Doesn’t it feel like we’re in the future? Mysterious UFOs flying around? Artificial Intelligence thrusting us into Singularity ASAP? Gene-editing is right there. After all: “The experts, who range from geneticists and public health researchers to bioethicists and philosophers, expect a wave of gene editing therapies to reach clinics in the next five years or so.”
It’s a great week to catch-up on the big issues in Bioethics: Gene editing, and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). See the materials below for expert summaries on the issues so far.
The inevitability of genetic enhancement
This week was the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London, England. The following articles provide a few different angles on it.
From The Guardian:
My favourite quote:
Baylis believes genetic enhancement is “inevitable” because so many of us are “crass capitalists, eager to embrace biocapitalism”.
From NPR:
"We all know you, see a yellow light and sometimes you slow down and hit the brake and sometimes you hit the gas. And it behooves us to ask the question: Are we hitting the brake or hitting the gas," said Ben Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Arizona State University who helped organized a kind of parallel project called the Global Observatory for Genome Editing aimed at broadening the discussion. "I think here we're hitting the gas."
Hurlbut and others also say the debate is being held amongst a relatively small cadre of elite researchers and raises too many profound questions for humanity to limit it that way.
From The New York Times:
Research should be driven by community needs and interests, rather than market forces. There are choices here. It’s up to us to decide what we want this future to look like.
Will a year make a difference with the MAID expansion?
The fervour around the MAID expansion has cooled down as it was bumped one year into the future. I wonder how much will change over the next year; will a year make all the difference in easing concerns?
From The Globe and Mail:
“If all had gone according to plan, medical assistance in dying for people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness would be two weeks away from becoming a reality in Canada.”
From The Globe and Mail:
People facing dementia, and indeed any limiting chronic complaint, worry that the life they lived is ending and the life they might live will be insufficient. The pride we all take in independence is threatened by a new reality, and it’s common for folks to say, “I don’t want to live that way.” Most find, however, that the life still to be lived is one worth living, if different from the one they knew.
From The CBC:
"I think we shouldn't exclude an entire group of individuals suffering from a particular type of illness, from a law that is the privilege of the rest of the Canadian population — especially because suffering from a mental illness can be just as unbearable as from a physical illness," Dembo said.
There are people who — despite the best quality treatment and having financial means to access private psychotherapies — do not find relief from their suffering after decades of treatment, she says.
That’s all for this week, folks! Perhaps it’s the exhaustion from keeping up with such complex issues - but some nihilism has admittedly creeped in. I think I should dive back into bioethics in film - there are so many interesting projects releasing soon! I promise I will keep you updated. :)
Hope you have a beautiful, cozy weekend!
-Nipa
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