The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease, an inherited disorder that distorts the shape of red blood cells and disrupts the function of hemoglobin, the protein that carries and distributes oxygen throughout the body.
About 1 in 13 Black babies are born with sickle cell trait while about 1 in every 365 Black or African American babies are born with sickle cell disease. The condition affects over 100,000 people in the U.S. and 20 million people worldwide and the only existing treatment is bone marrow transplant. This is a big win for those concerned about government control of science - this is a bureaucracy that took two decades to approve a salmon that grows faster but finally got out of its own way during COVID-19 vaccine efforts and that mentality seems to have stuck.
