In early 2015, I wrote an article about the making of designer babies. I was referring to the CRISPR gene editing technology that would make it possible to do them. I said it would happen by the year of 2042, which is obviously symbolic in the meaning of accuracy. More importantly, you fully understand that my article was about supporting, cherishing and never ever let obstructing scientific development. Also, that article was about my deep and sincere belief that we would never use scientific advancements in a wrong way.
The CRISPR gene editing technology is exploding, scientists are using its potential to make great progress in science. Just to mention, in our laboratory I did a next generation sequencing experiment to find the successfully gene-edited mouse tumor cell line for research purpose. We reverted the tumor causing mutation to the normal wild type status. Should you have very little imagination if you think this would lead to cure cancer. Let me not indulge myself into telling you in what year, let the realistic future success show us when it will happen.
Since early 2015 there have been several scientific reports about human embryo gene editing. Chinese scientists changed the mutant β-globin gene to normal variant to prevent the development of sickle cell disease. Next year, another Chinese group made the normal wild type CCR5 gene into a mutant variant rendering it resistant to HIV infection. Recently, from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, the 3rd paper about human embryo editing described the correction of germline mutation of the MYBPC3 gene, a mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. All these described experiments are truly only scientific experiments, the embryos were destroyed with no intention to be implanted. There are more than ten thousand monogenic inherited disorders. Cystic fibrosis could be the next one trying to fix, and ten thousands more to go, what a great way to progress science and save lives. Ask the parents of the child with cystic fibrosis. Should these experiments progress into perfection avoiding off target alteration in the genome and avoiding the unwanted mosaicism in the edited embryo, soon controlled, regulated and legally supported clinical trials will begin. Once demonstrated that the human embryo genome editing is clinically safe, medically justified and fully beneficial to the patient, authorities will approve it.
We are not going to make designer babies, we are not going to make GMO sapiens as it would be depicted in fake-news outlets or maybe more forgivably in Hollywood movies. Jude Law is great in Gattaca. The movie is about a eugenic society in the not so distant future, actually in about the present time, as the movie was made in 1997. Eugenics is the idea that with artificial genetic control we can improve the genetic quality of a group of people or even the entire human society. Eugenics idea might get a boost from the CRISPR genome editing technology in belief of making the perfect designer baby to produce the absolute superhuman. The idea of eugenics is a real danger, has been around since the ancient Greeks and sporadically practiced infamously throughout our entire human history. Yet, there is no real eugenics practice exists today. When the practice of eugenics happened in the past, it became crime against humanity and our entire humanity stood up against it, punished eugenics and eliminated eugenics.
Fire is dangerous, yet we use fire after almost a million year since we discovered the taste of the delicious meat roasted on fire and enjoyed the warmth of the fireplace in the cold caves. Where would be our human society now without fire if the Homo erectus tribal elders, the smart ones, would have said no-no-no to fire, because fire was dangerous. The smart elders would have said we could accidentally burn ourselves or worse we could use it to burn other people. Fire could be used as a lethal weapon of mass destruction, they would have said. The Homo erectus tribal elders definitely would have been wrong to ban fire, despite of the tragic fact that indeed we burned, roasted, cooked and boiled alive many people over the civilized part of our human history. We burned at the stake Giordano Bruno because he said the stars are actually distant suns surrounded by their own planets like Earth even with possible life on those distant planets. We burned at the stake Joan d’Arc, the Virgin of Orléans because Archangel Michael and Saint Margaret appeared to her. Giordano Bruno, the martyr of science lives today and guaranties the freedom of thoughts, and Joan d’Arc herself is a Saint.
“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance”–Sergey Brin
“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher
Loading ...