Calculate your site FeedRank Today
FeedRank, a newly developed algorithm for ranking RSS feeds only on RSSMicro
Click here to learn more
 7/10 Very Good --- blog.wired.com http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/atom.xml
| Wired.com weighs in on the latest science news, including space, biology, disease, drugs and alcohol, geology, math, neuroscience, and physics. ... |
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 --- 73 days ago http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/gm-embryo-setti.html
When the public information officer at Weill Cornell Medical College firmly and finally denied my requests to interview Zev Rosenwaks and Nikica Zaninovic yesterday, I started to feel a bit nervous.
He explained that the researchers -- propelled to overnight prominence after a British newspaper publicized a 2007 experiment in which they'd added a gene to a human embryo -- were frustrated by the misrepresentation of their work.
The gene was intended merely to let scientists better study embryo development; the embryo itself was already damaged beyond repair. They weren't going to implant it in a woman; they wouldn't use the technique on an embryo destined for implantation; and they certainly wouldn't start mucking around with any other genes.
But this, said the PIO, had been lost in the uproar over designer babies and eugenics. The Associated Press and New York Times got it right, he said -- gently implying that Wired Science had been among the hysteria-mongers. Or so it seemed. I might have been oversensitive. But just to make sure
everyone gets it: this research is not going to produce genetically
modified humans. Unless you believe in the intrinsic personhood of an
embryo, there isn't much reason to feel disturbed. As bioethicist Art Caplan wrote in an email to me, The public should not be frightened by talk of monsters and eugenics when researchers simply insert a marker gene in a non-viable huma ... |
|
|
Recent Posts
|
|
|
Facebook Del.icio.us Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Google
Anytime
