I think we cannot stop this. The train has left the station. we should allow and regulate then track the genetically modified people through their life and their offspring. We will never gain control now the science is ahead of policy. If Russia can do it.... we should regulate rather than prevent.
What do you think?
The next society that wants a master race... will do very well with this technology. Breed some super soldiers and Einsteins.
Should we support regulated research for the good of humanity or should we prevent it because we are fearful of the result?
What should governments do now the gene is out of the bottle and cannot be put back?
Human embryos genetically altered for the first time
Human embryos have been genetically modified for the first time, leading to the prospect of designer babies, according to a leading scientific journal.
Scientists speaking anonymously to Nature have said that several laboratories have altered the DNA of human embryos, with the results of their work now awaiting publication. Although illegal in much of the world, such techniques would not break the law everywhere, being allowed in Russia and parts of South America.
Alterations to individual human genomes have the potential to revolutionise medical care, enabling genetic diseases to be prevented and significantly lessening the risk of others that are partially genetic, such as some forms of breast cancer.
However, the technique also involves tampering with what most scientists view as the code that affects our fundamental nature — the very essence of what it means to be human. This could theoretically enable people to try to make changes to people’s personalities, such as improving intelligence or physique, with unpredictable results that would persist across generations.
So concerned is a group of eminent scientists, that they have called for a moratorium on all such research, saying that it is “dangerous and ethically unacceptable”. But others say that it is probably already too late.
“I have been expecting this, perhaps not quite so soon,” said Professor John Parrington, from Oxford University.
“New genome-editing tools are highly efficient and relatively easy to use. These are tools available to practically any molecular biology laboratory in the world and if you also have the ability to inject a fertilised egg, then combining these two technologies makes it possible to precisely modify the genome of the resulting embryo.
“This makes it feasible for any reasonably skilled lab to use and science being what it is, people will seek to apply these technologies,” said professor Parrington, author of The Deeper Genome. “Clearly some people have done it on human embryos.”
At present any embryos who have their germ line altered in this way would almost certainly have been destroyed, but even so, the application of such editing techniques to a human embryo worries many scientists.
A group of researchers including Edward Lanphier, chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Washington, said that for ethical, safety and scientific reasons, all such work must now stop.
“Philosophically or ethically justifiable applications for this technology — should any ever exist — are moot until it becomes possible to demonstrate safe outcomes and obtain reproducible data over multiple generations,” they said.
“Many oppose germline modification on the grounds that permitting even unambiguously therapeutic interventions could start us down a path towards non-therapeutic genetic enhancement. We share these concerns.”
Editing the genome of an embryo’s nucleus differs significantly from mitochondrial donation, a controversial procedure that was recently approved by the House of Commons — making Britain the first country to legalise it.
That technique involves altering the DNA of mitochondria, the cell’s energy packs. Mitochondrial DNA is believed to be completely distinct from the nuclear DNA that determines our individual characteristics.
Professor Tetsuya Ishii, a bioethicist at Hokkaido University, described this week’s news as “very worrisome”. He has conducted a review of global regulations and found that out of 39 of the top scientific nations, ten did not have guidelines that banned the practice. This included the US, where laboratories are able to apply for a licence.
Cracking the code
The progress made in editing genetic material lies in the way that bacteria defend themselves from infection.
In the 1980s biologists noticed a strange set of repeating patterns in some bacterial DNA, but did not know why this occured.
When a virus attacks an organism, it can integrate its genetic material into a cell’s genome. Now it has been realised that the bacteria use the repeating sections on their genome to target the viral DNA and remove it.
Scientists have appropriated the protein that does this and found that it can be used to target any DNA sequence in any genome. Even more excitingly, it has been shown that not only can it remove DNA segments but it can also change a gene’s character.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/a ... 381749.ece
