World is not ready to edit genes of human embryos
- China and beyond need to learn a serious lesson from sorry episode involving biophysicist He Jiankui, who attempted and failed to make twins HIV resistant
Even worse, the gene edits using a powerful method called CRISPR carried out by He and his team may have caused genetic damage, whose ultimate effects on the health of the twins as they grow up are unknown and unpredictable. He had let his personal ambition to “control the HIV epidemic” to blind him and to breach every scientific and ethical consideration.
China’s gene-edited baby scandal hasn’t stopped the technology’s progress
What is most absurd about the case is that there are far safer and cost-effective methods to give birth to the twins while protecting them from being infected by HIV. In other words, at best, He’s experiment could potentially protect them from infection in later life. However, simple birth control may be far more effective and cheaper.
He has been fired from his job and faces serious legal consequences, including jail. But the case goes beyond He. First, the welfare of the twins and their parents need to be provided for by the state as they grow up. The genetic dangers to which they have been exposed need to be closely studied and monitored.
China and the world need to learn a serious lesson from this sorry episode. The most transparent and stringent regulations and monitoring must be put in place to protect people who legally consent to such genetic experiments. Experts all agree that gene editing has great potential for major medical and treatment breakthroughs. But their effects in causing mutations can have unintended and unknown consequences. Some mutations can pass on through generations, though their effects often peter out.
Where the risks far outweigh the benefits, such experiments should be discouraged except in the most desperate of cases, subject to full disclosure and transparency, and ethical considerations.
