Changes made to various aspects of the investment chapter, including the

definition of investment and investor and the scope and application of nondiscrimination provisions.

Stop TTIPs? Negotiations have de facto failed and nobody is admitting

it? The TTIP negotiations were already on pretty shaky ground. What
is on the table doesn't seem to be

The 14th round of negotiations between EU and US took place in Brussels between 11-15 July 2016.
Yet, as the public report from EU Commission states, the talks over services and investment stretched
into the following week. This round boost itself in quantum possibilities thus a record number of
chapters suffered textual changes through proposals in sum of more then twenty.
Like Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt, negotiators and states face a new opportunity whether to copy
and paste the actual arrows of the investor-state arbitration system or just to dive in with this Eu
proposal blueprint of an alternative judicial system of ISDS.

I don't have the answer to that question. All we can do going forward, I think, is talk honestly
about the risks and benefits and take responsibility for our choices. By that I mean, not just
the choice to use a gene drive, but also the choice not to use one. Humans have a tendency
to assume that the safest option is to preserve the status quo. But that's not always the
case. Gene drives have risks, and those need to be discussed, but malaria exists now and kills
1,000 people a day. To combat it, we spray pesticides that do grave damage to other
species, including amphibians and birds.
So this is a talk about gene drives, but I'm going to start by telling you a brief story. 20 years
ago, a biologist named Anthony James got obsessed with the idea of making mosquitos that
didn't transmit malaria.
Then, last January, Anthony James got an email from a biologist named Ethan Bier. Bier said
that he and his grad student Valentino Gantz had stumbled on a tool that could not only
guarantee that a particular genetic trait would be inherited, but that it would spread
incredibly quickly. If they were right, it would basically solve the problem that he and James
had been working on for 20 years.
1:49As a test, they engineered two mosquitos to carry the anti-malaria gene and also this
new tool, a gene drive, which I'll explain in a minute. Finally, they set it up so that any
mosquitos that had inherited the anti-malaria gene wouldn't have the usual white eyes, but

would instead have red eyes. That was pretty much just for convenience so they could tell
just at a glance which was which.
2:13So they took their two anti-malarial, red-eyed mosquitos and put them in a box with 30
ordinary white-eyed ones, and let them breed. In two generations, those had produced 3,800
grandchildren. That is not the surprising part. This is the surprising part: given that you
started with just two red-eyed mosquitos and 30 white-eyed ones, you expect mostly whiteeyed descendants. Instead, when James opened the box, all 3,800 mosquitos had red eyes.
When I asked Ethan Bier about this moment, he became so excited that he was literally
shouting into the phone. That's because getting only red-eyed mosquitos violates a rule that
is the absolute cornerstone of biology, Mendelian genetics. I'll keep this quick, but Mendelian
genetics says when a male and a female mate, their baby inherits half of its DNA from each
parent. So if our original mosquito was aa and our new mosquito is aB, where B is the antimalarial gene, the babies should come out in four permutations: aa, aB, aa, Ba. Instead, with
the new gene drive, they all came out aB. Biologically, that shouldn't even be possible.
So what happened? The first thing that happened was the arrival of a gene-editing tool known
as CRISPR in 2012. Many of you have probably heard about CRISPR, so I'll just say briefly that
CRISPR is a tool that allows researchers to edit genes very precisely, easily and quickly. It
does this by harnessing a mechanism that already existed in bacteria. Basically, there's a
protein that acts like a scissors and cuts the DNA, and there's an RNA molecule that directs
the scissors to any point on the genome you want. The result is basically a word processor for
genes. You can take an entire gene out, put one in, or even edit just a single letter within a
gene. And you can do it in nearly any species.
4:04OK, remember how I said that gene drives originally had two problems? The first was that
it was hard to engineer a mosquito to be malaria-resistant. That's basically gone now, thanks
to CRISPR. But the other problem was logistical. How do you get your trait to spread? This is
where it gets clever.
4:23A couple years ago, a biologist at Harvard named Kevin Esvelt wondered what would
happen if you made it so that CRISPR inserted not only your new gene but also the machinery
that does the cutting and pasting. In other words, what if CRISPR also copied and pasted
itself. You'd end up with a perpetual motion machine for gene editing. And that's exactly what
happened. This CRISPR gene drive that Esvelt created not only guarantees that a trait will get
passed on, but if it's used in the germline cells, it will automatically copy and paste your new
gene into both chromosomes of every single individual. It's like a global search and
replace, or in science terms, it makes a heterozygous trait homozygous.
5:10So, what does this mean? For one thing, it means we have a very powerful, but also
somewhat alarming new tool. Up until now, the fact that gene drives didn't work very well was
actually kind of a relief. Normally when we mess around with an organism's genes, we make
that thing less evolutionarily fit. So biologists can make all the mutant fruit flies they
want without worrying about it. If some escape, natural selection just takes care of them.
5:37What's remarkable and powerful and frightening about gene drives is that that will no
longer be true.Assuming that your trait does not have a big evolutionary handicap, like a
mosquito that can't fly, the CRISPR-based gene drive will spread the change relentlessly until

it is in every single individual in the population. Now, it isn't easy to make a gene drive that
works that well, but James and Esvelt think that we can.
6:04The good news is that this opens the door to some remarkable things.

Critics say one of the main concerns with TTIP is that it could allow
multinational corporations to effectively sue governments for
taking actions that might damage their businesses.
EU trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom: "It's very difficult to say this is a bad deal
because there isn't any deal yet. Nothing is concluded until everything is
concluded."
One of the main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS),
which allow companies to sue governments if those governments policies cause a loss of
profits. In effect it means unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of
democratically elected governments

They claim US companies might be able to avoid having to meet

various EU health, safety and environment regulations by
challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes
between investors and states.
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel recently claimed negotiations over the
planned trans-Atlantic free trade agreement had fallen apart. US Trade
Representative Michael Froman says that's incorrect and argues now is the time for
unity.