BioNews CRISPR Appeal

This week the world's media has been gripped by the birth of what are purported to be the world's first genome-edited babies.

BioNews has a global reach and reputation, as does the charity which publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). But readers may be surprised to learn that Ryan Ferrell – the PR man who worked with Dr He – had been in touch with us back in October to ask PET's views about the ethical implications of genome editing, particularly in terms of equality of access. We shared with him the findings of our 'Basic Understanding of Genome Editing' project and he shared with us research on public attitudes to genome editing in China.

Little did we know that a pregnancy was already established. Nor did we know at the time that Ferrell worked in PR and not academia.

On Monday, as Shaoni Bhattacharya – our Science Editor – was writing up her article, Ferrell phoned the BioNews office as he felt he owed us an explanation. Unfortunately, we didn't get a quote from him.

So as ever PET – a charity whose team equates to three full-time employees – was at the centre of things, even though we weren't able to attend the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing.

BioNews is read by thousands of people around the world but we think you will agree that there are so many more people who would benefit from reading our content. That is why we would like to invest in some new software to help us increase BioNews' reach.

This software will enable PET to spot where BioNews' coverage can make the most impact, to know more about how our audiences use BioNews, and to make sure the broadest possible audiences can access our stories.

By donating to this appeal, you will be helping others to access the great content that you receive each week in your inbox. In turn this will benefit you, as the more readers we have the easier it is for us to attract funding to keep BioNews free.

We are looking to raise £2000 for this software, so please give what you can today.

You can make a donation via PayPal (click here), by text (text 'PROG23 £10' or any other amount to 70070), or by post (as detailed here).

Even better you can support us by becoming a Friend of PET as detailed here, and giving us a regular donation.

Thank you.