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Medicine United States Science

US Scientist Who Edited Human Embryos With CRISPR Responds To Critics (technologyreview.com) 131

Posted by msmash from the tough-discussions dept.
Facing criticism from fellow scientists, the researcher behind the world's largest effort to edit human embryos with CRISPR is vowing to continue his efforts to develop what he calls "IVF gene therapy." MIT Technology Review: Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, drew global headlines last August when he reported successfully repairing a genetic mutation in dozens of human embryos, which were later destroyed as part of the experiment. The laboratory findings on early-stage embryos, he said, had brought the eventual birth of the first genetically modified humans "much closer" to reality. The breakthrough drew wide attention, including from critics who quickly pounced, calling it biologically implausible and potentially the result of careless errors and artifacts. Today, those critics are getting an unusual hearing in the journal Nature, which is publishing two critiques of the Oregon research as well as a lengthy reply from Mitalipov and 31 of his coworkers in South Korea, China, and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The scientific sparring centers on CRISPR's well-known tendency to introduce unseen damage into a cell's DNA.

[...] Mitalipov remains intent on proving that CRISPR can work safely on embryos. In an interview, Mitalipov said he believes it will take five to 10 years before the process is ready to attempt in an IVF center. The revolutionary medical technology being pursued is a way to adjust an embryo's DNA to remove disease risks. It is sometimes called germline gene editing because any DNA fixes a baby is born with would then be passed down to future generations through that person's germ cells, the egg or sperm. For its initial research, the Oregon team recruited women around Portland and paid them $5,000 each to undergo an egg retrieval. With those eggs the team created more than 160 embryos for CRISPR experiments. Mitalipov said his Oregon center continues to obtain eggs in an ongoing effort to confirm his results and extend them in new directions.
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US Scientist Who Edited Human Embryos With CRISPR Responds To Critics More

US Scientist Who Edited Human Embryos With CRISPR Responds To Critics

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  • I have an announcement to make as well (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, 2018 @02:48PM (#57098014)

    Gentlemen, I give you Khaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!

    • Re:I have an announcement to make as well (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Thursday August 09, 2018 @02:57PM (#57098056) Homepage Journal

      Doctor Victor Frankenstein Addresses Panicked Slovenian Village

      "Listen to me! My creation is to better understand life itself."

      • And what's bad in this type of research?

        Besides, it will be done by bad guys in China (US can't find their ass with both hands these days, Russia prefers different methods). Thus, the rational response is to have good guys do such research in the open, not to demonize it. Just think of resistance to diseases, heightened intelligence, curing genetic defects, etc. Designer babies for cosmetic or bizarre reasons will still happen, and even there you want them to be done in a place that at least has some sup

        • I think the fear is that you'll screw something up and produce a human with severe defects. There's also the fear that you won't notice the problem until several generations later. Neither one of these problems is new, so I don't really get all the hand wringing. We still allow humans with genetic defects to breed.

          People being afraid of the future and thinking they can stop progress is nothing new. Human reproductive cloning is going to happen. Accept it and move on from there.

        • And what's bad in this type of research?

          Think "Revers" from Firefly.

          Or think of the Clans from Battletech.

          There are always unpredictable unknown consequences and dangers even with every precaution taken because one cannot know fully which/what precautions to take in advance regarding unpredicted and unexpected results. This is especially true if the nation's leadership in which the work is done prioritizes results over an abundance of caution. Think of N. Korea's Un, Russia's Putin, or China's Xi with an army of genetically-enhanced super-soldier

      • Frankenstein lived in Switzerland - on the shores of Lake Geneva, if I remember rightly.

        It's a good book - well worth reading. Better than the movies.

    • I was just in a business meeting which had a spreadsheet to assign people roles- and some guy named Khan was listed at the top. It took every bit of willpower not to yell "Khaaaaaaaannnnnn!" in the meeting.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        I used to work with a guy whose surname was Khan. He was aware of the film but hadn't seen it. I used to quote lines from the film that people said to Khan to him. He'd look confused, then realise it was just trekkie shit.

  • Playing in the control room of a nuclear reactor.
    "Gee wiz buddy, what do you think I could jump off that blue thing with all the lights and grab that lever up on the wall".

    Literally no one has any idea what the long term effect of this kind of thing is going to be.

    • Literally no one has any idea what the long term effect of this kind of thing is going to be.

      Kinda like them splicing jellyfish DNA into our food source vegetation, eh?

    • ... though you are the child, and your post is like a five year old evaluating what Daddy is doing in the control room...

      Where do you get off proclaiming careful genetic manipulation is being done without understanding or thought?

      Your post is just another example of fearful luddites refusing to take advantage of what is possible, in part because they cannot understand it themselves and proclaim no-one else possibly could.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Where do you get off proclaiming careful genetic manipulation is being done without understanding or thought?

        Manipulation of embryos at this stage is necessarily done without adequate understanding or thought. Too new to use on humans.

        • Too new to use on humans.

          They guy in the article doing the work agrees with this point, which is why he says it's ten years out before using on humans.

          This work is on embryos only, or did you miss that????

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            This work is on embryos only, or did you miss that????

            They weren't catfish embryos.

        • You don't have to know everything to do repairs. Do you know how to build a video card? Probably not. Of course, it's pretty easy to replace a known bad video card with a known good one despite that lack of in depth knowledge. Of course you could just assume that since you don't have the level of knowledge to build your own video card you should leave it alone, despite the fact that experience has shown us that a smoking video card eventually bursts into flames and destroys the entire computer long before i

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Tinkering with the genome is not akin to sapping a video card, but to rebuilding one while it's running. Pure trial and error is a fine approach, if the cost of errors is low, but we don't even begin to understand what we're doing. We don't even really understand protein folding. Thinking we could predict the unintended side effects of genetic alteration is nonsense - today we're stuck with tinkering and observing the consequences.

    • Literally no one has any idea what the long term effect of this kind of thing is going to be.

      No, there are a lot of people who have some idea of what this sort of tinkering will do. We call them geneticists, and they generally don't advocate tinkering around with human DNA on ethical grounds.

      The specific effects are.... a lot like mutations. Mostly bad. Sometimes good. Sometimes even then there's bad side effects. Anything you put in a gam

      If you want to know more about the current state of just what we know "Herding Hemingway's Cats" is a decent read. Thick, but insightful. I think it's a good r

    • Well we sure as heck know the misery and death those genetic based diseases will cause, so I'd rather risk a new programming error to fix an obvious show stopper than to let the damn thing slip through QA & Testing.

    • Literally no one has any idea what the long term effect of this kind of thing is going to be.

      And how is that any different from normal breeding? Two healthy adults can produce a less than healthy child.

      Children are born all the time with genetic defects. Some defects with minor impacts might go undetected for many generations. So what's the difference between a "natural" defect and one that occurs due to intentional genetic engineering? Besides, if we find a problem six generations down the line can't we just correct it then?

  • The breakthrough

    You mean.... a guy doing something that's been done before but to a target no one else has used due to ethical concerns.

    Unless there was some reason to believe CISPR wouldn't have worked on human DNA, this isn't a scientific breakthrough. At best it's a social one. Or possibly an ethical one, right through the floor.

    Personally though, Bring on GATTAGA and super-babies. It will make us better. And worse, but mostly better.

    What's the alternative? This isn't something you can stop, you can do it in a garage

    • Bring on GATTAGA and super-babies. It will make us better. And worse, but mostly better.

      It will bring on elitism in a form and magnitude the world has never seen before. It might be good for the individual, but for society it's a terrible mistake.

      • No, I'm pretty sure nobility was a thing. "High born". We've been here before. Most of them didn't get their heads chopped off.

        Yeah, it'll cause some social issues. It'll make that worse. But it will make a whole host of people better. It will cure illnesses. It will let the lame walk and the blind see. It will push the edges of what humans are capable of. It will do more good than harm. And it might not be restricted to only the billionaires' babies. It might be common. Imagine if every baby born in Africa

        • Well, considering we know how to vaccinate against malaria NOW (not to mention mosquito eradication) and it's not being done...

          Clearly that means that a procedure that's under patent, more technically advanced, not to mention expensive -- will somehow be employed in the areas of the world that need it the most? (and coincidentally are the poorest places on earth?)

          No, I've gotta go wtih my gut that this kind of technology will be limited to the 1% for the foreseeable future.

          • Well, considering we know how to vaccinate against malaria NOW (not to mention mosquito eradication) and it's not being done...

            Um, not according to the CDC, at https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/ma... [cdc.gov]

            "Although progress has been made in the last 10 years toward developing malaria vaccines, there is currently no effective malaria vaccine on the market."

            While that page was from 2015, there's still no vaccine.

      • It will bring on elitism in a form and magnitude the world has never seen before. It might be good for the individual, but for society it's a terrible mistake.

        There's nothing "elitist" about you not inheriting a horrible genetic disease that has run in your family. You will in that one particular respect, the one you had a gene edited for, just like everyone else.

        When we get to the point of improving on the existing normal, you can more honestly claim elitism. But once we do get to that point, the enhancements people will worry most about will be exactly the ones everyone wants to have.

  • An important point to keep in mind... (Score:5, Informative)

    by morethanapapercert ( 749527 ) on Thursday August 09, 2018 @03:49PM (#57098334) Homepage
    From the summary (this being Slashdot, I can't be bothered to actually read TFA), the criticism is all based on the researchers methodology and statistical rigour when analysing the resultant data. Not the ethics or morality of such experiments. For the record, I have no ethical problem with experiments of this nature, provided the embryos are terminated before a certain point in their development. In my opinion, that is before the sixth week, so that the spinal cord and brain haven't properly developed yet. In my opinion, it is our brains that make us human and until the developing collection of cells has developed a brain complex enough to react to stimuli, it isn't a human being.

    That being the case, I think this is crucial research with enormous potential for good (as with any new tech, balanced by potential for harm). One of my children has a severe genetic defect, once that confines him to a wheelchair and will condemn him to a slow, lingering death sometime in his twenties. CRISPR is the leading candidate for treating his condition, but the odds are that it won't be ready for clinical use in time to save his life. His defect can already be detected in vivo and fixing it in in vitro is an important step before treating embryos in vivo that are intended to be brought to term. Saying we're five years away from clinical use of this technology and technique is the same as saying we are five years away from eliminating a whole host of crippling genetic defects.

    I do understand and share the concerns about designer babies, eugenics and unknown long term effects of such medically unnecessary tinkering. But given the parsimonious approach the medical profession has to using new techniques, I think we'll see a well established track record of treating birth defects long before the industry embraces those techniques for selecting desirable traits.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In my opinion, that is before the sixth week, so that the spinal cord and brain haven't properly developed yet. In my opinion, it is our brains that make us human and until the developing collection of cells has developed a brain complex enough to react to stimuli, it isn't a human being.

      Its a rationalization for you to believe there is such a thing as "living human" if a fetus manages to survive a certain number of weeks before "birth delivery". There's no way to prove a fetus is "human" after X weeks. Society can only make an arbitrary legal distinction when a fetus is "human life". Frankly, the only reasonable, workable, legal definition for "human baby" is when it can be birthed from its host mother and sustain its autonomic functions (breathing, circulation) without medical interven

      • They're a lot more human by age 3 when they start talking. Before that they're mostly pooping footballs that you don't want to drop.

  • We Are So Perfect (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jim Sadler ( 3430529 ) on Thursday August 09, 2018 @03:59PM (#57098394)
    Considering the mess that most people are already just why would anyone not want the species to be altered? When you read our history books what you see is war, invasions, thefts. rapes and all manner of crime and depravity. And now we have a scientists that hopes to make a few adjustments.
    • I'm very conservative, if not precautionary about the intentional genetic alteration of humans precisely for the reason you apparently find it so appealing. (Unless you're trolling or joking, not sure about that.) Serious medical reasons make sense to me but political and moral opinions and world views are the pretty much the worst reasons I could imagine for fundamentally altering human DNA.

    • Considering the mess that most people are already just why would anyone not want the species to be altered? When you read our history books what you see is war, invasions, thefts. rapes and all manner of crime and depravity. And now we have a scientists that hopes to make a few adjustments.

      What's more, many of great accomplishments came at a massive cost in lives. The ancient civilizations that set ventured onto the Mediterranean from Egypt, Carthage, Greece and Rome sent many sailors to their deaths. This

    • because the society you then create is much worse than the one you are running away from. Weeding people out genetically has basically never gone over well...

      Ref, as always, black mirror did it. men against fire [imdb.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are two main objections.

      1. This will only be available to the wealthy, whose children already have a huge advantage in life and are now going to be super healthy, super intelligent and maybe even super sociopathic.

      2. Do we trust this guy to get it right? Making edits to someone who potentially has to live with them for 80+ years is something you do very carefully and with a great deal of oversight.

  • Lets be honest here (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday August 09, 2018 @04:14PM (#57098462)
    since we can genetically modify DNA someone/corporation/entity/group/government will do it. Like AI, Robotics, etc Genetic modifications will be done. We all need to accept that.
    It is also true no one has any idea where this will all go. And what the unforeseen consequences might be.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • Me bad
      "since we can genetically modify DNA"
      should have been
      "since we can modify DNA"
    • Not only will it be done, it has to be done so there would be any hope of surviving as a species long term. Simple matter is, that as great as modern medicine is, it's also royally mucking up our collective gene pool. Take premature babies for example, in a normal course of things any genetic traits that cause premature birth would be instantly removed from gene pool. Modern medicine saves these lives, but as a downside these genetic defects get passed on. As a species we are collecting genetic defects like

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 10, 2018 @03:16AM (#57100506)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • CRISPR human beings may not get soggy in milk as fast!

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