientists aborted the process.

The team, made up of members of the Salk Institute in the United States and the Murcia Catholic University, genetically modified the monkey embryos.

Researchers deactivates the genes which form organs, and replaced them with human stem cells.

And it is hoped that one day these hybrid-grown organs will be able to be translated into humans.

Scientists have successfully formed a hybrid human-monkey embryo  – with the experiment taking place in China to avoid “legal issues”.

Researchers led by scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa spliced together the genes to grow a monkey with human cells.

It is said the creature could have grown and been born, but scientists aborted the process.

The info is here.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Experts question the morality of creating human-monkey ‘chimeras’

Kay Vandette
www.earth.com
Originally published July 5, 2019

Earlier this year, scientists at the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced they had inserted a human gene into embryos that would become rhesus macaques, monkeys that share about 93 percent of their DNA with humans. The research, which was designed to give experts a better understanding of human brain development, has sparked controversy over whether this type of experimentation is ethical.

Some scientists believe that it is time to use human-monkey animals to pursue new insights into the progression of diseases such as Alzheimer’s. These genetically modified monkeys are referred to as chimeras, which are named after a mythical animal that consists of parts taken from various animals.

A resource guide on the science and ethics of chimeras written by Yale University researchers suggests that it is time to “cautiously” explore the creation of human-monkey chimeras.

“The search for a better animal model to stimulate human disease has been a ‘holy grail’ of biomedical research for decades,” the Yale team wrote in Chimera Research: Ethics and Protocols. “Realizing the promise of human-monkey chimera research in an ethically and scientifically appropriate manner will require a coordinated approach.”

A team of experts led by Dr. Douglas Munoz of Queen’s University has been studying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in monkeys by using injections of beta-amyloid. The accumulation of this protein in the brain is believed to kill nerve cells and initiate the degenerative process.

The info is here.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Congress weighs dropping ban on altering the DNA of human embryos used for pregnancies

Embryonic cell divisionSharon Begley and Andrew Joseph
www.statnews.xom
Originally posted June 4, 2019

A congressional committee is expected to vote on Tuesday to drop a ban on altering the genomes of human embryos intended for pregnancies, which could open the door to creating babies with genetic material from three people or with genomes that have been modified in a way that would be inherited by their descendants, as China’s “CRISPR babies” were.

The prohibition on modifying the DNA of embryos for reproduction (as opposed to doing so in basic research that stops short of pregnancies) has been attached to bills that fund the Food and Drug Administration since December 2015. But last month, a House appropriations subcommittee approved a version of an FDA spending bill without the amendment, or rider — amid worldwide condemnation of the CRISPR babies experiment last year and calls by leading scientists for a global moratorium on creating gene-edited babies.

“People don’t appreciate that this is the only piece of legislation in the United States that stands between us and genetically engineered children,” said science historian J. Benjamin Hurlbut of Arizona State University, who supports a “global observatory” to track uses of CRISPR, the powerful genome-editing technology.

The info is here.

Friday, June 28, 2019

‘We as a species need to come to terms’ with CRISPR technology

Ashley Turner
www.CNBC.com
Originally posted May 21, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Tuesday that He’s research was a “horrible experiment and it established a horrible precedent.” Gottlieb said He’s experiment risked causing people to “rightfully” turn away from the science.

Gottlieb said he has yet to see any compelling arguments in favor of human germline editing.

Paul Dabrowski, CEO of Synthego, a genome engineering company, agreed the scientific community is not yet ready for germline editing. He wondered whether allowing parents to choose to genetically alter their future children can be ethical if they’re not the one who is having their DNA changed.

“How do you make sure you can align the person who is consenting and the person who is taking the risk?” Dabrowski asked.

Stanford’s Hurlbut said there are risks to editing DNA, as those traits can then be passed down to future generations. Editing certain genes can also cause changes in other genes, according to Hurlbut.

“We want to be very careful, nature is a profound balance and if we intervene in a way that is not profound we can upset things,” Hurlbut said.

The info is here.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

It’s Our ‘Moral Responsibility’ to Give The FBI Access to Your DNA

Jennings Brown
www.gizmodo.com
Originally published April 3, 2019

A popular DNA-testing company seems to be targeting true crime fans with a new pitch to let them share their genetic information with law enforcement so cops can catch violent criminals.

Two months ago, FamilyTreeDNA raised privacy concerns after BuzzFeed revealed the company had partnered with the FBI and given the agency access to the genealogy database. Law enforcement’s use of DNA databases has been widely known since last April when California officials revealed genealogy website information was instrumental in determining the identity of the Golden State Killer. But in that case, detectives used publicly shared raw genetic data on GEDmatch. The recent news about FamilyTreeDNA marked the first known time a home DNA test company had willingly shared private genetic information with law enforcement.

Several weeks later, FamilyTreeDNA changed their rules to allow customers to block the FBI from accessing their information. “Users now have the ability to opt out of matching with DNA relatives whose accounts are flagged as being created to identify the remains of a deceased individual or a perpetrator of a homicide or sexual assault,” the company said in a statement at the time.

But now the company seems to be embracing this partnership with law enforcement with their new campaign called, “Families Want Answers.”

The info is here.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Privacy, data science and personalised medicine. Time for a balanced discussion

Claudia Pagliari
LinkedIn.com Post
Originally posted March 26, 2019

There are several fundamental truths that those of us working at the intersection of data science, ethics and medical research have recognised for some time. Firstly that 'anonymised’ and ‘pseudonymised' data can potentially be re-identified through the convergence of related variables, coupled with clever inference methods (although this is by no means easy). Secondly that genetic data is not just about individuals but also about families and generations, past and future. Thirdly, as we enter an increasingly digitized society where transactional, personal and behavioural data from public bodies, businesses, social media, mobile devices and IoT are potentially linkable, the capacity of data to tell meaningful stories about us is becoming constrained only by the questions we ask and the tools we are able to deploy to get the answers. Some would say that privacy is an outdated concept, and control and transparency are the new by-words. Others either disagree or are increasingly confused and disenfranchised.

Some of the quotes from the top brass of Iceland’s DeCODE Genetics, appearing in today’s BBC’s News, neatly illustrate why we need to remain vigilant to the ethical dilemmas presented by the use of data sciences for personalised medicine. For those of you who are not aware, this company has been at the centre of innovation in population genomics since its inception in the 1990s and overcame a state outcry over privacy and consent, which led to its temporary bankruptcy, before rising phoenix-like from the ashes. The fact that its work has been able to continue in an era of increasing privacy legislation and regulation shows just how far the promise of personalized medicine has skewed the policy narrative and the business agenda in recent years. What is great about Iceland, in terms of medical research, is that it is a relatively small country that has been subjected to historically low levels of immigration and has a unique family naming system and good national record keeping, which means that the pedigree of most of its citizens is easy to trace. This makes it an ideal Petri dish for genetic researchers. And here’s where the rub is. In short, by fully genotyping only 10,000 people from this small country, with its relatively stable gene pool, and integrating this with data on their family trees - and doubtless a whole heap of questionnaires and medical records - the company has, with the consent of a few, effectively seized the data of the "entire population".

The info is here.


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Chinese scientists create super monkeys by injecting brains with human DNA

Harriet Brewis
www.msn.com
Originally published April 13, 2019

Chinese scientists have created super-intelligent monkeys by injecting them with human DNA.

Researchers transferred a gene linked to brain development, called MCPH1, into rhesus monkey embryos.

Once they were born, the monkeys were found to have better memories, reaction times and processing abilities than their untouched peers.

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model," said Bing Su, a geneticist at Kunming Institute of Zoology in China.

The research was conducted by Dr Su’s team at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of North Carolina in the US.

“Our findings demonstrated that nonhuman primates (excluding ape species) have the potential to provide important – and potentially unique – insights into basic questions of what actually makes human unique,” the authors wrote in the study.

The info is here.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

China's Latest Cloned-Monkey Experiment Is an Ethical Mess

Ryan F. Mandelbaum
www.gizmodo.com
Originally published January 19, 2019

Chinese researchers have cloned five gene-edited monkeys with a host of genetic disease symptoms, according to two scientific papers published today.

The researchers say they want to use the gene-edited macaques for biomedical research; basically, they hope that engineering sick primates will reduce the total number of macaques used in research around the world. But their experiment is a minefield of ethical quandaries—and makes you wonder whether the potential benefits to science are enough to warrant all of the harm to these monkeys.

The researchers began by using CRISPR/Cas9 to alter the DNA of a donor macaque. CRISPR/Cas9 is the often-discussed gene editing tool derived from bacteria that combines repeating sequences of DNA and a DNA-cutting enzyme in order to customize DNA sequences. Experts and the press have heralded it as an important advance due to how quickly and cheaply it can alter DNA, but recent research has demonstrated it may cause more unintended effects than previously thought.

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This research combines a ton of ethical issues into one package, from those surrounding animal rights to cloning to gene editing. As bioethicist Carolyn Neuhaus from The Hastings Center summarized her reaction to the announcement: “Whoa, this is a doozy.”

The info is here.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Super-smart designer babies could be on offer soon. But is that ethical?

A micro image of embryo selection for IVF.Philip Ball
The Guardian
Originally posted November 19, 2018

Here is an excerpt:


Before we start imagining a Gattaca-style future of genetic elites and underclasses, there’s some context needed. The company says it is only offering such testing to spot embryos with an IQ low enough to be classed as a disability, and won’t conduct analyses for high IQ. But the technology the company is using will permit that in principle, and co-founder Stephen Hsu, who has long advocated for the prediction of traits from genes, is quoted as saying: “If we don’t do it, some other company will.”

The development must be set, too, against what is already possible and permitted in IVF embryo screening. The procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves extracting cells from embryos at a very early stage and “reading” their genomes before choosing which to implant. It has been enabled by rapid advances in genome-sequencing technology, making the process fast and relatively cheap. In the UK, PGD is strictly regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which permits its use to identify embryos with several hundred rare genetic diseases of which the parents are known to be carriers. PGD for other purposes is illegal.

The info is here.

Monday, November 26, 2018

First gene-edited babies claimed in China

Marilynn Marchione
Associated Press
Originally posted today

A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.

If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.

A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.

Many mainstream scientists think it’s too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation.

The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, said he altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments, with one pregnancy resulting thus far. He said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have — an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus.

The info is here.