
CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time - artsandsci
https://qz.com/929773/crispr-has-been-used-to-genetically-modify-viable-human-embryos-for-the-first-time/
======
baldfat
We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't
write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the
difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger.

Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes.
How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to
perform. We could do artificial semination and guarantee the gender of your
child.

Here is a decent general article on the pros and cons.

[http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/08/human-
gen...](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/08/human-gene-editing-
pro-con-opinions/)

~~~
lawless123
We ethically should.

~~~
hesdeadjim
Agreed 100%.

Why assume it's going to lead to some dystopian future when technological
progress has shown that advances like this come down in cost immensely over
time. Even an insurance system would want in on subsidizing these procedures
if it meant an upfront cost versus long term or lifelong expensive treatments.

Edit: Why even assume it would be an insurance subsidy -- the government has a
strong motivation to reduce health care costs for >= 65 year-olds and if you
could eliminate or reduce costs through early genetic engineering the argument
can be made that the government itself should subsidize as a public health
initiative.

~~~
mikeash
Just look at the past. Remember when doctors and scientists came up with ways
to prevent polio, smallpox, measles, etc. and the result was just that rich
kids enjoy immunity while the poor suffer?

Wait a minute....

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0xbadf00d
I would agree that this is a significant milestone - however I would have
thought that there's still a large amount of randomness in protein expression
meaning you would still be painting in "broad strokes" as opposed to granular
detail of traits.

~~~
sfeng
I don't really know what you mean. Genes encode to proteins, if a disorder is
genetic it generally means one or more genes are incorrect, encoding to the
wrong proteins. If genetic expression was significantly random, how would we
identify genetic disorders to begin with? How would they be hereditary?

~~~
badosu
Well, broadly speaking, the idea is that there may be a subtle underlying
mechanism in gene expression that we are unaware of.

So maybe you'll be able to remove a gene that could cause albinism in an
individual, then 25 years later discover that the individual has become
sterile.

It may seem otherwise but we still know very little on how a set of genes
encodes information of how an organism will develop.

~~~
sfeng
While I'm sure some variant of that will occur at some point, many genetic
disorders are relatively simple and well understood. Even if we are still
learning, there are dozens of disorders we could eliminate if we had robust
genetic editing capability with pretty good odds of success.

~~~
badosu
"... many genetic disorders are relatively simple and well understood."

Are they, really?

As far as I know (and I am not a specialist, so someone more qualified may
correct me), gene transcription and translation is far from well understood.

It's as if we don't have access to the source code for the compiler, only the
machine code and the syntax. You can draw correlations and infer causality
from your changes, but you can't really be sure.

~~~
jfarlow
Yep. As was in the news a couple of days ago, sickle cell disease can be
effectively 'cured' by installing an updated Hemoglobin protein [1]. (Some)
Breast cancer associated genes have pretty well understood issues that can be
effectively remedied with gene therapies [2]. And mutations in and around the
oncogene P53 have pretty well understood effects - all the way through public
policy with regards to HPV vaccination [3].

Adding single proteins and flipping single genetic bits in single cell types
in single organs is not the kind of thing that generally causes cascade
failures. There are always exceptions, but in general biology is pretty robust
to such changes. In fact, those are _exactly_ the kinds of changes that occur
from generation to generation. And these are precisely the kinds of systems
that have been under deep study for the past four or five decades.

[1]
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/hbb/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/hbb/)
[2]
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/brca1/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/brca1/)
[3]
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/p53/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/p53/)

------
tombert
These things fascinate me, and it makes me wonder how close we are to the
Gattaca-esque ethical debate.

All the same, the fact that we're close to gene editing feels like something
our of a SciFi book, and I think that's pretty cool.

~~~
benmcnelly
Yeah, its reminding me more of the ones with bad ending though.

~~~
mason240
Sci-fi with a happy, conflict free world is pretty boring though.

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timdeneau
Radiolab did an episode about CRISPR recently, for anyone interested in
learning more about CRISPR in general: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-
crispr/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-crispr/)

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jbreckmckye
If there's one thing a species like ours needs - with our exposure to so many
disease vectors and with so many ways to spread epidemics so quickly - it's
definitely not less genetic diversity.

~~~
itchyjunk
But is diseases really the type of diversity we want though? Some mutation
that is generally bad does turn out to be good in some cases [1] but I am
still not 100% convinced that the disease causing mutations is diversity that
needs to be preserved.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499995/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499995/)

~~~
jbreckmckye
Sickle-cell anaemia is the ur-example. There will no doubt be others we
haven't discovered yet.

~~~
itchyjunk
Right, even if there are many, would you be able to justify keeping sickle
cell? There was even a recent post on HN about it (thought I can't find the
same link here's a jist [1]).

People will probably benefit from some type of cure as opposed to trying to
save mutation that causes extreme discomfort (maybe death). I totally agree
with importance of variety but i think it's equally important to understand
and revert some of these unwanted mutations.

[1][http://www.acsh.org/news/2017/03/07/did-gene-therapy-cure-
si...](http://www.acsh.org/news/2017/03/07/did-gene-therapy-cure-sickle-cell-
disease-10950)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Right, even if there are many, would you be able to justify keeping sickle
> cell?

Would you be able to justify eliminating genetic malaria resistance? It's the
_same_ allele, of course, heterozygotes get the benefit, homozygotes get the
disease.

OTOH, if you can do in vivo editing with appropriate testing, maybe you only
edit embryos that would otherwise have the disease, which may marginally
reduce the distribution of the allele (in a first order analysis; but if it
makes know carriers less unattractive as mates, it might actually increase the
distribution), but doesn't eliminate it.

There are lots of issues like this, and overzealous editing could eliminate
beneficial traits whose genetic origins we don't understand as side effects of
targeting undesirable traits.

------
caustiko
There are first of all the obvious worries about the impact of genetic
engineering. But worse than that is the method described on Radiolab where the
genetic changes produce more instances of CRISPR itself so it passes along
from generation to generation. But worse than that is the idea of CRISPR being
airborne such that it can infect and change all of our genetics. Or the
genetics of only some particular targeted subset of the population.

~~~
Para2016
That sort of sounds like a familial prion disease but really - I don't see
that as a legit concern. The enzyme is already present in Strep pyogenes which
is practically ubiquitous. A lot of us have that same bacteria colonized in
our throats.

I never used CRISPR when I worked in a molecular lab, just a TOL2 system which
was pretty cool in its own right. But CRISPR needs a DNA probe (probes are
attached to CRISPR to target very specific sequences of DNA for editing) and a
way to deliver itself into the cell. I didn't read the paper myself, but I'm
guessing they just do a little microinjection of CRISPR into the embryo.

And these gene edits for various hemoglobinopathies (G6PD and thalassemia),
while impressive, are very simple. These are very specific mutations that when
fixed, should yield a normal/working protein and a healthy phenotype.

~~~
caustiko
Thanks for replying. I'm a layman in this field, so I'm not quite sure about
how to parse your response. But wanted to make sure you were aware of the
existence of Gene Drive. To me it seems dangerous, but I'd love to hear
thoughts from someone more educated in the topic:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Gene_drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Gene_drive)

This is the point where my thought process forked off into wondering about the
implications if the capabilities of Gene Drive could somehow become airborne.

~~~
Para2016
Gene Drive with CRISPR is pretty neat, thanks for sharing, I honestly haven't
worked with molecular techniques in over 4 years now, so it's been quite a
while since I've reviewed a lot of this kind of stuff. From the gene drive
wiki, this is one of my favorite lines:

"Endonuclease gene drives work by cutting chromosomes that do not encode the
drive at a specific site, inducing the cell to repair the damage by copying
the drive sequence onto the damaged chromosome. This is derived from genome
editing techniques and similarly relies on the fact that double strand breaks
are most frequently repaired by homologous recombination if a template is
present, and less often by non-homologous end joining. The cell then has two
copies of the drive sequence."

So that is pretty sweet. The researcher just hijacked the cell's repair
mechanism in order to ensure the gene is present in both chromosome copies
(I'm assuming the human 2n chromosomes here). That mean's all sexual progeny
(zygote) will have to inherit one of these copies - and once that happens the
single copy can duplicate itself by breaking the chromosome received from the
other mating partner and then replicating the gene/drive via homologous
repair.

If you want to say it could be dangerous then yea, I'll agree with you. It
would obviously depend on the gene you would include with the gene drive (the
gene drive I'm assuming is just the homing endonuclease and RNA guide sequence
used to target the drive-less chromosome). If a deleterious gene somehow
managed to attach itself to the drive system - either artificially or randomly
acquiring the sequence in vivo, then that person may have permanently ruined
their chances for normal offspring.

As far as an "airborne" vector with the gene drive/and bad gene someone wanted
to be propagated, that would be a lot harder I think. I believe you would need
the vector to be a virus, so it could gain access to the host's cells and DNA.
So you would need a pretty high powered lab working extensively to make an
infectious but not virulent virus - with the gene drive and harmful gene it
carries. Those labs would be highly regulated and controlled bio weapons
facilities. So yea, it could be dangerous.

Or it could be fantastic and something like this could be used to cure all of
sickle cell disease by coding for a normal beta hemoglobin gene. Sickle cell
only occurs from a single amino acid change, it's not a super complicated
genetic disease. It's just one amino acid change that causes red blood cell
sickling shape and fragility - which leads to a lot of pain and eventual early
demise. There are other genetic diseases that are very simple that could be
cured as well.

Anyways, sorry for the late response. I think there is potential to do a lot
of good and a lot of harm with this technology. Let's hope we keep it in the
right hands.

------
jlebrech
there's no ethical issue, it's just Vaccination 2.0

~~~
goatlover
The real ethical concerns are what lies beyond just removing nasty inheritable
diseases, which is the possibility for designer babies. But also the
possibility for weaponizing CRISPR, either to create nasty viruses, or make a
gene editing weapon. But beyond all that, it's the worry that a few people get
to make a decision that will impact the genes of future generations. And with
a gene drive, you could guarantee that all descendants would have the desired
modification.

~~~
mikeash
I have to imagine that CRISPR will be weaponized regardless of what the
civilian world decides to do with it. When it happens, we'll be better off if
we have as much experience with it as possible.

------
creaghpatr
Strikes me as equal parts awesome and terrifying.

------
gwern
Fulltext: "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human zygotes using Cas9
protein" Tang et al 2017
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/7pbn0ueet0a1r8d/2017-tang.pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/7pbn0ueet0a1r8d/2017-tang.pdf)

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influnza
We are terrified, because we don't know, how to handle it yet. This should not
stop us, the humanity. Our descendants will figure it out. There is no
progress, if we are afraid of mistakes. The real problem is when we don't
learn. Gattaca is a good example, what we should avoid.

~~~
sfeng
FYI: I don't know if English is your first language but you are using commas
excessively. All the commas in the first four sentences should be removed and
the final comma should be 'of'.

EDIT: Also, the second sentence should be "This should not stop us
(humanity)."

~~~
iklos55
FYI: I don't know about your language skills in general but
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commata#English](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commata#English).
Point I want to make: Please stop correcting so many people in general on HN.

Edit: Yes, this was not a perfectly warranted criticism. Yes, I may come off
as smug. It's my opinion that needing perfect english should not be a
requirement to have a conversation about tech in general.

I often get the feeling that in an academic setting every native English
speaker assumes that everyone needs to be perfectly conversational in his
English but when asked which other languages they even tried to learn you
often learn that the English native hasn't put considerable amount into
learning something else. Again, did not want to offend anyone.

I personally do not get offended, I like to learn. Still, I often experience
corrections by an English native which are simply not called for.

~~~
tomdell
He gave a helpful pointer on comma use, and you wrote a smug and incorrect
response. Congrats.

