The latest from the Center for Genetics and Society ‌ ‌ ‌ November 13, 2020 Assessing the Global Policy Landscape for Heritable Human Genome Editing Katie Hasson, Biopolitical Times Approaching global governance with the assumption that there is a policy vacuum ignores the large number of countries that already have policies and the near-consensus among them. [Cross-posted at Impact Ethics] Giving Tuesday is right around the corner Is the Center for Genetics and Society in your plans this year? Your donation will ensure that social justice and human rights perspectives and voices are well represented in urgent debates about human biotechnologies — heritable genome editing, international commercial surrogacy, eugenics past and present, and more. Mark your calendar for Giving Tuesday, December 1! CIRM May Be on the Verge of Winning Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 11.12.2020 Proposition 14, the California ballot initiative that continues and increases public financing for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, seems to have narrowly succeeded. The slim margin could reflect widespread concerns about the state’s looming budget deficit, and about effective oversight. Reform is now in the hands of the legislature but requires 70% supermajorities. Will the politicians step up to the plate? Some Recent and Forthcoming Books on Human Genome Editing Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 11.11.2020 Several titles have caught our attention lately, three published in the past few weeks and two more announced for early 2021. One question we’ll be asking as we read: Will their shared focus on the "CRISPR babies" drama obscure what's fundamentally at stake in the debate about heritable genome editing? Study: There Is No Country Where Heritable Human Genome Editing Is Permitted Farah Qaiser, Forbes | 10.31.2020 “The surprise for me is really that the momentum towards developing heritable genome editing has somehow gotten so strong without consideration of these possible social consequences, without anything like sufficient support given for those broad societal debates that so many people call for, and without acknowledging some of the basics facts of the case, including the existing policy situation,” says co-author Marcy Darnovsky. In Embryos, Crispr Can Cut Out Whole Chromosomes—That's Bad Megan Molteni, Wired | 10.29.2020 The DNA-cutting tool has been hailed as a way to fix genetic glitches. But a new study suggests it can remove more than scientists bargained for. [Links to the policy paper published last month in The CRISPR Journal.] HERITABLE HUMAN GENOME EDITING | EUGENICS | DISABILITY RIGHTS | RACISM | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | DATA AND PRIVACY | VARIOUS HERITABLE HUMAN GENOME EDITING International Reporting Mechanism for Unethical Germline Gene Editing Experiments Is Needed G. Owen Schaefer et al., Trends in Biotechnology | 11.04.2020 A number of scientists around the world knew in advance about the experiment resulting in the birth of the first gene-edited babies. Scientists have a responsibility to reveal such activities, so an international governance mechanism for reporting unethical gene editing experiments should be established. Lab tests show risks of using CRISPR gene editing on embryos Marilynn Marchione, AP | 10.29.2020 In more than half of the cases, genome editing caused significant unintended changes in human embryos, such as loss of an entire chromosome or big chunks of it. EUGENICS The genes we’re dealt Erik Parens, Aeon | 11.10.2020 Progressive optimists assert that the new field of social genomics can be used to combat racial and other inequities — but it could also be used by conservatives to excuse them. Proponent of using IQ tests to screen immigrants named to senior NIST post Jeffrey Mervis, Science | 11.09.2020 Jason Richwine, an independent public policy analyst, has been appointed as deputy undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology. His doctoral thesis maintained that Mexican and Hispanic immigrants have IQs below those of white people and that “the difference is likely to persist over several generations.” It’s 2020 and anti-Semitism is an electoral tactic again Tate Ryan-Mosley, MIT Technology Review | 11.02.2020 Jewish communities are facing a wave of anti-Semitic online ads, internet-fueled conspiracy theories like QAnon, and widespread racist disinformation. How Eugenics Shaped Statistics Aubrey Clayton, Nautilus | 10.28.2020 Statistics is a human enterprise subject to human desire, prejudice, consensus, and interpretation. DISABILITY RIGHTS Difference or Disability? Laura Hercher, The Beagle Has Landed | 10.27.2020 In this podcast, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, professor of English and Bioethics at Emory University, discusses disability as an identity and the conflicts raised by genetic testing and counseling. RACISM Racism is baked into patent systems Shobita Parthasarathy, Nature | 11.02.2020 Review of The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans by Anjali Vats, who argues that the tentacles of racism are institutional, embedded, and endemic. Wealthy funder pays reparations for use of HeLa cells Alexandra Witze, Nature | 10.29.2020 Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s six-figure donation is a step towards addressing racial injustice in the sciences. ASSISTED REPRODUCTION Egg-freezing has risen in lockdown, but it’s not a cure-all Katie Strick and Lucy Holden, Evening Standard | 11.10.2020 More women have frozen their eggs during the pandemic than ever before, but success rates remain vanishingly low. DATA & PRIVACY UN warns of impact of smart borders on refugees: ‘Data collection isn't apolitical’ Katy Fallon, The Guardian | 11.11.2020 The UN Special Rapporteur on racism and xenophobia has called for a moratorium on the use of certain surveillance technologies. Digital technologies can be unfair and regularly breach human rights, despite a misconception that biosurveillance technology is without bias. Schools Adopt Face Recognition in the Name of Fighting Covid Gregory Barber, Wired | 11.03.2020 Dozens of districts have purchased thermal cameras to monitor fevers that can also identify students and staff. It’s unclear how many districts will turn on the facial recognition features they’ve now purchased. Facial recognition used to identify Lafayette Square protester accused of assault Justin Jouvenal and Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post | 11.02.2020 The protester might never have been identified, but an officer found an image of the man on Twitter and investigators fed it into a facial recognition system, court documents state. They found a match and made an arrest. VARIOUS Men and women in early Americas shared hunting duties equally Christa Lesté-Lasserre, New Scientist | 11.04.2020 “There is sexist ideology in Western culture that may have slowed our ability to recognise females as hunters in the past,” says Randall Haas, one of 10 co-authors of a study published in Science Advances that was sparked by the unearthing of a young woman’s bones, buried 9000 years ago in the Andes mountains. 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