The ethics of creating GMO humans
By Editorial Board,
Los Angeles Times
| 08. 03. 2017
In a process that can be likened to the creation of GMO crops, scientists have edited genes in human embryos in order to eliminate a mutation that causes thickening of the heart wall. The embryos were created solely for the scientists’ study and will not be implanted. Nonetheless, the research offers hope that in years ahead, science could prevent many serious genetic diseases at the stage in which people are a microscopic cluster of cells in a petri dish. What’s more, because those edited genes would be carried forth into new generations, the disease might eventually be eliminated altogether.
Is this a glorious new frontier or a troubling situation? Unequivocally, the answer is yes to both.
The research results by an international team of U.S., Chinese and South Korean scientists were enormously exciting medically. Beyond the technical achievement involved, the team’s work hastened the arrival of a revolutionary form of treatment: removing genes that can lead inexorably to suffering and premature death.
But there is also a great deal we still don’t know about how minor issues might become major...
Related Articles
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Isabelle Bartram
| 07.17.2024
Image by Kuzzat Altay from Unsplash
Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in China, are mainly located in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government has pursued an aggressive settlement policy in this region since 1949, with the percentage of Han Chinese in the region increasing from five to forty percent in the second half of the 20th century. Since 2014, the Uyghurs have been subject to persecution and re-education – various sources have estimated that at least one million...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
