Ethics
But What Does That Really Mean?
30/07/12 12:53 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Adam Rutherford at Nature suggested that "the present gains and future benefits of synthetic biology are too great for it to be written off with fear-mongering maxims about "playing God." Gerhard Adam in his Blog questioned what it really means to "play God", and that if we now have the power to improve our ability to cure diseases, then we have a moral responsibility to do so. S. Pelech agrees and takes issue with the very concept of "Playing God" and wonders why if people believe in divine intervention they don't also believe that scientists are guided in their actions directly by "God." Read More...
'That Doesn't Sound So Terrible'
29/03/11 15:32 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Roxanne Palmer at Slate's Brow Beat blog wrote that the late actress Elizabeth Taylor's most famed physical feature — her eyes, "arresting: large, liquid, and framed by a thick fringe of eyelashes" — may have resulted from a mutation at FOXC2 that resulted in two sets of eyelashes. One potential complication is that damage to the cornea can result if the extra eyelashes grow inward, and FOXC2 mutations are also associated with lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome, a hereditary disease that can cause disorders of the lymphatic system. S. Pelech raises the ethical question that if Elizabeth Taylor's parents had amniocentesis and genome-wide sequencing performed when she was just a tiny fetus and they learned that she had a genetic mutation that could cause immune and vision problems, would they have elected to have the pregnancy terminated? Read More...