Posts by David Prentice, PhD
Treating Patients or Creating New Patients with Technology
In this week’s blog post, Dr. David Prentice discusses how emerging technologies offer opportunities for development of useful therapeutic interventions, but they can also offer temptations to rush ahead with risky, scientifically unproven and ethically questionable applications.
Read MoreThe Quality Control of Life
Manufacturing industries routinely do quality control on their products, testing them to be certain the items being produced meet certain specifications. Any flawed products, those that do not meet the required specifications, are discarded. But what if that same mindset were applied to human beings?
Read MoreAn Embryo by Any Other Name
Some recent stories illustrate the continuing obsession, by some in the scientific community, with trying to make embryos in a way that “gets around” the ethical and legal barriers erected to protect young human life. Dr. David Prentice explores these recent attempts.
Read MoreExciting Technologies and Ethical Applications
Some scientists have said one reason they don’t consult bioethicists or think about the ethical implications of their research is because ethicists usually say “no” to new technologies, or that ethics is arbitrary. But what they are really avoiding is the necessity of setting rational limits on science, thinking they can thereby avoid any limits on their work. Limits that protect all human beings, even nascent human life, are not arbitrary and actually say “yes” to some exciting—and ethical—applications of new technologies.
Read MoreGene Editing to Make Better Human Beings?
Gene editing has potential for great benefit but also for great evil. In the medical realm, great advances are possible, but this dual-use technology also could be used to design children, weaponize biological agents or even alter or dehumanize our concept of humanity. Dr. David Prentice explores how gene editing can be dangerous for healthcare professionals and their patients in this week’s blog post.
Read MoreLife—Artificial or Natural?
There continue to be reports of new attempts to create life, sometimes labeled “synthetic” or “artificial” because the entity is not created the old-fashioned way, i.e., by fertilization of an egg with a sperm. The most recent report involved combining two different types of stem cells to form an embryo-like structure that was labeled “artificial.”
Read MoreArtificial Wombs and Modern Incubators
Sometimes what seems like science fiction can actually be science fact, and sometimes new technologies can have the potential for both good and bad uses. So-called “dual-use technology” is most often thought of in connection with potential military as well as civilian use, e.g., weaponized forms of viruses or bacteria vs. using such altered pathogens for vaccine development.
Read MoreTechno-Babies: Some Assembly Required?
Science fiction is no longer fiction—the first three-parent baby was born a few months ago. Last month in The Point, Dr. Robert E. Cranston raised a series of important questions about the safety and ethics of the technique; now more information—and more questions—have arisen. As a reminder, the concept of creating a baby with three parents came as a proposal to “treat” individuals with mitochondrial genetic diseases, i.e., mutations in the mitochondrial DNA that lead to sometimes lethal physiological problems.
Read MoreGrowing Human Embryos Outside the Womb: New Record, Old Questions
There needs to be a pause for a deeper discussion about just why such research is being done, and if there are any ethical lines that should not be crossed. How many lives are worth sacrificing? One? One thousand? One million?
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