In discussions of potential eugenics that have become inevitable in the CRISPR era a distinction keeps on being made between gene elimination and genetic enhancement. Typically, it seems to be implicitly assumed that these are the only options when it comes to human germline editing though, as we see in the recent moratorium proposal in …
The Proposed Moratorium on Clinical Human Germline Editing
As most readers of this blog will know, last week Eric Lander and seventeen others (all seem to be biologists) published a commentary in Nature arguing for an immediate moratorium on clinical human germline editing. (For short, I will call this the Lander proposal while fully acknowledging the other authors.) The Presidents of the U.S. National …
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Op-Ed on Gene Editing
I wrote the following op-ed based on the earlier blog post; it appeared in The Hill today and has generated 82 comments as of now: How we proceed with human gene editing will be the debate of the future .
What a Little Gene Editing Can Do for You
Stuart Newman, with whom I am working on a book (with Lenny Moss as the third author), drew my attention to this article from the Wall Street Journal by Preetika Rana and Lucy Kramer. It is an important article responding to the recent reports of successful germ-line editing from China (primarily the work of Dr. He …
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Fear of Human Germ-line Editing
This week's issue of Science contains an editorial by Victor J. Dzau (President, U.S. National Academy of Medicine), Marcia McNutt (President, U.S. National Academy of Sciences), and Chunli Bai (President, Chinese Academy of Sciences) urging "international academies to quickly convene international experts and stakeholders to produce an expedited report that will inform the development of these criteria …
Sahotra Sarkar 