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Why DARPA Is Investing Big in Gene Drives

December 6, 2017

A powerful and controversial new genetic engineering technology called a gene drive offers the potential to drastically reshape our world by overriding natural selection. And the US military’s research arm is among one of the technology’s biggest research funders

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Why DARPA Is Investing Big in Gene Drives

Wednesday, December 6th, 2017

It’s no secret that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has its eye on gene drive technology. Last year, the agency launched a programaimed at developing a sort of Ctrl-Z function for gene editing that would allow scientists to undo their genetic work should they make an unfortunate mistake and better understand gene editing technologies’ function. In July, DARPA announced seven research teams that would be the recipients of a total $65 million in grants, with gene drives one of the major focuses of the research.

DARPA’s interest in gene drives—and what exactly the sometimes secretive agency plans to do with them—is making headlines again this week after an anti-gene drive advocacy group published a trove of emails from gene drive researchers obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails come as a United Nation committee meets this week in Montreal to discuss, among other things, how to address gene drives at the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity next year in Egypt.

Image: By Mariuswalter – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62766590

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GIZMODO

Are Mass Murderers Insane? Usually Not, Researchers Say

November 9, 2017

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Are Mass Murderers Insane? Usually Not, Researchers Say

Thursday, November 9th, 2017

If what people do is any reflection of who they are, then Devin P. Kelley, who slaughtered 26 churchgoers on Sunday in Texas, surely was a madman.

Before the atrocity, he had attempted to sneak weapons onto an Air Force base after making death threats to his superiors, according to a local police report. In 2012, he had escaped from a mental hospital in New Mexico to which he had been sent after assaulting his wife and fracturing his stepson’s skull.

A video of the church killing reportedly shows Mr. Kelley working his way methodically through the aisles, shooting some parishioners, even children, at point-blank range.

“I think that mental health is your problem here,” President Trump told reporters on Monday.

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NYTimes

Did His Mind Make Him Do It? How Neuroscience Entered the Courtroom

March 10, 2017

Since ancient philosophers first began to ponder the problem of criminal behavior, great minds in science and law have sought a single holy grail, the point at which the two fields intersect: What nervous or brain dysfunctions can explain how people become so incapacitated that they are not responsible for their own criminal behavior?

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Did His Mind Make Him Do It? How Neuroscience Entered the Courtroom

Friday, March 10th, 2017

The latest candidate is neuroscience. With functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRIs), positron emission tomography (PET scans) and other related methods, scientists can observe the brain in action as it responds to various forms of stimuli. Yet this is an obscure, highly specialized world; group studies in a laboratory, most scientists maintain, cannot yet be applied to the behavior of an individual, especially an individual’s commission of a violent crime.

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The latest person to offer his services as guide in this regard is Kevin Davis, in “The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America’s Courtrooms.” Davis, a veteran Chicago reporter, is the author of two previous books, “The Wrong Man” (1996), an engrossing true crime account of a mentally challenged man falsely convicted of a savage murder in Florida, and the brilliant “Defending the Damned” (2007)

Image: By The original uploader was Marvin 101 at German Wikipedia(Original text: benutzer:marvin_101) – selbst, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3735089

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NYTimes

Why DARPA Is Investing Big in Gene Drives

Why DARPA Is Investing Big in Gene Drives

Are Mass Murderers Insane? Usually Not, Researchers Say

Are Mass Murderers Insane? Usually Not, Researchers Say

Did His Mind Make Him Do It? How Neuroscience Entered the Courtroom

Did His Mind Make Him Do It? How Neuroscience Entered the Courtroom

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