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Scientists get 'gene editing' go-ahead

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http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35459054


UK scientists have been given the go-ahead by the fertility regulator to genetically modify human embryos.


It is the first time a country has considered the DNA-altering technique in embryos and approved it.


The research will take place at the Francis Crick Institute in London and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life.


It will be illegal for the scientists to implant the modified embryos into a woman.


But the field is attracting controversy over concerns it is opening the door to designer - or GM - babies.


DNA is the blueprint of life - the instructions for building the human body. Gene editing allows the precise manipulation of DNA.


In a world-first last year, scientists in China announced they had carried out gene editing in human embryos to correct a gene that causes a blood disorder.


Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, a scientific advisor to the UK's fertility regulator, told the BBC: "China has guidelines, but it is often unclear exactly what they are until you've done it and stepped over an unclear boundary.


"This is the first time it has gone through a properly regulatory system and been approved."



Groundbreaking

The experiments will take place in the first seven days after fertilisation.


During this time we go from a fertilised egg to a structure called a blastocyst, containing 200-300 cells.


The work will be led by Dr Kathy Niakan, who has spent a decade researching human development.


Earlier this year, she explained why she had applied to edit human embryos: "We would really like to understand the genes needed for a human embryo to develop successfully into a healthy baby.


"The reason why it is so important is because miscarriages and infertility are extremely common, but they're not very well understood."


Out of every 100 fertilised eggs, fewer than 50 reach the early blastocyst stage, 25 implant into the womb and only 13 develop beyond three months.


And at the blastocyst stage, some cells have been organised to perform specific roles - some go on to form the placenta, others the yolk sac and others ultimately us.


How and why this takes place is unknown - but some parts of our DNA are highly active at this stage.


It is likely these genes are guiding our early development, but it is unclear exactly what they are doing or what goes wrong in miscarriage.


The researchers will alter these genes in donated embryos, which will be destroyed after seven days.


The regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has given its approval and the experiments could start in the next few months.



Arguments

Paul Nurse, the director of the Crick, said: "I am delighted that the HFEA has approved Dr Niakan's application.


"Dr Niakan's proposed research is important for understanding how a healthy human embryo develops and will enhance our understanding of IVF success rates, by looking at the very earliest stage of human development."


Dr David King, the director of Human Genetics Alert, said: "This research will allow the scientists to refine the techniques for creating GM babies, and many of the government's scientific advisers have already decided that they are in favour of allowing that.


"So this is the first step in a well mapped-out process leading to GM babies, and a future of consumer eugenics."


Dr Sarah Chan, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "The use of genome editing technologies in embryo research touches on some sensitive issues, therefore it is appropriate that this research and its ethical implications have been carefully considered by the HFEA before being given approval to proceed.


"We should feel confident that our regulatory system in this area is functioning well to keep science aligned with social interests."


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it was going to happen. there are some major ethical issues here.

but at the end of the day people were going to do this anyway.

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The trick won't be stopping it - that's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Trying to make sure something good comes of this, and in such a way that the benefits and risks are equitably spread - that's worth aiming for.

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now we can breed super soldiers :crux:

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now we can breed super soldiers :crux:

now we can breed super soldiers legally

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We'll need them to fight the killer robots.

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Lets be realistic about this

Now it might be possible to remove genes that are involved with genetic disorders such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_disorders

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you all could live with the certainty that we werent going to pass any of these issues into our children.

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It's pretty much inevitable that designer babies will become a thing. We already kind of already practice eugenics when you look at some instances of Abortion (many women opt to have abortions if it is established the baby will be profoundly disabled, for example).

Not even sure I disagree with GM humans, honestly. Look at the kinds of atrocities perpetrated on human kind by the lottery of natural genetics.

Edited by starling
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the problem is we as a species are tampering with evolutionary processes such as survival of the fittest, this takes it to a new level.

granted correction of genetic mutations may be a good thing. ... but.... some genetic mutations lead to good things in time.

how does this decision affect us long term.

one important factor is evolving the human body for long term space travel, as its clear that its a part of our future (long term survival) if we survive the time it takes to get off the planet.

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the problem is we as a species are tampering with evolutionary processes such as survival of the fittest, this takes it to a new level.

granted correction of genetic mutations may be a good thing. ... but.... some genetic mutations lead to good things in time.

how does this decision affect us long term.

one important factor is evolving the human body for long term space travel, as its clear that its a part of our future (long term survival) if we survive the time it takes to get off the planet.

Evolution by natural selection isn't as simple as 'survival of the fittest'. There are all kinds of modicums of selection, and actually some organisms are here today through what can only be described as sheer, dumb luck. Nature doesn't design intelligently, that's the problem. Really all we'd be doing through manipulating the human genome would be cleaving out a lot of bad codes which result in nothing good for anyone.

As it stands, space simply cannot be transgressed by our physical bodies. My personal bet is that at some point in the future we will figure out how to separate our consciousness somehow, and send this out forward into space as signals, the way digital files are now. Of course there would need to be something to receive these.

Edited by starling

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Natural selection may well be more than just survival of the fittest, but having a broad diversity in the gene pool can be very advantageous to any species in the event of a disease or an environmental change etc.

Take the 1970's corn blight epidemic that almost wiped out the western worlds corn and corn seed supplies. The plants were so genetically similar that they didn't have the diversity in the gene pool to create a new hybrid from breeding stocks that could withstand this new (or possibly very old) pathogen. It was only the existence of a noahs ark of sorts of older unwanted strains that allowed agricultural scientists to breed a new resistant crop.

We could be heading down a similar path with humans. If designer babies become the norm, everyone is going to want disease resistant, intelligent, athletic, tall good looking kids, so that's going to remove most of the diversity in the human genome right there. If a new disease appears or an old one re-emerges & those designer babies have accidently had all the genes needed to resist the disease ( or environmental pressure) removed, a large part of the human gene pool could be wiped in one generation.

The technology definitely holds some promise, but a myopic focus on enhancing specific desirable traits and removing undesirable traits du jour could be an accident begging to happen.

Edited by Sallubrious

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Evolution by natural selection isn't as simple as 'survival of the fittest'. There are all kinds of modicums of selection, and actually some organisms are here today through what can only be described as sheer, dumb luck. Nature doesn't design intelligently, that's the problem. Really all we'd be doing through manipulating the human genome would be cleaving out a lot of bad codes which result in nothing good for anyone.

As it stands, space simply cannot be transgressed by our physical bodies. My personal bet is that at some point in the future we will figure out how to separate our consciousness somehow, and send this out forward into space as signals, the way digital files are now. Of course there would need to be something to receive these.

I kind of disagee. i agree that life on this planet is here through luck, but life has survived x amount of extinction events, and those who survived were through being the fittest. and this also true of most organisms that exist, it is because they have found a niche and exploited it. sometimes these niches disappear and we are left with remnant species. but to say they are here through only sheer dumb luck is a simplistic way of looking at evolution.

likewise clearing out bad code, its a simplistic way of viewing dna. i really dont think we as a species have as yet a good enough understanding to say whether a strange broken piece of dna is bad or not. a good example is sickle cell anaemia, why do we have it, and why hasn't it been expunged through natural processes? because those who have it are in fact highly resistant to malaria. i doubt generatons in the future will decide to clear out the broken code, because it then allows the possibility of a major epidemic. same can be said with leprosy to which now 95% of the population is immune.

space, its a big frontier but its doable. my perspective is very mechanistic so i dont share your thoughts on transmitting consciousness - thats a different discussion.

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Just a thought

If a child has a patented sequence of DNA implanted into their genome, does the corporation that owns the patent for that sequence also own the rights to that part of the child/embryo and its offspring ?

Let's face it, this technology is going to be big business and desired traits/sequences will rapidly become very desirable for anyone that can afford to "acquire" them. All the best proven to perform sequences will be priced out of the reach of the average Mum & Dad. It has the possibility to totally reshape humanity as we know it.

Does anyone else think it has the potential to give ownership of the human species to non-human entities (corporations)

Edited by Sallubrious
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This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Rich families get the most expensive modifications - not least of which will be the mods they think will ensure the success of their offspring.

I agree that tampering with desirable traits is potentially very dangerous, especially where mental health is concerned. This doesn't mean we can never so this, but that if we are going to, we need to decide what is best, not what is most profitable.

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I remembered something I read about a decade ago about human genes being patented, and as luck would have it I found a relevant link that indicates that in 2005 approx 20% of human genes had already been patented.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1013_051013_gene_patent.html

I know there was a ruling the US supreme court that determined human genes cannot be patented, so companies trading in these genes would need some way to protect their intellectual property (profits). Maybe trans genes would bypass that ruling, or slightly altered sequences that have never existed in the human genome.

I'd be happy to sign my family up for the monsanto 12 inch dick sequence even if it is horse/human trans. That would ensure the rest of my genome would flourish :wink:

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I kind of disagee. i agree that life on this planet is here through luck, but life has survived x amount of extinction events, and those who survived were through being the fittest. and this also true of most organisms that exist, it is because they have found a niche and exploited it. sometimes these niches disappear and we are left with remnant species. but to say they are here through only sheer dumb luck is a simplistic way of looking at evolution.

likewise clearing out bad code, its a simplistic way of viewing dna. i really dont think we as a species have as yet a good enough understanding to say whether a strange broken piece of dna is bad or not. a good example is sickle cell anaemia, why do we have it, and why hasn't it been expunged through natural processes? because those who have it are in fact highly resistant to malaria. i doubt generatons in the future will decide to clear out the broken code, because it then allows the possibility of a major epidemic. same can be said with leprosy to which now 95% of the population is immune.

space, its a big frontier but its doable. my perspective is very mechanistic so i dont share your thoughts on transmitting consciousness - thats a different discussion.

A) Sickle cell anaemia does give some--not a total-advantage over Malaria, and considering that pretty much everybody develops a natural immunity to the virus if they survive repeated exposure anyway (yes, they do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2620631/) and the systemic health tax that comes with Hbs, the whole shenanigan is, quite simply, a very stupid way of dealing with Malaria. Here's a brief rundown of what sickle cell anemia causes.

vaso-occlusive crisis

extremely high risk of infections, greatly reduced chance of surviving infections, both common and life threatening--especially influenza

Acute chest syndrome

Massively increased chance of blood clots, strokes, internal hemorrhages etc

fatigue, tiredness, lethargy

anemic crisis

Now, considering that the countries with the highest rate of of HBs are third world developing nations such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the trade off for having a slightly more favorable rate of resistance against malaria is...well, quite shit really. In fact, a child born with with Hbs in Africa will probably die before the age of 5. Bravo, evolution! You really fucking knocked it out of the park on this one! And not only that, sickle cell anaemia allows occurs at a reduced rate in Europe, where there malaria doesn't even exist--so people carrying Hbs in those regions get absolutely no kickback as a result of having this life-threatening disorder at all.

Wouldn't it be better to say, I don't know--pop a few quinine Tablets? Yes. Yes, it would. Not only is there no legitimate survival advantage to carrying Hbs in the conditions of the present--which again, contains quinine--but the symptoms of Sickle cell anemia would have greatly reduced the probability of survival in the past. All it would have meant is that while carriers would have been less likely to die from malaria. they would have been at much greater risk of winding up dead from an injury which caused an infection, or a cold. And in those conditions, there were no modern medicines to help stave off the symptoms of Sickle anaemia. Malaria is a tropical disease, btw--guess where quinine trees grow. It's understood that the benefits of quinine were understood by tribes very intimately--it was they who introduced it to us, actually.

I'm sorry, your grasp of evolution by natural selection is not sound. It comes perilously close to what would be considered intelligent design. Allow me to be clear--nature has no plan. It doesn't know you or I exist, and while I'm not disputing that organisms do indeed adapt to the conditions of environments, it is still random probability--that is, luck, that drives those adaptions. For every successful adaptation that exists, there are hundreds of thousands of failures. It is about as cruel, inefficient, and barbarous a method for designing organisms imaginable. It literally consists of throwing out random mutations hand over fist until something works--not perfectly, mind you--just enough to accrue any survival advantage at all, or a disdvantage that results in either the immediate death of the affected organism or the effacement of an entire species over time.Some mutations might not accrue any survival advantage all, but since they also don't result in a disadvantage, these effectively useless, pointless traits are passed on throughout the span of time, forward into a time where they might either result in a survival advantage or disadvantage. It is a system driven by, and characterized entirely by, nonsense, endless death and suffering. And the whole thing might be worthwhile if the Earth itself stayed static, but it doesn't--it's a transitive flux, ever-changing. What is successful one generation might be completely outdated and unviable in another. Consider if you will, thePermian extinction, which caused about 87% of all genera to be wiped from existence. Our species only exists because of that event, incidentally. We exist through sheer dumb luck--as do 90% of all modern animals.

Our own biology is atrociously designed fr4om an enginerring perspective. We stuff food into the same orifice we breathe from. Our entire life system is dependent on a pump that is prone to clogging, rupturing, and failing--a pump which I might add never stops:

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/11/01/ask-a-scienceblogger-which-par/

And finally, we are a part of nature.We didn't evolve as extra-terrestrials. And therein lies the ultimate truth;we are a part of evolution--everything we do is a part of evolution. I do not think we are capable of greater atrocities or abominations than nature itself--but I do think we are capable of ethics--something of which natural selection is, in case you haven't noticed, completely devoid.

Edited by starling
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