Editing germline cells to make GM humans with better offspring

We Are This Close to "Designer Babies"

On February 1, scientists from the United Kingdom's Francis Crick Institute got the okay to start research on human embryos using a new genome editing technology called CRISPR.

. . . .

CRISPR is essentially a cellular scalpel. 

The small enzyme works by moving through the body's cells and cutting away at precise pieces of the genome—something that's never before been possible to do with such efficiency and ease. 

Since 2012, it's been used to cut out the gene mutations leading to HIV and sickle cell anemia. 

Last spring, researchers in China became the first to genetically modify embryos with CRISPR after they used the technology to replace a gene in a single-cell embryo.

The technology can also be used to edit what scientists call germline cells—embryos in such early stages of development that any changes will become hereditary and can be passed on to future generations. 

Using the technique, for example, scientists could potentially edit out the gene for Huntington's disease in a woman before she's born. 

Not only would she be disease free; she wouldn't be able to pass it on to any future children.

Told you they'd sell it this way.

It is simply false that allowing this process means there are or will ever be women who would have been born with the disease, but for the intervention that ensured they were born free of it.

The intervention will be done on embryos that would absolutely not have been allowed to be born at all, without the intervention.

Much less is it true that the intervention means there is or ever will be any woman whose descendants would have carried the disease, but owing to the intervention those same descendants will be free of it.

Had the intervention not occurred neither the woman nor her descendants would ever have existed, at all.

The intervention means that people will be born who would not have been born had it not occurred.

It does not mean than anyone will be better off than he or should would have been had it not occurred, aside from the first set of parents who will be better off only in the sense that they will have a child free of disorder that they otherwise would not have had.

Making people from scratch

The post-human future is emerging

Wow.

I think I'm glad I won't live to see where this is going.

Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. 

The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting.

Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. 

The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

And for how long would newly created, parent-less humans actually be quite entirely human, as humans occur in nature?

Oh, not very long, I should think.

Relevant readings include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley as well as What Sort of People Should There Be? by Jonathan Glover.

GM humans. Another push against the envelope

Embryo engineering 'a moral duty'

Coming up, GM people

Updated much on 4/26.

The ethical debate is just the secular priesthood talking itself into being comfortable with this.

Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos

Pay particular note to the bits about the biological implications of germline modification.

Social acceptance begins with the promise of removal of tragic genetic disorders.

So far as that goes, this is going to be a very expensive and socially unnecessary means of enabling people who cannot otherwise have undisordered children to have at least one undisordered child, a child whose progeny will perhaps also be undisordered.

This is not about some once and for all fix that would ensure all of the children of "fixed" parents would be undisordered.

Who benefits?

Parents who will, by having a procedure, be able to have undisordered children that are biologically theirs, flesh of their flesh, rather than disordered ones or none at all, perhaps settling for adoption.

Future society that will not have to deal with disordered people who would otherwise have been born.

Will there be any individual person who would otherwise have been disordered but who will not be, thanks to this intervention?

Yes, a child C of parents having the procedure will so benefit if (1) there is an embryo that would, unaltered, be allowed to develop into a disordered individual A but, because of the alteration, will instead develop into an undisordered individual B, and (2) B is the same individual as A, but without disorder, rather than an entirely different person, and (3) C is the same person as both A and B.

(1) is almost certainly false, leaving it practically unnecessary for us to puzzle out (2).

Remoter descendants of a couple who had the procedure would also personally benefit provided they, the same individuals, will exist and be undisordered if the original couple have the procedure but will exist and be disordered if not.

For an ontology without immaterial souls, (2), above, is necessary for this, but not sufficient.

And even apart from that, again for an ontology without souls, it seems if there were some such descendants of a couple who had the procedure - identical individuals who will descend from the original couple whether or not they have the procedure - there could not be many and there would be none, for example, if the couple would have no children if they did not have the procedure.

But in any case that is not where the real impact will be felt.

Eventually it will all get to be a lot more interesting than that, and there is a real chance this science will produce - intentionally produce - diverse races (strains, varieties, variants) of humans for diverse fates.

Let your sci-fi imagination go.

Cui bono?

Mitochondria editing tried in mice

Here's the bait.

Dr Marita Pohlschmidt, at charity Muscular Dystrophy UK, said: "We welcome this exciting new technique, which could benefit thousands of women worldwide who risk passing on mitochondrial disease to their children."

They will go there.

But not without resistance.

And David King, of the group, Human Genetics Alert, had his own warning.

"This research is unethical. It threatens to usher in the future of genetically modified designer babies.

"We must extend the ban on human genetic engineering to create a global treaty."

Meanwhile, other research from China involving separate technology on the more abundant DNA found in the nuclei of human cells, has led scientists to question how far such technology should ethically go.

Jonathan Glover has the jump on this one.

30 years ago he wrote a book asking what sorts of people should there be.