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Despite CRISPR Baby Controversy, Harvard University Will Begin Gene-Editing Sperm (technologyreview.com)
Even as a furious debate broke out in China over gene-edited babies, some scientists in the US are also hoping to improve tomorrow's children. From a report: [...] Amid the condemnation, though, it was easy to lose track of what the key experts were saying. Technology to alter heredity is for real. It is improving very quickly, it has features that will make it safe, and much wider exploratory use to create children could be justified soon. That was the message delivered at a gene-editing summit in Hong Kong on Wednesday, by Harvard Medical School dean George Daley, just ahead of He's own dramatic appearance on the stage (see video starting at 1:15:30).
Astounding some listeners, the Harvard doctor and stem-cell researcher didn't condemn He but instead characterized the Chinese actions as a wrong turn on the right path (see video). "The fact that it is possible that the first instance of human germ-line editing came forward as a misstep should in no way lead us to stick our heads in the sand," Daley said. "It's time to ... start outlining what an actual pathway for clinical translation would be."
Astounding some listeners, the Harvard doctor and stem-cell researcher didn't condemn He but instead characterized the Chinese actions as a wrong turn on the right path (see video). "The fact that it is possible that the first instance of human germ-line editing came forward as a misstep should in no way lead us to stick our heads in the sand," Daley said. "It's time to ... start outlining what an actual pathway for clinical translation would be."
Don't know if you noticed, but the "furious debate" was more like researchers not wanting to be the first to say that it was okay to edit the genome of humans in planning. This is a done deal. It's going to happen. It will first be about saving the children, then it will be about making the children better, then it will be about making patented children under license with annual renewals. This random corporate crap is entering the species at the genetic level, we will NEVER get rid of it. If anything can be found to have gone wrong then entire populations will need to be force-sterilized. It is completely insane. It is now inevitable. Blame whoever or whatever you want for that.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Practice makes perfect so if you are going to start making improvements over a baseline then I think it would be logical to practice gene editing on something that isn't human and could really be improved. What fits the bill here is dog breeds. For the unaware, pure breed dogs have significant genetic defects because they are inbred which results in the expression of recessive traits. The current trend of buying cute dogs that are a genetic disaster doesn't seem to be receding so they seem like a prime target for genetic editing. When we've learned some important lessons (or succeeded beyond all expectations) then we should use what we learned on humans.
If you think it's a waste then you haven't considered the annual cost of animal surgeries that are a consequence of a small gene pool.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
More like "there are beneficial uses of this technology, so we should follow through on those". A better analogy is we didn't stop pursuing nuclear power because it could also be used as a weapon. There's definitely morally and ethically troubling issues, like controlling gender. There's also non-troubling things, like removing genetic disorders. The possibility for the first shouldn't preclude using it for the second.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Anyone who edits the human genome with the intent of degrading the child in any fashion is liable to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. If children are going to live with the consequences, then so should doctors and parents. Why do I bring this up? Because there are parents that actually do this now, like some deaf parents that want children who are deaf as well. Editing a child so they cannot hear should at least carry life imprisonment, if not the death penalty for every party involved because that is truly insidious and depraved abuse.
the key is to par boil them first. Otherwise your babies turn out all soggy. That's how the restaurants do it.
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There's also non-troubling things, like removing genetic disorders. The possibility for the first shouldn't preclude using it for the second.
Not even that is going to be simple. There are some deaf people that don't want their own deaf children to get cochlear implants or to have other types of procedures that could restore their hearing. If they don't want that, odds are they won't accept a genetic fix to prevent the problem from developing in the first place.
There's also a whole can of worms as to what constitutes a genetic disorder. Suppose for sake of argument that sexual preference has a genetic control (I don't believe that this is the case, but this is for the sake of argument) and some parent doesn't want (or does, as some people today may well do) their child to be a homosexual. Is that something that's permissible to "fix"?
Growing up with someone who, is now recently deceased, who would have benefitted from this, I absolutely am adamantly opposed to 90% of the arguments i hear about "ethics". Most of them are disingenuous efforts by people who want to keep the technology under wraps, practiced only in secret back rooms available to the rich. Many more are religious fruitcakes and their ideas about their chosen gods will, he's not my god, I'm not interested in his opinion.
However, there are reasonable concerns about first, yes I have something that will cure say, cystic fibrosis, but it also may cause cancer @40, or a few dozen other very unpleasant side-effects. And while *I* may find it acceptable, will the life that I create agree with my decision 40 years hence. That's a valid concern, but I don't know of any way of resolving it, but by doing it, seeing the fallout and either refining it or removing it as a legal technique. We don't actually know what we don't know, and we shouldn't let us stop it.
Then there's a concern about what happens to our survivability if the entire population is running around with edits to their genes, and whether we can continue to live without it. Is it our heroin? It should be a concern. I am not sure it should stop us, but we should consider how we want to approach availability and legality of some of the more superficial edits (i.e. every man wants to be blond haired, blue eyed an wielding a 12" wang, the latter of which may actually be problematic to our long term survival, particularly if edits cause him to be infertile 75% of the time).
Not even that is going to be simple. There are some deaf people that don't want their own deaf children to get cochlear implants [theatlantic.com] or to have other types of procedures that could restore their hearing. If they don't want that, odds are they won't accept a genetic fix to prevent the problem from developing in the first place.
That's an individual decision, and it's up to the parents. If they don't want to consider a genetic fix because they don't consider it a problem, that's fine, but it shouldn't stop the research from helping others who do want to correct the issue in their children.
I personally see the decision to not add a genetic fix as more ethically ambiguous than the research for a fix. You could remove one stumbling block from your child's life and chose not to. That said, if you're confident you can look your adult child in the eye and explain your reasoning with conviction if they ever come asking you chose not to, then, again, it's your choice. All you can do as a parent is make the choices you think are right.
Suppose for sake of argument that sexual preference has a genetic control (I don't believe that this is the case, but this is for the sake of argument) and some parent doesn't want (or does, as some people today may well do) their child to be a homosexual. Is that something that's permissible to "fix"?
I give the same answer here as the rumored answer to why Jean-Luc Picard is bald in the 24th century: surely they have come up with a cure by then. The answer is, "by the 24th century, nobody will care."
Ideally that's just not something parents will care to change. If they do care, it's probably better for the child to go ahead and make the change, instead of setting them up to grow up homosexual in a family that is non-accepting, and all the psychological issues that would come with that.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Yes, eugenics.
Yes, but not in the horrific way it has been practiced in the past, by killing babies (or adults).
What is wrong with parents being able to decide physical attributes of children? If that meant no more people under 6' tall - what is the problem? No-one is lost, just altered before they even know what is going on. What is lost by saying - well that baby was going to have a crippling low IQ, but we fixed it. What is the problem with that?
It's not like the world is not already practicing a far more primitive form of eugenics anyway, if through no other means than abortion where attributes of the parents lead to some 50 million abortions worldwide.
So why not allow more control over evolution by shaping those who are born rather than by carving away those we choose not to let be born?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know we have all this ethics crap, but if we eliminate something like Cystic Fibrosis, I don't see a downside here.
Many of the inheritable diseases we see are there because the genes don't just control one thing, but several. Often, a genetic variation does not only cause a negative, but is accompanied by something beneficial. Evolution has had a long time to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages. If it were only disadvantages, they would generally have been eradicated from the gene pool.
The most famous example is sickle cell anemia, which protects against malaria for those who only have the gene from one parent.
And some HLA antigens give strong resistance to influenza A, at the cost of an increased risk of rheumatic diseases. What would you pick?
In the case of Cystic Fibrosis, it's an an autosomal recessive disease, meaning that 25% of children of two healthy carriers get CF. That it is present in the gene pool indicates that there may be an heterozygote advantage to being a carrier with the mutation on only one gene. Eradicating the genetic variation that causes CF would eradicate that benefit too, whatever it may be.
As for the benefit to individual couples, CRISPR doesn't add any benefit that isn't already there today. Prospective parents who both are carriers can test the embryo and terminate pregnancies where both genes are added.
The lack of predation that would terminate the bad choices
That is the point of ALLOWING gene alterations on children, because it is exactly like an accelerated form of predation that removes defects and improves physical attributes of offspring.
What "bad choices" are you imagining it would be possible for parents to make to weaken the gene pool, that would be worse than allowing unchecked mental defects and physical abnormality as we do today? Society is already taking care of everyone born in a general sense so nothing changes there, all gene editing does is to remove the number of edge cases that society has to care for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not quite that simple.
To use CRISPR on the gene line you really want to be doing your modification as early as possible. So right away, you're talking about in vitro fertilization. The question is, if you're interested in preventing something like cystic fibrosis, wouldn't it be easier and simpler to just screen those cells before implanting them?
Now, most genetic diseases, and other traits, are way more complicated than CF. They're not just a binary one gene you've got it or you don't. Usually it's not even a few genes, it's a lot of them. So if you want to influence those, maybe you want something a bit stronger than just screening. But then you have all the practical problems with unintended consequences, because you don't actually know exactly what you're doing, you're just tweaking some things to nudge the baby in a particular direction.
The Chinese case is kind of an interesting in between. It's a single gene edit to confer HIV resistance, but it's presumably not an allele that either parent had already so there's no way you could achieve it through screening embryos. However, even CCR5-d32 isn't all gain like fixing the CF gene would be. Having the allele does confer resistance to some strains of HIV, but it also knocks out a bit of the immune system. There's some evidence that it decreases resistance to influenza, for example.
You imply left-leaning people are more likely to support eugenics/modification than right-leaning people. Do you have any statistically-valid evidence for such a preference, or is that just a personal guess?
No statistics, but from a historical perspective, eugenics was all the rage with Progressives in the early 20th century. The Progressives of that time wanted to replace random natural selection with purposeful social selection. For example, sterilizing black women without their consent would reduce the number of "imbeciles" being born. I don't think the Progressives of today think like that now, but the way they treat others that don't have the same opinions makes me wonder sometimes, and I'm sure there are plenty who wish DJT's mom was sterilized before he was born.
don't they know? See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The defence is obvious. What this research does is act in the exact same manner evolution does, but in a more controlled fashion, as a result reducing suffering caused by nature and its processes.
We still get children born with horrific birth defects for example that cause tremendous amount of suffering to those children and their families. Would removing those be moral or immoral? According to your argument, it would be utterly immoral and indefensible to do it.
According to a rational mind, it would be utterly immoral and indefensible not to do it.
Overall, the problem is that some people clearly haven't studied human history beyond "Hitler bad", and fail to even understand why it is that eugenics as practised in Third Reich were bad. Instead, they default to "eugenics bad" without any kind of deeper understanding of the reasons. And as a result, utterly miss the fact that their gross oversimplification renders their logic and results they derive from applying it to real world scenarios utterly immoral.
If God didn't want us doing this he wouldn't have made our code open source.
How is it possible that the word "eugenics" does not appear in this story or in any of the comments?
1. The Nazis gave "eugenics" a bad rap, so nobody uses that word anymore. You have to call it something else.
2. This isn't really eugenics. Nobody is selected out. We just cut and paste the bad genes.
Only sometimes. Yes, sickle-cell anemia carriers get a benefit. I think that there are lots of others that don't. Tay-Sachs carriers don't get any advantage (that we've been able to identify).
Many if not most genes code for more than one effect. The same gene that can influence the height of an individual might also increase the risk of connective tissue disorders
That's a whole lot of guess work just to worry about something that amounts to nothing. I am talking long-term, as any discussion relating to eventual fitness of species should be. Do you seriously think over the next few hundred years they will not be able to discern how to edit for height without making people have slightly more oily skin or whatever? a handful of generations with a few negative effects is nothing compared to long term benefit once the process is optimized. And unlike normal evolution we can just edit out any mistakes from future generations without delay, Or probably even the current one...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley