Genetic Breakthrough at OHSU
By Allison Frost,
Oregon Public Radio
| 10. 29. 2012
[With CGS's Marcy Darnovsky]
Oregon Health and Science University scientist Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his team have created a viable embryo with the genetic material from three different parents. The goal is to prevent genetic diseases from being passed down.
We spoke to Mitalipov in 2009 after baby rhesus macaque monkeys were born using the same science. Now that human genetic material has been used in a similar way, we'll check back in with the research team and an ethicist to discuss the implications of this scientific breakthrough.
Here's a video that shows how Mitalipov's team removed much of the genetic material from one woman's egg and put it into another:
What questions do you have about the medical or ethical implications of this research?
Related Articles
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News | 07.09.2024
A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.
Released earlier...
By Amanda Becker and Shefali Luthra, The 19th | 07.08.2024
Image by Duke University Archives from Flickr
Republicans have adopted a slate of policy positions ahead of next week’s convention that does not call for a federal legislative abortion ban, but opens the door to establishing fetal personhood.
The Republican...