Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/opinion/genetically-edited-babies-china.html

by yesprabhu • 8 years ago

39 48 8 years ago

hd4• 8 years ago

The Chinese realize what others refuse to, it's a race and whoever wins sets the rules. And what would they gain by waiting and losing the first-mover advantage?

The article talks about risks, they are certainly not that concerned about risks, not as long as they get the upper hand in biotech and genome manipulation.

Zeebrommer• 8 years ago

Dr. He’s university has disavowed knowledge or support of the research and said an inquiry is underway.

Sounds more like an individual rogue action than coordinated effort backed by vision of "the Chinese".

vaultcool• 8 years ago

How often did Chinese researchers claim to have done something incredible, without proper proof and lack of data, and it turned out to be a total scam? This really feels like another one of these, we'll see what happens, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

tgb• 8 years ago

But the difference here is that, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing particularly difficult about CRISPR in humans. It's routine in other mammals and had previously been done on human embryos. The thing holding everyone back was ethical concerns and the possibilities of off-target effects, side-effects of the mutation, etc. So I'd err on the side of assuming they did do it.

buboard8• 8 years ago

Also George Church says it's "probably accurate"

https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/26/claim-of-crispred-baby-g...

booleandilemma• 8 years ago

Meanwhile China is actually doing it and soaking up the investor money, interested researchers, and gaining the lead.

adventured• 8 years ago

That's false. The city of Boston by itself leads China in CRISPR tech and innovation.

baybal22• 8 years ago

Have you noticed just how many genetic technology in US is actually made in China? Boston companies may have high profile, but all the dirty work is done in China by research outsourcing labs staffed with interns.

winchling• 8 years ago

We should not proceed down this road until we know far more about the consequences of what we are doing.

In the present climate of pessimism it's worth reminding ourselves that we never know all the consequences of what we're doing. The 'Precautionary Principle' kills people too; it merely does so in a less obvious way.

Personally I think we should be going hell for leather in identifying and eliminating genetic diseases that arise from known mutations. And we should of course expect new problems to arise down the road from these treatments.

mannykannot• 8 years ago

This is a particularly bad example to make that case over, as it is hard to discern any scientific or medical justification for it, while the known risks are considerable. Frankly, it looks to me like a posterity-grabbing stunt - an attempt by the researcher to write himself into the history books.

candiodari2• 8 years ago

First, the event reported on is almost certainly a scam (HIV resistance ? Seriously ?). But let's assume it's valid.

But I don't agree at all with the sentiment. Most/all current gene editing is about fixing known issues, and in nearly all cases (at the moment) it seems like the edited gene, even if it goes disastrously wrong, would still be superior to the "natural" gene. E.g. MVD, MS, ...

Should we also outlaw (and enforce) that people with known genetic defects produce babies the "natural" way ? How about people where we don't know what exactly is wrong, but clearly something is wrong (e.g. very small, bone disease, large family incidence of leukemia, ...). There's some justification for that as making those babies produces a LOT of terrible suffering, but aside from the moral problems it seems very impractical to do this as well.

A LOT of "suboptimal" humans are produced, a LOT of humans are born with a body that just ... won't work in certain ways or will die in painful ways in a decade or less. Mostly in cases where the odds of a better outcome than the parents had is zero (meaning the terrible outcome was testable beforehand or even predictable).

So I would argue there is plenty of reason to give people access altered babies. Perhaps there are indeed some bridges not to be crossed, but I would argue that we should probably still cross them a few times to see first.

That will suck badly for a few babies, but not doing it has sucked for ~0.5% of humanity for all of history (that's about the incidence of genetic defects that kill on average before adulthood, all taken together).

That means this year alone half a million babies will be born with genes so defective they will never grow up (but the vast majority of them will gain enough intelligence to make the inevitable suffering really bad before they die)

That's not counting serious defects, like Down syndrome, that won't kill but have incredibly bad consequences nevertheless. Nor is it counting people born with disabilities that will survive (e.g. blind, deaf, paralyzed (ouch), deformed, ...)

I feel like that makes it reasonable to say that we should do nothing until we have something like 10000 edited babies born. Hopefully at that point we will know what works, actually have some data, and know what doesn't work and perhaps cut that half a million figure in half or better.

That won't change the number of people who are screwed by their genes meaningfully. In fact, it ought to make it possible to lower that number by a LOT.

This is one of those cases where "doing nothing" is not the morally neutral option. Doing nothing is accepting the status quo as good enough. The status quo is that worldwide, something like 20 million children are on death row due to bad genes. 5 US states worth of children. Most of them are children with no real outward sign of any problem, who will just die, relatively suddenly (meaning from "going to school and playing" to dead takes months, no more).

Nasrudith2• 8 years ago

We should but only after we know about its safety in model animals. They have DNA as well as often being simpler systems to model with shorter generations to model effects.

I mean I am pro genetic engineering but it is senseless to learn the basics of cardiac suturing on a live human when there are cadavars and livestock byproducts to do it on without the loss.

anvandare• 8 years ago

First one to get the (nuclear|genetic|quantum decryptor| ...) superweapon wins. That's been always true. Any government who's currently protesting and proclaiming they never will partake in it are either (1) idiots or (2) lying.

Nasrudith2• 8 years ago

Really apart from nukes which had a brief preproliferation period when have superweapons been worth it? Most of the time they have been holes to put money in and get ego out from the Paris railway gun to the megatanks of Nazi Germany.

maroonblazer• 8 years ago

I don't follow this area so my reply may be naive but it seems like developing super-weapons would be worthwhile if only to be able to detect when others are doing the same.

bohadi• 8 years ago

Likewise, the large benefit being a perceived halo of invincibility. A 'superweapon' further provides political positioning to maneuver before, during, after some confrontation.

My point here is to say worth valued in effects viewed as secondary.

TomMarius• 8 years ago

Or (3) too weak and trying to gain sympathy from other governments.

Symmetry3• 8 years ago

This was a straightforwards application of well understood and disseminated science, it is entirely unlike a secret superweapon. Even if this technique is banned in the US and not in China I have no doubt that many Americans would still play medical tourist to have enhanced babies. There might be large differences in the willingness of Chinese versus American parents to have their children modified but that isn't a matter of government intervention.

quotemstr• 8 years ago

The Manhattan project was also a straightforward application of known science. The US didn't discover nuclear fission in the desert. Atomic weaponry had been known to be possible for decades; the US was just the first to do it.

I strongly support further research in this area and think that regulatory means to stop it will be both ineffectual and harmful.

20kleagues• 8 years ago

Kinda unrelated but I was amazed at the speed with which the webpage loaded. In the age of bloated websites, being able to start reading the content within a second of clicking was refreshing. Kudos to the NYT developers!

paraditedc• 8 years ago

Since we are in the fallout stage now, it is important to note that this news is poorly received within China, with most organizations against it or denying ties with it.

I wrote a summary of reactions in China on my blog if anyone is interested (no paywall, no ads): https://paraditedc.com/2018/11/26/doubts-within-china-on-gen...

baybal22• 8 years ago

Human genetic engineering is a great thing! All research to advance it and bring it into practical use should be encouraged.

kanzure• 8 years ago

Here's a transcript of Jiankui He's talk in Hong Kong on his human embryo editing project: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/human-genome-editing-summi...

Symmetry3• 8 years ago

I wonder to what extent the existence and use of CRISPR to edit a baby will serve to normalize the relatively less radical practice of IVF embryo selection[1] on a wider range of criteria than we currently accept. That would also open the door to some enhancements. Many traits that parents might care about are deeply polygenetic and not amenable to the sort of editing we can currently perform but could still be selected for in this manner.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagno...

bluGill4• 8 years ago

There are ethical concerns in some areas. However I have no ethical concern about knocking out the Downs Syndrome gene (though how you would do this is a different question). Likewise blind or deaf genes can go. As can high cholesterol genes.

Symmetry3• 8 years ago

Downs Syndrome is caused by an extra copy of a chromosome, not a specific gene variant or mutation. It's something you could avoid by embryo selection but not by conventional gene editing techniques.

LeicaLatte• 8 years ago

China and India have much different problems compared to most other countries. There in lies the opportunity too.

refurb• 8 years ago

Derek Lowe has a nice summary of the situation and why it's sloppy science.[1]

Multiple microinjections were needed to try to ensure that the majority of cells in the embryo were indeed affected, He said, and even so neither of the twin girls appears to be a clean job of it. One of them is mosaic for the desired 32-amino acid CCR5 deletion, and the other, if I’m reading this right, is heterozygous for a five amino acid deletion. Wonderful, a complete hack job.

[1]http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/11/28/aft...

buboard8• 8 years ago

Curious why this wasn't asked during his talk. Aren't +/- knockouts valid knockouts ?

buboard8• 8 years ago

from reddit's biologists i got this:

he actually doesn't report a mosaic at the CCR5delta32 locus - just a mosaic off-target effect in a non-coding region that disappears when sequencing tissues from the baby

and heterozygous knockouts are still knockouts so i m not sure why they are so quick to discredit the work

buboard8• 8 years ago

For anyone interested , the slides from his presentation are online

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1T1zLTtHS2z_cgl29...

And livestream:

https://livestream.com/NASEM/events/8464254/videos/184103056

1:17:00

nootropicat• 8 years ago

I don't understand the inconsistent morality. I bet the author wants abortions to be legal. If the edited baby turns out to be damaged just abort it, then try again, no big deal.

Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First

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