Is the unexamined life worth living?
… no, emphatically states Socrates [through Plato] in his Apology. You might think this is a metaphorical statement. And thus the surprise when Socrates chooses to drive this most important point home...
View ArticleMitohype: 3-Parent Designer Babies Who Will Change Human Evolution
If I turned in a 20,337 word article and the editor decided to replace 37 of those words, would I call her a co-author? Certainly not. So why does replacing 37 genes in a fertilized ovum destined to...
View ArticleEpigenome Project, robot ethics, one-way trip to Mars
Here’s the Epigenome Project The headline on Rachel Feltman’s post at Speaking of Science said the epigenome project was awesome, which is as good an introduction as any. That slew of two dozen...
View ArticleApple Watch ResearchKit ethics, NYT flubs cellphone risks, scientists urge...
An Apple all day keeps the doctors monitoring you 24/7 I wasn’t paying much attention to the miasma emanating from last week’s Apple presentation, which seemed to consist entirely of The Watch and its...
View ArticleAdventures in Stem Cell Land
Two weeks ago a neurologist asked me to blog about a US-based company that is offering stem cell treatments, because it had raised hopes among some of his patients. Intrigued because I cover “stem...
View ArticleDisappearing Down Syndrome, Genetic Counseling, and Textbook Coverage
Last week, several people sent me a perspective piece by bioethicist Art Caplan in PLOS Biology, “Chloe’s Law: A Powerful Legislative Movement Challenging a Core Ethical Norm of Genetic Testing.” The...
View ArticlePinker’s gene editing rant ignored most bioethics issues; debunking stoner...
Do you suppose Steven Pinker’s broadside against professional bioethics oversight of CRISPR and other forms of gene editing–Pinker’s command to bioethics was brutally inflexible: “Get out of the...
View ArticlePsychology cleans up its act, plus biohackers embrace gene editing, CRISPR,...
THE MESS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND OTHER SCIENCES TOO You’d think that the just-published Science paper, recounting a massive attempt at replication of 100 selected research projects published in the top...
View ArticleIs synthetic biology sliding down the eugenics slope?
“What will we do with this?” is a question we ask each time a significant new product or technology is developed. In some cases, the question is literal: Lasers were considered a “solution looking for...
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