Graphic of DNA

Science and ethics experts still reeling from #CRISPRbabies fallout

Watching David Baltimore open the #GeneEdit Summit last week brought back a memory of the last time I saw the Nobel laureate in such a role. The 2015 #GeneEditSummit concluded with a Q&A about the summit’s statement — which many considered was a moratorium on gene editing of embryos.

An audience member, with a sense of the promise of the science but concern for buy-in from a distrustful public, asked whether the statement might be translated into clearer language for those hard-pressed to understand CRISPR even with the acronym spelled out for them. To which Baltimore replied: “You mean it isn’t?”

That exchange convinced me that even gene editors need an editor. Especially gene editors. Indeed, if He Jiankui read that 2015 moratorium before he altered his own future in unintended ways, he did not see it as a red light.

In a tweet, director Francis Collins (@NIHdirector) clarified that the National Institutes of Health considers the light red: “The work of Dr. He Jiankui presented at #GeneEditSummit is profoundly disturbing & tramples on ethical norms. We need to develop binding international consensus on limits for this research. #NIH does not support the use of gene-editing in human embryos.”

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FDA scott gottlieb

How Scott Gottlieb is Wrong on the Gene Edited Baby Debacle

I am a huge fan of FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

He is by far my favorite Trump appointee — though the competition isn’t tough, to be honest— and he is doing great things at FDA on issues such as mobile health, software, and so on.

But in his comments on the news that gene edited embryos in China had led to live births, I think he has it wrong.

“The response from the scientific community has been far too slow and far too tepid, and the credibility of the community to self-police has already been damaged,” he said to Biocentury. “Governments will now have to react, and that reaction may have to take consideration of the fact that the scientific community failed to convincingly assert, in this case, that certain conduct must simply be judged as over the line.” Read More