I could hurt you but I never do it because I love you

”There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. That would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” Albert Einstein, 1932.

“Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” Alexander Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Corporation, 1956.

Let me side with Mr. Lewyt, the inventor of vacuum cleaner: we will have designer babies by 2042. We have the tools to do it now, but let’s say it will take another 15-20 years by the time the scientific protocols will be developed into standard operating clinical procedures and another 10 years with clinical trials and finally the FDA approval. If I am wrong, like Mr. Lewyt, it is not because we cannot do it but because we don’t want to do it.

Almost twenty years ago I was making molecular constructs for transgenic and knock out animals. Mice, precisely, we generated transgenic mice to give them a gene to over express it in order to study that gene by the principle called gain of function. Also, we knocked out other genes in order to study those genes by the principle called loss of function. We made the mega-mouse, the size of a rat, in which we inserted a transgenic growth hormone gene to over express in her body. It was about the time when Dolly was cloned. Our mouse genetic group was composed of the embryonic stem cell laboratory, the microinjection and in vivo transgenic animal facility and the molecular design lab, which I conducted. All together, we could have cloned a human, more we could have inserted an extra trans-gene into her genome or we could have knocked out a gene in her genome. We never did it, because we loved her. In that time the technology was not developed into routine, the outcome would have been a disaster, but even if we succeeded, her life would have been a misery, think of it, for god’s sake in heaven why would we do that. Now, 20 years later we still don’t do it. It is not because we cannot do it but because we don’t want to do it. I don’t know why we would do human cloning, because cloning procedure simple makes a copy of one genomic constitution into another human life. We want genetic diversity, not copies.

However, think of disease. Huge effort we are making to cure diseases. We are devastated when we have children born with genetic disorders. We would do anything to save our children. So why not prevent genetic diseases for our children.

Today, we have the technology in human clinical practice called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In vitro fertilized human embryos are screened for healthy genetic constitution, by microarray technologies and yes, you might have guessed, by next generation sequencing. Choose the best embryo and implant it for a happy delivery of a beautiful healthy baby to delight the parents for the rest of their life.

Today, we have a technology in research practice called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) based genome editing. This is so simple, that makes my highly qualified molecular expertise obsolete, I am like an antique furniture, beautiful to look at, very expensive, but who needs those type of things, maybe a museum. Edit the genome, knock in what you want, knock out what you want, reverse a disease mutation to a healthy normal variant, or add a mutation that makes my neck longer and I can graze on higher level. You know, like messing with the evolution.

However, keep it simple, let’s do just the regular in vitro fertilization. We already know the whole genome sequence of both the mother and father, we know what we are doing, we are all prepared with the CRISPR genome editing protocol design, we have the genes and the mutations exact locations to correct them in the embryo’s genome. In cystic fibrosis, the most common mutation is a deletion of three nucleotides which results in a loss of the amino acid phenylalanine at the 508th position in the protein. Would you re-insert those 3 simple nucleotides, a TTC triplet into your baby? Where those TTC’s are missing? Not to have her being born with the cystic fibrosis terrible disease? I would do it for my baby. I will. Certainly.

We will have designer babies, soon. Nothing is wrong with that. We have atomic energy and we still don’t destroy each other because we love each other. We could prevent genetic diseases, we could even manipulate evolution but we will not use it for the wrong reason because we love our humanity.

Tibor Gyuris

Personal Genomics Blogger

2015. January 23

“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance”–Sergey Brin

“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher