Policy & Advocacy

Johnny Kung, Director of New Initiatives for the Personal Genetics Education Project (pgEd), fills us in on their latest Congressional briefing. A version of this post is published on the pgEd website and is posted here with permission. On Nov. 17, our group, the Personal Genetics Education Project at Harvard Medical School, held a Congressional…

In October of this year, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine held a public workshop to gather information regarding the safety and ethics of gene drive research.  GSA Public Policy Chair Allan Spradling sent the following comments to the committee for consideration.    In the late 1980s I was one of the first…

The Committee on Gene Drive Research in Non-Human Organisms convened by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held an information gathering meeting on October 28, 2015, to consider the Science, Ethics and Governance Considerations for Gene Drive Research.  This meeting comes as a component of a large Gene Drive study, which is set to review the…

GSA member Denise Montell (University of California, Santa Barbara) spoke on Capitol Hill this summer, presenting her research on anastasis, the process of by which cells can return from the brink of death:   Montell, a former President of the North American Drosophila Board, spoke as part of the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus (CBRC) 2015 briefing…

The Biotechnology Science Coordinating Committee (BSCC), at the behest of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), held the first of three public meetings to discuss an update to the coordinated framework which serves as the regulatory guidelines for genetically engineered organisms. This meeting provided an opportunity for representatives from the primary agencies involved…

The comments below were offered by long-time GSA member Nina Fedoroff at a public meeting on updating the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology held on October 30, 2015. In addition to her academic research career, Dr. Fedoroff served as Science & Technology Adviser to Secretaries of State Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton and U.S.…

On the evening of October 28, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.1314, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the budget deal negotiated by the current Congressional leadership and President Obama. The bill passed the House on a vote of 266-167, with 79 Republicans—including all members of the Republican House leadership—joining all 187 voting Democrats…

The federal regulatory policy in use today for biotechnology products, known as the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, was created in 1986 through a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation…

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has issued an action alert encouraging members of the research community to contact their Members of Congress to support passage of spending bills that support research. GSA is one of 27 FASEB member societies. As reported earlier, the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution that…

The Human Gene-Editing Initiative launched earlier this year by the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Medicine held a public meeting to provide an overview of the state of gene editing science in preparation for an international summit to conducted in partnership with the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.…

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that the continuing growth of federal research regulations and requirements is “diminishing the effectiveness of the nation’s research investment” by forcing investigators to spend more time on administrative and compliance matters, rather than research. Optimizing the Nation’s Investment in Academic Research: A…