On July 21,ย WIREDย magazine released itsย August issueย with aย cover story on the controversial new gene-editing technique CRISPR. Under the headline โThe Genesis Engine,โ the cover shows magenta mountains and bright pink trees, and welcome readers to โthe post-natural world.โ
The online version of the article begins: โEasy DNA editing will remake the world. Buckle up.โ
Even with todayโs sensationalist scientific journalism, this level of hyperbole was a bit much, and the satirical Twitter hashtagย #CRISPRfactsย quickly began to trend.
Daniel Macarthur, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, was the first toย suggestย thatย WIREDโs CRISPR article may have gone too far with the tweet:
Share this article
For those of us with deep social and political concerns about CRISPR โ especially about proposals to use it to create genetically modified human beings, which theย WIREDย article discusses โ the Twitter wave was double-edged. It was great to see the hype bubble pierced, but a little worrisome that few of the tweets acknowledged any problem with CRISPR beyond the hype.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post:ย The Facts Behind #CRISPRfacts and the Hype Behind CRISPR
