A Nobel Laureate's 'Unsettling Note' From California's Human Gene Editing Conference
By David Jensen,
California Stem Cell Report
| 02. 12. 2016
[cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
Untitled Document
The
Center for Genetics and Society, which has been monitoring human gene editing for the past few years,
weighed in this week on the possibility that the state of California will beef up its role in financing research involving the sometimes controversial process.
The Berkeley-based center has taken cautionary approach to the field. The article this week on the center’s blog by
Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the group, continued in that vein.
Darnovsky attended the session last week during which the $3 billion California stem cell agency decided to embark on a thorough examination of the topic with the possibility of moving forward on gene editing of human embryos, a field that the federal government does not fund.
Darnovsky provided a summary of the session and cited “an unsettling (if unsurprising) note” from David Baltimore. He is a Nobel Laureate, former president of Caltech and a former member of the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM), as the stem cell agency is formally known. Baltimore also has been active in...
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