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Editorial: Time to Discuss Consent in Digital-Data Studies

July 31, 2019

Anonymized data sets are growing and it is becoming easier to identify individuals. Research-consent procedures must be updated to protect people from being targeted

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Editorial: Time to Discuss Consent in Digital-Data Studies

Wednesday, July 31st, 2019

People today shed data wherever they go. Data flow from their financial transactions, social-media platforms, wearable health monitors, smartphone apps and phone calls.

By tapping massive digital data sets collected by phone providers, technology companies and government agencies, researchers hope to reveal patterns in the data and ultimately to improve lives. Such studies range from an analysis of call records in Nepal that showed where people moved to following an earthquake, so that aid could be delivered; to estimates of pollution exposure based on location data from the Google Maps smartphone app. But relatively little attention has been given to the ethics of how this research is conducted and, in particular, how those who supply their data should consent to taking part.

In general, proposals for research involving people are vetted by guidelines rooted in the 1947 Nuremberg code and the subsequent 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. These are ethical principles forged after unconscionable Nazi experimentation during the Second World War. They demand that researchers obtain voluntary consent from people who understand the subject matter of the study well enough to make an informed decision about whether to take part. But informed consent is often not required for studies that access anonymized and pooled data.

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Nature

Editorial: Japan Should Put the Brakes on Stem-Cell Sales

January 30, 2019

Unproven therapies should not be marketed to patients.

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Editorial: Japan Should Put the Brakes on Stem-Cell Sales

Wednesday, January 30th, 2019

Healing spinal-cord injuries has been one of the most difficult — and doggedly pursued — quests in medicine, and among the most symbolic goals for the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine.

Progress, however, has been frustratingly slow. Dozens of seemingly promising efforts, based on animal studies, have fallen flat.

Last week, a Californian company called Asterias Biotherapeutics released promising results from a 12-month first phase clinical trial, in which embryonic stem cells are converted into oligodendrocytes — cells of the central nervous system that support neurons and can stimulate their growth — and then injected into the backs of people with a spinal-cord injury. The data show that injected cells do stick around at the injury site, and that most patients (21 out of 22) showed improved movement.

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Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by National Institutes of Health (NIH)

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Nature

Should Scientists Toy With the Secret to Life?

January 29, 2019

The gene-editing technology Crispr has the power to remake life as we know it. Questions about how to use it concern everyone

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Should Scientists Toy With the Secret to Life?

Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

Scientists quickly condemned the Chinese researcher who altered the DNA of at least two embryos to create the world’s first genetically edited babies, defying a broad consensus against hereditary tinkering.

But as The Times reported last week, the global scientific community is divided over what to do next. Should researchers agree to a moratorium on any human genome editing that can be passed down to future generations? Or should they simply tighten existing criteria?

It’s good that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are planning a global forum to address these questions. But it will be crucial for biologists to seek substantial input from policymakers, ethicists, social scientists and others.

…continue reading ‘Should Scientists Toy With the Secret to Life?’

Thumb image via New York Times – Andrea D’Aquino

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New York Times - Editorial

Editorial Board: The Science of Gene Editing Demands Caution and Consensus

December 12, 2018

News of a reckless experiment demonstrates the dangers. A response from the editorial board of Bloomberg News

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Editorial Board: The Science of Gene Editing Demands Caution and Consensus

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018

A Chinese scientist’s claim to have edited the genes of human embryos has provoked condemnation from scientists worldwide, and rightly so. He Jiankui barged ahead without ensuring that the genetic changes he says he made — meant to confer resistance to HIV infection — would not cause unintended harm to the children, twins who have now been born.

His insistence that he fully informed the parents of the risks involved is absurd: The risks are unknown. His experiment was conducted without oversight, and he’s published no report that would allow other scientists to check and verify his assertions.

…continue reading ‘The Science of Gene Editing Demands Caution and Consensus’

Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by sabianmaggy

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Bloomberg News

Editorial: How to Respond to CRISPR Babies

December 7, 2018

Nature editors write, “The claims from He Jiankui that he has used gene editing to produce twin girls demand action. A new registry of research is a good start”

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Editorial: How to Respond to CRISPR Babies

Friday, December 7th, 2018

People like to say that science is self-correcting. Events in China last week pose a serious challenge to that reassuring platitude. How do researchers respond to the failure of medical ethics, collective responsibility and professional standards that saw an immature experimental technique used to help produce human babies?

It has not yet been independently confirmed that the Chinese genome-editing researcher He Jiankui altered the DNA of embryos using a gene-editing technique and then implanted them in a woman, as he claims. Such a step would be significant and controversial because it would make a permanent change to the germ line that could be passed on to future generations. (This distinguishes germline editing from the use of gene-editing tools as therapies that correct genetic alterations in somatic cells in blood and other tissues.)

Verification of He’s claims could be difficult, given that privacy concerns rightly protect the identity of the parents and their one-month-old twin girls. But many scientists in the field agree on two things: the relative simplicity and widespread availability of the gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 mean that what He claims to have done is eminently possible; and, whether or not he is the first person to have genetically edited a baby, he will not be the last.

…continue reading ‘Editorial: How to Respond to CRISPR Babies’

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Nature

Statues: An Editorial Response

September 19, 2017

Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature responds to the widespread criticisms to an editorial warning about the risks of “removing statues or altering the names of awards or streets that honor researchers who committed atrocious acts in the name of science.”

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Statues: An Editorial Response

Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

In the 7 September issue of Nature, we published an Editorial that provoked a widespread response (Nature 549, 5–6; 2017). We have since published representative criticisms, including those in this issue, as well as a related article by an expert. After our intensive consideration of those responses, as well as internal and external discussions, I think it important to say the following.

The Editorial was wrong in warning that there could be risks associated with removing statues or altering the names of awards or streets that honour researchers who committed atrocious acts in the name of science. We did not adequately explore the ramifications of this statement or subject it to sufficient scrutiny. Many people, internally and externally, have pointed out that the statement is not true. Removing such statues or other memorials does not erase these individuals or their acts from history.

Beyond that fundamental error in the Editorial, the arguments throughout the piece — including an inappropriate framing of the example of J. Marion Sims — and its overall tone were naive and unintentionally served to reinforce the insidious notion that women, people of colour and minority groups do not have a place in science. This notion is wrong.

Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by edenpictures

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Nature

Honors for Racist Scientists

September 7, 2017

As debate over statues and building names moves from Confederate generals to researchers, editorial in Nature receives intense backlash

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Honors for Racist Scientists

Thursday, September 7th, 2017

Historians like to say that everything has a history. Yet the natural sciences remain somewhat removed from academic debates over what to do with monuments tied to dark chapters in American history.

That’s changing, though.

In a twist to discussions about campus memorials linked to slavery and racism, the natural sciences are facing new questions about monuments tied to eugenics and to individuals who denied basic rights to those nonwhite people on whom they did research.

In one example, scientists and other academics lit up social media Wednesday in a response to an editorial in Nature called “Removing Statues of Historical Figures Risks Whitewashing History.” Some critics objected to the term “whitewashing” itself, saying that leaving memorials to eugenicists and other problematic figures unchallenged is the real whitewashing.

Image: By ESO/M. Kornmesser (photo displayed on the magazine cover) – https://www.eso.org/public/images/ann16056a/ (photo displayed on the magazine cover), CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50998461

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Inside Higher Ed

Beware the Anti-Science Label

May 11, 2017

Presenting science as a battle for truth against ignorance is an unhelpful exaggeration

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Beware the Anti-Science Label

Thursday, May 11th, 2017

Antimatter annihilates matter. Anti-science, it is said, destroys what matters. And fears are increasing that anti-science forces are on the march. Indeed, on last month’s March for Science, a ‘war on science’ was frequently invoked as a reason for researchers to mobilize. Signs held aloft warned of a conflict.

True anti-science policies — the early Soviet Union’s suppression of genetics research, for example, and its imprisonment of biologists while trying to revamp agriculture — can wreck lives and threaten progress. But it’s important not to cheapen the term by overusing it. And it’s wrong for researchers and others to smear all political decisions they disagree with as being anti-science. For instance, despite being labelled by many as anti-science, the US Republican Party — for all of its flaws — is not trying to hobble innovation or seeking to dismantle the research enterprise.

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Nature Editorial

Editorial: Time to Discuss Consent in Digital-Data Studies

Editorial: Japan Should Put the Brakes on Stem-Cell Sales

Editorial: Japan Should Put the Brakes on Stem-Cell Sales

Should Scientists Toy With the Secret to Life?

Should Scientists Toy With the Secret to Life?

Editorial Board: The Science of Gene Editing Demands Caution and Consensus

Editorial Board: The Science of Gene Editing Demands Caution and Consensus

Editorial: How to Respond to CRISPR Babies

Editorial: How to Respond to CRISPR Babies

Statues: An Editorial Response

Statues: An Editorial Response

Honors for Racist Scientists

Honors for Racist Scientists

Beware the Anti-Science Label

Beware the Anti-Science Label

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