Karen Hunt “Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won’t matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.” Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story In Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession and Other Religious Writings, he retells an Eastern fable about a traveler who is ‘taken unawares on the …
There are test-tube babies and three-parent babies, and both generate plenty of controversy. But as it stands, making a baby still requires an egg from a mother and sperm cells from a father. Scientists say that won’t always be the case, though, because someday it will likely be possible to make babies from skin cells alone.
Last year, scientists in Japan revealed that mice had been born of eggs made from a parent’s skin cells, and researchers believe the same technique can one day be used in humans. [1]
Doctors in the U.K. have been given the first-ever license to create “three-parent babies,” with the controversial IVF treatment taking place as early as later this year. [1]
The license was granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to a team who pioneered the mitochondrial pronuclear transfer technique at the University of Newcastle.
The UK’s fertility regulator has given approval for the “cautious use” of techniques to create a baby using the DNA of 3 people. [1]
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announced its “historic” decision December 15 and said that it would begin accepting applications from fertility clinics that wish to become licensed to perform the procedure. The HFEA said 3-parent baby technique, as it is commonly called, will help prevent a small number of children from inheriting potentially fatal diseases from their mothers. [2]
For the first time in history, a human has been injected with genes edited using the CRISPR-Cas9 method. [1]
The experiment took place on 28 October 2016, when a team of Chinese scientists, led by oncologist Lu You at Sichuan University in Chengdu, delivered the genetically modified (GM) cells into a patient with aggressive lung cancer as part of a clinical trial at the West China Hospital in Chengdu. [2]
To protect the patient’s privacy, the details of the trial have not been released; but Lu said the trial “went smoothly.”
In what is believed to be a first, a Swedish scientist has attempted to edit DNA in healthy human embryos. [1]
Developmental biologist Fredrik Lanner is the first known researcher to conduct the experiment, which has long been considered taboo due to safety and ethical concerns.
A lot of people are willing to spend a few extra bucks to buy organic produce and antibiotic-free meat these days, while others aren’t too worried about eating foods made with genetically modified ingredients or sprayed with pesticides. Well, it seems that scientists recently made history when they served up – and ate – the first full-meal consisting of genetically engineered food using CRISPR technology.
A controversial fertility treatment requiring 3 genetic parents was recently approved by an elite panel of U.S. scientists and ethicists.
The 12-member panel, assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released a 164-page report outlining how scientists could ethically carry out such genetic engineering for the purpose of eliminating rare mitochondrial diseases – a process that would exclude girls.
Scientists in Britain have recently been given the green light to edit the genes of human embryos for research, leading to fears the practice could lead to “designer babies.”
Chinese scientists set off a firestorm of controversy a year ago when they announced they had begun genetically modifying human embryos. Now, British researcher Kathy Niakan, from London’s Francis Crick Institute has a received a license to carry out similar experiments.
