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A comment on First U.S. use of CRISPR to directly target cancer seeks approval. Parent comment

Re:First U.S. use of CRISPR to directly target cancer seeks ... by Symmetry on Thursday June 13, 2019 @10:18AM (#20175082)
I'm sort of glad we've changed our approach. Back in the early days of gene therapy in the 90s in one of the first attempts at curing OTC[1] the medical ethics board decided that the trial could only be conducted on people with a non-lethal version of the disease. It was thought that people whose only alternative to the treatment was death wouldn't be able to say no and thus couldn't give the required consent.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_def...

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Re:First U.S. use of CRISPR to directly target cancer seeks ... by ebg13 on Thursday June 13, 2019 @10:34AM (#20175257)
> thus couldn't give the required consent

While they weren't technically wrong, holy throwing the baby out with the bathwater, batman. This is the problem with single-issue voting.

I wonder if they have logicians on these panels. "So you want to take a person who will live...and maybe make them die...because you don't want to test on someone who will die?"

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Re:First U.S. use of CRISPR to directly target cancer seeks ... by Symmetry on Thursday June 13, 2019 @12:00PM (#20176133)
Well, yeah, I think that was a very bad call. But from the hospital's perspective nobody was going to blame them if some children died of a currently incurable disease. But people might very well blame them if there was a problem with the treatment. And there was a problem with the treatment, so maybe it was selfishly good for them that they had this procedure.
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