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Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 06.24.2021
Distinguished bioethicists, religious conservatives, and scientific entrepreneurs — including people who rarely agree with each other — all oppose changes to the “14-day rule” in human embryo research and to relaxing prohibitions against human germline editing.
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Video recordings of the “California Eugenics Legacies Symposium,” held June 4-5, 2021, are now available. The event brought together a diverse group of scholars, educators, students, activists, and community members to engage in dialogue exploring how California’s institutions of higher learning, health care, and government promoted, sustained, and mainstreamed eugenics. CGS’ Marcy Darnovsky, Osagie Obasogie, and Alexandra Minna Stern presented at the symposium.
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Sharon Lerner and Lee Fang, The Intercept | 06.09.2021
The Bayer Corporation has applied to the Berkeley City Council for a 30-year development agreement on its 46-acre campus, but has provided area residents with little clarity about how its research might affect them. “What are they going to do there?” asked CGS’ Marcy Darnovsky. “They say they’re going to follow all the rules. Well, is there any oversight?”
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HERITABLE HUMAN GENOME EDITING | GENOMICS |
DNA DATABASES | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION |
STEM CELLS | VARIOUS
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HERITABLE HUMAN GENOME EDITING |
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Josephine Johnston, Françoise Baylis & Henry T. Greely, Nature | 06.22.2021
At some point, the developing human embryo reaches a stage at which it should not be used for research. There is disagreement about when that happens, but scientists need to acknowledge that it does, and reassure the public that they accept limits.
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Françoise Baylis, Nature | 06.15.2021
There are troubling inconsistencies in the revised guidelines for stem-cell research and clinical translation issued in May by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. These imply that, in time, research that involves making heritable changes to the human genome will be permitted, and ignore that 75 countries with policies on such research prohibit it.
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Erik Malmqvist, Bioethics | 06.14.2021
Clinical trials in which genetically edited embryos would be implanted into a woman’s uterus, gestated, and brought to term would expose people in a vulnerable situation to risks and burdens that are substantial and not obviously offset by benefits. This would be a significant ethical obstacle for clinical use of human germline gene editing.
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Dalton Conley, Washington Post | 06.14.2021
New ‘polygenic’ screening techniques open a Pandora’s Box of ethical issues. A team of researchers conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,457 Americans to assess public sentiment about the use of polygenic scores in medicine, education, dating, and beyond. The degree of tolerance people showed surprised them.
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Philip Ball, The Guardian | 06.09.2021
A blizzard of misleading rhetoric surrounded the Human Genome Project, contributing to widespread and sometimes dangerous misunderstandings. Life is not a readout of genes – it’s a far more interesting, subtle, and contingent process than that.
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UK Government Press Release | 06.22.2021
The UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee has published a report on direct-to-consumer genomic testing, which recommends updating regulations to address risks by promoting technical and ethical standards.
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Quirin Schiermeier, Nature | 06.15.2021
Geneticists say a global Y-chromosome database holds profiles from men who are unlikely to have given free informed consent. This is the latest strand of a wider campaign to draw attention to a ramping-up of DNA profiling across the world in the absence of stringent ethical oversight. Often, the onus for checking ethical compliance rests only on a scientific journal.
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Sharon Pruitt-Young, NPR | 06.12.2021
Two 1956 killings went unsolved until this year, when forensic genetic genealogy led investigators to a suspect who had died in 2007. His family agreed to provide DNA samples, which confirmed the identification. The case is one of the oldest solved using forensic genealogy. While authorities hope to apply this technology to cold cases dating back even further, new state legislation restricting forensic genealogy could complicate matters.
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Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post | 06.11.2021
Jurors held Chart Industries, which made the storage tanks, 90 percent responsible and Pacific Fertility Center 10 percent responsible for the failure. This historic verdict could have far-reaching consequences for the loosely regulated U.S. fertility industry. Hundreds of other cases are pending, and policymakers may take note and issue tighter regulations.
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Annabelle Spranklen, Glamour | 06.10.2021
Responding to concerns that clinics are misleading patients by inflating success rates and offering unclear pricing, two UK agencies have issued guidance that stresses the legal obligation of clinics to treat all patients fairly and to help them understand their rights.
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Alison Motluk, HeyReprotech | 06. 08. 2021
Young women are recruited into the global egg trade through shrewd emotional marketing techniques and a skillful manipulation of their emotions during the process. The result is an addictive formula that combines an appeal to altruism with the lure of money and foreign adventure, while playing down the realities of egg donation.
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David Jensen, Capitol Weekly | 06.21.2021
The “caucus” is composed of the 13 members of the California stem cell agency’s governing board who have ties to the University of California, which has received more funding from the agency than any other enterprise – more than $1.2 billion.
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Zubin Master, Kirstin R.W. Matthews, and Mohamed Abou-el-Enein, Stem Cell Reports | 06.08.2021
The issue of marketing unproven stem cell interventions spans national borders and requires international cooperation, as no one country can effectively address the issue by itself. The World Health Organization should form a committee to provide guidance on ways to harmonize national regulations, promote regulatory approaches responsive to unmet patient needs, and formulate an educational campaign against misinformation.
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Amelia Hill, The Guardian | 06.17.2021
Research suggests that humans cannot slow the rate at which they get older because of biological constraints. A statistical analysis comparing humans and non-human primates found similar mortality patterns across species. Gains in human life expectancy were explained by reduced mortality at younger ages, not by slowing down death or aging.
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Nicola Jones, Nature | 06.18.2021
Some advocates say that auctioning non-fungible tokens (NFTs) provides an incentive to showcase science to the public, a new method of fundraising, and even a way for individuals to monetize genomic data. Others see a bubble that’s sure to burst.
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Kathleen Garnett, A Bigger Conversation | 06.09.2021
The notion that genetic technologies are merely an extension of “traditional” agricultural breeding — which is essentially the policy of the UK government — is contradicted by the concept that they can be patented. Consumers and farmers have a right to know whether their purchases are novel, untested, artificial, synthetic, and anthropogenic.
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