This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through November 19)

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: China Used Crispr to Fight Cancer in a Real, Live Human Megan Molteni Wired "The FDA, for better and for worse, is a historically cautious gatekeeper, unconcerned with international spitting contests. Clinical trials cost millions, and last for years. But George Church, Harvard University geneticist and co-founder of Editas Medicine believes it's a necessary step to ensure new technologies like Crispr-based gene therapies really work. Even when they hold you up from making history." VIRTUAL REALITY: I Hung out With My Past Self in Virtual Reality Ben Popper The Verge "I met the crew from AltspaceVR inside a virtual space station. We chatted briefly, moving around the room...Then I moved off to the side, and watched as my avatar reappeared at our starting location...I watched as beta-Ben repeated the last five minutes of my life."