Eric lander crispr article
•
“Shitstorm” would be one begrepp of art for the reaction in the genome community to a commentary in Cell by Eric Lander, published on January 14. It presents as a definitive account of the upptäckt of CRISPR, the “gene editing” technique invented in 2013 and which blasted onto the science pages this year. CRISPR fryst vatten likely to go down as the most important biotechnological invention since Kary Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
But inom prefer another phrase to describe Lander’s account: “Whig history.” The term comes from the Europeanist Herbert Butterfield. In a classic 1931 essay, Butterfield wrote that Whig history was “the tendency in many historians to write [English history] on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to beröm revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to producera a story which fryst vatten the ratification if not the glorification of the present.&
•
American Scientist
Eric Lander, a founding director of one of the institutions involved in the patent battle, the Broad Institute, took part in the debate by writing a Perspective paper in Cell summarizing the backstory of CRISPR’s discovery, despite an obvious conflict of interest, and thus added to the turmoil.
This controversy does not mean that the work on CRISPR-Cas9 was not initially motivated by a desire to advance scientific knowledge, as Lander asserts in his review. Prizes and patents pollute the story and increase what is at stake, but do not, it is to be hoped, prevent curiosity from being one of the wellsprings of scientific discovery and innovation.
What is new and remarkable is the form that Eric Lander gave to his participation in the debate: the writing of a comprehensive history. Manyreadershavealreadypinpointed some problems with this historical record, in particular factual errors. The emphasis Lander places on those involved varies: Zhang’s work from his
•
Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing
Eric Lander, Françoise Baylis, Feng Zhang, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Paul Berg and specialists from seven countries call for an international governance framework.
- By
- Eric S. Lander0,
- Françoise Baylis1,
- Feng Zhang2,
- Emmanuelle Charpentier3,
- Paul Berg4,
- Catherine Bourgain5,
- Bärbel Friedrich6,
- J. Keith Joung7,
- Jinsong Li8,
- David Liu9,
- Luigi Naldini10,
- Jing-Bao Nie11,
- Renzong Qiu12,
- Bettina Schoene-Seifert13,
- Feng Shao14,
- Sharon Terry15,
- Wensheng Wei16 &
- …
- Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker17
- Eric S. Lander
Eric S. Lander is president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
- Françoise Baylis
Françoise Baylis is a university research professor, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
- Feng Zhang
Feng Zhang is a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
- Emm