Crispr Wins Key Approval to Fight Cancer in Human Trials (bloomberg.com)

Tom Randall, reporting for Bloomberg Technology:An experimental cancer treatment that alters the DNA of patients has won a key approval to proceed with its first human tests using the controversial gene-altering tool known as Crispr. Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania want to edit the immune systems of 18 patients to target cancer cells more effectively. The experiment, backed by internet billionaire Sean Parker, won approval from the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), a federal ethics panel set up at the National Institutes of Health 40 years ago to review controversial experiments that change the human genome. The trial still needs final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The experiment targets difficult-to-treat cases of multiple myeloma, sarcoma, and melanoma. The scientists will remove blood samples from patients and alter their T-cells -- central to human immune response -- to more effectively target and pursue cancer. The T cells will then be infused back into patients and studied for the safety and effectiveness of the technique.STAT News has an article in which it discusses the probable consequences of altering the DNA of a cancer patient.

Comments

Re:quit your bitching

[Anonymous Coward]

You were not created to hypothesize about such things. Cease now or be punished for eternity.

Re: Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is if I have sex with twins I am helping cure cancer? Awesome, Nobel prize here I come!

Just to clarify

[frovingslosh]

Just to clarify, I believe in the one true God, born of God the father and a mortal woman, who wore a beard and sandals and traveled the mid-east doing miraculous feats and building a religious following. Yes, like many others, I worship Hercules. And of course I know that all other gods are false and all who worship them are idiots.

And I do understand that the story of my god sounds an awful lot like the religious myth of Zoroastrianism and Ahura Mazda. But that's just how religion works. Why make up a new silly story when you can just reuse a ludicrous story that it has already been shown that people will fall for?