Critics attack Harvard's secret meeting on human genome synthesis

[KamaAina]

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_29890402/critics-attack-harvards-secret-meeting-human-genome-synthesis

Prominent Stanford scientist Drew Endy is denouncing a secret meeting held at Harvard University this week to discuss creating a synthetic human genome -- essentially, constructing human life from scratch using chemicals.

In an essay criticizing the proposed project, Endy and Northwestern University bioethicist Laurie Zoloth said human genome synthesis is a scientific development with enormous moral implications, so discussions "should not occur in closed rooms."...

It portends a future with sci-fi implications, when a human genome --the complete set of genetic instructions for a human being -- could be assembled like a Tinkertoy.

Large societal questions loom. Among them: Who will fund, control and coordinate the research and its applications?

[Octafish]

1. Like modern democracy, modern science is for the selected few.

Like modern medicine, available for the selected few who can afford it.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. He writes from a computer... On the Internet...

-_-

[Octafish]

3. No, it's that I know who Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was.

Secret science in service of stopping the spread of socialism:

Even less well remembered is one mission in the CIA’s Phoenix Programin Vietnam in July of 1968. A team of CIA psychologists set up shop at BienHoa Prison outside Saigon, where NLF suspects were being held after PhoenixProgram round-ups. The psychologists performed a variety of experimentson the prisoners. In one, three prisoners were anaesthetized; their skullswere opened and electrodes implanted by CIA doctors into different partsof their brains. The prisoners were revived, placed in a room with knivesand the electrodes in the brains activated by the psychiatrists, who werecovertly observing them. The hope was that they could be prompted in thismanner to attack each other. The experiments failed. The electrodes wereremoved, the patients were shot and their bodies burned. -- Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn

http://www.counterpunch.org/1999/06/15/us-official-poisoner-dies/

Government funded torture by a top doc, way back when.

[Act_of_Reparation]

4. Yes, we in the sciences do love to torture people.

You should see my day planner.

Wake up
Jog
Breakfast
Commute to work
Torture
Torture
Torture
Torture
Lunch
Torture
Torture
Faculty Planning Meeting
Torture
Torture
Torture
Commute home
Space out for an hour
Dinner
Think about how to torture tomorrow
Sad wank
Cry myself to sleep because the funding climate is so terrible

[Kelvin Mace]

5. You might want to look into a minion,

or a henchman to take on some of that load. In a pinch, you can train a goon in minioning or henching.

[jpak]

7. LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!1111

but so true...

[Octafish]

9. Well I hope you're happy.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

[Act_of_Reparation]

10. All things considered, I'm fairly content.

Sometimes it sucks that your work goes unappreciated, but whatever. I'm not in it for the kudos.

[TipTok]

8. With an average life expectancy in the 70s-80s...

[jpak]

6. It's Alive!!!!1111

[proverbialwisdom]

11. Thank you for posting!

I saw this amazing story first today in "Related Articles" here: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/158178/20160514/white-house-begins-new-national-microbiome-initiative-to-understand-benefits-of-bacteria.htm
via http://www.ageofautism.com/2016/05/white-house-acknowledges-microbioeme-brain-gut-connection-in-disease.html

Specifically: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/158432/20160516/scientists-hold-secret-meeting-about-creating-synthetic-human-genomes.htm

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/158490/20160515/how-close-are-we-to-an-entirely-synthetic-human.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/science/synthetic-human-genome.html

Scientists Talk Privately About Creating a Synthetic Human Genome

By ANDREW POLLACK
MAY 13, 2016

Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting.

Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?

“Would it be O.K., for example, to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford, and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. “If so how many Einstein genomes should be made and installed in cells, and who would get to make them?”

<>

MUST READ: https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/should-we-synthesise-human-genome

[cstanleytech]

12. I foresee..................

Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!

In other words a whole lot of melodrama from alot of ignorant people which is business as usual really.

[proverbialwisdom]

13. PRESS RELEASE: The Center for Genetics and Society

http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=9374

For Immediate Release: May 13th, 2016

Press statement

[center]Comment - Closed Harvard Meeting on Human Genome Synthesis[/center]
According to a recent statement (1), an invitation-only group of roughly 150 scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs gathered at Harvard on Tuesday May 10 to discuss making a complete synthetic human genome from scratch, and inserting it into a cell line. The event was closed to media.

Knowledge of the Harvard meeting emerged in a critical commentary co-authored by Stanford University bioengineer Drew Endy, who has been deeply involved in developing and promoting synthetic biology for many years, and Northwestern University bioethicist Laurie Zoloth, who has participated in numerous efforts to develop guidelines and public policy about emerging biotechnologies.

Endy and Zoloth report that the meeting “was originally organized to focus on 'deliverables and industry involvement,’” and that one of the topics on the agenda was “changing the human genome itself.” On Twitter, Endy posted part of an invitation to the meeting, which asked participants to refrain from talking with the media about it.

“From what we know so far, it’s hard to tell much about the actual technical purpose, business plan, or public relations agenda of the convenors. If these reports are accurate, the meeting looks like a move to privatize the current conversation about heritable genetic modification,” said Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Genetics and Society, referring to the ongoing controversy about the prospect of using new gene editing techniques to alter the genes passed on to future children and generations.

Both in the US and globally, opposition to heritable genetic modification is strong. A “gene editing summit” in December 2015 convened by the national scientific academies of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China concluded with a statement by its organizing committee that “it would be irresponsible to proceed with any clinical use of germline editing unless and until...there is broad societal consensus about the appropriateness of the proposed application.”

Though the December “summit” was widely covered by news and social media, and featured speakers from a range of disciplines, it was criticized by the Center for Genetics and Society and others for being insufficiently inclusive. “A semi-secret meeting of scientists and business people to make plans about synthesizing the human genome is a new low in scientific accountability,” Darnovsky said.

“Fully synthetic humans are not close at hand,” she continued. “But genetically modified humans could be. If the next move from the convenors of the Harvard meeting is a splashy announcement about a privately financed moon-shot project, that would really make a stark contrast to the promise of broad societal consensus.”

(1) Should We Synthesize A Human Genome?, by Drew Endy and Laurie Zoloth, May 10, 2016
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/102449#files-area

####

The Center for Genetics and Society is a non-profit public affairs and policy advocacy organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of human genetic and reproductive biotechnologies.

[proverbialwisdom]

14. “Human Genome Project-Write” Unveiled

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46237/title/-Human-Genome-Project-Write--Unveiled/

“Human Genome Project-Write” Unveiled

A proposal to synthesize entire genomes—the subject of a controversial, invitation-only meeting at Harvard last month—is formally presented in Science.

By Jef Akst | June 2, 2016


A team led by New York University’s Jef Boeke, Harvard’s George Church, and Andrew Hessel of the California-based commercial design studio Autodesk Research has published its proposal to synthesize entire genomes from scratch, including those of humans. Called the “Human Genome Project-Write” (the authors refer to the original HGP as Human Genome Project-Read), the initiative could take 10 years and a minimum of $100 million just to get started, the researchers wrote today (June 2) in Science.

“It’s essentially a call to action,” Hessel told BuzzFeed News. “We are suggesting it’s time to consider a new genome project standing on the foundations of the Human Genome Project.”

An underlying goal of the proposed project is to develop technologies to more efficiently and more cheaply write DNA. “Tangible products may be slow to follow at first, but writing DNA more cheaply and at large scale will make researchers more efficient and comprehensive in their work, leading to practically unlimited potential for indirect products,” Danielle Tullman-Ercek, a biochemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, told Nature.

But the proposal was not universally praised. “My first thought was ‘so what,’” Martin Fussenegger, a synthetic biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, told Nature. “I personally think this will happen naturally. It’s just a matter of price at the end.”

Others are still upset about the discussion that took place at a closed-door meeting last month at Harvard. Synthetic biologist Drew Endy of Stanford University and religious scholar Laurie Zoloth of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, question the scientific value of the plan. “Boeke et al.’s current proposal should be broadly rejected and not now pursued,” Endy told BuzzFeed News in an email.

MOONSHOT SEGMENT (Andrew Hessel, distinguished research scientist at Autodesk, and Ethan Kurzweil, a Bessemer Venture Partners partner): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-07-14/full-show-bloomberg-west-07-13

https://mobile.twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/753355474058170368

Emily Chang
@emilychangtv

Our new Series A segment live now! Today's topic: Moonshots with @ethankurz @andrewhessel bloomberg.com/live
3:28 PM - 13 Jul 2016