The target resistance was found to be HIV -: a few weeks Ago, the first artificially genetically modified people came to the world. Scientists around the world to outlaw the breaking of a taboo with all the consequence, says Fabian Schmidt.
To see only under the microscope: Manipulation with the CRISP/Cas9-process on Embryo – here is a Zebra fish
The assertion of the researcher, He Jiankui, he had generated with the CRISPR/Cas9 transgenic Embryos by artificial insemination, the mother planted, and the twins were born, sounds about as credible as creepy.
Has underpinned Hey you two documents: an application to the ethics Committee of the orchestra care women’s clinic, where he allegedly carried out the insemination, and an information sheet for the affected patient, in which he describes the process exactly.
Whether these documents are real or not, and whether the ethics Committee has actually given his consent, is now to clarify an inquiry. The hospital first denied that the fertilisation and birth have taken place there.
More: ECJ judgment: Is CRISPR/Cas9 “genetic engineering”?
DW-science editor Fabian Schmidt
The case makes all the alarm bells are ringing!
No matter what is found at the end of The case shows the urgent doctors and biologists around the world must agree on binding Standards and ban mechanisms, so that such experiments will never take place or never again. Not least, the tough penalties for all must include the physician, the do something or take responsibility for it. And research institutions around the world should put the cooperation with universities and hospitals on the ice, make them guilty.
The arguments are obvious. First of all, the fundamental ethical signal is: man should not play God. We really want that in the future, Designer babies to the world, whose properties are the latest fashions? We want a society in which it’s like in Aldous Huxley’s “brave new world” according to the needs of produced people for different tasks – possibly differentiated by social classes? This is good-bye to the principle of the equality of all people? And what is our relationship to sick people? We will consider you in the future as a failure of medicine? The worst memories of the crime in the first half of the 20th century. Century awakening at the thought!
More: Ernst-Jung-prize for microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier
Do not follow predictable
Not less difficult to the medical arguments weigh in: An intervention in the human germ line can have unpredictable consequences, even generations after the birth of a child. Just this year, it was found that in the case of CRISPR/Cas9 applications always also unwanted mutations. Who will take responsibility, if after three generations – about 60 years – turns out that children are born with a severe hereditary disease?
Last but not least, the use of CRISPR/Cas9 for such purposes is also completely unnecessary. Against the HIV Virus there is very effective antiretroviral drugs that prevent if applied consistently – even that of newborns from their parents are infected. And also later in the life of AIDS do not need to be: to breed, Instead of HIV-resistant babies, should invest the world community prefer to be in Safer Sex education.
And how it looks with other dangerous hereditary diseases? Here, too, CRISPR/Cas9 can be the solution. If a genetically want to bring preloaded Pair to a child without a genetic disease to the world, it’s always artificial insemination. Perhaps the genetic material of the child is not then necessarily of two biological parents – but we are not as reason people are not emancipated enough that we can agree on something with our self-esteem? After all, a child of a foreign cell donor is still better than one that comes after an intervention in the germ line damaged, perhaps to the world.