Summit on Human Gene Editing
Every issue explores cutting-edge developments in technology, medicine, education, climate change, and much more. Articles provide in-depth analyses of science and technology’s impact on public policy, the economy, and society—bringing today’s best minds to bear on tomorrow’s most critical topics.
Editor's Journal
Responding to CRISPR/Cas9
The prospect of influencing the course of human evolution through technological intervention has been thought about for a long time, but usually in an abstract or theoretical way. But that possibility has… Read More
From the Hill
From the Hill – Spring 2016
Congress advances spending bills for NSF, NASA, Energy, and USDA In mid-May, the House Appropriations Committee approved FY 2017 spending bills covering the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Agriculture,… Read More
Perspectives
Data-Driven Science Policy
A critical challenge for science policy decision makers is determining how to spend limited resources most productively. To do so, one must have a basic understanding of the inner workings of the… Read MoreSuper-Muscly Pigs
Animal research is moving rapidly in two, divergent directions. Research on animal cognition, behavior, and welfare is teaching us that many animal species have complex cognitive and emotional lives and needs. Such… Read More
Features
Why We Need a Summit on Human Gene Editing
In 1981, Matthew Meselson pointed out that the puzzle brought to light by Darwin, of what constitutes heredity, was solved in two tranches. The first lasted from 1900, when Mendel’s work of… Read MoreThe Legal and Regulatory Context for Human Gene Editing
The potential use of human gene editing is stimulating discussions and responses in every country. I will attempt to provide an overview of legal and regulatory initiatives around the globe. But I… Read MoreThe History of Eugenics
The human race today stands at a threshold unlike any in the past: it now possesses tools to reshape its own hereditary capacities, perhaps even to realize the dream of eugenicists that… Read MoreInterrogating Equity: A Disability Justice Approach to Genetic Engineering
Read MoreThe insights and expertise of those who have been harmed and exploited in the name of progress offer us a more rigorous foundation by which to democratize science than the current model in which citizens are imagined to be “We, the patients” waiting for the fruits of science to ripen.
Transforming the Active Orientation
Our ambitions are high. We have a long list of desiderata that, in effect, entail re-engineering much of the physical and social world around us, even the self. We Americans are keen… Read MoreOn Human Gene Editing: International Summit Statement by the Organizing Committee
Scientific advances in molecular biology over the past 50 years have produced remarkable progress in medicine. Some of these advances have also raised important ethical and societal issues—for example, about the use… Read MoreGermline Gene Therapy: Don’t Let Good Intentions Spawn Bad Policy
The proposed moratorium on clinical applications of gene editing technology reveals ignorance about how innovation works, and callousness about human suffering. “Human gene therapy” has been one of the most ambitious goals… Read MoreThe Rise of the Platform Economy
A digital platform economy is emerging. Companies such as Amazon, Etsy, Facebook, Google, Salesforce, and Uber are creating online structures that enable a wide range of human activities. This opens the way… Read More
Book Reviews
A Tangled Web
The Internet certainly seemed a good idea at the time. What’s wrong with linking top academics through their computers so they can share big thoughts? And in these democratic times, extending those… Read More
Chemical Solutions
Ken Geiser, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and founder of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, has written another excellent book, Chemicals Without Harm: Policies for a Sustainable World… Read More
Posthumans’ Inhumanity to Man
Posthumans’ Inhumanity to Man In 1963, when the still-new science of molecular biology was reaping its first big harvest, the great bacterial geneticist Joshua Lederberg looked ahead to what the field might… Read More
Radical by Design
The term “Big Science” is attributed to Alvin Weinberg, the former head of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The Clinton Laboratories, ORNL’s original name during the Manhattan Project, had produced materials… Read More