By Jenni Quilter, Slate | 12. 13. 2022
Is Gene Therapy Delivering on Its Promises?
The Center for Genetics and Society: 2022 Highlights
By CGS Staff | 01.14.2023
https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/hatching-excerpt-infertility-ivf-africa.ht…
Most people understand in-vitro fertilization to be privilege for the wealthy, the well-insured, or those living in a country with a generous social safety net. In 2014, IVF clinics across Europe reported 508,433 cycles. In 2015, the United States reported 231,936 cycles. In 2013, across Africa—the entire continent—there were only 25,550 cycles.
Yet the effects of infertility are outsized precisely where there is little support. In 2001, at a World Health Organization meeting, two researchers proposed a continuum of social suffering to measure the effects of infertility. The language is banal, but the extraordinary pathos remains. In the developed world, couples tend to experience social suffering in level 1 (fear, guilt, self-blame) through level 2 (marital stress, depression, helplessness) and level 3 (mild marital or social violence and abuse, social alienation). Spend any time on the thousands of internet chatboards devoted to infertility, and you'll see comments that align rather well with these levels. But the consequences of infertility extend to level 4 (severe economic deprivation, moderate to severe violence, total loss of social status), level 5 (violence-induced suicide... see more
Gene therapy has been the next big thing in medicine for decades. Until recent years, the results were underwhelming. Now there are promising developments and real successes, but significant questions remain: Is it safe enough? How many people might benefit, and under what conditions? And, crucially, how much will gene therapies cost and who will pay?
It has been more than 50 years since gene therapy was formally proposed; more than 40 years since the first scandal; more than 30...
Scientists create genetic 'pen' that corrects common heart conditions
By Manuel Ansede, El País | 01.15.2023
The gene editing techniques that have revolutionized medicine since 2016 could also be used to treat common heart diseases, the number one cause of death in humans, according to a study published recently by one of the world's leading scientists, ...
Photo by Isabela Kronemberger on Unsplash
Throughout 2022, CGS worked to deepen and expand collaborations with advocates and scholars concerned about the social justice implications of a range of human biotechnologies, with a major focus on the alarming prospect of using genome editing in human reproduction. We also organized and sponsored public events; curated, analyzed, and commented on news related to human genetics and assisted reproduction, both in media outlets and in our own newsletter and social media; and conducted...
The reproducibility issues that haunt health-care AI
By Emily Sohn, Nature | 01.09.2023
Each day, around 350 people in the United States die from lung cancer. Many of those deaths could be prevented by screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) scans. But scanning millions of people would produce millions of images, and there...