Human Enhancement Freaks People Out, Study Finds; Designer Babies Might 'Meddle With Nature'
By Ed Cara,
Medical Daily
| 07. 26. 2016
Fond as we are of superheroes on the big screen, most of us would stop short of actually becoming one via technology.
That’s the verdict issued by an extensive survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and released Tuesday. The Center polled over 4,000 Americans on a variety of issues related to advances in biomedical technology that may arrive in the near future — from using implanted brain chips to boost our thinking power to editing the genes of babies to eliminate hereditary flaws and diseases. The representative sample of Americans proved to be more careful than celebratory about these technological leaps.
Sixty-eight percent were somewhat or very worried about gene-editing, as opposed to 49 percent who saw themselves as at least somewhat enthusiastic about the prospect. Sixty-nine percent were also wary of brain implants and 63 percent felt the same about using synthetic blood transfusions to improve our strength, speed, and stamina. A similar percentage were taken aback at the thought of trying these technologies out on themselves or their future children.
"Developments in biomedical technologies are accelerating rapidly, raising...
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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.
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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...
By Gemma Conroy, Nature | 06.27.2024
Image by Robina Weermeijer from Unsplash
A molecular-editing tool that’s small enough to be delivered to the brain shuts down the production of proteins that cause prion diseases, a rare but deadly group of neurodegenerative disorders.
The system — known...
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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...