Download or read book The Promise and Peril of CRISPR written by Neal Baer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely collection of essays on the pressing possibilities and risks of gene-editing technology. Scientists and genetic engineers are becoming increasingly adept at editing the human genome. How far can—and should—they go in editing future generations? In The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, editor Neal Baer brings together a timely collection of essays by influential bioethicists, philosophers, and geneticists to explore the moral, ethical, and policy challenges posed by CRISPR technology. We are at a technological and ethical crossroads in grappling with the impacts of genetic editing. Gene-editing technology holds the promise of curing more than 7,000 known genetic diseases. Yet with that promise comes the peril of using CRISPR to edit the human genome, which could not only lead to manipulating human evolution, but also to creating and releasing pathogens capable of wreaking havoc on human, animal, and plant life. Although CRISPR has already cured several genetic diseases, it could also be used to design biological weapons or to edit the embryos of people who can afford to purchase genetic "enhancements" for their children. What role can and should the public play in discussing the far-reaching implications of gene editing? What oversights should be put in place to prevent a rogue scientist from engineering another baby – as was recently done with twins in China? Essay contributors offer informed predictions and guidelines for how the uses of CRISPR today will affect life in the future. Decisions we make now may have unpredictable consequences for future generations. For anyone concerned about the uses and potential abuses of gene editing, these essays provide a critical and comprehensive discussion of the central issues surrounding CRISPR technology. Contributors: Florence Ashley, R. Alta Charo, Marcy Darnovsky, Kevin Doxzen, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Jodi Halpern, Katie Hasson, Andrew C. Heinrich, Jacqueline Humphries, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Ellen D. Jorgensen, Peter F. R. Mills, Carol Padden, Marcus Schultz-Bergin, Robert Sparrow, Sandra Sufian, Krystal Tsosie, Ethan Weiss, Rachel M. West
Download or read book Heritable Human Genome Editing written by The Royal Society and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2021-01-16 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heritable human genome editing - making changes to the genetic material of eggs, sperm, or any cells that lead to their development, including the cells of early embryos, and establishing a pregnancy - raises not only scientific and medical considerations but also a host of ethical, moral, and societal issues. Human embryos whose genomes have been edited should not be used to create a pregnancy until it is established that precise genomic changes can be made reliably and without introducing undesired changes - criteria that have not yet been met, says Heritable Human Genome Editing. From an international commission of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.'s Royal Society, the report considers potential benefits, harms, and uncertainties associated with genome editing technologies and defines a translational pathway from rigorous preclinical research to initial clinical uses, should a country decide to permit such uses. The report specifies stringent preclinical and clinical requirements for establishing safety and efficacy, and for undertaking long-term monitoring of outcomes. Extensive national and international dialogue is needed before any country decides whether to permit clinical use of this technology, according to the report, which identifies essential elements of national and international scientific governance and oversight.
Download or read book Editing Humanity written by Kevin Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading experts on genetics unravels one of the most important breakthroughs in modern science and medicine. IIf our genes are, to a great extent, our destiny, then what would happen if mankind could engineer and alter the very essence of our DNA coding? Millions might be spared the devastating effects of hereditary disease or the challenges of disability, whether it was the pain of sickle-cell anemia to the ravages of Huntington’s disease. But this power to “play God” also raises major ethical questions and poses threats for potential misuse. For decades, these questions have lived exclusively in the realm of science fiction, but as Kevin Davies powerfully reveals in his new book, this is all about to change. Engrossing and page-turning, Editing Humanity takes readers inside the fascinating world of a new gene editing technology called CRISPR, a high-powered genetic toolkit that enables scientists to not only engineer but to edit the DNA of any organism down to the individual building blocks of the genetic code. Davies introduces readers to arguably the most profound scientific breakthrough of our time. He tracks the scientists on the front lines of its research to the patients whose powerful stories bring the narrative movingly to human scale. Though the birth of the “CRISPR babies” in China made international news, there is much more to the story of CRISPR than headlines seemingly ripped from science fiction. In Editing Humanity, Davies sheds light on the implications that this new technology can have on our everyday lives and in the lives of generations to come.
Download or read book A Crack In Creation written by Jennifer A. Doudna and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BY THE WINNER OF THE 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY | Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize “A powerful mix of science and ethics . . . This book is required reading for every concerned citizen—the material it covers should be discussed in schools, colleges, and universities throughout the country.”— New York Review of Books Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. That is, until 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the gene-editing tool CRISPR—a revolutionary new technology that she helped create—to make heritable changes in human embryos. The cheapest, simplest, most effective way of manipulating DNA ever known, CRISPR may well give us the cure to HIV, genetic diseases, and some cancers. Yet even the tiniest changes to DNA could have myriad, unforeseeable consequences, to say nothing of the ethical and societal repercussions of intentionally mutating embryos to create “better” humans. Writing with fellow researcher Sam Sternberg, Doudna—who has since won the Nobel Prize for her CRISPR research—shares the thrilling story of her discovery and describes the enormous responsibility that comes with the power to rewrite the code of life. “The future is in our hands as never before, and this book explains the stakes like no other.” — George Lucas “An invaluable account . . . We owe Doudna several times over.” — Guardian
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy written by David Boonin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a large and diverse collection of philosophical papers addressing a wide variety of public policy issues. Topics covered range from long-standing subjects of debate such as abortion, punishment, and freedom of expression, to more recent controversies such as those over gene editing, military drones, and statues honoring Confederate soldiers. Part I focuses on the criminal justice system, including issues that arise before, during, and after criminal trials. Part II covers matters of national defense and sovereignty, including chapters on military ethics, terrorism, and immigration. Part III, which explores political participation, manipulation, and standing, includes discussions of issues involving voting rights, the use of nudges, and claims of equal status. Part IV covers a variety of issues involving freedom of speech and expression. Part V deals with questions of justice and inequality. Part VI considers topics involving bioethics and biotechnology. Part VII is devoted to beginning of life issues, such as cloning and surrogacy, and end of life issues, such as assisted suicide and organ procurement. Part VIII navigates emerging environmental issues, including treatments of the urban environment and extraterrestrial environments.
Download or read book The Code Breaker written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an “enthralling detective story” (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
Download or read book A Crack in Creation written by Jennifer Doudna and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handful of discoveries have changed the course of human history. This book is about the most recent and potentially the most powerful and dangerous of them all. It is an invention that allows us to rewrite the genetic code that shapes and controls all living beings with astonishing accuracy and ease. Thanks to it, the dreams of genetic manipulation have become a stark reality: the power to cure disease and alleviate suffering, to create new sources of food and energy, as well as to re-design any species, including humans, for our own ends. Jennifer Doudna is the co-inventor of this technology - known as CRISPR - and a scientist of worldwide renown. Writing with fellow researcher Samuel Sternberg, here she provides the definitive account of her discovery, explaining how this wondrous invention works and what it is capable of. She also asks us to consider what our new-found power means: how do we enjoy its unprecedented benefits while avoiding its equally unprecedented dangers? The future of humankind - and of all life on Earth - is at stake. This book is an essential guide to the path that now lies ahead.
Download or read book Gene Drives on the Horizon written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-08-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on gene drive systems is rapidly advancing. Many proposed applications of gene drive research aim to solve environmental and public health challenges, including the reduction of poverty and the burden of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue, which disproportionately impact low and middle income countries. However, due to their intrinsic qualities of rapid spread and irreversibility, gene drive systems raise many questions with respect to their safety relative to public and environmental health. Because gene drive systems are designed to alter the environments we share in ways that will be hard to anticipate and impossible to completely roll back, questions about the ethics surrounding use of this research are complex and will require very careful exploration. Gene Drives on the Horizon outlines the state of knowledge relative to the science, ethics, public engagement, and risk assessment as they pertain to research directions of gene drive systems and governance of the research process. This report offers principles for responsible practices of gene drive research and related applications for use by investigators, their institutions, the research funders, and regulators.
Download or read book Fables and Futures written by George Estreich and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—require us to imagine who counts as human and what it means to belong. From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreich—an award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndrome—delves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on “three-parent IVF,” a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.
Download or read book Embryo Experimentation written by Peter Singer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New developments in reproductive technology have made headlines since the birth of the world's first in vitro fertilization baby in 1978. But is embryo experimentation ethically acceptable? What is the moral status of the early human embryo? And how should a democratic society deal with so controversial an issue, where conflicting views are based on differing religious and philosophical positions? These controversial questions are the subject of this book, which, as a current compendium of ideas and arguments on the subject, makes an original contribution of major importance to this debate. Peter Singer is the author of many books, including Practical Ethics (CUP, 1979), Marx (Hill & Wang, 1980), and Should the Baby Live? (co-authored with Helga Kuhse, Oxford U.P., 1986).
Download or read book Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication written by Anne Hudson Jones and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2000-05-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation "Highly recommended for those intending to undertake clinical trials or similar research, as well as for those presently engaged in this field, as a refresher course in medical ethics."--JAMA"A very thorough discussion of the various legal and administrative solutions ... The book is well-written, has case material and examples enough to make reading vicariously pleasurable."--Bulletin of Medical Ethics.
Download or read book Gene Drives at Tipping Points written by Arnim von Gleich and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book reports on a pilot project aiming at collecting information on the socio-ecological risks that could arise in the event of an uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered organisms into the environment. The researchers will, for instance, be taking a closer look at genetically engineered oilseed rape, genetically engineered olive flies as well as plants and animals with so-called gene drives. The book mainly adresses researchers.
Download or read book CRISPR Crops written by Aftab Ahmad and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-08 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compiles the latest applications of the cutting-edge gene editing tool CRISPR/Cas in the area of crop improvement. It begins with an introduction to the technique and its application in crop plants. Next, it gives an updated overview of available delivery methods, design tools and resources in CRISPR/Cas. The book subsequently reviews the applications of CRISPR/Cas in connection with e.g. insect stress, disease stress, abiotic stress, nutritional and yield improvement in crop plants, etc. It also discusses the various regulatory, ethical and social aspects of the technique that must be kept in mind when designing experiments. In closing, the book summarizes the status quo and outlines future prospects for the tool in crop improvement and food security. Given its scope, the book will especially benefit students and researchers in food science, biotechnology, agriculture and the plant sciences.
Download or read book The Gene Machine written by Bonnie Rochman and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp-eyed exploration of the promise and peril of having children in an age of genetic tests and interventions Is screening for disease in an embryo a humane form of family planning or a slippery slope toward eugenics? Should doctors tell you that your infant daughter is genetically predisposed to breast cancer? If tests revealed that your toddler has a genetic mutation whose significance isn’t clear, would you want to know? In The Gene Machine, the award-winning journalist Bonnie Rochman deftly explores these hot-button questions, guiding us through the new frontier of gene technology and how it is transforming medicine, bioethics, health care, and the factors that shape a family. Rochman tells the stories of scientists working to unlock the secrets of the human genome; genetic counselors and spiritual advisers guiding mothers and fathers through life-changing choices; and, of course, parents (including Rochman herself) grappling with revelations that are sometimes joyous, sometimes heartbreaking, but always profound. She navigates the dizzying and constantly expanding array of prenatal and postnatal tests, from carrier screening to genome sequencing, while considering how access to more tests is altering perceptions of disability and changing the conversation about what sort of life is worth living and who draws the line. Along the way, she highlights the most urgent ethical quandary: Is this technology a triumph of modern medicine or a Pandora’s box of possibilities? Propelled by human narratives and meticulously reported, The Gene Machine is both a scientific road map and a meditation on our power to shape the future. It is a book that gets to the very core of what it means to be human.
Download or read book Drawing Blood written by Keith Wailoo and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-02-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Drawing Blood, medical historian Keith Wailoo uses the story of blood diseases to explain how physicians in this century wielded medical technology to define disease, carve out medical specialties, and shape political agendas. As Wailoo's account make clear, the seemingly straightforward process of identifying disease is invariably influenced by personal, professional, and social factors - and the result is not only clarity and precision but also bias and outright error. Drawing Blood reveals the ways in which physicians and patients as well as diseases are simultaneously shaping and being shaped by technology, medical professionalization, and society at large. This thought-provoking cultural history of disease, medicine, and technology offers a perspective that is invaluable in understanding current discussions of HIV and AIDS, genetic blood testing, prostate-specific antigen, and other important issues in an age of technological medicine.
Download or read book American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century written by William G. Rothstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1992-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paper edition, with a new preface, of a 1972 work. The author, a sociologist, explains how ...19th-century medicine did not disappear; it evolved into modern medicine...; and he discusses such topics as active versus conservative intervention, reciprocity between physicians and the public in adopt
Download or read book Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees written by Linda Farber Post and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can dedicated ethics committees members fulfill their complex roles as moral analysts, policy reviewers, and clinical consultants? The Joint Commission (TJC) accredits and certifies more than 19,000 health care organizations in the United States, including hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies. Each organization must have a standing health care ethics committee to maintain its status. These interdisciplinary committees are composed of physicians, nurses, attorneys, ethicists, administrators, and interested citizens. Their main function is to review and provide resolutions for specific, individual patient care problems. Many of these committees are well meaning but may lack the information, experience, skills, and formal background in bioethics needed to adequately negotiate the complex ethical issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees was the first book of its kind to address the myriad responsibilities faced by ethics committees, including education, case consultation, and policy development. Adopting an accessible tone and using a case study format, the authors explore serious issues involving informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, the end of life, palliative care, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. The authors have thoroughly updated the content and expanded their focus in the second edition to include ethics committees in other clinical settings, such as long-term care facilities, small community hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and hospices. They have added three new chapters that address reproduction, disability, and the special needs of the elder population, and they provide additional specialized policies and procedures on the book’s website. This guide is an essential resource for all health care ethics committee members.
