Honey I CRISPR'd the Kids #527
June 14, 2019
This week we're coming to you from Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. There, host Bethany Brookshire led a panel of three amazing guests to talk about the promise and perils of CRISPR, and what happens now that CRISPR babies have (maybe?) been born. Featuring science writer Tina Saey, molecular biologist Anne Simon, and bioethicist Alan Regenberg.
- A Nobel Prize winner argues banning CRISPR babies won’t work
- Geneticists push for a 5-year global ban on gene-edited babies
- A CRISPR spin-off causes unintended typos in DNA
- News of the first gene-edited babies ignited a firestorm
- The researcher who created CRISPR twins defends his work but fails to quell controversy
- Chinese scientists raise ethical questions with first gene-edited babies
- Most Americans think it’s OK to tweak a baby’s genes to prevent disease
Guests:
- Tina Saey
- Anne Simon
- Alan Regenberg
Guest Bios
Tina Saey
Molecular biology writer Tina Hesman Saey is a geneticist-turned-science writer who covers all things microscopic and a few too big to be viewed under a microscope. She is an honors graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she did research on tobacco plants and ethanol-producing bacteria. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, studying microbiology and traveling. Her work on how yeast turn on and off one gene earned her a Ph.D. in molecular genetics at Washington University in St. Louis. Tina then rounded out her degree collection with a master’s in science journalism from Boston University. She interned at the Dallas Morning News and Science News before returning to St. Louis to cover biotechnology, genetics and medical science for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. After a seven year stint as a newspaper reporter, she returned to Science News. Her work has been honored by the Endocrine Society and the Genetics Society of America.
Anne Simon
Anne Simon is a professor at the University of Maryland. Her lab studies the structure and function of RNA elements involved in cap-independent translation of plus-strand RNA viruses. She also was a consultant on The X-Files, including an episode on CRISPR.
Alan Regenberg
Alan Regenberg is the Director of Outreach and Research Support and an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. His team is responsible for social media dissemination and active public engagement around the Institute’s diverse portfolio of scholarship. This includes rapid-response research in addition to managing/curating the institute’s social media-based, public-engagement efforts.
