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California Shouldn't Expand the Market for Women's Eggs
Lisa Ikemoto and Diane Tober, San Francisco Chronicle | 09.12.2019
Medical researchers would be allowed to buy women’s eggs under a bill being considered by the Legislature this week. As pro-choice, feminist scholars, we are deeply troubled by this legislation. The arguments for it ignore the potential health repercussions for and financial exploitation of prospective donors.
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| We Have a Winner!
Congratulations to Biopolitical News & Views reader Ligia Castaldi who won a copy of Biotech Juggernaut for taking our newsletter survey!
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Rigorous Pathway or Runaway Train?
Katie Hasson, Biopolitical Times | 08.15.2019
August 14 marked the first meeting of the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing. Despite a few speakers’ attempts to pump the brakes, the Commission appears to be skipping over the question of whether to alter the genes of future generations, and doubling down on the details of how to do so.
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Illness or Identity? A Disability Rights Scholar Comments on the Plan to Use CRISPR to Prevent Deafness
Katie Hasson, Biopolitical Times | 09.11.2019
Bioethics professor and disability rights scholar Jackie Leach Scully responds to CGS’ questions about Denis Rebrikov’s announcement that he’ll use CRISPR to edit the genomes of human embryos, targeting genes linked to inherited deafness. In addition to the ethical issues of using CRISPR to alter heritable genes, his plan begs another important question: Who decides what constitutes a “serious condition”?
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Paying Women to Donate Their Eggs for Research Is Still a Terrible Idea
Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times | 08.23.2019
Without adequate research on the long-term effects of egg provision, paying women for their eggs will always be an exploitative practice. The egg donor market, Hiltzik says, is an unregulated Wild West, and it’s only going to get wilder if limits on payment to donors are eliminated.
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Designer Babies Are On the Way. We're Not Ready
Robert Klitzman, CNN | 08.16.2019
With racism and economic divides prevalent in our society, we must be better prepared for technological advances powerful enough to change generations of people and our species as a whole.
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The Biotech-Industrial Complex Gets Ready to Define What is Human
Stuart Newman, CounterPunch | 08.16.2019
Human-animal hybrids are no longer the stuff of monster movies. A successful fetal human-monkey chimera was created in a California lab this summer, and researchers in Japan have been given the go-ahead to bring human-pig chimeras to full term.
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Brazil's Plans for Gene-Edited Cows Got Scrapped—Here's Why
Megan Molteni, WIRED | 08.26.2019
Plans to produce a herd of hornless cattle were abandoned when FDA scientists discovered that bacterial DNA — including a gene conferring antibiotic resistance — had unintentionally been inserted into the genome of a gene-edited stud bull.
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His Cat’s Death Left Him Heartbroken. So He Cloned It.
Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times | 09.04.2019
Garlic the cat’s genes live on after a Beijing-based pet-cloning company achieved its first success with a cat — a development that marks China’s entry into a potentially lucrative and unregulated market for cloning pets.
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| ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES |
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The Dignity of Disabled Lives
Andrew Solomon, The New York Times | 09.02.2019
According to scientists behind the eugenics movement, the key to breeding a pure, advantaged race was getting rid of "misfits." This view was reflected in American campaigns to sterilize people with disabilities. Today, despite gains in social attitudes and beliefs, the disability community must continue to claim visibility and share their stories so these gains can strengthen and grow.
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Overvaluing Individual Consent Ignores Risks to Tribal Participants
Krystal S. Tsosie, Joseph M. Yracheta, Donna Dickenson, Nature Reviews Genetics | 08.16.2019
Genomic studies consistently rely on individual-based consent approaches for tribal members residing outside of their communities. This practice can violate Indigenous communitarian ethics and bypass tribal sovereignty. (Subscription required.)
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Is Genetic Medicine Making the World Less Fair?
Laura Hercher, The Nation | 08.23.2019
All indicators point to the likelihood that genetic medicine will be a luxury accessible only to the wealthy. This reality could potentially make life worse for people born with genetic conditions.
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Dr. Stuart Newman: “It Seems to Me That We Are Headed for A Techno-Eugenic Future”
Mohsen Abdelmoumen, American Herald Tribune | 09.05.2019
Prospective people are not any doctor’s patient, nor are they any future parent’s property to be made to order. Human modification would be uncontrolled experimentation. … Few scientists openly espouse eugenicist policies these days but many find little wrong with embryo gene engineering, notwithstanding the fallibility of the technology.
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New Google Policy Bars Ads for Unproven Stem Cell Therapies
William Wan and Laurie McGinley, The Washington Post | 09.06.2019
After seeing a rise in the number of bad actors using their platform, Google will now no longer accept ads for “unproven or experimental medical techniques,” including most stem cell therapy, cellular therapy, and gene therapy.
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