He did it!! Or did He?

A most beautiful baby

Made the old fashioned way

As we witty little smart-alecks used to say back in junior high school, a big, soft wad of it is about to hit the fan!

Designer babies!  The very thought frightens most of us, and puzzles the rest.  You all are aware of the potential for using “edited” genes to combat disease, especially cancer.  These alterations are applied to “somatic” cells, often using the CRISPR cas9 technology, about which I have written many times.  This use of DNA-modification raises no ethical problems; no potential human life is sacrificed by editing somatic cells, and any such changes cannot be passed on to the next generation.

You also are aware of the ethical battles surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells for any purpose other than to produce babies.  Such “pluripotent” cells have the capacity to turn into anything the body requires.  However, their main biological “purpose” is to turn into a human being.  Thus, some say, sacrificing a stem cell for anything else is tantamount to murder.  Many conferences have been devoted to the ethics of this sort of thing, and emotions run high.  Fortunately it now is possible to chemically coax a mature cell back to its pluripotent state, so with luck it may be possible to leave the embryonic type alone.

It is possible, however, to “edit” the DNA of an embryonic cell – and such an editing job can be inherited.  Therein rests big ethical questions, because editing heritable DNA is the road to designer babies.

In the United States experimenting on this subject is almost universally condemned – and moreover, illegal.  Not so, it appears, in China.

In a southern Chinese technical center, a researcher (they call him He) claims to have successfully added a gene to embryonic DNA that will protect against HIV.  He has yet to publish his results properly, so some skepticism exists.  His method involves processes done in vitro and thus is neither simple nor swift.  However, He says, healthy twin girls have been born with their modified DNA safely aboard.  They, and their descendants, will be resistant to HIV.

By the way, Dr. He was educated at Rice and Stanford.  He is no Chinese witch doctor prescribing ground rhino horn for erectile dysfunction.  Still, great doubt abounds, and all await the definitive publication.  Then, assuming He really did it, an ethical shit-storm inevitably will arise.  I will wait until then to wade into that particular fetid swamp.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-in-china-claim-first-gene-edited-babies_us_5bfbfe6fe4b0eb6d93116196