This piece is co-authored with Carolyn Plunkett, PhD, Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Langone Medical Center. Last week, Forbes.com published an op-ed by the conservative Hoover Institute’s Henry Miller titled “We Desperately Need Bioethicists…To Get Out of the Way of Gene Therapy.” The very next day, Science published an article by a group of eminent genetic scientists with the summary: “We need technology and an ethical framework for genome-scale engineering.” The scientists call for bioethical input, Miller says no. So should bioethicists get out of the way as Miller wants and as, in an earlier alarmist screed, Steven Pinker of Harvard urged, or, rather, ought they engage in discussions of genome editing, synthesis and engineering, as the people actually informed about that work request?
CRISPR - get to know this acronym. It's good to know the name of something that could change your future. Pronounced "crisper", it is a biological system for altering DNA. Known as gene editing, this technology has the potential to change the lives of everyone and everything on the planet. A bold statement but that is the considered view of many of the world's leading geneticists and biochemists I've spoken to in recent months when working on my latest Panorama - Medicine's Big Breakthrough: Editing Your Genes. CRISPR was co-discovered in 2012 by molecular biologist Professor Jennifer Doudna whose team at Berkeley, University of California was studying how bacteria defend themselves against viral
