IN MEMORIUM
An architect of modern genetics passes away
J. Craig Venter, an ambitious scientist who helped turn genetics from an artisanal trade into an industrialized information machine, died Wednesday of cancer at 79.
The logline of Venter’s life is eye-popping. He raced against a government-funded project to sequence the first human genome, sailed around the world collecting genetic information about life in the sea, and removed a bacterium’s genome and rebooted the organism with an identical set of genes he and his team had synthesized.
STAT’s Matt Herper penned a poignant obituary about Venter’s life and work and how he shaped our modern systems of science and biotechnology. Read more.
SECOND CHANCES
Her daughter got a bespoke medicine. Now she's starting a new biotech to make more.
If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again? Julia Vitarello is certainly trying to.
Eight years ago, Vitarello’s daughter Mila received a bespoke medicine designed for her particular disease-causing mutation. This week, Vitarello revealed that she is in the process of starting a new company to try to create those individualized therapies at scale.
Vitarello’s previous effort, EveryONE Medicines, recently folded after the FDA released guidance that investors found not so encouraging for the development of customized therapies. EveryONE had sponsored a trial in the U.K. that aimed to treat 10 patients with fatal and life-threatening neurological conditions and eventually build up enough evidence to gain regulatory approval.
Read more from STAT’s Andrew Joseph to understand why Vitarello thinks that this time will be different.
FIRST OPINION
America is worrying about fertility again. But it’s not really about families
America’s anxiety about fertility has never been only, or even primarily, about supporting families. It is about power, control, and determining who, exactly, gets to have children, write Sonya Borrero and Rachel Logan, authors of the forthcoming book “Reproducing Control: The Family Planning Framework's Conflict with Reproductive Autonomy.”
Throughout U.S. history, reproduction policy has been less about personal decisions than about securing national strength and economic growth, they argue. It was repackaged as “family planning” in the 20th century, but its focus on preventing “unintended pregnancies” made it clear that reproductive freedom was never a goal.
This underlying logic has stayed the same, even as the United States now confronts the opposite problem — its declining birth rate. Read more.
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