Lies, Damn Lies, And CRISPR: The Legal Battle Escalates
Beneath the technical and legal jargon in the latest documents filed in the battle over CRISPR patents is a simple argument that, in only slightly exaggerated form, comes down to this:
Any idiot could have turned the rudimentary CRISPR genome-editing technology described by scientists at the University of California in 2012 into the powerful technique that has revolutionized biology. No, going from DNA floating around in a test tube, the UC experiment, to precisely editing genes in humans took the kind of skill wielded only by a scientist in the running for a Nobel Prize — say, the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang.
Any idiot could have turned the rudimentary CRISPR genome-editing technology described by scientists at the University of California in 2012 into the powerful technique that has revolutionized biology. No, going from DNA floating around in a test tube, the UC experiment, to precisely editing genes in humans took the kind of skill wielded only by a scientist in the running for a Nobel Prize — say, the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang.