Bioethics.net

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Clearly, the massive increase in drug deaths warrant a serious government response. But what does a national emergency actually mean?

Computer algorithms trained on the images of thousands of preserved plants have learned to automatically identify species that have been pressed, dried and mounted on herbarium sheets, researchers report.

Of course it was going to happen — and now it has. Last week, an international team reported the use of CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing techniques to correct a heart-wrenching mutation in human embryos. These attempts worked several times more efficiently than previous ones had, and avoided introducing new genetic errors. Although the embryos were never destined to be used for pregnancies (and have now been destroyed), the work — carried out mainly in the United States — makes it easy to foresee practical applications to genetically alter human embryos.

So far, the big winner in the great clone race has been Alan Meeker, chief executive officer of Crestview Genetics. Since 2010 the 52-year-old Texas oil heir has created close to 100 horse clones valued at $500,000 to $800,000 each, depending on how long the company’s raised them.