By Kyle B. Brothers You have a rare illness that seems to have a genetic cause. For years you have moved from geneticist to geneticist looking for the cause of your illness, hoping that by finding the precise genetic cause you will discover ways to alleviate your symptoms. You have had five or six genetic tests,…
By Michael Mackley It took nearly thirteen years and an army of scientists to generate the first sequence of the human genome. Now, patients around the world are having their genomes sequenced every day. Since the first sequence was unveiled in 2003, the cost of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has dropped from almost $1 billion to less…
By Kelly Dhru “We worship perfection because we can’t have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.” – Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. Pessoa may have had an “I told you so!” moment looking at the ethical debates over CRISPR-Cas9, which is the technology that…
By I. Glenn Cohen As reported by Science, today the NIH announced plans to lift a preemptive year long moratorium on funding chimera research – that which mixes human and animal cells, often at the embryonic stage. Here is a snippet from the Science article about the new proposed NIH process: According to two notices released today, NIH is…
The Oxford Union Debating Society at Oxford University has published full video of its DNA Manipulation Debate, filmed on May 26. The Motion under debate was, “This House Believes the Manipulation of Human DNA is an Ethical Necessity.” Oxford billed its DNA Manipulation Debate as “historic” in a year when rapid advances in gene editing and genome…
By Kelly Dhru CRISPR-Cas9 has drawn applause for being one of the biggest technological advancements in recent history, but it also raises important ethical issues. This technology, an efficient genome editing tool, is now taking its next big step: CRISPR might be going in for human trials for its potential use in fighting cancer (namely, by…
By Donna M. Gitter, based on Professor Gitter’s presentation at the Petrie-Flom Center’s 2016 Annual Conference, “Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics,” held May 6, 2016, at Harvard Law School. Cross-posted from the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum. The Icelandic biotech firm deCODE Genetics has pioneered a means of determining an individual’s susceptibility to various medical conditions with 99 percent…
By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale This week we talked with George J. Annas, Chairman of the Bioethics & Human Rights Department, and William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, at Boston University. George’s work is legendary among health policy experts; a 1998 tribute from Jay Katz gives some sense of its breadth and depth. Having reviewed numerous works, Katz states:”I have barely conveyed the…
By Timo Minssen New publication on the patentability of biomedical diagnostics out: Abstract: This brief comment complements Dan Burk’s excellent paper ( Dolly and Alice, J Law and the Biosciences (2015), 1–21, doi:10.1093/jlb/lsv042 ) by providing a very brief summary of the European approach regarding patents on medical diagnostic methods. This serves as the basis for…
By Maayan Sudai Of the many responses to the monumental victory of the gay marriage movement in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, one was a backlash of legislative proposals submitted by conservative groups. A popular target was the regulation of sex-segregated public spaces like bathrooms, schools, etc. – also called “bathroom bills” – in Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and other states. The anti-LGBT bills are…
