Twenty - nine percent
of children 2 to 3 years
of age have a television in their bedroom, and 30 %
of parents have reported that watching a television program enabled their children to fall asleep.3 Although
parents perceive a televised program to be a calming sleep aid, some programs actually increase bedtime
resistance, delay the onset
of sleep, cause anxiety about falling asleep, and shorten sleep duration.41 Specifically, in children younger
than 3 years, television viewing is associated with irregular sleep schedules.42 Poor sleep habits have adverse effects on mood, behavior, and learning.
The former target, say, using gene editing techniques to inactivate HIV receptors and achieve
resistance of blood cells to the virus (which Sangamo BioSciences is working on in clincial trials) is different
than helping
parents who both carry genes for Huntington's Disease to have a child that is free
of the disease (a change to the genome that would be passed on to future generations and would likely not be very commonly needed).