Free Republic

[PHOTO:TELESUR] For years, I’ve worried and warned about the dangers posed by gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR. In the words of one of its inventors, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) makes the human genome “as malleable as a piece of literary prose at the mercy of an editor’s red pen.” At least, that’s the promise that has yet to materialize. In 2018, a Chinese scientist announced he’d used CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos. At the time, more “respectable” scientists denounced his actions as “unethical,” given how new the technology was and how little ethical oversight there was...

As I said in a BreakPoint commentary last month, gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR and what’s being called “Prime Editing” are “existential threats.” We have no idea what our attempts to play god with the human genome will unleash on humanity. Yet, we insist on charging ahead despite our imperfect knowledge with an unbounded confidence in our abilities.Coming from a concerned non-scientist like me, these concerns can be easily dismissed as alarmist, but what if the concern comes from the Director of the National Institutes of Health?It turns out that Francis Collins is also concerned. In a recent article in...

Large amounts of chemicals commonly used to make bombs were found in the basement of a New Jersey doctor, along with assault rifles and a stun gun, prosecutors said today. Dr. Roberto Rivera, 60, who was said to have been an active member in the Occupy Wall Street movement last year, was arrested following a Friday night raid on his Ridgewood, N.J., home