How Brave New World Is Sneaking Up On Us
By John Farrell,
Forbes
| 02. 28. 2016
Untitled Document
Paul Knoepfler is not a scientist given to alarmism, but it’s pretty clear from his informative new book that the Brave New World is already upon us.
GMO Sapiens: the Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art science, and what headline-grabbing breakthroughs we can expect in the very near future, perhaps in less than a year.
Genetically modified human embryos are likely to be implanted and brought to term in the U.K., where three-parent IVF has been approved. This is a limited form of genetic manipulation, aimed to help couples where the mother would pass on certain diseases due to faulty genes in the mitochondria, the cell’s energy centers. In the process, the nucleus of the mother’s egg cell is transferred to replace the nucleus of a donor whose own egg cells contain healthy mitochondria. In this way the couple can avoid passing on the mother’s disease bearing genes.
In China, we may see human embryos modified using the controversial new CRISPR-Cas 9 technology to bring children to term, also...
Related Articles
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Mesha Maren , Salon | 07.20.2024
By Alcott Wei, South China Morning Post | 07.13.2024
China has banned all clinical research involving germline genome editing under a newly released ethics guideline.
Germline gene engineering relates to altering the DNA in sperm, eggs or early embryos to introduce changes that can be inherited.
“Any clinical research...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...