‘Increased mortality’: 1st generation CRISPR babies will likely die young, scientists warn

RT

It is now six months since the world’s first gene-edited babies were born in China, but researchers in the US warn that, though the twin girls may be more resistant to HIV, they also have “significantly increased mortality.”

 

Geneticist He Jiankui, dubbed the 'Chinese Frankenstein,' shocked the world in November 2018 when he announced that he had created the first gene-edited babies. He and his team edited the gene CCR5 from two twin babies (a third gene-edited child is due to be born this summer) in a bid to make them immune from HIV.

However, it turns out that people with the variant of that genome that He and his team gave the children are 21 percent more likely to die younger according to researchers from UC Berkeley.

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Genetically Modified Babies. The Genetic Editing of Human Life is “Big Business”

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

Last November, He Jiankui, a Chinese biology professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Shenzhen (Guangdong Province) announced that he and his team had created the World’s first “genetically edited babies”: twin babies Lula and Nana. 

Dr. He Jiankui, used the CRISPR technology “to alter the embryos of seven couples [allegedly] to make them resistant to HIV”.  He Jiankui made his announcement at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing held at the University of Hong Kong.  

Dr. He claims to have used CRISP “to tweak the DNA of human embryos during in vitro fertilization”.

The broad implications of this experiment are far-reaching. The genetic editing of human life forms including embryos has a bearing on the future of humanity.

It opens up the pandora’s box of genetic engineering applied to human beings.
It undermines the “reproduction of real life”. Potentially, it destroys humanity.

 

 Screenshot Source Nature News Carl Zimmer, Click image to enlarge

The experiment raises important scientific and ethical issues. Human embryos are not commodities.

The Chinese government immediately opened an investigation, Dr He Jiankui was fired by his University in January 2019.

Corporate Interests: Genetic Editing is “Big Business”

Despite government regulations and ethical issues, there are powerful corporate interests involved in the development and patenting of genetic editing of life forms including Dr. He’s findings on “genetically modified babies”.

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Talking with Jean François Gariépy - The Revolutionary Phenotype

Coach Red Pill

JF's book: https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-... 

JF's channel: youtube.jfg.world 

"The Revolutionary Phenotype is a science book that brings us four billion years into the past, when the first living molecules showed up on Planet Earth. Unlike what was previously thought, we learn that DNA-based life did not emerge from random events in a primordial soup. Indeed, the first molecules of DNA were fabricated by a previous life form. By describing the fascinating events referred to as Phenotypic Revolutions, this book provides a dire warning to humanity: if humans continue to play with their own genes, we will be the next life form to fall to our own creation."

 

The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story

of how life begins and how it ends

Monsanto/Bayer Moving to Genome Edit Fruits and More

F. William Engdahl 
 
Not surprising, Monsanto, today hidden behind the Bayer logo, as the world leader in patented GMO seeds and the probable carcinogenic Roundup herbicide with glyphosate, is attempting to quietly patent genetically modified or GMO varieties of fruits using controversial gene-editing. The “beauty” of this for Monsanto/Bayer is that in the USA, according to a recent ruling by the US Department of Agriculture, gene-edited agriculture needs no special independent testing. The developments are not good for human health or safety, nor will it do anything to give the world better nutrition.

The agrichemical and GMO giant Monsanto, which today tries to keep a lower profile inside the German agrichemical and GMO giant Bayer, is moving into the highly controversial domain of gene-editing of new crop varieties. In 2018 as the company was being deluged with lawsuits over its use of the probable carcinogen, Roundup, Monsanto invested $125 million in a gene-editing startup called Pairwise. The link is anything but casual.

Former Monsanto Vice President for Global Biotechnology, Tom Adams, has taken the post of CEO of Pairwise. In short, this is a Monsanto gene-editing project. In a press release, Pairwise says it is using the controversial CRISPR gene-editing technology to create genetically edited produce. Among their goals apparently is a super-sweet variety of strawberry or apples, just what our sugar-saturated population doesn’t need.

CRISPR gene-editing, a stealth attempt by the global agribusiness industry to promote artificial mutations of crops and, as the world was shocked recently to hear, even humans, as in China, is being advanced, much like GMO crops falsely were, as solution to world hunger. Pairwise founder, Keith Joung, told media that their CRISPR gene-edited fruits, “will speed innovation that is badly needed to feed a growing population amid challenging conditions created by a changing climate.” How sweeter genetically-edited strawberries will solve world hunger he leaves to the imagination. Pairwise also says that gene-edited fruits would somehow also cut down on food waste. One has to be also skeptical there as well, even if it makes nice promotion copy. In addition to super-sweet strawberries, Monsanto plans to use its work with Pairwise to develop new varieties of gene-edited corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and canola crops. And because the USDA unfortunately has given the green light, the new genetically modified foods will undergo no independent testing for health and safety.

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DARPA to weaponize insects to spread viruses across the population

Natural News 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on an agricultural bio-weapon, and a team of scientists are speaking out about it.

For many years, agricultural firms have experimented with plant life, genetically modifying crops to confer desired, profitable traits. This experimentation has largely been conducted in labs, whereas genetic modification is directly applied into the chromosomes of a particular crop. Subsidized and introduced with lofty promise, these genetically altered crops have overtaken agricultural practices over the years. Who wouldn’t want to plant a seed type that has been genetically altered to survive mass herbicide spraying, allowing for easy weed control on a mass scale? While genetic modification shows promise for efficiency, the limitations of this experimentation have showed up across the agriculture industry, worldwide. For one, modified chromosomes are not always vertically inherited from one generation to the next. Two, the weeds that once died quickly begin to take on resistant traits. More chemicals, new formulations, and more genetic changes are needed in order to maintain profit margins. Moreover, as agriculture becomes dependent on a select breed of genetically altered seeds, agricultural systems become vulnerable.

Plants will naturally adapt to the diseases and pests in their regional ecosystem and produce seeds that are more genetically adapted to these threats. Heirloom seeds possess various traits from year to year. A diverse selection of heirloom seeds protects agriculture systems. This is why the governments of the world save seeds at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an underground facility near the North Pole which protects against accidental loss of diversity in traditional gene banks.

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Scathing Report Accuses the Pentagon of Developing an Agricultural Bioweapon

Gizmodo

 

A new technology in which insects are used to genetically modify crops could be converted into a dangerous, and possibly illegal, bioweapon, alleges a Science Policy Forum report released today. Naturally, the organization leading the research says it’s doing nothing of the sort.

The report is a response to a ongoing research program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dubbed “Insect Allies,” the idea is to create more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease. But instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send fleets of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would do their work, “infecting” the plants with a special virus that passes along the new resilience genes.

If you think this sounds scary, you’re not alone. The lead author of the new Science Policy Forum report, Richard Guy Reeves from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, says the Insect Allies program is a disturbing example of dual-use research in which DARPA, in addition to helping out farmers, is also working on a potential weapon. When contacted by Gizmodo, DARPA denied the accusations made in the new report, saying it’s filled with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations.

The technology at the heart of this research could herald an entirely new way of genetically modifying crops. Instead of having to wait for a plant to pass its newly-acquired traits onto the next generation, genetic changes would be imposed upon living organisms, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents, or HEGAAs.

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Why Have Insect-Delivered Diseases Tripled Since 2004?

Catherine J. Frompovich
Activist Post

In May of 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published some rather interesting demographic data regarding insect-delivered diseases – basically those diseases have tripled since 2004 [1-2]!

According to the CDC, “Nine new germs spread by mosquitoes and ticks have been discovered or introduced since 2004.”  Chikungunya and Zika viruses, even though not ‘new’ and have been around elsewhere, are relatively new to the USA.

The question this author, who is/has been a healthcare issues researcher and writer since the 1980s, logically and somewhat conclusively, has to ask is, “What roles do chemtrails sprayings for Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) and the genetic modification of insects, including diseases, to be genetically modified and used as “weapons of war,[1]” play in the tripling of vector-borne diseases?”

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Gene-edited farm animals are on their way

BBC News

Scientists have created pigs that are immune to one of the world's costliest livestock diseases.

The team edited the animals' DNA to make them resist the deadly respiratory disease known as PRRS - a move that could prevent billions of pounds in losses each year.

However, consumers have traditionally been reluctant to eat genetically altered animals and crops.

This poses a significant barrier to farmers owning gene-edited pigs.

And because genome, or gene, editing (GE) is relatively new, the absence of regulation currently prevents their sale anyway.

GE is different to the more widely used technology of genetic modification. The former involves the precise alteration of an organism's DNA, while the latter is characterised by the introduction of foreign genetic sequences into another living thing.

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US military wants to know what synthetic-biology weapons could look like

Comment: US military telegraphing what they already know and what they are already experimenting with. Their "concerns" and curiosity are merely a way to suggest Russia is at fault or a legion of terrorists (most of which have been created and funded by the same minds). It's an interesting article when seen as a snapshot of their objectives. 

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Antonio Regalado
MIT Tech Review

A study ordered by the US Department of Defense has concluded that new genetic-engineering tools are expanding the range of malicious uses of biology and decreasing the amount of time needed to carry them out.

The new tools aren’t in themselves a danger and are widely employed to create disease-resistant plants and new types of medicine. However, rapid progress by companies and university labs raises the specter of “synthetic-biology-enabled weapons,” according to the 221-page report.

The report, issued by the National Academies of Sciences, is among the first to try to rank national security threats made possible by recent advances in gene engineering such as the gene-editing technology CRISPR.

“Synthetic biology does expand the risk. That is not a good-news story,” says Gigi Gronvall, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins and one of the report’s 13 authors. “This report provides a framework to systematically evaluate the threat of misuse.”

Experts are divided on the perils posed by synthetic biology, a term used to describe a wide set of techniques for speeding genetic engineering. In 2016, the US intelligence community placed gene editing on its list of potential weapons of mass destruction.

“Many different groups have written and spoken about the topic, with a wide spread of opinion,” says D. Christian Hassell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for chemical and biological defense, who commissioned the report in order to obtain a “consensus opinion from among the top leaders and thinkers” in the field.

Hassell says the military’s current view is that “synbio is not a major threat issue at the moment” but bears preparing for, in part because defenses like vaccines can take years to develop.

The current report attempted to weigh potential threats by considering factors such as the technical barriers to implementation, the scope of casualties, and the chance of detecting an attack. It found that while “some malicious applications of synthetic biology may not seem plausible right now, they could become achievable with future advances.”

Among the risks the authors termed of “high concern” is the possibility that terrorists or a nation-state could re-create a virus such as smallpox. That is a present danger because a technology for synthesizing a virus from its DNA instructions has previously been demonstrated.

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Humans to be Genetically Modified for the first time in Europe

Nick Meyer 
March Against Monsanto

The acceleration of human progress and knowledge about health has reached a breakneck pace, and it appears as though there are two distinct camps emerging: people who believe natural health is the answer to a long and healthy life, and those who would rather side with modern medicine.

At the end of the day, both methods have their benefits and drawbacks, and have been instrumental in increasing human lifespan even at a time when chronic diseases are out-of-control.

But now, mainstream medicine is entering into unchartered territory, and it could change the future of our species for good. Whether or not it ends up being a positive development, however, remains to be seen. 

First GMO Humans to Be Created in Europe

According to a new article posted on the website Technocracy News & Trends,the first-ever GMO humans will soon see the light of day in Europe after a new CRISPR DNA-splicing therapy was approved.  

The therapy will be used in an attempt to treat the destructive blood disorder known as beta thalassaemia, which is designed to reduce the product of hemoglobin and could potentially cure this disorder.

The scientists petitioning to use it do not believe that they are capable of making mistakes or causing unintended consequences according to the website, but many people are nonetheless skeptical because of a recent study showing that that CRISPR is capable of causing "hundreds of unintended mutations" within the target organism.

That paper was later retracted, but the underlying concerns still remain, especially because of the complex nature of this therapy and the ability scientists will be given to "play God" with target organisms and foods, including human beings.

Early trials hold promise according to the article, but it remains to be seen how the human body itself will actually react over the long term to having its DNA spliced. 

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Agrichemical Political Power in America and Europe

Evaggelos Vallianatos
greenmedinfo.com 

In November 2014, an open letter signed by about 57 million Americans reached European politicians urging them not to follow America’s genetic engineering path in food and agriculture. Don’t use genetic engineering to modify your crops, the letter said, because GM crops have served us pretty badly here in America. We are convinced the genetic modification of crops is a hazardous and failing technology. 

Genetic engineering for the hegemony of the world

Studies show that animals fed GM foods and / or the weed killer glyphosate become ill from damaged liver, kidneys, gut tissues and gut flora. These animals also suffer from immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities and tumors. Do we want to eat this kind of food?

With this unsettling evidence from scientific studies, you would think, the letter said, the regulators of genetic engineering in America (Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture) would be alarmed and ban any further fiddling with the nation’s food. On the contrary, these government regulators and the industry justify the modification of crops from studies funded by the biotech industry.

The letter from America went beyond warning that GM foods were not safe. It concluded that GM foods were much more than the application of genetics on food. Modifying crops was intensifying the biocidal effects of industrialized agriculture. It triggered the radical remaking of farming into a perpetual cash cow for agrichemical corporations. GM food was part of a strategy of corporate hegemony over farmers, food and the world.

The open letter put it this way:

Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system. Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU [European Union] countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts [on human health and the environment]. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of gross dereliction of duty.

I observed the regulatory origins of this technology. It happened in the 1990s under the supervision of the Clinton administration.

EPA alone had a Biopesticides Division of about eighty scientists working feverishly on behalf of the biotech and agrichemical companies. Indeed, it was pesticide executives that invented agricultural genetic engineering. This was their scheme of extending the life of their best-selling chemicals, especially weed killers like glyphosate and 2,4-D. Naturally, duping and addicting farmers to the genetic modification of crops complemented the global ambition of giant corporations for the control of the world’s food.

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US Military Is Working to Turn Plants Into a Network of Environmental Spies

Comment: There are no words.

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Science Alert

Traditionally, most spying and intelligence gathering has been done by highly trained human operatives. But the US military has a plan to enlist a smart network of plants to help it stay one step ahead of its enemies.

These flora won't be sneaking into secret labs or engaging in close combat, but will be used to monitor the environment for chemical attacks or even electromagnetic pulses, says the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The program is called Advanced Plant Technologies or APT, and while it's only just being launched, eventually DARPA is hoping to create a self-sustaining network of plants that can be monitored remotely for any signs of environmental shift.

"Plants are highly attuned to their environments and naturally manifest physiological responses to basic stimuli such as light and temperature, but also in some cases to touch, chemicals, pests, and pathogens," says DARPA's Blake Bextine.

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New Way to Boost Crop Production Doesn’t Rely on GMOs or Pesticides

MIT Tech Review

A new treatment for cotton seeds draws on beneficial microbes that live inside plants—much like the good bacteria in our own guts—to help the crops thrive in dry conditions.

The microbe-enhanced cotton, the first product from startup Indigo Agriculture, is already growing on 50,000 acres spread across five different states in the southern United States. Indigo CEO David Perry says the treatment increases yield as much as irrigation can. The company also today announced a new $100 million investment round that brought its venture funding total to $156 million.

Many experts argue that global agricultural productivity is not growing fast enough to keep up with the increase in global demand for food. Intense competition for land and pressures to reduce chemical fertilizer and pesticide use have led technologists to search for new ways to increase yield. Adding beneficial microbes to crops could be an effective but less controversial alternative to genetic engineering.

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Unintended consequences: Researchers warn against releasing GM mosquitoes in U.S.

Phys.org

Releasing genetically-modified mosquitoes into the wild to fight malaria, Zika or other insect-borne diseases is premature and could have unintended consequences, researchers said in a new report.

"Our committee urges caution—a lot more research is needed to understand the scientific, ethical, regulatory and social consequences of releasing such organisms," said Arizona State University professor James Collins, who was co-chair of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee.

The committee was studying gene drives—systems of "biased inheritance" that make it more likely for a genetic trait to pass from parent to offspring.

With new gene-editing techniques, modifications can quickly spread through a population via a gene drive, greatly increasing chances that the altered gene will become widespread.

"Preliminary research suggested that gene drives developed in the laboratory could spread a targeted gene through nearly 100 percent of a population of yeast, fruit flies or mosquitoes," the academies said in a news release announcing the committee's report Wednesday.

The technology could potentially be used to target wild mosquitoes, modifying them so they are not able to carry or spread infectious diseases such as dengue, malaria and Zika.

In agriculture, gene drive might be used to control pests that damage crops.

However, such technology could have devastating unintended consequences "such as the unintentional disruption of a non-target species or the establishment of a second, more resilient invasive species," the researchers said.

"Because the goal of using a gene drive is to spread genetic information throughout a population rapidly, it is difficult to anticipate its impact and important to minimize the potential for unintended consequences," the report said, calling for more research, phased testing and better collaboration among scientists.

The committee found that existing regulations are insufficient for assessing risks of field experiments or planned releases of organisms modified through gene drives.

"As of May 2016, no ecological risk assessment has been conducted for a gene-drive modified organism," the report noted. 

British Scientist Plans to Genetically Modify Human Embryos After Ethics Committee’s Approval

Joseph Jankowski
Activist Post

Genetically modified humans might seem like a far-out idea that has a place only in science fiction but is actually what some scientists have in store for humanity in the very near future.

After receiving the go-ahead from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) earlier this year, British scientist Dr. Kathy Niakan, of the Francis Crick Institute, will now be able to genetically modify human embryos.

Dr. Niakan will use a gene editing technique on embryos that have been donated by consenting patients undergoing fertility treatment.
The Telegraph reports:

Despite the approval, the start of research may still be months away due to the difficulties of obtaining sufficient embryos.
The controversial project is thought to mark the second time the procedure will be undertaken. Scientists in China, who carried out the first experiment but are not believed to have been approved by a regulator, were met with widespread criticism.
Dr Niakan, speaking at a briefing in central London in January, said she hoped the research would give hope to prospective patients.
“We would really like to understand the genes that are needed for an embryo to develop into a healthy baby,” she said.
“Miscarriage and infertility are extremely common but they are not very well understood. We believe that this research could improve our understanding of the very earliest stages of human life.”

According to Dr. Niakan, 50 percent of human embryos fail to reach the early developmental blastocyst stage.

“If we were to understand the genes, it could really help us improve infertility treatment and provide crucial insights into the causes of miscarriage,” Niakan said.

Some believe that this type of genetic engineering will pave the path for “designer babies” which would be an act of god by humans.

Others, such as Dr. Kiakan, are looking at this as a way to advance the good health of humanity.

Either way you look at this, it is safe to that some very interesting results could come from the genetic tampering of humans.

From The Green Revolution To GMOs: Living In The Shadow Of Global Agribusiness

Colin Todhunter 
True Publica

What can we do about the powerful transnational agribusiness companies that have captured or at the very least heavily influence regulatory bodies, research institutes, trade agreements and governments? How can we assess the safety and efficacy of GMOs or their other technologies and products when narratives and decision-making processes have become distorted by these companies?

Through the ‘green revolution’ chemical-intensive model of agriculture these corporations and their powerful backers promoted and instituted, they have been able to determine what seeds are to be used by farmers, what is to be grown and what inputs are to be applied. This, in turn, has adversely effected the nutritional content of food, led to the over-exploitation of water and diminished drought resistance, degraded soil, undermined biodiversity, polluted the environment, destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and so much more: with 60 years’ farming experience behind him, Bhaskar Save outlined many of these impacts in his open letter to Indian officials some years back.

These powerful corporations increasingly hold sway over a globalised system of food and agriculture from seed to plate. And with major mergers within the agribusiness sector in the pipeline, power will be further consolidated and the situation is likely to worsen. While scientific innovation has a role to play in improving agriculture, the narrative about farming has been shaped to benefit the interests of this handful of wealthy, politically influential corporations whereby commercial interest trumps any notion of the public good.

The green revolution has proved to be disastrous in many areas (for example, see this, this and this). If the technology involved had been used more judiciously and genuinely in the public interest – and had not been married to geopolitical interestsresulting in the creation of food deficit regions or instituted for the commercial gain of corporations – would we not now be in a better position? And would organic farming and agroecology have received greater attention and investment and be playing a much greater role (as research shows they should), even a dominant one, in agriculture?

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See also:  World State Policies IX: Food as a Weapon and GM Crops Unleashed

Scientists smash record for human embryos grown in the lab in revolutionary breakthrough

Independent

 

Since scientists first fertilised an embryo in a test tube in 1969, they have never managed to keep one alive for long after the point at which the foetus implants in the womb, normally about seven days. 

However researchers at Cambridge University have now grown embryos for 13 days — a process they only stopped to avoid breaking the current legal limit of about 14 days. 

The ability to observe a human embryo as it grows during this “most enigmatic and mysterious” stage of life in a lab should shed new light on genetic diseases and disabilities.

And it could help improve the dismal failure rate of IVF embryos — currently up to 70 per cent do not successfully implant – and lead to better understanding of miscarriages.

 

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Epicyte: Contraceptive Corn and Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs (Full Length) HD

Startup in biotech adds two base pairs to genetic code — and life on earth may never be the same

Aaron Krumins
Extreme Tech

midst the staggering diversity that is life on earth, there is a surprising thread of commonality. That shared ground is the language of genetics. Prior to the discovery of DNA, few suspected that a single molecular code could underpin such a panoply of biological forms - everything from viruses to talking apes.

Even more startling was the discovery that this code consisted of a molecular language only four base pairs in length. It took evolution a billion years to devise this four-letter chemical code. Now for the first time in recorded history, organisms with a new, expanded, genetic code are taking shape in the laboratory. It's no exaggeration to say that life on earth will never be the same.

While the playboy of biology, Craig Venter, has stolen many of the recent headlines in regards to synthetic biology, the more interesting advances in the field are occurring with surprisingly little fanfare. And not without good reason: many of the corporate labs pursuing synthetic biology have little cause to draw excess attention to themselves.

They've learned all too well from the disastrous backlash against genetically modified foods that the public is not necessarily the wisest arbiter of scientific advancement. If we were to ban GMO crops tomorrow, half the population of the world would starve in short order. Yet this seems to be precisely what a large percentage of the "well-fed" in places like the United States are angling for. But I digress.

In a development sure to have far reaching repercussions, scientists working at the drug discovery company called Synthorx quietly announced that it is using an expanded version of the genetic alphabet, one that includes two novel base pairs dubbed X and Y, to create a type of E. coli bacteria never before seen on the face of the earth.  

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The Genesis Engine - We now have the power to quickly and easily alter DNA ...

Subscribe to WIRED Photo by: Richard Mosse 

 

Wired.com

Spiny grass and scraggly pines creep amid the arts-and-crafts buildings of the Asilomar Conference Grounds, 100 acres of dune where California's Monterey Peninsula hammerheads into the Pacific. It's a rugged landscape, designed to inspire people to contemplate their evolving place on Earth. So it was natural that 140 scientists gathered here in 1975 for an unprecedented conference.

They were worried about what people called “recombinant DNA,” the manipulation of the source code of life. It had been just 22 years since James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin described what DNA was—deoxyribonucleic acid, four different structures called bases stuck to a backbone of sugar and phosphate, in sequences thousands of bases long. DNA is what genes are made of, and genes are the basis of heredity.

Preeminent genetic researchers like David Baltimore, then at MIT, went to Asilomar to grapple with the implications of being able to decrypt and reorder genes. It was a God-like power—to plug genes from one living thing into another. Used wisely, it had the potential to save millions of lives. But the scientists also knew their creations might slip out of their control. They wanted to consider what ought to be off-limits.

By 1975, other fields of science—like physics—were subject to broad restrictions. Hardly anyone was allowed to work on atomic bombs, say. But biology was different. Biologists still let the winding road of research guide their steps. On occasion, regulatory bodies had acted retrospectively—after Nuremberg, Tuskegee, and the human radiation experiments, external enforcement entities had told biologists they weren't allowed to do that bad thing again. Asilomar, though, was about establishing prospective guidelines, a remarkably open and forward-thinking move.

At the end of the meeting, Baltimore and four other molecular biologists stayed up all night writing a consensus statement. They laid out ways to isolate potentially dangerous experiments and determined that cloning or otherwise messing with dangerous pathogens should be off-limits. A few attendees fretted about the idea of modifications of the human “germ line”—changes that would be passed on from one generation to the next—but most thought that was so far off as to be unrealistic. Engineering microbes was hard enough. The rules the Asilomar scientists hoped biology would follow didn't look much further ahead than ideas and proposals already on their desks.

Earlier this year, Baltimore joined 17 other researchers for another California conference, this one at the Carneros Inn in Napa Valley. “It was a feeling of déjà vu,” Baltimore says. There he was again, gathered with some of the smartest scientists on earth to talk about the implications of genome engineering.

The stakes, however, have changed.

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