Developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert is credited with saying, “It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life.” Gastrulation, simply put, means the embryo develops an axis and distinctly different cell layers. In the human embryo, gastrulation takes place during the third week post-fertilization. Formation of …

Continue reading "Embryonic Legerdemain?"

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

Move over United States, China is the new research powerhouse. In the last few months, announcements out of China talk about the first live human births from genetically edited embryos; the birth of 5 cloned, genetically edited monkeys, and most recently, announced the development of an artificial intelligencethat is more accurate than human doctors at diagnosing diseases in children.…

by Jeffrey P. Kahn, Ph.D., M.P.H. and Anna C. Mastroianni, J.D., M.P.H.

National Institutes of Health Director (NIH) Francis S. Collins and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently co-authoreda New England Journal of Medicinecommentary suggesting that special oversight of gene transfer research in humans was no longer necessary.…

A couple of gene-editing news items from this week’s science literature: First, Nature reports that a group in my “back yard,” at the University of California San Diego, has tested gene editing using the CRISPR approach in mice.  Recall that CRISPR is an acronym for a particular molecular mechanism, first discovered in bacteria, that is …

Continue reading "Raiding the CRISPR"

That’s only a slight paraphrase of a news feature article this week in Nature.  The clearly-written article is devoid of scientific jargon, with helpful illustrations, open-access online, and readily accessible to the non-specialist.  Check it out. Key points include: Scientists who do not find it ethically unacceptable to create and destroy human embryos solely for …

Continue reading "Labs are growing human embryos for longer than ever before"

Hat-tip to Dr. Joe Kelley for bring this to my attention… As readers of this blog will recall, there is keen interest in exploiting recent discoveries in genetic engineering to “edit” disease-causing gene mutations and develop treatments for various diseases.  Initially, such treatments would likely use a patient’s own cells—removed from the body, edited to change the cells’ genes in a potentially therapeutic way, then... // Read More »

One might think with the amazing advance of technology and easy access to nearly infinite data via the Internet that we, as a society, would see a reduction in false claims of benefit for novel medical procedures and untested medications. Sadly, it seems to be just the opposite. I seem to be spending gradually more time with my patients reviewing the results of their internet... // Read More »

In May of this year, my brief essays (literally, “attempts”) on synthetic human entities with embryo-like features, or SHEEFs for short, sought to ask what sort of human cellular constructs might or might not enjoy full human moral status; to wit, the right to life.  Some experimenters with SHEEFs have suggested that, since they may bypass the early (14 days of life) markers that normal,... // Read More »

When any business over-promises and under-delivers, it is well on its way to failure.   Does this principle also hold true in the world of stem-cells?  In the last few months the promise of stem cell treatment has met the reality of government oversight. Does the government have the responsibility to rein in the larger-than-life claims of stem cell treatment clinics? In a letter dated August 24, 2017... // Read More »

Nature has recently carried two new reports of human gene editing.  In one, embryos donated from an IVF clinic had a gene critical to very early development altered, to study what happens when you do that, and try to understand early human development more than we now do.  In the other, scientists studied editing of an abnormal recessive gene, specifically the one causing a type... // Read More »