Daily Archives: March 13, 2015

Industry Body Calls for Gene-Editing Moratorium

Posted: March 13, 2015 at 3:47 pm

Gene-editing companies say research on altering the DNA of human reproductive cells is dangerous and unethical.

Officials of a biotechnology industry group have called for a voluntary moratorium on using new DNA-editing techniques to change the genetic characteristics of human embryos in laboratory research.

In an editorial published today by the journal Nature, Edward Lanphier, CEO of the biotechnology company Sangamo Biosciences, and four colleagues write that scientists should agree not to modify the DNA of human reproductive cells because it raises safety and ethical risks including the danger of unpredictable effects on future generations.

New gene-editing techniques, in particular one called CRISPR, have given scientists powerful and useful new ways to swap and change DNA letters inside of living cells for the first time (see Genome Surgery).

Recently, some scientific teams have started to study whether CRISPR would be able to correct disease genes in future generations of peoplefor instance, by repairing genes during in vitro fertilization, or in eggs or sperm. The idea of such germ line modification would be to install healthy versions of genes, which children would be born with.

The emergence of active research around germ-line editing, which is taking place in China, at Harvard University, and at a publicly traded biotechnology company called OvaScience, were described last week by MIT Technology Review (see Engineering the Perfect Baby).

But the idea of using editing technology to improve children is as controversial as it is medically powerful. In their editorial, Lanphier, whose coauthors include Fyodor Urnov, co-developer of a different gene-editing system, raise the concern that such techniques might be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. That could mean, for instance, changing the physical traits of children.

The availability of technology to carry out genetic engineering in human germ-line cells is driving intense debate in scientific circles and may eventually become a legal issue in the United States and other countries.

The authors call for a cessation of basic research is unusual and likely to be opposed by scientists as an intrusion on the quest for scientific knowledge.

George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School whose laboratory studies CRISPR and germ-line editing, says a voluntary moratorium would be weak compared with existing regulations that nearly all countries impose on the use of new medical technologies until they are proven safe and effective in animals or human [tests]. Church was referring to rules governing the birth of actual gene-edited children, not basic research.

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DNA Editing of Human Embryos Alarms Scientists

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A call by scientists to halt to precision gene-editing of DNA in human embryos would allow time to work out safety and ethical issues

Sperm cell fertilizing an egg. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Amid rumors that precision gene-editing techniques have been used to modify the DNA of human embryos, researchers have called for a moratorium on the use of the technology in reproductive cells.

In a Comment published on March 12 inNature, Edward Lanphier, chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Washington DC, and four co-authors call on scientists to agree not to modify human embryos even for research.

Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development, write Lanphier and his colleagues, who include Fyodor Urnov, a pioneer in gene-editing techniques and scientist at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, California. Many groups, including Urnov's company, are already using gene-editing tools to develop therapies that correct genetic defects in people (such as by editing white blood cells). They fear that attempts to produce designer babies by applying the methods to embryos will create a backlash against all use of the technology.

Known as germline modification, edits to embryos, eggs or sperm are of particular concern because a person created using such cells would have had their genetic make-up changed without consent, and would permanently pass down that change to future generations.

We need a halt on anything that approaches germline editing in human embryos, Lanphier, who is also chief executive of Sangamo, toldNatures news team.

But other scientists disagree with that stance. Although there needs to be a wide discussion of the safety and ethics of editing embryos and reproductive cells, they say, the potential to eliminate inherited diseases means that scientists should pursue research.

Related trials Geneticist Xingxu Huang of ShanghaiTech University in China, for example, is currently seeking permission from his institutions ethics committee to try genetically modifying discarded human embryos. In February 2014, he reportedusing a gene-editing technique to modify embryos that developed into live monkeys. Human embryos would not be allowed to develop to full term in his experiments, but the technique gives lots of potential for its application in humans, he says.

Besides Huangs work, gene-editing techniques are also being used by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, to eliminate disease-causing mutations from mitochondria, the cell's energy-processing structures. Belmonte's work is on unfertilized eggs; human eggs with such modified mitochondria could one day be used inin vitrofertilization (IVF) procedures to prevent a woman's offspring from inheriting mitochondrial disease.

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DNA Editing of Human Embryos Alarms Scientists

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Free speech isn't free

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SEPTA DID what it felt it had to do, pointlessly, and wound up in federal court after banning posters deemed to be anti-Islamic.

I say pointlessly because the same ban had been tried and defeated in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco.

The U.S. District Court here ruled Wednesday that since SEPTA has accepted other advocacy advertising, it can't refuse ads that call for ending U.S. aid to Islamic countries and that portray an Islamic leader as an ally of Adolf Hitler.

SEPTA general counsel Gino Benedetti said SEPTA rejected the Hitler ad because it "disparaged Muslims because it portrayed them in a way that I believe was untrue and incorrect and false," adding the ad "put every single Muslim in the same category as being a Jew hater."

I'll get to the specific ad in a moment, but that's a huge stretch by Benedetti, like saying attacking Boko Haram is an attack on all Muslims.

The posters (and other ads) are commissioned by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, co-founded by Pamela Geller. Both are accused of being "Islamophobic," which is a convenient way of trying to shut down those who disagree with you.

Those attacking Geller and AFDI include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, other Islamic groups and the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, which I have supported over the years, even while not agreeing with all it says and does.

I also don't agree with everything Geller says. She's too often a bomb thrower whose careless words allow her critics to paint her with the anti-Muslim brush.

"This is part of the Islamic supremacist narrative," she told me. "I oppose an ideology that calls for the annihilation of the nonbeliever."

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Free speech isn't free

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Mitch Jones – Unnecessary Censorship – Video

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Mitch Jones - Unnecessary Censorship
The pleb at his finest. http://www.twitch.tv/watchmeblink1 In the words of skyline1478: If any of the involving parties have issues with me uploading this, j...

By: TheFriendlyDonut

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Mitch Jones - Unnecessary Censorship - Video

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My Last Video Was Deleted – Google Internet Censorship – Video

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My Last Video Was Deleted - Google Internet Censorship
I posted a Voice over video of an ISIS beheading video that was solo fake it was silly and Youtube deleted it from my account within 24 hours. This is ridiculous!

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My Last Video Was Deleted - Google Internet Censorship - Video

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My Thoughts on Free Speech, Islam, and Censorship – Video

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My Thoughts on Free Speech, Islam, and Censorship
In this video, PC bullshit is flushed into oblivion. I #39;m getting so fucking tired of dealing with people #39;s stupid religion being shoved down our throats. Meanwhile, Canada is striking ISIS,...

By: Alyssia Maiden

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My Thoughts on Free Speech, Islam, and Censorship - Video

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Censorship can't cure Oklahoma frat racism

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Robert Shibley 11:24 a.m. CDT March 13, 2015

The University of Oklahoma football team and coaches walk into practice wearing all black in protest of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma on Monday, March. 9, 2015. The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity has been banned from campus after several members of the fraternity took part in a racist chant caught on video.(Photo: Nick Oxford/AP)

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter at the University of Oklahoma is giving America another crash course in how offensive people can be when they put their minds to it. Members of the now-defunct chapter are featured in a video singing a song that works in the n-word no fewer than three times, references lynching and pledges allegiance to an odious form of racial discrimination.

And if you're against racism, you should be glad they could do it. Free speech has many benefits, but one of the most overlooked is its ability to warn us of truths about the world especially when we'd rather not hear them. Doesn't the video tell us something we need to know about the racial attitudes of at least some OU students? The protesters on the OU campus must think so.

University President David Boren wasted no time condemning the SAE chapter, expelling two of its members and giving the others a day to clear out of their house. Though OU may punish SAE if it finds the chapter actually engaged in unlawful discrimination against African-American students, it shouldn't punish the fraternity members solely for the content of their expression.

Many people might find this disappointing. Indeed, punishing those who engage in offensive expression is perennially popular because it gives the impression that we're "doing something" about the problem of racism, sexism and bigotry. In France, for instance, Holocaust denial has long been illegal, and just this year the country arrested more than 70 people for praising the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.

Yet according to the Anti-Defamation League, 37 percent of the French harbor anti-Semitic opinions. In the U.S., that number is 9 percent, among the lowest in the world. While this comparison can't capture all the differences between the two nations, it strongly suggests that punishing expression is no real cure for bigotry, and refusing to punish hateful speech does not lead inevitably to its spread.

Censorship isn't necessary for those who are confident in the truth of their views. Somehow, college administrators are convinced that if they don't officially punish racism, their students will be drawn to it like moths to a flame. But there's no reason to expect that. There are myriad reasons to expect the opposite.

Instead of government crackdowns, it is far better to let the marketplace of ideas determine the social consequences for racist speech. In this instance, the OU members of SAE are not only likely to spend the rest of their college careers as pariahs but also to be hounded on social media and exposed for posterity on Google.

Baseless bigotry won't survive in a free marketplace of ideas which is what our campuses are supposed to be. College students are adults. Let's allow them to make up their own minds about what to believe, free from the coercive power of the state.

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Censorship can't cure Oklahoma frat racism

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Ron Paul : Obama Has Started ‘Illegal and Immoral’ Wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya New Cold War – Video

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Ron Paul : Obama Has Started #39;Illegal and Immoral #39; Wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya New Cold War
Ron Paul : Obama Has Started #39;Illegal and Immoral #39; Wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya New Cold War Subscribe to my channel for newest about DOLLAR COLLAPSE / ECONOMIC CRISIS / CURRENCY ...

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Ron Paul : Obama Has Started 'Illegal and Immoral' Wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya New Cold War - Video

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The Alex Jones Show – 2nd HOUR VIDEO Commercial Free – Tuesday January 13 2015 – Ron Paul – Video

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The Alex Jones Show - 2nd HOUR VIDEO Commercial Free - Tuesday January 13 2015 - Ron Paul
The Alex Jones Show - 2nd HOUR VIDEO Commercial Free - Tuesday January 13 2015 - Ron Paul Subscribe to my channel for newest about DOLLAR COLLAPSE / ECONOMIC CRISIS / CURRENCY ...

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The Alex Jones Show - 2nd HOUR VIDEO Commercial Free - Tuesday January 13 2015 - Ron Paul - Video

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RON PAUL Warns : Economic Collapse and Martial law in 2015 – Video

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RON PAUL Warns : Economic Collapse and Martial law in 2015
RON PAUL Warns : Economic Collapse and Martial law in 2015 Subscribe to my channel for newest about DOLLAR COLLAPSE / ECONOMIC CRISIS / CURRENCY WARS / FINANCIAL WARS / NEW ...

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RON PAUL Warns : Economic Collapse and Martial law in 2015 - Video

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