#also got a vaccine for cholera like that was so unnecessary

[kweza]

looking at my old vaccination booklet for HR stuff at work and i really got vaccinated for things i don't even know exist. what the heck

[siriuscatbennett]

The First Avenger info dump because I can

Enlistment/Dog Tags/Awards:

It is canon that Bucky Barnes enlisted on his own right after Pearl Harbor (and Steve tried). This would make his dog tags a type two. His service number would start with a 1 (enlisted army soldier) and a 2 (from New York). This site can be used to generate dog tag numbers (I haven’t tried all the functions, but be aware the O for officers is a 0 starting in 1942). 

During WW2 (amongst other times), there was the Regular Army and the Army of the United States (which no longer exists). Voluntary enlisted men were in the Regular, with draftees in the other (officers were often part of both and had two separate ranks). If you choose to divert from canon and make Bucky a draftee (I personally have always liked this fanon because I’m evil), his service number would start with 32 (drafted, New York). This would also better explain why Bucky rises to the rank of Sergeant so quickly as promotions happened constantly in the AUS ( Dwight D. Eisenhower rose from a colonel to five-star general in three years). 

Steve would have a different type of dog tags than Bucky (including a different chain). He would have a type three (as would anyone between July 20, 1943 and March 31, 1944). I will illustrate the differences below with the custom tags I made for Steve's sister and Bucky in my fanfic (feel free to use the info from them). The N and 7 in her tag are for nurse.

The T42 you’ll see below is the year tetanus shots were recieved. I’ve seen some with two years and some with one. The B is blood type and the P is religion. 

Steve received an award for rescuing the POWs. Seeing as this wasn’t presented by the president, I’ve decided it was the Distinguished Service Cross. This award comes with a $2 pay raise; as a Captain, Steve previously made $200 a month, paid monthly (post-serum). Bucky made $78 as a Sergeant, with a $3.90 pay raise after 3 years of service (December 1944). Steve also obtained SSR pins after joining them (and I believe the Howling Commandos should have as well). (Even though nurses had the rank of an officer, they didn’t get equal pay until after WW2. They earned $70 a month for the first 3 years.)

Many soldiers put their second dog tag in their boot, usually slipped on the shoe laces in between the tongue and top of the shoe.

Not a fact, but I will add a link here to a website where you can either buy Bucky/Steve’s dogtags or make custom ones for $10 (personally, I would advocate for the custom as Bucky’s say he’s not from NY and show he is a draftee. Also, he has type B blood, not O. And Steve is Protestant, not Catholic. The site also states officer’s service numbers didn’t start with 9, but those with special duties did. His service number would most like be between 800000 and 999999, starting with a 0- to show he’s an officer).

Sister: Margaret E Rogers N-724669 T42 B                         P

Bucky: James B Barnes 12831412 T42 B Margaret Rogers (next of kin) 1404 Alameda Ave (next of kin address) Brooklyn NY     P (address, religion)

Italian Front:

Seeing as the 107th were venturing to England in June 1943, they most likely headed straight to Sicily from there (or diverged if they had fuel) to aid in the invasion, continuing into the invasion of the mainland before pushing troops back toward Austria. Italy surrendered at the very beginning of the invasion of the mainland, so the Allies only fought Nazis and Italian soldiers loyal to Mussolini (National Republican Army), who was arrested during the invasion of Sicily and broken out during the mainland invasion. Seeing as Chester Phillips and Peggy were with Steve, they must have joined the 107th later. In my canon, they (and Howard) join at the beginning of the mainland invasion. 

AM-lira (Allied-Military Currency), 100 "am-lire" for a U.S. dollar, was the currency specifically put into circulation for Allied Military after the landing in Sicily. It was used interchangeably with their normal currency. Once the Howling Commandoes join the SSR, they use British currency. 

The 107th’s camp pre-Battle of Azzano was most likely behind the  Volturno Line. Azzano is part of Umbria, which was about 170 miles into enemy territory. 

Post-Azzano, the camp was most likely behind the Barbara Line. Walking approx 533 miles from Kreuzberg, Austria, with troops alternating resting periods in the trucks, walking approximately 42 miles for 12 hours a day, they would reach camp in thirteen days.

Random:

Steve’s canon address according to Avengers is 1404 Alameda Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11362. This is a Queens zip code. I changed it to 11237.

As a Sergeant, Bucky would command a squad of 12 soldiers (privates), split into 3 fireteams. He was also assigned a PFC (one of the scout riflemen) as an assistant; this soldier could serve as either the squad leader's messenger to the platoon commander or could be used to relay orders to other squad teams, as needed. Sergeants are responsible for the individual training, personal appearance and cleanliness of their soldiers, and are expected to set a standard for lower-ranked soldiers to live up to.

Women did have their own army sect for part of the war (Women’s Army Corps) but they didn’t go overseas as they didn’t legally get benefits overseas {I didn’t read a lot on this, take this with a grain of salt}. They did all the non-fighting jobs like listening to radio transmissions and fixing weapons. 

On the ship, there were three-tier bunks. Enlisted men got footlockers under their beds (you could lift up the base), while officers got standing lockers. I would assume water on ships was cold, filtered from the ocean, and they had showers.

Showers were available but not popular at this time, just like hot water heaters. Many people still boiled water to take baths. People also didn’t bathe as often and there was only one kind of shampoo and no conditioner. Women made their own concoctions, used soap, or straight up would do egg masks. Hair was kept clean by doing the “100 strokes” with a hairbrush that was cleaned after every use. Indoor heating also wasn’t used everywhere, leaving many places still using things like fireplaces and wood stoves.

Soldiers used latrines in WW2. They also used a bucket of water and a bar of soap to wash. When water was unavailable and snow was, it was melted and used. They could also simply use things like rivers and lakes if available but if unnecessary, weren't used as lice was prevalent along with disease. Clothes weren't washed often (depending on the situation, some men went weeks without washing their uniform, only changing into dry socks when necessary) but when they were, they were boiled in big pots of water in mass and hung on a line to dry (there were also other ways, but I preferred this one). They carried an extra shirt, socks and laces, water canteen, ammunition, a spade, grenades, a gas mask, food rations, a cup, a wash kit (toothpaste, razor, comb, etc), first aid pouch, and a helmet (usually on their head) in their haversack's/on their belt (and rations, of couse). There was also a tent pack, but most soldiers would simply carry a raincoat. Lots of candles and oil lanterns to light the night. Canvas water bags – also known as Lister bags – were hung around camps and used for dispensing drinking water in which a dose of chlorine was added for purification.

Medical:

Morbidity from such diseases as tuberculosis (anti-tuberculosis agents didn’t begin to appear until 1949), rheumatic fever, typhus, dysentery, and malaria were high. There were tuberculosis quarantine wards separate from the other patients and were eventually evacuated. Frostbite was also common during the cold. Hepatitis A and B were also prevalent. Trench foot was also common, sometimes leading to jungle rot (often referred to as 'the creeping cruds'). PTSD was known then as 'battle fatigue'; men showcasing symptoms were often just given rest and food near the front lines and would normally rejoin the fight in a few days or were evacuated if necessary. All soldiers were vaccinated against tetanus, typhoid, smallpox, cholera, and yellow fever before shipping out. Dental hygiene was extremely important and many field hospitals were equipped with dental prosthetics. 

Food:

A-Rations referred to fresh/refrigerated meats, bread, and vegetables, prepared in mess halls. These meals were basically the same as C-rations, but fresh and always warm.

C-Rations consisted of one M-unit (12 oz can, meat), one B-unit (12 oz can, bread/dessert), and an accessory pack. Each daily ration consisted of three M-units, three B-units, and three accessory packs (one for each meal). The cans were made of tinplate. The cans had a gold lacquer finish. C-rations can be eaten cold or hot and were cooked with a Coleman's pocket stove (which was made specifically for WW2 soldiers).

M-units initially had three kinds: meat and beans, meat and potato hash, and meat and vegetable stew. In 1943, meat and spaghetti in tomato sauce was added; along with meat and noodles, pork and rice, frankfurters and beans, and chicken & vegetables in 1944. 1944 also brought a chopped ham, egg, & potato unit and compressed cereal B-units to replace meat & vegetable hash.

B-units contained crackers, three sugar tablets, loose candy (Brach's chocolate caramels, candy-coated peanuts/raisins, Charms hard candy), and a packet/small can of beverage mix (instant coffee, powdered lemon drink, or bouillon soup powder). Orange drink powder was added in 1944. Due to spoilage, the loose candy was replaced in 1944 with a Brach's fudge disk or a Jim dandy.

Accessory packs (brown butcher paper) contained sugar tablets, water purification tablets, a flat wooden spoon, a piece of candy-coated chewing gum, three 3-packs or one 9-pack of cigarettes, a book of 20 moisture resistant matches, a paper-wrapped P-38 can opener (with instructions that everyone immediately throws out), and about 22.5 sheets of toilet paper. Cigarette brands included Camel, Chelsea, Chesterfield, Craven A-Brand, Lucky Strike, Old Gold, Philip Morris, Player's, Raleigh, and Wings (these were traded constantly). Can openers were meant to be disposable but soldiers wore them on their dog tags for later use either with opening cans or other things (clean muddy boots, screw screws, open letters, strip wires, trim loose thread, and sharpen pencils). 

Seriously. They really gave every single soldier three can openers a day. With printed instructions. During metal rationing. Of which soldiers just put them on thier dog tag chains for later use. Where did all these excess can openers go? And why half a sheet of toilet paper? 

Clothes:

The nurses wore an olive drab service jacket and skirt (they are seen in pants as well) and cap, khaki shirt and tie, and brown shoes (wore nursing shoes or boots). The rank insignia (a single gold bar for second lieutenants, the vast majority of nurses) was worn on the epaulets. A gold "U.S." pin was worn on each collar, and a gold caduceus with a red N was worn on each lapel. Whenever the service jacket wasn't worn, the rank insignia was pinned to the right collar, the caduceus on the left.

Soldier’s field uniforms looked like this (with some adjustments based on gun used). And yes, the leggings are neccessary, they helped keep feet dry: 

The layout I made for Steve’s apartment (there are 2 beds and dressers in the spare room because Bucky lives there too, feel free to change this):

These aren’t all the links I used, because I’ve gone through a lot, like a lot, but here are the ones I saved that are relevant (I don’t like using wiki but I cross-checked any info stated above):

https://www.google.com/amp/s/screenrant.com/winter-soldier-mcu-complete-timeline-bucky-barnes/amp/ https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/65170/how-did-bucky-get-the-rank-of-sergeant https://marvel-movies.fandom.com/wiki/Steven_Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_campaign_(World_War_II) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_invasion_of_Sicily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_invasion_of_Italy https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/medsvcsinmedtrnmnrthrtrs/chapter6.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j8zos/pay_of_american_gis_during_world_war_ii/ https://blogs.stockton.edu/womeninwwtwo/womens-military-involvemnt/womens-nurse-corps/#:~:text=The%20pay%20of%20members%20in,per%20month%E2%80%9D%20(2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_number_(United_States_Army) https://www.med-dept.com/articles/u-s-army-ww2-dog-tags/

Find me on Wattpad here where all of this information and more will be compiled in a Bucky Barnes series with mediocre writing (coming soon). 

[orbemnews]

A Virus Variant by Any Other Name … Please 20H/501Y.V2. VOC 202012/02. B.1.351. Those were the charming names scientists proposed for a new variant of the coronavirus that was identified in South Africa. The convoluted strings of letters, numbers and dots are deeply meaningful for the scientists who devised them, but how was anyone else supposed to keep them straight? Even the easiest to remember, B.1.351, refers to an entirely different lineage of the virus if a single dot is missed or misplaced. The naming conventions for viruses were fine as long as variants remained esoteric topics of research. But they are now the source of anxiety for billions of people. They need names that roll off the tongue, without stigmatizing the people or places associated with them. “What’s challenging is coming up with names that are distinct, that are informative, that don’t involve geographic references and that are kind of pronounceable and memorable,” said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. “It sounds kind of simple, but it’s actually a really big ask to try and convey all of this information.” The solution, she and other experts said, is to come up with a single system for everyone to use but to link it to the more technical ones scientists rely on. The World Health Organization has convened a working group of a few dozen experts to devise a straightforward and scalable way to do this. “This new system will assign variants of concern a name that is easy to pronounce and recall and will also minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people,” the W.H.O. said in a statement. “The proposal for this mechanism is currently undergoing internal and external partner review before finalization.” The W.H.O.’s leading candidate so far, according to two members of the working group, is disarmingly simple: numbering the variants in the order in which they were identified — V1, V2, V3 and so on. “There are thousands and thousands of variants that exist, and we need some way to label them,” said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a member of the working group. Naming diseases was not always so complicated. Syphilis, for example, is drawn from a 1530 poem in which a shepherd, Syphilus, is cursed by the god Apollo. But the compound microscope, invented around 1600, opened up a hidden world of microbes, allowing scientists to start naming them after their shapes, said Richard Barnett, a historian of science in Britain. Still, racism and imperialism infiltrated disease names. In the 1800s, as cholera spread from the Indian subcontinent to Europe, British newspapers began calling it “Indian cholera,” depicting the disease as a figure in a turban and robes. “Naming can very often reflect and extend a stigma,” Dr. Barnett said. In 2015, the W.H.O. issued best practices for naming diseases: avoiding geographic locations or people’s names, species of animal or food, and terms that incite undue fear, like “fatal” and “epidemic.” Scientists rely on at least three competing systems of nomenclature — Gisaid, Pango and Nextstrain — each of which makes sense in its own world. Updated  March 2, 2021, 10:34 a.m. ET “You can’t track something you can’t name,” said Oliver Pybus, an Oxford evolutionary biologist who helped design the Pango system. Scientists name variants when changes in the genome coincide with new outbreaks, but they draw attention to them only if there is a change in their behavior — if they transmit more easily, for instance (B.1.1.7, the variant first seen in Britain), or if they at least partly sidestep the immune response (B.1.351, the variant detected in South Africa). Encoded in the jumbled letters and digits are clues about the variant’s ancestry: The “B.1,” for instance, denotes that those variants are related to the outbreak in Italy last spring. (Once the hierarchy of variants becomes too deep to accommodate another number and dot, newer ones are given the next letter available alphabetically.) But when scientists announced that a variant called B.1.315 — two digits removed from the variant first seen in South Africa — was spreading in the United States, South Africa’s health minister “got quite confused” between that and B.1.351, said Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban and a member of the W.H.O.’s working group. “We have to come up with a system that not only evolutionary biologists can understand,” he said. With no easy alternatives at hand, people have resorted to calling B.1.351 “the South African variant.” But Dr. de Oliveira pleaded with his colleagues to avoid the term. (Look no further than the origins of this very virus: Calling it the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus” fed into xenophobia and aggression against people of East Asian origin all over the world.) The potential harms are grave enough to have dissuaded some countries from coming forward when a new pathogen is detected within their borders. Geographical names also quickly become obsolete: B.1.351 is in 48 countries now, so calling it the South African variant is absurd, Dr. de Oliveira added. And the practice could distort science. It is not entirely clear that the variant arose in South Africa: It was identified there in large part thanks to the diligence of South African scientists, but branding it as that country’s variant could mislead other researchers into overlooking its possible path into South Africa from another country that was sequencing fewer coronavirus genomes. Over the past few weeks, proposing a new system has become something of a spectator sport. A few of the suggestions for name inspiration: hurricanes, Greek letters, birds, other animal names like red squirrel or aardvark, and local monsters. Áine O’Toole, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh who is part of the Pango team, suggested colors to indicate how different constellations of mutations were related. “You could end up with dusty pink or magenta or fuchsia,” she said. Sometimes, identifying a new variant by its characteristic mutation can be enough, especially when the mutations gain whimsical names. Last spring, Ms. O’Toole and her collaborators began calling D614G, one of the earliest known mutations, “Doug.” “We’d sort of not had a huge amount of human interaction,” she said. “This was our idea of humor in lockdown No. 1.” Other nicknames followed: “Nelly” for N501Y, a common thread in many new variants of concern, and “Eeek” for E484K, a mutation thought to make the virus less susceptible to vaccines. But Eeek has emerged in multiple variants worldwide simultaneously, underscoring the need for variants to have distinct names. The numbering system the W.H.O. is considering is straightforward. But any new names will have to overcome the ease and simplicity of geographic labels for the general public. And scientists will need to strike a balance between labeling a variant quickly enough to forestall geographical names and cautiously enough that they do not wind up giving names to insignificant variants. “What I don’t want is a system where we have this long list of variants that all have W.H.O. names, but really only three of them are important and the other 17 are not important,” Dr. Bedford said. Whatever the final system is, it also will need to be accepted by different groups of scientists as well as the general public. “Unless one really does become the kind of lingua franca, that will make things more confusing,” Dr. Hodcroft said. “If you don’t come up with something that people can say and type easily, and remember easily, they will just go back to using the geographic name.” Source link Orbem News #Variant #Virus

[shenzhenblog]

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies

A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.

The step toward genetically tailored humans was undertaken in secrecy and with the clear ambition of a stunning medical first.

When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present.

It was the invention of a powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.

Now, it appears it may already be happening.

According to Chinese medical documents posted online this month, a team at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, has been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first gene-edited babies. They planned to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in hopes of rendering the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera.

The clinical trial documents describe a study in which CRISPR is employed to modify human embryos before they are transferred into women’s uteruses.

The scientist behind the effort, He Jiankui, did not reply to a list of questions about whether the undertaking had produced a live birth. Reached by telephone, he declined to comment.

However, data submitted as part of the trial listing shows that genetic tests have been carried out on fetuses as late as 24 weeks, or six months. It’s not known if those pregnancies were terminated, carried to term, or are ongoing.

[After this story was published, the Associated Press reported that according to He, one couple in the trial gave birth to twin girls this month, though the agency wasn’t able to confirm his claim independently. He also released a promotional video about his project.]

The birth of the first genetically tailored humans would be a stunning medical achievement, for both He and China. But it will prove controversial, too. Where some see a new form of medicine that eliminates genetic disease, others see a slippery slope to enhancements, designer babies, and a new form of eugenics.

“In this ever more competitive global pursuit of applications for gene editing, we hope to be a stand-out,” He and his team wrote in an ethics statement they submitted last year. They predicted their innovation “will surpass” the invention of in vitro fertilization, whose developer was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2010.

Gene-editing summit

The claim that China has already made genetically altered humans comes just as the world’s leading experts are jetting into Hong Kong for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing.

The purpose of the international meeting is to help determine whether humans should begin to genetically modify themselves, and if so, how. That purpose now appears to have been preempted by the actions of He, an elite biologist recruited back to China from the US as part of its “Thousand Talents Plan.”

The technology is ethically charged because changes to an embryo would be inherited by future generations and could eventually affect the entire gene pool. “We have never done anything that will change the genes of the human race, and we have never done anything that will have effects that will go on through the generations,” David Baltimore, a biologist and former president of the California Institute of Technology, who chairs the international summit proceedings, said in a pre-recorded message ahead of the event, which begins Tuesday, November 27.

It appears the organizers of the summit were also kept in the dark about He’s plans.

Regret and concern

The genetic editing of a speck-size human embryo carries significant risks, including the risks of introducing unwanted mutations or yielding a baby whose body is composed of some edited and some unedited cells. Data on the Chinese trial site indicate that one of the fetuses is a “mosaic” of cells that had been edited in different ways.

A gene-editing scientist, Fyodor Urnov, associate director of the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, a nonprofit in Seattle, reviewed the Chinese documents and said that, while incomplete, they do show that “this effort aims to produce a human” with altered genes.

Urnov called the undertaking cause for “regret and concern over the fact that gene editing—a powerful and useful technique—was put to use in a setting where it was unnecessary.” Indeed, studies are already under way to edit the same gene in the bodies of adults with HIV. “It is a hard-to-explain foray into human germ-line genetic engineering that may overshadow in the mind of the public a decade of progress in gene editing of adults and children to treat existing disease,” he says.

Big project

In a scientific presentation in 2017 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which is posted to YouTube, He described a very large series of preliminary experiments on mice, monkeys, and more than 300 human embryos. One risk of CRISPR is that it can introduce accidental or “off target” mutations. But He claimed he found few or no unwanted changes in the test embryos.

He is also the chairman and founder of a DNA sequencing company called Direct Genomics. A new breed of biotech companies could ultimately reap a windfall should the new methods of conferring health benefits on children be widely employed.

According to the clinical trial plan, genetic measurements would be carried out on embryos and would continue during pregnancy to check on the status of the fetuses. During his 2017 presentation, He acknowledged that if the first CRISPR baby were unhealthy, it could prove a disaster.

“We should do this slow and cautious, since a single case of failure could kill the whole field,” he said.

A listing describing the study was posted in November, but other trial documents are dated as early as March of 2017. That was only a month after the National Academy of Sciences in the US gave guarded support for gene-edited babies, although only if they could be created safely and under strict oversight.

Currently, using a genetically engineered embryo to establish a pregnancy would be illegal in much of Europe and prohibited in the United States. It is also prohibited in China under a 2003 ministerial guidance to IVF clinics. It is not clear if He got special permission or disregarded the guidance, which may not have the force of law.

Public opinion

In recent weeks, He has begun an active outreach campaign, speaking to ethics advisors, commissioning an opinion poll in China, and hiring an American public-relations professional, Ryan Ferrell.

“My sense is that the groundwork for future self-justification is getting laid,” says Benjamin Hurlbut, a bioethicist from Arizona State University who will attend the Hong Kong summit.

The new opinion poll, which was carried out by Sun Yat-Sen University, found wide support for gene editing among the sampled 4,700 Chinese, including a group of respondents who were HIV positive. More than 60% favored legalizing edited children if the objective was to treat or prevent disease. (Polls by the Pew Research Center have found similar levels support in the US for gene editing.)

He’s choice to edit the gene called CCR5 could prove controversial as well. People without working copies of the gene are believed to be immune or highly resistant to infection by HIV. In order to mimic the same result in embryos, however, He’s team has been using CRISPR to mutate otherwise normal embryos to damage the CCR5 gene.

The attempt to create children protected from HIV also falls into an ethical gray zone between treatment and enhancement. That is because the procedure does not appear to cure any disease or disorder in the embryo, but instead attempts to create a health advantage, much as a vaccine protects against chicken pox.

For the HIV study, doctors and AIDS groups recruited Chinese couples in which the man was HIV positive. The infection has been a growing problem in China.

So far, experts have mostly agreed that gene editing shouldn’t be used to make “designer babies” whose physical looks or personality has been changed.

He appeared to anticipate the concerns his study could provoke. “I support gene editing for the treatment and prevention of disease,” He posted in November to the social media site WeChat, “but not for enhancement or improving I.Q., which is not beneficial to society.”

Still, removing the CCR5 gene to create HIV resistance may not present a particularly strong reason to alter a baby’s heredity. There are easier, less expensive ways to prevent HIV infection. Also, editing embryos during an IVF procedure would be costly, high-tech, and likely to remain inaccessible in many poor regions of the world where HIV is rampant.

A person who knows He said his scientific ambitions appear to be in line with prevailing social attitudes in China, including the idea that the larger communal good transcends individual ethics and even international guidelines.

Behind the Chinese trial also lies some bold thinking about how evolution can be shaped by science. While the natural mutation that disables CCR5 is relatively common in parts of Northern Europe, it is not found in China. The distribution of the genetic trait around the world—in some populations but not in others—highlights how genetic engineering might be used to pick the most useful inventions discovered by evolution over the eons in different locations and bring them together in tomorrow’s children.

Such thinking could, in the future, yield people who have only the luckiest genes and never suffer Alzheimer’s, heart disease, or certain infections.

The text of an academic website that He maintains shows that he sees the technology in the same historic, and transformative, terms. “For billions of years, life progressed according to Darwin’s theory of evolution,” it states. More recently, industrialization has changed the environment in radical ways posing a “great challenge” that humanity can meet with “powerful tools to control evolution.”

It concludes: “By correcting the disease genes … we human[s] can better live in the fast-changing environment.”

Note: This story was updated after publication to include claims by He Jiankui that the trial had produced live births.

Credits: This article was taken from MIT Technology Review, written by Antonio Regalado

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies was originally published on Shenzhen Blog