I've built a career out of sharing
science news and looking into new
discoveries. So when I read that it's now
possible to edit our genes, the very
fabric of what makes us who we are,
I was captivated. I've become
determined to find out how this genetic
revolution could change our lives. Could
there be a future where it's as easy as
ordering genetic modifications from a
menu? Like stronger bones, or a
disease-free body? And if you could, would
you design your DNA? Do the benefits
outweigh the risks? I'm off to explore if
we should be "playing God". Just because we
could choose from a mutant menu, does
that make gene editing right? Just
considering it's use raises so many
tough ethical questions. I want to start
a wider conversation, so I've gathered a
group of informed citizens to see what
they would do. Would you edit your own
genes? I would love to get rid of my
lactose intolerance. I would love that.
I'd love to be able to eat ice cream and not
worry if I have a lactate. At this point,
sure. I'm getting old, my joints are
starting to hurt I'm in ways that I
never thought they would and if I want
to continue to be physically active I
would love to be able to do stuff that
allows me to do that.
I probably wouldn't.
That would be so boring, wouldn't it?
I'd really like to be a tetrachromat. These
are people who could see more colors
than the usual people. I'd really like that.
Yeah I would definitely do that. No  no. I
don't think I would. To me that's an
obvious thing, you know. I think having
just having extra decades of useful,
healthy life. We develop our
professional skills and and some small
amount of wisdom, and being able
to apply that for a little bit longer I
think would be powerful.
I don't know I really don't know.
Should people be able to do that?
I think that the option should be available.
I don't feel qualified to say,
"here's what you should do with your own
body."
If you could choose any aesthetic
improvements for yourself, what would they be?
Well if I answer that question that
would bring attention to my flaws.
So removing what we see as flaws with
genetic engineering is nothing new. Weeds
have become wheat, our tomatoes are sweet
and juicy and even our dogs are
hypoallergenic. But it takes generations
to refine these beneficial traits. Gene
editing allows us to fast-track this
process by tweaking the DNA of every
living thing. And a new breakthrough
technology called CRISPR-cas9, or
CRISPR for short, promises to do this
more cheaply and accurately than ever before.
So what is CRISPR? CRISPR-cas9,
which stands for Clustered Regularly
Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats is
a new gene editing tool that allows us
to tweak DNA in all living things.
CRISPR was discovered in bacteria as a
way they identify and destroy invading
viruses. And to edit DNA, scientists
have now repurposed what's like a tiny,
programmable molecular scalpel to cut at
precise locations in the genetic code.
And then DNA is provided and pasted in
to repair that cut. And just like that,
mozzie, fish or your DNA has been edited.
And since this technology has global
implications, I'm traveling around the
world, meeting experts, to find out what
these implications might be.
Are we in the DNA revolution?
Yeah I'm pretty sure.
Will CRISPR change everything?
Definitely CRISPR will change our lives.
We're here to meet Jin-Soo Kim, he's a
gene editing pioneer and he's using this
CRISPR technique to try and save the
banana and also to develop super
muscular pigs. It could solve a food
supply problem, but it seems kinda weird.
I don't know if I want to eat that pork
and I really like pork buns.
I'm interested to know if you're using
CRISPR to save the banana?
The banana is on the verge of extinction because of fungal diseases.
All the banana is genetically identical. You know, Cavendish
bananas. So, you know, the single pathogen
can kill every banana on Earth. And then
now we try to make banana that is
resistant to the fungus. So we can just
change one gene at a time, there are some
candidate genes, and then fungus cannot
infect. That's the idea. So it is like
surgery, right?
If you have some defective gene with fatal
phenotype, then you can now
use CRISPR to correct the defect.
And CRISPR is being used to enhance our food
as well as correct defects. With an ever
increasing population, especially in Asia,
scientists are getting creative about
bulking up what we eat.
We create super-muscular pig by just mutating a single
gene called the myostatin. So
myostatin actually inhibit muscle growth
and differentiation. So we knock out myostatin
gene and then the pigs have
super muscles. So like Arnold
Schwarzenegger, but in a pig?
Exactly. The pig will provide the lean
meat, with a high protein content and low
fat content and it could fit healthy
diet for many people. So CRISPR is
making the genetic engineering of
everything faster, cheaper and more
accurate. Its potential is enormous and
in some places it's becoming a reality.
So the difference is, you know, whether
nature makes it or scientist makes it.
Nature can make it, but randomly, so if
you just screen 1 million individual and
there is a one variant, one mutant with
supermuscle phenotype. So to find it, you
know, it will take a lot of time and
resource. But with this tool, CRISPR-cas9
or other genome editing tools, now you can
do it in one or two years.
However you feel
about the Schwarzenegger pigs, they're
just one way way we can hack
evolution for our benefit.
More gene-editing pioneers are pushing the
boundaries of the revolution, using
CRISPR to create, well, just about
anything. We're off to Harvard Medical
School to speak with George Church about
the wild possibilities of gene editing,
like the extinction of species. If
anyone's going to push further in the
field, it's him.
We're definitely in a DNA revolution of
both reading and writing genomes and
it's much, much bigger than editing,
editing is bigger than CRISPR and gene
therapies bigger than editing and the
revolution is much bigger than any of those.
Professor Church published one of
the first methods from nothing our
genome he more or less invented modern
DNA sequencing why is everyone so
excited about Chris well yeah you know
even though my team was one of the
inventing teams I'm mystified the why
people are so excited about it I think
it has cool name as cool personalities
involved and some cool projects that
were enabled by a whole revolution in
reading and writing genomes in general
not just editing but writing and I think
it's just a little more efficient and
the church lab is using CRISPR
to try and solve some of Medicine's
biggest problems tell me about the the
pig organs that you were human izing so
one of the health crises in the world
has all has been ever since
transplantation worked is there not
enough donors so a solution is to either
grow the organs in the lab which is
potentially expensive or to grow them in
an animal that's well masters of the pig
this is recognized three decades ago has
all perfectly sized organs and there
have been some transplants that worked
in in primates for short periods of time
but they need to be they need to be
crafted so that their composition is
compatible with the human recipient so
you're using genetic engineering to
humanize these older them so people
won't project it's something that would
have been very difficult a few years ago
but with CRISPR and other parts of the
revolution we can we now make tens of
changes hundreds of changes as needed to
make a pig this very that could be
long-term compatible with less and less
immune suppression needed never before
have you been able to avoid me a
suppression by engineering the donor and
finally and it's still hard to engineer
a human donor but sew it on eclis the
pig could end up being a better donor
than a human because
in engineering as well as growing organs
in pigs the human donation church is
working towards making animals like the
woolly mammoth de-extinction elephant so
they can again roam the tundra something
they're insulating snow and keeping
greenhouse gases locked up in the frozen
soil could it crispy give us unicorn so
we're getting creative now so there are
examples of animals that have single
horns in the middle so like the
rhinoceros has one and it snows but
there are other ancient right answers
that have it in the middle of the head
so anyway I think that you could get a
single horn on a horse by looking at
horns and other species so open the
realm of possibility yes now I mean I
took that sounds cool I devil in science
fiction a lot of science lecture is now
becoming science fact I mean things that
really seemed either unimaginable to the
unimaginative is now routine and they
forgot that it used to be unimaginable
do you think we'll get to a point where
CRISPR is in vogue and people want to
edit their genes well it's already in
vogue in a certain sense think about it
in the media day would it be -
television shows and so forth but yeah
in terms of in vogue you would do it
well so I know of two people who have
already done gene therapies on
themselves without you know not without
going to the usual channels
well CRISPR change everything I think
the genetic revolution including CRISPR
will change everything
so in this genetic revolution who
decides if we should be editing our DNA
from lawyers to scientists we're not
really sure
regulations haven't caught up with
reality
a few months ago I saw a press release
from a Swedish plant scientist who could
groin in even vegetable the episode with
the CRISPR technique just because he
could rather he couldn't Sweden
elsewhere in Europe it would require
government approval Steffan Jensen drew
attention to the oddities of the current
law that with his prefer Edison
vegetables I'm very excited to see your
crisper vegetable what have you brought
for us hmm
yeah comes down there yeah let's see
let's see I want to see and here is some
actually got the chrome extends in about
50 up today you know yeah I'm not really
big okay I mean they look beautiful to
me Stefan has gone to great lengths to
grow this cabbage I'm planning on
becoming one of the first people to eat
crisper edited vegetables
I made holidays how are they are they
different to a normal vegetables the
only thing that they're different they
are lacking a little piece or one gene
I believe that you smuggled these seeds
into Sweden from another country why are
they yeah yeah yes or smugglers market
oh I got them from other country do it
yeah okay but why why couldn't this be
grown outside of Sweden because Sweden
is the only country Europe that have
taken the decision or made their own
interpretation of the European law about
genetically modified clams they said
well if you only do it in this way if
you only take some DNA away if you don't
add anything then according to their
interpretation this is not the Devo
because if you don't add that thing it
also means that they can't detect it so
do you think that this is genetically
modified
well that's what is it what is uniquely
modified that's that's the problem it's
electrically modified is something which
are different in different genetic
combinations for what's their nature
cause everything with genetically
modified because with unclamp reading
for millennia and we have a very
significant change begin to sort of
everything everything we eat I mean
whatever ways even if we took a potato
zeroes on it anything is very different
from the natural counterparts well I'll
make sure that I don't eat too much of
it I mean we have some reindeer luckily
we have some other things to go with it
so look I bought you some reindeer it is
a reindeer hard because I thought that's
probably the most swedish thing ever and
we have got so we have a reindeer heart
and we have some horseradish to go with
that we have some potatoes as well
crispy crispy cabbage there we go our
personal thing okay this is mum me
number five until them it's crisp and
real number five in the world in the
world okay I think it's somewhat a
historic event and the only that it
being cooked internationally so I'm the
first international guests to eat your
Chris cooking okay great well I feel
like that's a historic event so how do
you how do you say Bon Appetit in
Swedish Vasa who's boss good
Varsha good Barcia good dig in
a few so I'm about to put crisper
modified food in my body
let's see how this goes
just tastes like normal cabbage crisper
could lead to the unimaginable Stepan
publicized his crisper cabbage to
highlight the gap between what science
can do and what we think we ought to do
do you think we're playing God or
manipulating nature by genetically
modifying things like plants answer you
well no I mean first of all we're part
of nature so we are constantly being
manipulated by our natural environment
and we're manipulating back that there's
nothing sort of godlike about that the
benefits are also potentially massive I
mean you know feeding the world curing
all congenital diseases so playing God
in a good way I think that's one of
those things which is a very polarizing
use of words it's not suddenly we have
this one technology which suddenly is
the god technology I think is an
evolution over time like humans build on
knowledge and build on technology how is
it different when we manipulate plants
over manipulating humans so I think for
humans because we do whilst biologically
we're the same as any other creature but
there's any other animal we're all made
from the same stuff but we give
ourselves special these rules that apply
to humans they don't apply to anyone
else
we generally recognize that there's
something special about us humans and so
I think that because we have these
ethical rules if we were genetically
modifying humans we would start to come
up against those rules who gets the
right to choose whether we added our
genes or not
yeah I mean I would go start with
personal so I think it should be I think
it should be personal it should be you
should be for you for you me serve you
it's all of us and when I mean that
that's all of us and the problem is that
it can't just be scientists who work on
the technology and it can't just be
politicians in a corner you know
deciding and it can't just be the public
I think all of those people have to get
together in order to be cautiously
optimistic we have to really think about
what we're doing and not shy away from
because we're scared of crazy mutants
happening
but like tackle the problem head-on and
really be honest about what we can and
can't do and what we should or shouldn't
do as long as we know what we're doing
and not just dive in without checking
for unforeseen consequences of seeing
that the thing is we don't know all of
the unforeseen consequences would you
risk your health or your child health to
potentially benefit from gene-editing
how deep we dive it becomes a big
ethical consideration
I'm on my way to Melbourne to talk to
bioethicists Rachel Anthony about ethics
and the genetic revolution I see myself
not as necessarily telling people what
to do but helping people think through
the implications of decisions they might
make so you're a professional thought
provoker I hope so your vegetable
thought provoker hands up clarifier
question Oscar concept clarifier and
revive giver exactly what do you see as
the range of ethical questions that I
should be asking people modifying the
genome is such isn't in itself I think
for most people a major ethical issue
it's the purposes for which is going to
be deployed who's going to benefit what
kind of safeguards are in place to make
sure that it's safe and effective before
it actually is used either in an
external setting in the case of
agriculture or pests or you're thinking
you know as an individual the kinds of
things if you had a child who had a
condition or you knew you were at risk
to pass on something would be you know
is the risk of those kind of
unanticipated consequences worth the
potential benefit is there a place where
you will say this is a good spot for the
benefits outweigh outweighed the risk
people are generally much more open if
it's a biomedical kind of intervention
if it's something that's going to cure a
disease that's quite severe people are
willing to take a little more risk
because the benefit is so great if it's
the kind of intervention that simply is
going to create more profit they're much
less interested because they don't see
the benefit is who decides how much risk
we take often companies hold the rights
to technologies like CRISPR so it's
their moral compass which can set the
boundaries
I first heard about CRISPR actually
taking a test my first year of graduate
school so I was really lucky to be in
the early wave of people who were
starting to jump into the field I think
the impact that it will have on both
healthcare and food is fundamental where
in Silicon Valley whether the growing
number of biotech startups hoping to
commercialize technologies just like
Christmas one of them is caribou
Biosciences which was born out of one of
the labs where the CRISPR technique was
developed what's the role of a start-up
in terms of looking for novel solutions
to a problem or to trying to make money
for the initial investment for us
obviously we're a company and we have
obligations to our investors and to our
shareholders but we're also very
ethically driven by how and where this
technology should be used obviously
there are a lot of conversations around
some of the potential uses for editing
the human germline for example and we
feel very strongly that that's an
inappropriate use of the technology so
you guys think we should edit the human
done
we don't why is that if you're starting
with a human embryo a single cell that's
going to turn into every cell in that
person's body any mistakes get
propagated across the entire body we
simply don't know enough yet to feel
that that would be safe or fair to that
person to treat their their very first
cell in that way the human germline is
the DNA you pass on to your children
it's not affected by gene therapy but if
we do choose to edit eggs sperm or a
single fertilized cell will not only
alter the resulting baby but the DNA of
every one of their descendants forever
and ever and if that's not enough to
give you pause it's also a real
challenge it's not one gene one outcome
it's tens hundreds of genes that all
work together to make you a tall or
short as you are or your hair color or
your eye color or your intelligence and
so it's not as simple as one tiny change
and it has a very significant or
specific impact on someone what is the
social cost
something like genetic engineering could
have lead to more inequality it's a
great question I mean I think it's a
fundamental question that comes with all
drugs the cost of drugs obviously is
something that's talked about
extensively in the United States right
now I think one of the arguments that's
frequently put forward by the the drug
development world is the cost it
actually takes to get these new drugs to
market and so you you have that compared
against sort of the social desire to
help cure all of these patients or treat
elevate patients regardless of their
socioeconomic status is a fundamental
challenge for medicine will it create
more inequality absolutely absolutely
good I think that's why we have to be be
very specific and careful important
about like how we're doing research and
who's funding it and how that actually
gets availed to the public so it's not
just like a super class of people that
are really rich being able to modify
themselves for their own benefits it is
definitely a fear that I have I don't
know that I can say that it definitely
will but being the thing that strikes me
is as a possibility in most medical
research it's mostly based on the
majority population and so what if
minority groups are sort of left behind
concerns about accessibility to the
genetic revolution are real but can we
really ignore a way to cure disease
there's so many people there is benefit
to having a genome that is mutable
because without it we wouldn't be here
so we know evolution so we're all
mutants in a way we we are there is no
normal dr. Edelin runs a genetic testing
program for prospective parents at Mount
Sinai Hospital it's a way we currently
screen for genetic disease to minimize
the chance of passing it on to our
children there are roughly 4,000 genes
in the human genome that haven't have
some connection or association to
disease in a genetic test in particular
a carrier screen we're assessing a
person
risk of having a child born with a
genetic disorder so we're testing their
their DNA their genome and looking for
mutations that would cause disease I'm
imagining that you have a room that's
just full of people spit here yeah
visiting room yeah this is the
extraction a lot of the hype with CRISPR
has been around editing human genes and
not everyone thinks we should do that
but the reality is gene editing can help
those with diseases do you think that
carrier screening is a more effective
way to control genetic diseases than
using CRISPR would be at the moment yes
there are very few genetic diseases with
cures at the moment CRISPR really isn't
being used to cure many genetic diseases
but it is imaginable
Crysta is being used to treat patients
with cancer and trials using CRISPR to
correct genetic disorder can't be far
off do you think we'll get to a point
where genetic engineering is widely
accepted where we could use CRISPR in
people I think that if it's going to
cure a disease I can't imagine why it
wouldn't be widely accepted when a lot
of people talk about CRISPR in the media
they also talk about designer babies do
you think it's realistic that something
like CRISPR could be used to design a
baby so I think for designer babies we
need to understand a lot more about the
genome than we do and you know I don't
consider carrier screening designer baby
because you're you're really trying to
avoid genetic disorder in your in in
your offspring but as far as I color
you know athletic ability all of those
things I think that's something for the
future we'll see where society goes with
that if you are having a child and you
could pick out diseases from them like
if you could design your child's genes
and you could say I don't want my child
to have all of these diseases what would
you choose
but I think that's really that's a hard
question I'm so glad you asked the
question that way because that's a
psychologist like our minds are so
different when we're talking in the
abstract versus my kids right we
suddenly become totally selfish when it
comes to my kids and in general I can be
like that idea like we don't want the
whole world living long I want my kids
living long yeah I don't want them to be
sick if I knew that my child was at high
risk for specific diseases and I
probably would want to do that I mean
yes I would take them out to find you
though there I've actually chosen not to
have children but a part of my decision
is the self-knowledge that I wouldn't I
don't think I have what it takes to take
care of a child who would need care for
life because they were disabled in some
way and that's something that can happen
and and if there was a way with genetic
editing to know for sure that that
wasn't going to be an a problem a
concern then maybe that would change my
decisions a child born with a genetic
disease doesn't have exactly think all
your life as others in that case I think
if we can fix it why not that that's the
ultimate cure then the question becomes
how far do we go
eliminating diabetes eliminating obesity
but what about autism and what about
ADHD curing genetic disease in humans is
about removing unwanted mutations but
how far do we go we might all want to
use CRISPR as a fast cheap way of
turning ourselves into superhumans
we discovered genetic superhumans who
accumulate less cholesterol others are
almost diabetes proof and some have
stronger bones they're all due to these
beneficial mutations that you one day
might want to edit into your genes but
this is still reliant on us knowing
where to edit our DNA finding people
with good mutations can show us exactly
where those beneficial genes are that's
a good question there are probably in a
medical research institute at a hospital
normally we would talk about sickness
and disease right but you're a guy who's
all about wellness and so loud in here
yes what a supercomputer sounds like we
believe that medical research has missed
a large segment of really important
people that we feel like a really
interesting study and those are people
who should be sick but somehow they've
escaped here Mount Sinai there's also a
resilience project it's looking for
healthy genetic mutations that people
carry that protect us against disease
and so to find them the first thing that
we can do is go out and just ask people
about what they believe they might match
some pattern of resilience the other way
that we can go is if somebody doesn't
have any evidence that the resilient per
se that we can make start with their
genome and look in their genome for
severe risk factors for disease and then
zoom up to the person and see if they
lack typical signs and symptoms of that
disease to find genetic superhuman this
through the computer turns through
healthy people DNA to find genetic
mutations that protect them against
disease when you identify these genetic
superpowers all these beneficial
mutations did it it's possible that
someone like me could get those edited
into my genome
well I suppose I think I think I sort of
depends on what time scale that you're
talking about I think that there are a
lot of different ways that this
information could ultimately be turned
into new medicines and I think like you
know editing humans is something or
editing their DNA is something there's a
lot of work to do yet around figuring
out whether or not it's safe and what
areas that we can actually have you know
good effects for people if genetics
superpowers a long way off what can you
do right now to drive the genetic
revolution speeding things up may lie in
more democratized science think DIY and
out of a garage like the humble
beginnings of Apple Facebook or uber but
for your genome
so it started when I worked at NASA I
was a scientist at NASA and their
synthetic biology program and I thought
what happens if people at home can start
to contribute to science and what
technology would really get people
excited to start to do genetic design in
their home and I thought wow it's
probably CRISPR allow me so far we've
painted labs and universities and
hospitals around the world where you
might expect to find cutting-edge
science here in the Bay Area we're
visiting a bio hacker in his garage he's
selling CRISPR kids DIY Krista kits for
a couple of hundred dollars one of the
big questions is how do you create
something that's tangible using like
genetic design that people can use so we
thought well what is you know something
that we use or do often that uses some
sort of organism that we can engineer it
the obvious thing is fermentation like
making alcohol what's so special about
the yeast that you have engineered so oh
so the yeast that we use it's just a
normal Burnie so you could buy from any
company online anywhere the cool thing
that our kit allows people to do and
it's our first kit of many this makes
the yeast glow so what you're going to
look for is you're going to see a glow
on there if they're harmful to me
the youth yeah oh no I mean you use like
the green fluorescent protein oh no not
at all it's not that the bacteria and or
anything in any of our kits is hazardous
or could cause harm everything in it is
completely non hazardous can not cause
harm at all when you think about like
the computer revolution and how that
changed everything it wasn't until that
they came into homes and people
personally had them that the computer
revolution like exploded so I think
investing in consumers is kind of what
Spurs
everything you can buy this cutting-edge
kit that allows you to use this
technology and you don't need anything
else
you don't need a PhD and you could do
experiments with CRISPR like that I
think is is really cool and it shows the
direction that the world is like going
in genetic technology genetic designs it
should we try something sugar Detroit
Oh
yeah
there's always a chance that there's
going to be a renegade scientist or
renegade person editing the genetic code
but you know as a species I think we've
got to really be informed as educated so
that we can make good decisions what
happens when we start experimenting with
our genes and we might create these
aesthetic differences will these humans
be seen as different than humans who
don't have those modifications could
that lead to eugenics could that lead to
new divides in humanity I don't know
that stuff is that stuff scary I think
that when you're talking about genetic
modifications like that to yourself you
have to accept that almost nothing is
risk or cost free and there's always a
trade-off and you have to think ahead
and most of us don't really think ahead
it's really hard to plan even for next
year
we've been playing God with our health
from transplanting organs and a lot of
the fears that people had with that what
we're doing over here and sort of get
used to it I think that's one of the
things here about about all of this is
there's a lot of outcry and a lot of
concern and a lot of fear and then we
sort of get used to it we ditch away to
it and I think a very similar thing is
going to happen with altering genomes of
humans
so everything our DNA is technically
possible but it's unwise and untested
clinical trials using CRISPR
are happening right now as knowledge
grows and risk declines the
extraordinary becomes commonplace we are
undeniably in the middle of a genetic
revolution the technology to change us
is already here and well you need to
decide how the rest of the revolution
plays out if we know right now what we
want to improve repair or preserve
having a conversation about editing our
DNA none of our future in a better
direction we're in the process of
improving testing and retesting these
technologies until the line between
science fiction and science facts will
no longer be a question of scientific
limit but a matter of choice would you
like to place an order
