Scope of Genetic Engineering and Ethics Surrounding Gene Editing
Gene Editing today
It might be safe for one to assume that nearly everyone reading this has read or at least heard of the Tintin Comics (although if you haven’t read them, it’s never too late, just saying.) Here’s an interesting trivia: Tintin-Explorers on the moon was published seventeen years before Neil Armstrong historically stepped on the moon. The same goes for the mention of the submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Imagine being alive three centuries ago and being told that human beings in the future will be able to communicate at any time, across any distance by audio-visual modes. It was inconceivable to the layman then. We are at a similar stage with genetic modification and gene editing now. It has reached fiction and to the common man, that is all it is likely to be. In reality, however, genetic engineering has given us many assets for research, medicine, and agriculture. Today, we have highly muscled pigs, fast-growing fish, featherless chickens, see-through frogs (eliminating the need to dissect them to study anatomy), and fish that glow in the dark (because why not?), gene editing used to be expensive, complicated and tedious until the advent of CRISPR. (As much as it sounds like wafer biscuits, it isn’t)
CRISPR| A Revolution
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. To offer an overly simplistic explanation of how CRISPR works, it cuts, pastes, and matches. To elucidate further, consider the following example. CRISPR has long functioned as a bacterial immune system. It defends bacteria from invading viruses. The protein Cas9 has the ability to cut DNA strands. When the virus enters, the Cas protein cuts out a segment of the viral DNA to stitch into the bacterium’s CRISPR region. This is then copied into short pieces of RNA and which binds to Cas9 and forms a complex. This complex searches for a match to the virus. If the virus invades again, the RNA immediately recognizes it and Cas9 destroys it. This can be applied to any cell.
The Potential of CRISPR
It is tough to explain what an epoch-making technology CRISPR is. It has the potential to end almost all maladies and afflictions. Recently, by injecting the virus into rats containing HIV, scientists were able to remove more than fifty percent of the infected cells. In a few decades, CRISPR may be able to cure serious diseases like herpes and cancer. Then there are genetic diseases that can be cured, ranging from slightly bothersome to highly lethal. Combining CRISPR with other therapies, we may be able to stop, slow down, or even reverse aging. It is known that Planarians are immune to aging. Their genes may be borrowed to make this possible, although many are still highly skeptical about this. Engineered humans may be better armed to put up with high-energy food and hence obesity will be eliminated. Humans who can cope with life on another planet can also be engineered!
How Far Can We Go?
However, modified humans can affect the genome of our entire species. The first designer babies will be modified to correct a disorder. As technology advances people may claim that not using genetic modification is unethical because it practically sentences children to ailments. Gradually, the urge will grow. If you can cure some disease in your child, why not throw in superlatively good looks, extreme mental capability, impermeable immunity, and purple eyes? CRISPR is overwhelmingly effective but not totally unerring. There can be wrong edits, errors, and unwelcome changes that are very likely to be triggered accidentally. And there are also some ethical aspects that cast doubt on CRISPR and its utility. The world may become a place where we reject flaws and pick out and preselect features based on our idea of perfect health. In Europe, about 92% of pregnancies with Down syndrome are terminated. Abortion is a highly personal decision but it is necessary to note that we are preselecting humans based on medical conditions already. Besides, what would stop any dictatorship from engineering a battalion of customized soldiers? This is still far off into the future but it surely is imminent as it is doable in theory. That however is no reason to stop research. Research should be regulated by cautiousness, reason, and supervision. So the question is, had we been born in the future that lies ahead of us, would we have been allowed to exist? Are we mature enough to handle all the exciting possibilities? It is all in our hands… or rather, our genome.
