Illustration by Ashley Mackenzie: from New York Times Sunday Magazine

Getting in-depth stories about science in general, and regenerative medicine in particular, into the mainstream media is becoming increasingly hard these days. So when you get one major media outlet doing a really long, thoughtful piece about a potential game-changing gene-editing technology it’s good news. But when you get three major media outlets, all reporting on the same technology, all in the space of less than one week, and all devoting lots of words to the pieces, then it’s really a cause for celebration.

That’s what happened in the last few days with features on the gene editing technology CRISPR in the New York Times Sunday Magazine,  the New Yorker Magazine,  and STAT, a new online health and life-sciences publication produced by the Boston Globe.

Making the story personal

Feng Zhang: photo courtesy of the Broad Institute

Each takes a similar approach, focusing on the individuals behind the new approach – Feng Zhang at Harvard/MIT and Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley. The fact that the two are involved in a fight over patent rights for the process adds an extra element of friction to a story that already has more than its share of drama.

In the New Yorker, Michael Specter neatly summarizes why so many people are excited about this technology:

“With CRISPR, scientists can change, delete, and replace genes in any animal, including us. Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis. One group has replaced a mutation that causes cataracts; another has destroyed receptors that H.I.V. uses to infiltrate our immune system.”

Jennifer Doudna: Photo courtesy of iPSCell.com

Sharon Begley in STAT, writes that this discovery could bring cures to some of the deadliest health problems we face, from cancer to Alzheimer’s, but that it also comes with big ethical questions hanging over it:

“He (Zhang) has touched off a global furor over the possibility that a genetics tool he developed could usher in a dystopian age of designer babies.”

Jennifer Kahn in the New York Times Sunday Magazine follows up on that thought, writing about Doudna:

“But she also notes that the prospect of editing embryos so that they don’t carry disease-causing genes goes to the heart of CRISPR’s potential. She has received email from young women with the BRCA breast-cancer mutation, asking whether CRISPR could keep them from passing that mutation on to their children — not by selecting embryos in vitro, but by removing the mutation from the child’s genetic code altogether. ‘‘So at some point, you have to ask: What if we could rid a person’s germ line, and all their future generations, of that risk?’’ Doudna observed. ‘‘When does one risk outweigh another?’’

Each article makes for fascinating reading. Collectively they highlight why CRISPR is such a hot topic, on so many different levels, in science right now.

The topic is going to be the focus of a conference, featuring scientists from the US, Europe and China, being held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC the first week of December.

CIRM is also getting involved in the debate and is holding a science-policy workshop on February 4^th, 2016 in Los Angeles to consider the future use of genome editing technologies in studies sponsored by CIRM.