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The ‘Perfect’ Baby?: The Dangers of Gene Editing in Assisted Reproduction
Daisy Boyd, Biopolitical Times | 08.18.2022
In a lively and wide-ranging conversation, Françoise Baylis, Nourbese Flint, and Karen Nakamura raised concerns about the potential use of CRISPR in assisted reproduction, including researchers’ lack of engagement with civil society, efforts to downplay the social implications of the technology, and the risk of further exclusion of marginalized groups.
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James Wilson Is in Trouble. Again.
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 08.16.2022
Not for the first time, gene therapy developer James M. Wilson is facing well-documented criticism. He is accused of serious workplace abuse at the Penn Gene Therapy Program, which he directs. Once again, his employer seems to be enabling his wrongdoing.
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How Can We Assess Public Opinion?
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 07.29.2022
It's widely agreed that heritable genome editing should not go forward unless and until there is broad societal consensus. Can opinion polls tell us if that goal has been achieved?
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GENE THERAPY | GENOME EDITING | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION
EUGENICS | GENOMICS | ANIMAL TECHNOLOGIES | VARIOUS
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CRISPR gene editing may cause permanent damage - study
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, The Jerusalem Post | 07.24.2022
A new study indicates that “CRISPR therapeutics, in which DNA is cleaved intentionally as a means for treating cancer, might, in extreme scenarios, actually promote malignancies.”
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This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting
Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 08.04.2022
After success with mouse embryos, Renewal Bio will create artificial human embryos in mechanical wombs, perhaps for use in transplant treatments. To "help avoid ethical dilemmas," they will genetically engineer the starting cells so that no head develops.
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The Legacy of Scientific Racism
Prabir Purkayastha, LA Progressive | 08.10.2022
Major genetics research institutions and journals claim to have shed their eugenic pasts, but theories of eugenics are very much alive in recurring race and IQ debates, sociobiology, white replacement theory, and the rise of white nationalism.
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Penn Museum to Bury Skulls of Enslaved People
Remy Tumin, The New York Times | 08.09.2022
The Philadelphia museum hopes to provide a formal burial to 13 Black Philadelphians whose remains were used by a 19th century anatomist to formulate racist theories that laid the groundwork for the eugenics movement.
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Viktor Orban: Eugenics and the GOP
Robert Reich, LA Progressive | 08.07.2022
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has adopted eugenics by another name: White Christian nationalism. Fear-mongering about “racial mixing” between white Christians of European descent and others also defines the Republican Party.
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The hidden anti-Black history of Brazilian butt lifts
Daniel F. Silva, The Washington Post | 08.01.2022
The popularity of Brazilian butt lift surgery has its roots in the eugenics movement, which promoted anti-Black conceptions of beauty and helped create a plastic surgery industry that would reconstruct bodies to conform to White standards of beauty.
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She survived a forced sterilization. She fears more could occur post-Roe.
Meena Venkataramanan, The Washington Post | 07.24.2022
With 31 states allowing people with disabilities to be sterilized without their consent, forced sterilization is hardly a thing of the past. The Dobbs decision could give states further power to forcibly sterilize people from marginalized populations.
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Legacies of eugenics: confronting the past, forging a future
Marius Turda, Ethnic and Racial Studies | 07.20.2022
Eugenics was not an historical anomaly, but rather an integral aspect of global modernity, one in which the state and the individual embarked on an unprecedented quest to create an idealized future defined by the promises of evolutionary biology and genetics.
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NJ police used baby DNA to investigate crimes, lawsuit claims
Corin Faife, The Verge | 07.29.2022
New Jersey requires all newborns to have their blood drawn to screen for disease, but state police may be using some samples to investigate crimes––effectively entering babies into a DNA database with no ability to opt out.
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Hacks of genetic firms pose risk to patients, experts say
Aaron Schaffer, The Washington Post | 07.21.2022
Since 2021, over a dozen genetic testing companies, labs, and fertility firms have disclosed data breaches affecting more than 3.5 million people. It’s not clear what the data consists of, how hackers might use it, or how firms will protect data going forward.
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‘Time to invest in genomics’ in poorer countries –– WHO
Dann Okoth, SciDev.Net | 07.14.2022
A new WHO report calls for rapid expansion of access to genomics, especially in resource-poor countries: “It’s not justifiable ethically or scientifically for less-resourced countries to gain access to such technologies long after rich countries do.”
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Project plans to bring back the extinct thylacine
James Fair, BBC Wildlife | 08.16.2022
Colossal Biosciences announced its early-stage effort to “de-extinct” the Tasmanian tiger using genetic material from dead animals and living relatives. Conservation experts doubt that restoring the thylacine would benefit wildlife and worry that it could divert resources from conservation efforts.
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Why Did the First Human Patient to Receive a Pig Heart Transplant Die?
Simar Bajaj, Smithsonian Magazine | 07.14.2022
The surgeon who first transplanted a pig heart into a human considers why the patient died. He may have been too sick to receive the heart, the organ may have been rejected, or a pig virus or anti-pig antibodies may have attacked the heart.
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