from the not-quite dept.
ChrisHibbert writes "There was a recent scientific announcement closely enough related to the Foresight Idea Futures claim Germ15 that the organizers of the market called in an expert to determine whether the claim should be judged true at this point. The claim simply says:
By 2015, the NY Times will report the live birth of a
germline-modified human, who lived more than one year
after. (This birth can happen anywhere in the world.)"
Read more for the results . . . "The New York Times report on the births cited an editorial in "Science" that said in part:
> two ethicists, Erik Parens of the Hastings Center in Garrison, > N.Y., and Eric Juengst of Case Western Reserve University in > Cleveland, suggested that such treatments, [...] result in > permanent genetic alterations that in turn will be passed on to > the babies' children.
Greg Stock, the Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society in the School of Medicine at UCLA, determined that the clear meaning of the claim had not been satisfied. According to Dr. Stock:
>Nuclear DNA is what has been usually considered when "germline" is >spoken of and no one would seriously think about specifying a 2015 >date if mitochondrial DNA is included. This tack would make >cloning a "germline" intervention as well, and no one thinks of it >that way.
"
