A Chinese Court has Sentenced Dr He Jiankui to 3 years in Prison for Genetically Engineering Babies with CRISPR

A Chinese court sentenced the scientist who created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies to three years in prison on Monday, according to the official Xinhua media.

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A Third CRISPR Baby may Have Been Born

The Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong last November, was meant to debate the pros and cons of genetically engineering humans. Instead, the proceedings were turned upside down by the revelation that He Jiankui, a Chinese biophysicist, had already done it.

He’d gone ahead and edited the DNA of twin girls with the powerful gene modification tool called CRISPR.

Then the Chinese scientist sprang a further surprise on the shocked gene-editing experts. A second Chinese woman, he said, was pregnant with yet another CRISPR baby. An early pregnancy test had confirmed it.

That third CRISPR baby is now due to be born at any moment—if he or she hasn’t come crying into the world already.

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How Should DeExtinction be Used? Zoos or Ecological Restoration?

Can the woolly mammoth be brought back from the dead? Scientists say it's only a matter of time.

In fact this year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature issued its first official set of guidelines on resurrecting extinct species. What's more, university research labs and non-governmental agencies have projects in motion to bring back extinct species. But is all of this a good idea?

A new paper by UC Santa Barbara researchers explores de-extinction -- the process of resurrecting an extinct species -- as a potential win for conservation and suggests how to make it so.

In an analysis in the journal Functional Ecology, UCSB ecologist Douglas McCauley and colleagues recommend several ways in which the science of de-extinction would have to evolve in order to make it maximally benefit ecological communities and ecosystems.

"The idea of de-extinction raises a fundamental and philosophical question: Are we doing it to create a zoo or recreate nature?" said co-author Benjamin Halpern, director of UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. "Both are reasonable answers, but restoring species to a natural state will be a much, much harder endeavor. We offer guidelines for how to make ecological de-extinction more successful and how to avoid creating 'eco-zombies.' "

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In the age of CRISPR, Should Parents be Allowed to Edit Their Children's Genomes?

Many safety, technical and legal barriers still stand in the way of editing DNA in human embryos. But some scientists and ethicists say that it is important to think through the implications of embryo editing now — before these practical hurdles are overcome. What sort of world would these procedures create for those currently living with disease and for future generations?

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Terminator Times #1

Terminator Times is a spin out of the Robopocalypse Reports.  The reason being the militaria related section was growing and would be a distraction from the main, original thrust of the Reports: the impact on our every day lives and economy of the coming Robopocalypse.   The Terminator Times will be focused on the military aspects of the Robopocalypse.

A notable exception will be any sort of stealthy UCAV drone: that will continue to be covered under the Stealth Saga series.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:

The US special forces want their UAVs to be smaller.  

 The US Army is testing anti UAV weapons.

 

Israeli drone feeds have been hacked by the US and British. 

Singapore has been learning how to have manned and unmanned aircraft work together.

 

Turkey says the Kurds in the Syrian Civil War have American UAVs.

Iran flew a drone over American and French aircraft carriers...which is REALLY dangerous and unprofessional.

Bellingcat takes a look at whether or not Iran has a new drone.

 Unmanned Underwater Vehicles:

Russia is apparently trying to invest very heavily in drone subs (UUVs).  This we knew, based on their dirty bomb torpedo/UUV.  However, they want to make sure the world knows they're doing it now.

The US Navy will be sending its large robo submarine from San Diego to San Francisco autonomously this summer. 

The US Navy has successfully tested a common control software for UUVs.

Unmanned Surface Vehicles:

Textron's unmanned surface vehicles (aka robo boat) has entered production for use by the US Navy for mine sweeping.  It may get upgraded for mine hunting as well.

 Ethics:

The US military is weighing the ethics of pairing lethal force with AI on autonomous weapons.

The Terminator/skynet scenario seems to be causing concern still.

Joint Conference in Washington, DC on the use of CRISPR-Cas9 on Humans

Don't look now, but the future just pulled into town.

Hundreds of scientists, policymakers and the president's science adviser have gathered Tuesday in Washington for what will be a three-day summit on genetic engineering, with a focus on a new, relatively simple technique for manipulating genes. It's fast and flexible, and just about anybody with some lab equipment and a little know-how can potentially alter the human species. The technique is called CRISPR-Cas9, or simply CRISPR, and more generically referred to as "gene editing."

The summit kicked off early Tuesday morning at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences, which is one of the sponsors, along with the National Academy of Medicine, the Royal Academy (Britain), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Chinese scientists have been aggressive in using CRISPR, and one team made news this year when it reported results from experiments on nonviable human embryos.

“The overriding question is when, if ever, we will want to use gene editing to change human inheritance," summit chair David Baltimore of Caltech said in his introductory remarks.

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Where Will the First Genetically Engineered (CRISPR) Baby be Born?

They are meeting in China; they are meeting in the United Kingdom; and they met in the United States last week. Around the world, scientists are gathering to discuss the promise and perils of editing the genome of a human embryo. Should it be allowed — and if so, under what circumstances?

The meetings have been prompted by an explosion of interest in the powerful technology known as CRISPR/Cas9, which has brought unprecedented ease and precision to genetic engineering. This tool, and others like it, could be used to manipulate the DNA of embryos in a dish to learn about the earliest stages of human development. In theory, genome editing could also be used to 'fix' the mutations responsible for heritable human diseases. If done in embryos, this could prevent such diseases from being passed on.

The prospects have prompted widespread concern and discussion among scientists, ethicists and patients. Fears loom that if genome editing becomes acceptable in the clinic to stave off disease, it will inevitably come to be used to introduce, enhance or eliminate traits for non-medical reasons. Ethicists are concerned that unequal access to such technologies could lead to genetic classism. And targeted changes to a person's genome would be passed on for generations, through the germ line (sperm and eggs), fuelling fears that embryo editing could have lasting, unintended consequences.

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Making DeExtinction Mundane

Making De-Extinction Mundane?

Authors:

Friese et al

Introduction:

The use of new technologies to bring back extinct species has recently become a topic widely discussed in the media, partly as the result of a TEDx programme on de-extinction [1] at the National Geographic Headquarters, timed to coincide with a National Geographic cover story in April 2013. Two weeks earlier, Stuart Brand, a key proponent of de-extinction, gave his own TED talk [2]. These public events were followed by high-profile conferences at Cambridge (UK) and Stanford Universities [3],[4]. These events have begun to shape the contours of ‘de-extinction,’ by defining the relevant techniques (cloning, genome editing, back breeding, stem cell manipulation) and also the actors that can legitimately participate. Thus, de-extinction is currently crystalizing into a field that includes not only bioscientists but also, to varying degrees, the popular press, bioethicists, conservationists, and scientists from other fields (for example, synthetic biologists).

De-extinction has raised a number of ethical and political questions: Will it divert resources from other tried-and-tested measures for conservation? Will the resurrected animals be classified as members of the extinct species? Are conservationists too pessimistic and sceptical about cutting-edge science to embrace its potential? How will we ethically care for the animals used in and produced by these techniques? Are there hidden commercial interests at stake? What is striking, from our perspective, is that many of these debates have been held before: the tropes regarding de-extinction are remarkably similar to those used in debates regarding cloning endangered animals.

In this paper, we explore the relevance of previous debates and argue that important insights can be gleaned from them as de-extinction moves forward, and that there is another set of questions that has not yet been adequately addressed. In line with the arguments of Marris and Rose [5] in the opening editorial for this series “Opening Engagement: Exploring Public Participation in the Biosciences,” we examine how, in the field of cloning endangered animals, the concerns of conservationists have in some cases been the basis for reformulating scientific practices in a way that can be interpreted as a form of ‘upstream’ public engagement. We argue that de-extinction could learn valuable lessons from these earlier projects regarding how to incorporate contributions from various publics; and demonstrate what a sociological approach can add to the exploration of these questions, in ways that traditional bioethics and ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Implications) approaches cannot.

Logical Limitations for Machine Ethics?

Logical Limitations to Machine Ethics with Consequences to Lethal Autonomous Weapons

Authors:

Engleert et al

Abstract:

Lethal Autonomous Weapons promise to revolutionize warfare -- and raise a multitude of ethical and legal questions. It has thus been suggested to program values and principles of conduct (such as the Geneva Conventions) into the machines' control, thereby rendering them both physically and morally superior to human combatants.

We employ mathematical logic and theoretical computer science to explore fundamental limitations to the moral behaviour of intelligent machines in a series of "Gedankenexperiments": Refining and sharpening variants of the Trolley Problem leads us to construct an (admittedly artificial but) fully deterministic situation where a robot is presented with two choices: one morally clearly preferable over the other -- yet, based on the undecidability of the Halting problem, it provably cannot decide algorithmically which one. Our considerations have surprising implications to the question of responsibility and liability for an autonomous system's actions and lead to specific technical recommendations.

Soooo....does that imply PEOPLE are not Turing Machines???  *evil grin*

De-Extinction: Hope or Hubris