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 Problem of Eliminating Measles
I would like to draw attention to a recent blog post by Professor Raina MacIntyre of the University of New South Wales (with whom I have occasionally collaborated). MacIntyre points out the complexity of any attempt to eliminate measles completely partly because of how infectious it is: elementary herd immunity calculations show that the required minimum …
Worldwide Measles Outbreaks 2019
In response to the surge of measles outbreaks in the U.S. this year, Lauren Gardner, who is in the process of moving to Johns Hopkins from the University of New South Wales, and I are doing a risk analysis that combines the geography of hotspots of vaccine avoidance (from Olive et al. 2018) with international …
