On 24 February 1975, some 150 people met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds near Monterey on the Californian coast. They were mostly scientists from the United States, together with representatives of various companies and government agencies, and 16 journalists. Their subject was the new technology of recombinant DNA — molecules created in a laboratory by stitching together genetic material from different organisms. Researchers were excited by the possibilities for discoveries, and the potential of the technique to produce drugs, for example using specially engineered bacteria to make insulin. But they were also terrified that they might inadvertently create diseases that could infect lab workers and the wider community.
By the end of the meeting, its participants had agreed to adopt biosafety protocols that are still in force in the United States, and which have hugely influenced similar regulations worldwide. The meeting has become known simply as Asilomar, a byword for how a scientific community came together to forge consensus on a thorny topic. It is often held up as an example of how science can self-regulate without the involvement of...
“I’m not a scarcity guy, I’m an abundance guy”
– Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm, The New Yorker, 4/14/25
Even the most casual consumers of news will have seen the run of recent headlines featuring the company Colossal Biosciences. On March 4, they announced with great fanfare the world’s first-ever woolly mice, as a first step toward creating a woolly mammoth. Then they topped that on April 7 by unveiling one...
China's most infamous scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, who went to jail for three years after claiming he had created the world's first genetically altered babies, says he remains...
By Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 03.27.2025
Aggregated News
Around 2018–19, there was not a bigger science and ethical story than the debate over heritable human genome editing (HHGE) and the scandal over the “CRISPR babies.” The scientist, He Jiankui, who attempted to engineer the germline of human embryos...
WASHINGTON — Keith Joung knows better than a lot of people what, exactly, it might require to prove to regulators and patients that CRISPR could be safely used to alter the genome of a human embryo. If, of course, society...
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