Lifeboat Foundation

An ultra-charismatic CEO and a company that wants to do just about everything.

Scientists say they have used the gene editing tool CRISPR inside someone’s body for the first time, a new frontier for efforts to operate on DNA, the chemical code of life, to treat diseases.

A patient recently had it done at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland for an inherited form of blindness, the companies that make the treatment announced Wednesday. They would not give details on the patient or when the surgery occurred.

It may take up to a month to see if it worked to restore vision. If the first few attempts seem safe, doctors plan to test it on 18 children and adults.

In Beilinson Hospital, for the first time, a lung cancer patient went under surgery in which the tumor removed and the healthy lung returned to his body. “Cleaning” organs from tumors may change global coping with cancer.

If there was a public vote about human gene enhancement, would you vote YES or NO?

Our species is on the cusp of a revolution that will change every aspect of our lives but we’re hardly talking about it.

Continue reading “Our Genetic Future Is Coming… Faster Than We Think” »

Researchers in China have found that two different types of the new coronavirus could be causing infections worldwide.

In a preliminary study published Tuesday, scientists at Peking University’s School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai found that a more aggressive type of the new coronavirus had accounted for roughly 70% of analyzed strains, while 30% had been linked to a less aggressive type.

Even with the revisions, scientists warned, the new regulation would let the federal government dismiss or downplay seminal environmental research.

World health officials said Tuesday the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.

“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.

For the first time, doctors have attempted to cure blindness by gene-hacking a patient with CRISPR technology.

A team from Oregon Health & Science Institute injected three droplets of fluid that delivered the CRISPR DNA fragments directly into a patient’s eyeball, The Associated Press reports, in hopes that it will reverse a rare genetic condition called Leber congenital amaurosis, which causes blindness early in childhood.

“We literally have the potential to take people who are essentially blind and make them see,” Charles Albright, chief scientific officer of Editas Medicine, told the AP. Editas is one of the biotech companies that actually developed the treatment. “We think it could open up a whole new set of medicines to go in and change your DNA.”

During a Tuesday briefing, the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier warned that self-imposed quarantines could last weeks.

“You may need to take a break from your normal daily routine for two weeks,” she said, as quoted by The Washington Post.

“Staying home when you are sick is really important,” she added. “Don’t let the illness spread beyond you. Stay away as much as you can from other people.”