Category Archives: Post Human

Police and followers of Wat Phra Dhammakaya confront each other at a gate of the temple in Khlong Luang district, Pathum Thani, Sunday afternoon. (Photos by Pongpat Wongyala)

PATHUM THANI - Thousands of followers broke through official barricades to enter Wat Phra Dhammakaya and returned with monks to form a human shield, just before a deadline for them to leave the temple.

The followers breached the barricades at Gates 5 and 6 on Bang Khan-Nong Sua Road in Khlong Luang district at about 1pm. Temple officials let the laymen enter the vast compound through a special entrance and the people boarded vehicles to reach inner areas.

During the breach, a follower threw a newsagency camera worth about 300,000 baht to the ground, breaking it.

About ten minutes later the followers emerged with a lot of the temple's monks. Wearing face masks, they cut opened Gate 5 and formed a human shield confronting police.

Pol Lt Gen Charnthep Sesavej, commissioner of the Provincial Police Region 1, tried to calm the mob. Both sides pushed each other for about 20 minutes before stopping. Police from Saraburi province were deployed to replace police from Ayutthaya province adjacent to Pathum Thani.

Pol Lt Charnthep said police needed reinforcement to control the situation and prevent any ill-intended parties from triggering an incident.

He said officials had taken pictures of the people who broke through their barricades and would later take legal action against them.

The incident occurred two hours before the 3pm deadline of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) for people and monks who are not a resident of Wat Phra Dhammakaya to leave the temple to facilitate searches.

DSI director-general Paisit Wongmuang later issued a summons for 14 senior monks of the temple to report to him at the Region 1 Border Patrol Police Bureau in Khlong Luang district at 6pm. They include its former abbot Phra Dhammajayo.

The DSI said on its Facebook page that officials had found a pistol and a knife in the van of a temple adherent. (DSI's photo below)

Since Thursday, DSI and police have searched the 2,300-rai temple compound for Phra Dhammajayo, 72, who is wanted for forest encroachment, money laundering and receiving stolen assets in connection with his meditation centres in several provinces and the multi-billion-baht embezzlement at Klongchan Credit Union Co-operative.

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Dhammakaya's human shield just before deadline - Bangkok Post

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and worlds richest man, said in an interview Friday that robots that steal human jobs should pay their fair share of taxes.

Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things, he said. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level.

Gates made the remark during an interview with Quartz. He said robot taxes could help fund projects like caring for the elderly or working with children in school. Quartz reported that European Union lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robots in the past. The law was rejected.

Recode, citing a McKinsey report, said that 50 percent of jobs performed by humans are vulnerable to robots, which could result in the loss of about $2.7 trillion in the U.S. alone.

Exactly how youd do it, measure it, you know, its interesting for people to start talking about now, Gates said. Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I dont think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. Its OK.

Last month, Gates told FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo that he is excited to work with President Trump and his administration, especially when it comes to the U.S. governments support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization he said.

How we continue that type of outreach and how it helps our security that we are helping those countries to be healthy and be stable, he said. There will be some great conversations and be some ideas about new investments that can be made.

This article originally appeared on Fox News.

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Bill Gates: Robots that steal human jobs should pay taxes - New York Post

MEXICO CITY Hundreds of people in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez gathered on the edge of the Rio Grande river on Friday to form a human wall to protest U.S. President Donald Trumps plans for a wall between the countries.

The demonstrators held aloft colorful swatches of cloth and waved to the residents of the neighboring city of El Paso, Texas.

Organizers said a friendly, human wall meant to join the two cities was better than a wall of steel or concrete to divide them.

We have, as it is being demonstrated here, many friends on the other side of the river, on the other side where they intend to build this wall that will never separate two friendly peoples, said former Mexican presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas said.

Trump has promised to make Mexico pay for the wall, something Mexican officials say they will not do.

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Hundreds of Mexicans form 'human wall' in border wall protest - New York Post

This might be another way of saying that the idea of living forever is as influential as the actual possibility of living forever. Immortality is a long shot. But why is it such big business now?

The future, as a concept, has always been lucrative; the more abstract, the better. Though OConnell doesnt focus strictly on Silicon Valleytranshumanists dot the globetranshumanism is a distinctly Californian project. The state has a long legacy of self-improvement programs, exercise crazes, and faddish diets, amounting to a unique brand of bourgeois spirituality. California is a pusher for freedom. Lifestyle is supreme.

These days, this utopian futurism can take the shape of New Age management philosophy, corporate wellness, or the annual conference Wisdom 2.0, which brings together tech luminaries and the spiritual leaders of industry, from Eileen Fisher and Alanis Morissette to the CEOs of Slack and Zappos. Recent years have seen an uptick in venture capitalbacked products that carry the promise of not just a better, more productive you, but a better life overall. From Soylent (a meal-replacement drink) to nootropics (capsules that purportedly level-up ones cognitive ability), investors are pursuing extended youth, neurological enhancement, and physical prowess.

Of course, much of this is less new than it feels. In Silicon Valley, there are no new ideas, only iterations. Soylent looks a lot like SlimFast, a protein drink marketed to dieting women since the 1970s. Nootropics tend to contain ingredients like l-theaninefound in green teaand caffeine. These companies web design has a lot to do with this illusion of newnesssexy front-end design signals trustworthiness and hints that there is something technologically impressive happening on the back end. Their products get a boost from their association with work-addicted engineers, who turn to them as high-tech solutions to self-created high-tech problems. But this promise is bigger than Silicon Valley, and carries with it a distinctly Californian air of self-improvement, of better living through technology.

It is tempting to see transhumanism, too, as merely the latest rebranding of a very old desire. Many of OConnells subjects specialize in the hypothetical. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist who sees death as a disease to be cured. Anders Sandberg, a neuroscientist working on mind uploading, wishes literally to become an emotional machine. He is also an artist who creates digital scenes resembling early-web sci-fi fan art, and gives them dreamy names such as Dance of the Replicators and Air Castle. Zoltan Istvan, a former journalist who claims to have invented the sport of volcano-boarding, ran a presidential campaign that saw him travel across the country in a coffin-shaped bus to raise awareness for transhumanism. He campaigned on a pro-technology platform that called for a universal basic income, and promoted a Transhumanist Bill of Rights that would assure, among other things, that human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms be entitled to universal rights of ending involuntary suffering.

Then theres Max More, a co-founder of Extropianism, who runs the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alcor is a cryopreservation facility that houses the bodiesor disembodied heads, to be attached at a later date to artificial bodiesof those hoping to be reanimated as soon as the technology exists. The bodies, OConnell writes, are considered to be suspended, rather than deceased: detained in some liminal stasis between this world and whatever follows it, or does not. Alcor is the largest of the worlds four cryopreservation facilities, and houses 149 patients, nearly 70 percent of whom are male. (Alcor also cryopreserves pets.) Its youngest patient is a two-year-old who died due to a rare form of pediatric brain cancer; her case summary, posted on Alcors web site, shares that her parents, both living, also intend to be cryopreserved. No doubt being surrounded by familiar faces of loving relatives will make the resumption of her life . . . easier and more joyful, the case summary ends hopefully, heartbreakingly. To date, science has not suggested that reanimation will ever be possible; the dream of re-uploading ones mind into a new, living body, at a yet-to-be-determined date, remains just that: a dream.

Those working on immortality are long-term thinkers and fall, broadly, into two camps: those who want to free the human from the body, and those who aim to keep the body in a healthy condition for as long as possible. Randal Koene, like Max More, is in the first group. Instead of cryonics, he is working toward mind uploading, the construction of a mind that can exist independent of the body. His nonprofit organization, Carboncopies, aims for the effective immortality of the digitally duplicated self. Koene compares mind uploading to kayaking. It might be like the experience of a person who is, say, really good at kayaking, who feels like the kayak is physically an extension of his lower body, and it just totally feels natural, he tells OConnell. So maybe it wouldnt be that much of a shock to the system to be uploaded, because we already exist in this prosthetic relationship to the physical world anyway, where so many things are experienced as extensions of our bodies.

Aubrey de Grey is in the second, body preservationist group, whose efforts tend to be slightly more modest: Rather than solving death, they focus on extending life. His nonprofit, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, focuses on research in heart disease and Alzheimers, and other common illnesses and diseases. (SENS, like many organizations the transhumanists are involved with, has received funding from Thiel.) De Greys most mainstream contribution is the popularization of the concept of longevity escape velocity, which OConnell explains as such: For every year that passes, the progress of longevity research is such that average human life expectancy increases by more than a yeara situation that would, in theory, lead to our effectively outrunning death. One might dismiss such transhumanist visions as too extreme: so many men, so much hubris. And yet, at a time of great cynicism about humanityand the future were all barreling towardthere is something irresistible about transhumanism. Call it magical thinking; call it radical optimism.

A quest for immortality may be the ultimate example of overpromising and under-delivering, but it will still deliver something. Indeed, plenty of the Extropian dreams of anti-aging have already been realized, though these accomplishments now look less futuristic than we previously imagined. Thanks to improved health care, sanitation, and education, we are living longer than our ancestors could have imagined. We sleep with our cell phones. Prosthetics have become increasingly personalized and affordable. Roboticized microsurgery blurs the lines between human and machine skill. In more staid quarters (where most of the money is), the quest for transhumanism is simply biotech.

OConnells focus is on the more extreme transhumanists, those committed to eternal life. But he also meets a few of the transhumanists taking this more incremental approach, edging us closer to longer and healthier lives. Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist working on brain-machine interface technology, created a robotic exoskeleton that can be controlled by brain activity. He exhibited it at the 2014 World Cup, to give a sense of how human and robot might work together in the future. A clear practical application of his work would be to help paraplegics increase their mobility and activity. Its technology that doesnt demand that we radically overhaul our idea of reality. It allows us to make minor adjustments.

Nicolelis does not seem to share the technologists passion for scalability; though he has proven that brain activity can be translated into dataand that data can be translated into movementhe is not drawn to large-scale projects like whole-brain emulation. I dont think we will ever be able to broadcast from one brain to another the essence of the human condition, he told Popular Mechanics last year. We love analogies, metaphors, expecting things, and predicting things. These things are not in algorithms.

As transhumanism gradually alters the length and quality of human life, it will also alter political and cultural life. If the average human life were to span 100 healthy years, then society, the economy, and the environment would be drastically transformed. How long would childhood last? What would the political landscape look like if baby boomers were able to vote for another 50 years? OConnells foray into transhumanism comes at a moment when our democratic institutions look weaker than ever. Wealth is increasingly concentrated among a small group of people. The future, while always uncertain, looks, for many, particularly bleak. Envisioning a future in which transhumanisms wildest desires are realized is a heady thought experiment, one that quickly devolves into a vision of dystopia: too little space, too many bodies, andif brains are uploaded from centuries pastobsolete software.

As exciting, ambitious, fantastical, or practical as the transhumanists aims may be, they neglect to offer a fully fledged vision for society should they be successful. It would hardly be the first time that actors in Silicon Valley, with an emphasis on speed and scale, innovated firstthen scrambled to address the repercussions after they had already arrived.

This is both a core promise and the fundamental problem of transhumanism: It exempts those involved from their debt to the present. As Bill Gates put it in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer. OConnell finds it odd, too, that billionaire entrepreneurs are more interested in developing AI than in eradicating grotesque income inequality in their own country. Of course, experimentation is essential to progress, and researchers claim their work will benefit all of humanity in the future. But it raises the question: What future and for whom?

There is something deeply sad about transhumanism, tooa yearning, one that perhaps harks back to the self-improvement doctrines that have so colored California since the halcyon days of the midcentury. The promise of a better worlda better youis hard to turn away from these days. We are not more than human; we have not found a way to transcend. In the weeks between the election and the inauguration, our collective visions of the future adjusted to accommodate the possibilities of rampant corruption and the rapid perversion of constitutional freedoms, among many other things. It feels indulgent to fantasize about a future in which humanity is optimized for immortality; it feels indulgent to fantasize about a future at all.

Yet I cannot fault the transhumanists for wanting more: more from life, more of life itself. In How We Became Posthumanpublished in 1999, and now a touchstone of writing on transhumanismthe literary critic N. Katherine Hayles detailed her ideal version of a posthuman world:

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.

To focus on the extremes of posthuman ambition is, it seems to me, to miss the point. As a species, we are slowly nudging along a spectrum. Hayless vision is solidly in the middle with its mortality and fallibility, rendered not obsolete but more manageablemore human.

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Only Human - New Republic

Im visiting Liron Talker in her hospital room. Shes feeling a little more cheerful because shes going home. Her father holds up a plastic bag; inside is what remains of her army uniform, returned from the trauma center.

What do you want to do with it? he says, voice thick, almost a whisper.

On a sunny morning on January 8, Sec.-Lt. Liron Talker accompanied her cadets on an educational day trip in Jerusalem. Part of volunteering for leadership in the IDF means deepening your familiarity with and understanding of your homeland. Her cadets and others gathered at the Armon Hanatziv panoramic promenade in East Talpiot, the site where, according to tradition, Abraham and Isaac paused on the way to Mount Moriah. About 300 young men and women were in the parking lot.

The guided tour was about to start.

Thats when Fadi al-Qanbar, a father of four from the nearby Jebl Mukaber neighborhood, plowed his expensive flatbed truck into the crowd, ramming into and running over soldiers. He murdered four, including Lirons cadet Lt. Shir Hajaj, 22, of Maaleh Adumim.

Liron was one of the 21 young men and women who were hit. You didnt see her in the news. She wouldnt allow photos until someone gently told her grandmother about the incident.

Her leg injury is healing. Home rest and physiotherapy are prescribed.

What do you want to do with the scraps? her father repeats.

Throw them away! I never want to see it again, she says, making an angry tossing gesture with her arm.

Wait a minute, I hear myself say, although none of this is exactly my business.

Sometimes we throw things away too fast.

She might want an object from the attack, I think. Telling the story is part of the therapy.

I hear myself volunteer to transform that torn IDF uniform into a memory pillow, marking her bravery and survival.

A memory pillow, having nothing to do with memory foam, is a miniature version of a memory quilt an ambitious craft project where, for example, outgrown baby clothes are turned into a decorative, nostalgic coverlet or wall hanging.

I tell her about another pillow made from a certain leopard-striped comforter that once resided in our house. On what now seems almost like a fantasy day trip, my family and two friends visited one of our sons in his bunker on the Lebanese border. He had already been serving as an infantry officer in Lebanon for a long time, in many locations inside. We noticed that the leopard comforter had made its way to the army.

Another officer was sleeping deeply in a bunk bed, wrapped in this shabby blanket.

The lucky comforter returned with our son to civilian life. Years later, when he was already a father and professor, his wife insisted that the now threadbare and discolored mantle be retired.

He posted a good-bye photo of the trademark comforter on a family email. Maybe I was inspired by that old Yiddish folksong Hob Ikh Mir a Mantl (I Had a Little Overcoat), about a garment that is downsized over the years, finally to a button. I thought of a pillow.

My own craft skills are limited, but I knew exactly whom to enlist. Rivka Elder, whose son had also served as a officer in Lebanon, would understand. A retired Jerusalem teacher and long-time friend, she holds a bazaar every year to raise money for Keshatot, a wonderful school for children on the autism spectrum aged three to 13 in the Menashe region near Hadera. She knits and sews everything herself. Nearly every pillow I own is her handiwork. The shekels she raises are doubled by Apple Companys Development Office in Haifa, where her son is an engineer. And so, the pillow, full of bittersweet memories, replaced the blanket and helped develop the incredible programs at Keshatot.

Limor likes the idea of the pillow, especially the part about Keshatot; 79 children go to school there, and the latest fund-raising campaign is directed toward renovating the sand playground.

I have volunteered Rivka without asking her, but of course she agrees. She launders out the grit and the tire marks.

She irons the material. How to make this work? The IDF green can only be the base, she decides. She sews tall whimsical trees out of the army green, embroidering Lirons name in delicate stitches.

The first time I try to make arrangements to bring Liron the pillow, she isnt home. Despite her injury, shes returned for the officers graduation ceremony in Mitzpe Ramon.

We decide to meet in Jerusalem at Mount Herzl; 30 days have already passed since the terrorist attack.

A memorial ceremony is being held at the military cemetery for Shir Hajaj and the others: Lt. Yael Yekutiel, 20, of Givatayim, Sec.-Lt. Shira Tzur, 20, of Haifa, and Sec.-Lt. Erez Orbach, 20 of Alon Shvut.

A crowd is already gathering. Liron, tall and beautiful, is walking up the hill, still using a crutch. Im feeling better, she assures me.

She and a fellow officer admire the pillow, exclaiming over the embroidery.

Liron runs her fingers over the pants and military undershirt.

I have a new one, she says, smiling, pointing to the shirt. She poses with the pillow. My hands are shaking so hard that it takes three tries to snap the photo with my phone.

Slowly, she climbs the hill. She will meet the new officers, who will remember and honor their fallen colleagues. The author is a Jerusalem writer and is the Israel director of public relations for Hadassah, the Womens Zionist Organization of America. The views in her columns are her own.

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The human spirit: Liron's pillow - Jerusalem Post Israel News

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Human trafficking bill heads to House - The Dominion Post

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Powerful gene editing tools may one day be used on human embryos, eggs and sperm to remove genes that cause inherited diseases, according to a report by U.S. scientists and ethicists released on Tuesday.

The report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Medicine said scientific advances make gene editing in human reproductive cells a realistic possibility that deserves serious consideration.

The statement signals a softening in approach over the use of the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 that has opened up new frontiers in genetic medicine because of its ability to modify genes quickly and efficiently.

In December 2015, scientists and ethicists at an international meeting held at the NAS in Washington said it would be irresponsible to use gene editing technology in human embryos for therapeutic purposes, such as to correct genetic diseases, until safety and efficacy issues are resolved.

Though the technology is still not ready, the latest NAS report says clinical trials for genome editing of the human germline could be permitted, but only for serious conditions under stringent oversight.

Such editing is not legal in the United States, and other countries have signed a convention prohibiting the practice on concerns it could be used to create so-called designer babies.

CRISPR-Cas9 works as a type of molecular scissors that can selectively trim away unwanted parts of the genome, and replace it with new stretches of DNA.

Genome editing is already being planned for use in clinical trials of people to correct diseases caused by a single gene mutation, such as sickle cell disease. But these therapies affect only the patient.

The concern is over use of the technology in human reproductive cells or early embryos because the changes would be passed along to offspring.

Research using the powerful technique is plowing ahead even as researchers from the University of California and the Broad Institute battle for control over the CRISPR patent.

Although gene editing of human reproductive cells to correct inherited diseases must be approached with caution, caution does not mean prohibition, the committee said in a statement.

Sarah Norcross of the Progress Educational Trust, which advocates for people affected bygenetic conditions, called the recommendations sensible and prudent.

But Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society said they were unsettling and disappointing, arguing that they constitute a green light for proceeding with efforts to modify the human germline - changes that can be passed to future generations.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Andrew Hay)

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US Scientists Urge 'Serious Consideration' Of Gene Editing In Human Embryos - Huffington Post

The Roads and Transport Authority in Dubai released footage of a drone that can carry passengers at up to 100 mph for 30 minutes. (Roads and Transport Authority via Storyful)

Dubai has made a habit ofpushing the transportation envelope, andits latestambitions are literally sky high.

Dubais transportation agency chief announced Monday at the World Government Summit that human-ferrying drones would begin transporting people acrossthe citys iconic skylinein July, according to the Associated Press.

Indeed, the government hasactually experimented with this vehicle flying in Dubais skies already, Mattar al-Tayer told the AP. It was not clearhow much each ride willcost.

The drone can carry a single passenger weighing up to 220 pounds and a small suitcase for 30 minutes. The traveler climbs into the drone and inputs adestination within 31 miles,then takes to the sky at a speed of 62 mph, according to the AP.The drone is monitored via a control room.

The drone takes off from and lands atpredetermined points and uses a camera to ensure a safe landing, according to EHangs website. Ifthe drone malfunctions or disconnects from 4G mobile service, it promises to land immediatelyat the nearest safe location, the company says.

The droneis the brainchild of a Chinese company called EHang and was trotted out to spectators at the International CES technology show in January last year.The followingJuly, officials in Nevada revealedplans to begin testing the drone with hopes of eventually winning theapproval of federal regulators, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

I personally look forward to the day when drone taxis are part of Nevadas transportation system, Mark Barker, business development director at theNevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, told the paper.

The drone isthe latest example of how thegovernment of Dubai has jumped on new technologyto shuttlepeople in the city. Officials there have begun working on aHyperloophigh-speed highway that could propel people and cargo in floating capsules at airplane-like speeds.

The city also holdsthe Guinness World Record for the longest driverless metro rail system, which opened in May 2011 and currently travels about 46 miles. (There is some questionabout whether the Skytrain inVancouver is actually longer, but Dubai possessesthe Guinness certificate.)

The EHang isnt the first personalized air transport in Dubai. Uber offered ahelicopter service during the Grand Prix auto race there inNovember 2015 at a price of $600 per seat. The company has sincepartnered with a tour company to provide Uber Chopperservice.

For its part, Uber recently hired a NASA scientist to work on flying cars an idea that seems outlandishly futuristic, except perhaps in Dubai.

Read more from The Washington Posts Innovations section.

The Concorde failed to change how we fly, but it still could

Ford to invest $1 billion in artificial intelligence for your car

What Elon Musk shows us about the struggles of being a CEO in Trumps America

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A drone carrying humans prepares to take flight in Dubai - Washington Post

BOYNTON BEACH

Three South Florida menremained in custody early Tuesday after their arrests last week on human-trafficking charges after police alleged a 19-year-old woman was kidnapped from a Boynton Beach home.

Authorities say Jackson Poinvil, 21, of West Palm Beach and Jimmy Edmond, 26, and Christopher Thomas, 22, of Port St. Lucie intended to put an ad on a social-media site for the womans sexual services.

I was in fear of my life, city police said the woman told them during a taped interview.

All three men are facing charges of kidnapping with the intent of human trafficking. In addition, Edmond faces burglary with assault and heroin and cocaine possession charges and is being held on $462,000 bail. Thomas also faces burglary with assault charges, and his bail is set at $450,000. Poinvil also is charged with carrying a concealed and unlicensed firearm and is being held on $350,000 bail.

The alleged kidnapping took place just before 12:30 a.m. Thursday at a home onNorthwest Fourth Street, north of Boynton Beach Boulevard and west of Seacrest Boulevard near Sara Sims Park. A witness told police that two of the men pulled out guns upon entering the home. One pointed a light-colored revolver at the womans stomach, grabbed her by the back of the head and forced her to leave, police said.

The woman later appeared on the Backpage.com website advertising sexual relationship.

An undercover detective spoke to the woman by telephone and arranged to meet her at a Boynton Beach motel, offering to pay $200. Police monitored the suspects vehicle as a detective met the woman in the lobby of the hotel.

She had bruising and appeared to have been crying, police said.

Edmond, Thomas and Poinvil were taking into custody without incident. Poinvil allegedly told officers he and the other men had gone to the Boynton Beach home to pimp the woman out.

Edmond were later found to have crack cocaine and heroin in his possession, the police report said.

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NEW: Three face human-trafficking charges; Boynton woman, 19, targeted - Palm Beach Post

Ethicists have been working overtime to figure out how to handle CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technique that could potentially prevent congenital diseases but could also be used for cosmetic enhancements and lead to permanent, heritable changes in the human species.

The latest iteration of this ongoing CRISPR debate is a report published Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. The report, a series of guidelines written by 22 experts from multiple countries and a variety of academic specialties, presents a kind of flashing red light for CRISPR.

The report did not recommend an absolute prohibition of gene editing on the human germline if such interventions can be proved safe. This would involve genetic changes to eggs, sperm or embryos that would persist in an adult and could be inherited by future generations.

For some ethicists, that represents a slippery slope. At the conclusion of a gene-editing summit in Washington at the National Academy of Sciences in December 2015, scientists said that although some basic research could proceed, it would be irresponsible to use genetically modified germline cells for the purpose of establishing a pregnancy.

But the new report takes a slightly more permissive, forward-thinking position, saying that, if and when such interventions are proved safe which could be in the near future and if numerous criteria are met to ensure that such gene editing is regulated and limited, it could potentially be used to treat rare, serious diseases.

We say proceed with all due caution, but we dont prohibit germline, after considerable discussion and debate, said Richard Hynes, an MIT biologist and one of the leaders of the new study. Were talking only about fixing diseases.

The list of criteria for going down that road is a long one, said Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, speaking at a news conference Tuesday in Washington. For example: The intervention would have to replace the defective, disease-causing gene with a gene already common in the human species. There would also have to be no simpler alternative for parents wishing to have a healthy child. And first and foremost, there needs to be more research to show that such modifications are safe and target well-understood genes, she said.

We are not even close to the amount of research that we need before you can move forward, Charo said.

What is less controversial, and already happening, is gene therapy that targets somatic cells, in which the changes are not heritable. Such interventions can help an individual patient but would not affect his or her offspring. However, some therapies that can be used to treat a disease could potentially be used for purely cosmetic or competitive purposes.

For example, gene therapy developed as a treatment for muscular dystrophy could potentially be exploited to make a healthy person more muscular. The committee came out strongly against any use of CRISPR for cosmetic enhancements. And the report argues that gene editing in humans should come only after broad public discussion.

This animation depicts the CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing a powerful new technology with many applications in biomedical research, including the potential to treat human genetic disease or provide cosmetic enhancements. (Feng Zhang/McGovern Institute for Brain Research/MIT)

Josephine Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute, said the only thing potentially controversial in this new report is the openness to germline modification. Some bioethicists believe that's a bright line that should not be crossed, she said.

Eric Lander, president of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, said of the report, Its a very careful, conservative position thats just a little bit beyond an absolute bar. And I think thats the right place to go for now. They say you cannot do this unless you put double-stick tape on the slippery slope so that nothing can slip. Thats a pretty strong set of restrictions.

Neither Johnston nor Lander were part of the National Academy of Sciences committee that issued the report.

The report drew immediate criticism from a California-based non-profit organization called the Center for Genetics and Society.

This report is a dramatic departure from the widespread global agreement that human germline modification should remain off limits, said Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the center. It acknowledges many of the widely recognized risks, including stigmatizing people with disabilities, exacerbating existing inequalities, and introducing new eugenic abuses. Strangely, theres no apparent connection between those dire risks and the recommendation to move ahead.

CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR-Cas9, as it is more precisely called, is a natural system developed bybacteria over the course of their long evolutionary history. The bacteria use their own gene-editing system to identify foreign genetic material that has been inserted into the bacterial genome by viruses. These invasive genetic passages are snipped away, and the genome repaired.

Early in this decade, a series of scientific papers described how this system could be exploited in the laboratory for genetic engineering. CRISPR quickly became the go-to method for gene editing, because it's easier and cheaper than previous methods. It can be used to modify the genomes of plants, animals and potentially humans, though experiments with human embryos have been limited so far because of ethical concerns and, in the United States, legal prohibitions.

This story has been updated.

Further Reading:

Scientists debate an unnerving gene-editing technique

Pondering what it means to be human on the frontier of gene editing

New gene-editing trick discovered just in time for J-Lo's CRISPR TV series

Original post:
Ethicists advise caution in applying CRISPR gene editing to humans - Washington Post