NCER Comments: In Mexico, women were paid to be artificially inseminated and then donate the resulting embryos for research. The women had to receive powerful hormone therapy, which carries considerable health risks, both immediate and long term. The goal of the study was to find a procedure that allowed parents with genetic abnormalities to give birth to healthy […]
NCER Comments Are women who receive payment to donate their eggs able to fully understand the health risks (possibly cancer or death) entailed so as to give informed consent? Additionally, does this practice violate the ethical principle of Justice by taking advantage of vulnerable poor women? NCER believes this policy is unethical because it debases women and treats […]
NCER Comments There is very little legal oversight in the marketplace of selling human eggs, and women who initially agree to donate but then change their minds are often harassed and threatened by fertility clinics. Julie Johnson was one such case, and she changed her mind about donating her eggs when she realized the clinic was not […]
MIT Technology Review The Chinese scientist and two associates were sentenced after a secret trial. by Antonio Regalado Dec 30, 2019 The Chinese scientist who created the world’s first gene-edited children has been sentenced to three years in prison by a Chinese court. He Jiankui, a biophysicist trained at Rice University and Stanford, shocked the […]
NCER Notes: Forty years ago, Bioethics was born out of the collaboration between Beauchamp and Childress, two ethicists with very different moral approaches- one based on obligation and duty, the other on the goodness of outcomes. They were able to merge the best elements of prominent philosophical theories on morality to create a new approach […]
NCER Notes: Is it ethical to use aborted fetal tissue in research? The practice of using aborted fetal tissue has been in the news lately with the trial of journalist David Daleiden, who filmed Planned Parenthood abortionists admitting they change their procedures in order to sell the “freshest” aborted fetal tissue to researchers. This kind […]
NCER Notes: Research has shown that the CRISPR gene editing tool (which cuts out and replaces diseased DNA) holds great potential for healing disease, but currently poses a significant risk to humans due to frequent unintended mistakes, or “off-target” mutations in DNA. A solution is being pursued, but in the meantime, a new kind of […]
NCER Notes: With more than 36 M HIV infected people worldwide, and over 1 M living in the U.S., a cure for the disease is fervently sought. Researchers at our own UNMC in Omaha, Ne. believe they have found that cure! Mice were injected with human stem cells from cord blood in order to create […]
NCER Notes: As an alarming example of how the gene editing of embryos can be dangerous, the first gene edited babies born in China last year now have a high probability of a significantly shorter lifespan due to unexpected consequences of the editing. Because of this outcome, the World Health Organization has asked all countries […]
Notes from NCER: In hopes of receiving sight, adults and children with an inherited form of blindness will have their genes edited in the first ever treatment that will alter patients’ native DNA using CRISPR. The specific condition, Leber congenital amaurosis, is rare (3 out of 100,000), and occurs when a child inherits two flawed […]
