Genomics firm 23andMe patents ‘designer baby' system, promises not to use it

The homepage for 23andMe, a company that offers to test your DNA to scan for heritable diseases.23andMe

An illustration from 23andMe's patent application for a "designer baby" system.23andMe

A personal genetics firm was recently granted a patent on a system that lets you predict the traits of a baby -- but the company promises not to use.

The Mountain View, Calif., company 23andMe just announced the patent for a system that would let parents to be chose traits they’d like to pass on or suppress in their children, from hair and eye color to susceptibility to diseases.

"Taken out of 'patentese,' what 23andMe is claiming is a method by which prospective donors of ova and/or sperm may be selected so as to increase the likelihood of producing a human baby with characteristics desired by the prospective parents," explained Sigrid Sterckx, a bioethicist at Ghent University in Belgium, in an essay published Thursday on Nature.

'We’ve never pursued the idea, and have no plans to do so.'

- Catherine Afarian, a 23andMe spokeswoman

"What is claimed is not a cast-iron, fool-proof method guaranteeing that the eventual child will have all the phenotypic traits on the parents’ shopping list, an impossible task, but merely a method of improving the chances that the baby has the right' characteristics," she wrote.

An image of the system associated with the patent shows a simple, pull-down menu to design your offspring: “I prefer a child with a low risk of colorectal cancer,” for example, or “I prefer a child with a high probability of blue eyes.”

But rest assured, the company told Wired it promises not to use the technology.

“When we originally introduced the tool and filed the patent there was some thinking the feature could have applications for fertility clinics,” said Catherine Afarian, a 23andMe spokeswoman. “But we’ve never pursued the idea, and have no plans to do so.”

Filed in December 2008, the patent was meant to cover the technology that supports a service the company currently offers, called Family Traits Inheritance Calculator. That service allows parents to scan their own personal genome and highlight the risk of passing certain diseases or susceptibility to them along to their offspring.

But the language of the patent extends beyond the Calculator, the company said. It offered details on the system in the blog post to be very clear about the technology and the company’s intentions.

A design-a-baby service isn’t in the works, but the services the company does offer are still of use to parents.

“Individuals use our service to get personalized information about their health and ancestry. This information empowers them to be more involved in managing their own health. It also offers them more insight into themselves, their traits and their family’s ancestry,” the company wrote.

Still, Sterckx was concerned that such a broad, potentially disturbing patent was approved.

"it is clear that selecting children in ways such as those patented by 23andMe is hugely ethically controversial," she wrote.

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The long, dark search for E.T. (and for ourselves)

Is there anybody out there?basheertome / flickr

There’s nothing quite as simultaneously awe-inspiring and humbling as gazing at the starry sky and coming to terms with your own fleeting role in the cosmos.

Science journalist Lee Billings sets the stage for his first book, “Five Billion Years of Solitude,” with this very thought, describing how he, and many of the scientists he interviews, first fell in love with the heavens. But it is a love letter to a place we may never reach. As our telescopes become ever more powerful, Billings writes, the universe appears to be receding before humanity’s outstretched hands, while the pressing problems of life on Earth draw our gaze, and our ambitions, down from the skies.

“Solitude” is a “meditation on humanity’s uncertain legacy,” as the 20th century’s space race and boom years have given way to manmade terrestrial crises that have not only hampered space exploration, but made clear how the only life we know hangs fragilely in the balance. Billings literally brings the stars down to earth, as he connects the dots between geology, biology, astrophysics, engineering, and economics. Fracking, it turns out, has an awful lot to do with searching for E.T. with radio telescopes. Single-pixel measurements of the chemical “color” of alien planets’ atmospheres can tell us a lot about their ability to harbor life, and can also inform us about where our own planet came from – and where it’s going.

Much of the discussion in the book centers on habitability – what makes Earth unique in the solar system and (so far) the galaxy, how planetary conditions have changed, how it will all end billions of years from now (cooked alive by an engorged Sun, followed by darkness and nothingness), and how we can predict the number of other civilizations there might be out there using what is known as the Drake Equation.

The equation’s many terms, Billings explains, can be boiled down to just one: L, or a civilization’s longevity. Possible outcomes seem to be one of two extremes: a (cosmically) relatively short-lived civilization that may succumb to self-annihilation, or a civilization that transcends its squabbles, its planet, and itself, harvesting the energy of entire stars as it travels through the universe, near-immortal.

It is no accident that Billings here carefully dwells on the orchids raised by Frank Drake, a giant in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. Tended correctly, these flowers can live in perpetuity, yet each individual bloom is short-lived, much like the radio frequency visibility window of our planet, which is now largely closed thanks to the adoption of digital communications and fiber optics.

The radio telescope-based search for extraterrestrials, once fueled by the optimism of Drake and the late Carl Sagan among others, has given way to the current en vogue field of exoplanetology, which seems poised to discover habitable Earth-like worlds any day now. That is, says Billings, if it weren’t for infighting, shifting organizational and funding priorities, and other failings that make us human. The dust jacket description and introduction hype this fraught narrative, which the rest of the book doesn’t quite fully deliver. The cutting-edge climate science, optics, and chemical detection techniques being used by the exoplanet hunters, however, are described in thorough and clear detail.

Billings oscillates between character-driven chapters – the personal histories, egos, and rivalries of prominent scientists – and longer narratives on the geologic history of earth and the cosmos. At times “Solitude” reads like a eulogy for the SETI titans of the 1960s and 1970s, while expressing tentative hope for both the current exoplanet boom, and our collective will to keep searching. Space dreams are continually brought back to their roots in earth science; a fairly large chunk of the book is devoted to fostering an appreciation for the “interactions of air, water, rock and sunlight” that created the thermodynamic sweet spot of Earth.

In “Solitude,” Billings uses deft descriptions and dazzling wordplay, though at times the language can appear dense. One chapter in particular is littered with a few too many acronyms to keep track of: a seemingly endless list of ambitious, bloated, and consequently shuttered projects that suffered from the downturn of the early 2000s. The glories of the Space Age are briefly revisited, and those familiar with SETI history will recognize seminal events in the field – the Green Bank conference, the Arecibo message – but will also note the absence of some of its most well-known figures, like former SETI Institute director Jill Tarter.

The timing of “Solitude’s” October 3 release couldn’t be better. Not only does there appear to be renewed public interest in space, with the success of the Curiosity rover, the confirmation of the Voyager 1 probe’s solar system exit, and the impending launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, but one of the book’s protagonists, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, just last week received a MacArthur “genius grant.” Seager is introduced relatively late in the book, and in describing her path from canoeing the barren lands of Canada to the study of the barren cosmos, Billings indulges in a triumphalist crescendo that rounds out the book.

The big question – what’s next, not just in space but here on Earth – is, of necessity, left unanswered, as it is unknown to scientist, author, and reader alike. Rather than rousing spirits and making a grand call for renewed vigor in space exploration, “Solitude” succumbs to a denouement similar to that of the shuttle program it laments. The descriptions of setbacks, ignorance, and death are not gratuitous, though. Billings knows that it is only through meditating on these that we can seize this singular moment in human history and become “momentarily eternal.”

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NASA's next Mars probe ready for Nov. launch, despite gov't slimdown

This artist's conception shows the NASA's MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. The mission will launch in late 2013.LASP

NASA's next Mars probe should get off the ground on time, no matter how long the government shutdown lasts.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or Maven, got back on track for a Nov. 18 launch on Thursday (Oct. 3), just two days after the government shutdown froze liftoff preparations and put a scare into planetary scientists around the world.

"We have already restarted spacecraft processing at Kennedy Space Center, working toward being ready to launch on Nov. 18," Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in a mission status update Thursday. "We will continue to work over the next couple of days to identify any changes in our schedule or plans that are necessary to stay on track." [How the Government Shutdown Will Influence Science and Health]

'Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today.'

- Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky

The shutdown — which went into effect at midnight EDT Tuesday, Oct. 1, when the Senate and House of Representatives failed to agree on an emergency spending bill — forced NASA to furlough 97 percent of its employees and cease most of its operations, including work on missions such as Maven that have yet to leave the ground.

So the $650 million Maven mission went into a worrisome limbo in the home stretch of its long march toward launch. A lengthy shutdown could have caused Maven to miss its liftoff window, which officially runs through Dec. 7 (though the spacecraft could actually launch as late as Dec. 15 or so, Jakosky said).

That would be a big deal, because the next opportunity for Maven to get off the ground won't come until early 2016, when Earth and Mars are once again properly aligned.

But those concerns have now evaporated. NASA has determined that Maven qualifies for an emergency exception because of its importance as a communications link between Earth and robots on the Red Planet's surface, Jakosky wrote.

"Maven is required as a communications relay in order to be assured of continued communications with the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers," he said. "The rovers are presently supported by Mars Odyssey launched in 2001 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005. Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today."

NASA has no Red Planet relay orbiters planned beyond Maven, he added.

Maven was designed to help scientists learn how Mars' thin, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere has changed over time, and what those changes may have meant for the Red Planet's ability to support life.

The probe will arrive in Mars orbit in September 2014. It will then use eight scientific instruments to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere for one Earth year, which is about half of a Mars year.

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Hippo vs. elephant: Animal giants face off

It was a battle of the giants when a hippo had a tetchy face-off with an elephant.Nicole Cambre/Rex Features/NationalGeographic

A hippopotamus left no room for his message to get lost in translation when he ferociously defended his territory from an African elephant.

"There is an island on the middle of the Chobe River to which this elephant had crossed," photographer Nicole Cambre who captured the scene while visiting Botswana told National Geographic. "The hippo was not happy about it and was apparently defending its territory."

Cambre watched the scene unfold as the hippopotamus swam towards the elephant near the shoreline. The hippo approached the elephant and gave him an up close view of his massive teeth.

When the hippo came face to face with the largest land animal on Earth, he did not back down. He only reconsidered once the elephants' posse arrived.

"When more elephants crossed the river to the island, the hippo backed off and went back into the river," Cambre said.

While hippopotamus' are often called the most dangerous animal in Africa, the elephants were confident that their sheer size would be enough to ward off the hippo.

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New photos of Pakistan's 'Earthquake Island'

An aerial photo from Pakistan's National Institute of Oceanography suggests the new island is 60 to 70 feet (15 to 20 meters) tall.Pakistan's National Institute of Oceanography/NASA Earth Observatory

The Earth performed the ultimate magic trick last week, making an island appear out of nowhere. The new island is a remarkable side effect of the deadly Sept. 24 earthquake in Pakistan that killed more than 500 people.

A series of satellite images snapped a few days after the earthquake-triggered island emerged offshore of the town of Gwadar reveals the strange structure is round and relatively flat, with cracks and fissures like a child's dried-up mud pie.

The French Pleiades satellite mapped the muddy hill's dimensions, which measure 576.4 feet long by 524.9 feet wide. Aerial photos from Pakistan's National Institute of Oceanography suggest the gray-colored mound is about 60 to 70 feet tall. [Gallery: Amazing Images of Pakistan's Earthquake Island]

Geologists think the new island is made of erupted mud, spewed from the seafloor when trapped gases escaped.

Gwadar is about 230 miles from the earthquake's epicenter. The magnitude-7.7 earthquake was likely centered on the Chaman Fault, Shuhab Khan, a geoscientist at the University of Houston told LiveScience last week..

Geologists think the new island, named Zalzala Koh, is made of erupted mud, spewed from the seafloor when either trapped gases escaped or subsurface water was violently expelled.

The new island could be a mud volcano. Mud volcanoes form when hot water underground mixes with sediments and gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. If the noxious slurry finds a release valve, such as a crack opened by earthquake shaking, a mud volcano erupts, said James Hein, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, Calif, said in an earlier interview. Geologists from the Pakistan Navy report that Zalzala Koh is releasing flammable gas. But seafloor sediments commonly hold methane-producing bacteria, so the possible methane coming from the island isn't a clincher to its identity.

Shaking from the powerful Sept. 24 earthquake could have also loosened the seafloor sediments offshore of Pakistan, jiggling them like jelly. The great rivers coming down from the Himalayas dump tons of water-saturated sediment into the Arabian Sea every year. The new island could be a gigantic example of a liquefaction blow, when seismic shaking makes saturated sediments act like liquid and trapped water suddenly escapes, Michael Manga, a geophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience last week.

Similar islands have appeared offshore of Pakistan after strong earthquakes in the region in 2001 and 1945. If the earlier examples hold, the soft mud island won't last a year, disappearing under the erosive power of the pounding of waves from monsoon storms.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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'Gravity': Science vs. fiction

Warner Bros. Pictures

1 How Real Is This Orbital Blockbuster? Warner Bros. Pictures

2 Orbital Debris Causes … Complications Warner Bros. Pictures

3 Houston ... We Have a Good One For You Warner Bros. Pictures

4 Can You Steal a Space Capsule? Warner Bros. Pictures

5 Correct Use of Jargon is Critical Warner Bros. Pictures

6 Remember to Use Sunscreen (SPF 900) Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

8 When The Comsat Grid Goes Down, Try Ham Radio Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

Director Alfonso Cuarón's visually stunning film "Gravity," in theaters today, is already being heralded as one of the year's best movies. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star as astronauts whose mission goes spectacularly wrong when a cloud of orbital debris shreds their shuttle, cuts off communication and leaves them stranded in space.

These details have already been revealed in the film's trailers, but what the previews can't convey is the impressive sense of authenticity and verisimilitude that director Cuarón brings to the big screen. Thanks to a brilliant visual design and strategic use of 3-D effects, the movie feels like being in space.

That sense of authenticity also applies to the film's depiction of the specifics of an actual NASA space mission. It's clear that the filmmakers did their homework. The movie is careful to stay within the realm of plausibility demanded by the genre of hard science fiction.

But just to be sure, we asked former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao -- a veteran of three shuttle missions, four space walks and a six-month stint on the International Space Station -- to help us separate the science from the fiction.

Warning: Several significant plot spoilers dead ahead

Warner Bros. Pictures

The crisis in the film is precipitated when the Russians blow up one of their own satellites, triggering a chain reaction that sends a cloud of lethal debris toward our heroes at around, oh, 17,000 mph. Chiao says the dangers of such a scenario are quite real and have been studied extensively.

"Just in recent history, the Chinese conducted an anti-weapons satellite test," Chiao says. "They blew up one of their old weather satellites, which created a bunch of debris."

Could such an incident really set off a chain-reaction that wipes out everything in orbit?

"It's not implausible, but it's unlikely," Chiao says. "Of course, if you have orbital debris, it can damage satellites or other spacecraft and potentially cause them to break up in turn. But the thing is, satellites are actually spaced pretty far apart. To get a cascade or chain reaction is pretty unlikely."

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Warner Bros. Pictures

Before everything goes haywire in orbit, the spacewalking astronauts Ryan Stone (Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (Clooney) keep it loose by casually chatting, joking with ground control in Houston and even listening to music. Is it really that casual up in space?

"Yeah, during spacewalks we're tied in with Houston and tied in with the crew inside (the shuttle), of course," Chiao says. "We have some light-hearted moments and we joke around a bit."

BLOG: Huge Space Battle Rumbles Virtual Universe

Warner Bros. Pictures

When the debris cloud destroys the astronauts' ride back home -- that is to say, the space shuttle -- Stone is forced to improvise by breaking into an old Soyuz spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. Chiao says such orbital grand theft is quite possible, but pretty tricky.

"In order to open the outer door of the airlock you have to have the inner hatch closed and the air evacuated in between," Chaio says. "On the American airlock, you could open the pressure equalization valves, and there's a handle outside so you could definitely open the outer hatch. But the trick is, on the inside, the crew would have to have already closed that inner hatch. Otherwise you let all the air out of the station. If the crew configured it that way before they abandoned ship, then yes that could happen. It's physically possible."

The Science and Fiction of ‘Oblivion’

Warner Bros. Pictures

After the orbital debris cascade knocks out communication satellites, Stone and Kowalski lose contact with ground control. They keep transmitting, though, in hopes that someone is listening. Each message begins with the rather haunting phrase, "Transmitting in the blind..."

"Yeah, that's real phraseology and that's used in aircraft operations also," Chiao says. "You call 'in the blind' if you're not receiving them, but you think they might be receiving you. You're basically letting them know that you're not able to hear them."

Warner Bros. Pictures

In one rather pretty scene, astronaut Stone ditches the spacesuit and catches her breath in a pressurized space vehicle, as sunlight streams in through a nearby porthole. But without a spacesuit or, say, the ozone layer, isn't dangerous to be exposed to direct sunlight in orbit?

"It depends on the window, but most windows are treated with UV protection," Chiao says. "For example, on the shuttle, all the windows had UV protection coatings on them. On the station, in the Russian segment, the small windows generally did not have UV protection, so they would be more optically pure. You'd get a pretty severe sunburn if you were in direct sunlight through one of those windows."

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Warner Bros. Pictures

In fact, Stone uses the porthole sunlight to do a little light reading. Improvising inside Russian and Chinese spacecraft, she's able to get systems working by, apparently, reading the user manuals handily stored nearby. Really? You can fire up a spacecraft by reading the manual?

Surprisingly, Chiao says this is fairly accurate: "There are definitely paper procedures and books, certainly in the Soyuz and, I imagine, the Chinese spacecraft as well," Chiao says. "On the shuttle we had paper books. The problem would be, having not been trained, she may not know how to follow the instructions. She might not even know the language. But the books are there, and they're definitely used."

Chiao, by the way, would be prepared in such a situation: He speaks both Chinese and Russian.

Astronaut Gave 'Gravity' Advice To Sandra Bullock

Warner Bros. Pictures

A fairly relentless thriller, "Gravity" is short on light moments, but one of them occurs when Stone tries to raise ground control on a complex communications matrix … and gets a giddy Chinese farmer on ham radio. According to Chiao, that absolutely could happen, and has.

"On both the shuttle and ISS, we're normally going through satellites, but we have backup ways of communicating that are more direct-line," Chiao says. "We have a UHF radio that could go direct to the ground sites. The normal S-band radios can also go to ground sites. Just because you lose the satellites doesn't mean you lose comm."

And ham radio?

"Sure, on board the station we do have a ham radio and that's one way we organize conference sessions with schools and students," Chiao says. "As we fly from horizon to horizon, line-of-sight, we're able to answer questions for about 10 minutes or so. In fact, I remember hearing truck drivers talking to each other while we were over rural China. I tried calling down to them but they couldn't hear me."

VIDEO: What It's Like To Be An Astronaut

Warner Bros. Pictures

As the film's beginning title cards read, there's no oxygen in space, no air pressure, no sound. Life in space is impossible. The spacewalking sequences, in particular, underline just how vulnerable astronauts are.

Chiao says the trick is not to think about it too much. "You know, I've wanted to do this since I was a little kid, so getting into orbit and looking out that window for the first time was just such an emotional moment."

"Doing a spacewalk is a little different," Chiao says. "You're acutely aware that you're at higher risk. You're not protected by a pressure vessel and a spacecraft hull. If something goes wrong, your buddies inside, there's very little they can do to help you. It's a heightened sense of awareness. You're very careful and deliberate. You're always checking the tethers because the worst thing that could happen is you get unattached...."

Science vs. Fiction: 'Elysium'

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Thousands of turtles killed by longline fishing in Costa Rica

Sea turtles were the second most common catch on Costa Rican fishermen’s longlines during the past decade. Sharks also suffered on the hooks.

A team of Americans and Costa Ricans estimated that longlines hooked more than 699,000 olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) and 23,000 green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) between 1999 and 2010. Female olive ridleys made up 92,300 of the total. This represents a serious blow to the reproductive potential of the species, which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists as vulnerable. The IUCN lists green turtles as endangered.

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Approximately 20 percent or 144,400 of the hooked turtles died. People freed the rest from the curved steel spikes and released them back into the sea. However no one knows if the ordeal seriously injured the animals.

“The effect of the rusty hooks may be to give the turtles a good dose of disease,” said James Spotila, an environmental scientist at Drexel University and co-author of the study published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, in a press release. “No one knows because no one holds the turtle to see if it gets sick.”

Approximately 20 percent or 144,400 of the hooked turtles died.

Longline fishing involves a single long cable with many side lines coming off of it. Each side line holds a baited hook. Spotila and his teammates used data collected by observers aboard longline ships to calculate the totals of the various species caught.

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The research team also observed that many young silky (Carcharhinus falciformis) and blacktip (Carcharhinus limbatus) sharks ended up on the lines. Less than 15 percent of the captured silky sharks had reached maturity. An abundance of adolescents may mean the adults have been wiped out.

Longline fisherman caught more mahi mahi than any other fish. Mahi mahi attracted fishmermen’s attention because they command a good price in the market.

However, sharks and turtles have no legal commercial value in Costa Rica, because of protections under national law. One study author criticized the Costa Rican fisheries agency INCOPESCA for failing to enforce protections of the sharks and turtles.

“INCOPESCA has failed to adequately study and regulate the fishery in Costa Rica for many years,” said Randall Arauz, president of Pretoma, a Costa Rican conservation organization, in a press release. “It does not even enforce national laws. Board members have serious conflicts of interest because they are commercial fishermen. Until INCOPESCA is reformed in such a way that the Board of Directors is eliminated and its mission is to defend the public interest, neither the fish nor the turtles will be safe.”

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Scientist to Congress: Partial shutdown a 'deep hardship'

The United States Capitol building.Architect of the Capitol

During her time as head of the U.S. Geological Survey, Marcia McNutt had to prep for many government shutdowns but never had to temporarily lay off any employees, as is happening under the current shutdown.

Now, she's the editor of Science, one of the world's top science journals, and has the freedom to let Congress know what she thinks about the current budget impasse.

"The entire scientific community will suffer if the shutdown is allowed to endure for any substantial length of time," McNutt wrote in an editorial published Thursday 3 in the journal Science.

'The entire scientific community will suffer.'

- Marcia McNutt, editor of Science magazine

"The government rules for a shutdown are so strict that many scientists are not allowed to continue their work, even as unpaid volunteers. They have no access to their facilities or their government-issued computers. Experiments are interrupted, time series are broken, continuity is destroyed and momentum is lost."

The government shutdown has a direct economic hit on the 800,000 federal workers who are not allowed to work, with no guarantee of back pay. "Many federal agencies are already furloughing employees for part of the year to cope with the recent budget sequester," McNutt wrote. "Adding the shutdown to any furlough is a deep hardship for families just making ends meet." [6 Ways the Government Shut Will Impact Science, Health]

The science impact is also widespread, McNutt noted.

"The science mission agencies have been responsible for much of the applied science done in the public interest; with the shutdown, they will no longer be able to track flu outbreaks, update real-time information on water quality and quantity, improve weather forecasts, develop advanced defense systems to keep us safe and serve many more immediate needs," she wrote.

The cascading effects of the shutdown are already spreading outside the federal science world. Here are just a few examples: Researchers at universities can't get data locked behind shuttered federal websites. Scientists planning Antarctic expeditions later this month are grounded, and their entire campaign may be called off if the prep work isn't completed in time. Field workers studying seasonal habits of animals, plants and insects may miss their research window due to a lack of grants. The delay could also push the planned Nov. 18 launch of NASA's next Mars mission, called MAVEN, to 2016.

"I urge the research community to take stock of real economic hardships, opportunities lost and damage done, so as to more effectively argue for congressional action on the federal budget," McNutt said.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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