- Gene editing.
A Michael Crichton-like
plot unfolding at the lab,
or a procedure that will become
a common tool for fighting disease?
(upbeat music)
The National Academy of Sciences
is hosting an historical
summit on gene editing,
and this is a big deal.
Because any time scientists
decide to get together,
done their capes, and argue their side,
it means that the technology in question
is a game changer, moving
from the what if stage,
to what now?
To get a sense of what all
the hullaballoo is all about
let's look at what gene
editing actually is.
The formal name for procedure is CRISPER,
a Cluster of Regularly Interspaced
Short Palindromic Repeats.
It was co-developed by
Dr. Jennifer Doudna,
a genetecist at the University
of California Berkeley,
who harnessed the power
of a protein called CAS9.
This protein is able to seek out, cut,
and eventually degrade viral DNA.
This allows for Doudna and her colleagues
to delete cells in DNA,
or insert specific ones
with unprecedented precision.
So if you think of a genetic
code like a Word document
and diseases like typos
in that Word document,
the CRISPER method acts
as a kind of spell check,
finding and replacing errors.
This is revolutionary.
Gene mutations that cause disease
can be isolated and clipped
out of the genetic code,
effectively wiping out cystic fibrosis,
muscular dystrophy, HIV, and cancer.
But, things get dicey when you consider
that same technology could be used
for embryo editing,
permanently changing
the genes of an embryo
to create the hypothetical designer baby.
In other words, the
changes made to the embryo
could go well beyond its health
and extend to the realm
of cutting and pasting
genetic code to create the perfect baby.
So far CRISPER's been used
in plants to create traits,
as well as mice and monkeys.
According to Doudna,
scientists in Philadelphia
used CRISPER to remove the DNA
from integrated HIV virus
from infected cells.
The big deal, though, was in April 2015
when Chinese scientists
were able to change
human genes in nonviable embryos,
which underscores the fact
that not all countries
are moving at the same
pace when considering
the implications of this technology.
In fact, Dr. Doudna has called
for a moratorium on CRISPER,
gathering the scientists for
a little global chat on ethics
before proceeding any further.
But genome editing is hardly new.
Scientists have been tinkering
with it since the 1970s,
and grappling with the
ethics surrounding it.
Other techniques, like three-person IVF,
have been around for decades
and are only beginning
to be approved for application in humans.
Science is pretty
conservative when it comes to
permanently altering
the human genetic code,
and this summit is a signal that ethics
are the main priority
before moving forward.
So no worries about Monsanto
patenting our genes quite yet.
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