For years I have been writing about how our species is at the cusp of a genetic revolution that will transform our healthcare in the short term, how we make…
read moreYou may have seen today’s New York Times article describing how scientists have for the first time successfully edited genes in unimplanted human embryos. As the article notes: “Scientists at Oregon…
read moreWhen someone at a Los Angeles book event asked me a personal question, I was already disarmed, exposed, and predisposed to a more personal answer.
“Would you genetically enhance your own children?”
read moreOur species is on the cusp of a revolution that will change every aspect of our lives but we’re hardly talking about it.
After three and a half billion years of evolution, two hundred and fifty thousand years of them as the ass-kicking bipedal hominins we call homo sapiens, we are on the verge of taking control of our evolutionary process unlike never before. This revolution will take hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to play out but it has already begun.
read moreMarcy Darnovsky’s call to arms against “radical biological procedures,” namely mitochondrial transfer from the eggs of a woman with healthy mitochondria to replace the diseased mitochondria of an aspiring mother, in her New York Times editorial today [linked here] goes too far.
read moreGina Kolata’s important article in today’s New York Times (linked here) on the ethical questions surrounding preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and embryo selection only touches the very tip of the genetic iceberg.
read more