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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.
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).
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 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.