MIT Tech Review: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies

[No Excuses]

 

Quote

 

When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present.

 

It was the invention of a powerful gene editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.

 

Now, it appears it may have already happened.

 

According to Chinese medical documents posted online this month (here and here), a team at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, has been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first gene-edited babies. They planned to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in order to render the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera.

 

 

This day was inevitable but WOW. What a moment in human history. The first gene edited humans will be born within this decade. I am at a loss for words. 

[PeterMP]

Two thoughts:

 

1.  If they are actually deleting the CCR5 gene that's pretty presumptuous to the function of CCR5.  I know there is a deletion in the gene where people don't seem to have any issues that then makes them (heavily) resistant to HIV, but a deletion in part of a gene in some people that presumably inherited the deletion from their parents is very different than a homozygous deletion of a gene in every genetic background.

 

2.  HIV is already getting into cells other ways.  You'll just shift the evolution of the HIV population at a genome level to those variants that are best at getting in to the cells other ways.

 

(Life will find a way (in this case HIV).)  There are going to be useful things we can do with CRISPR.  These aren't them.

[No Excuses]

My assumption is that they chose CCR5 because breaking a gene is a lot less riskier with CRISPR than attempting to make an edit. 

 

There was inevitably going to be a push from scientists to be the first to lead a project on gene-edited babies.

 

This news is coming on the eve of a major global summit on gene editing taking place in Hong Kong tomorrow. The primary people involved in the discovery of CRISPR-editing are attending and presenting. This is incredible, I can't wait to tune in tomorrow to hear reactions.

[Larry]

They already all look the same to me. 

 

Ok, it's a horrible joke. I had to. 

[skinfan2k]

This was bound to happen. The next technological advancement will come in extending life and manipulating the lifecycle.  

[Springfield]

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[PeterMP]

18 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

My assumption is that they chose CCR5 because breaking a gene is a lot less riskier with CRISPR than attempting to make an edit. 

 

There was inevitably going to be a push from scientists to be the first to lead a project on gene-edited babies.

 

This news is coming on the eve of a major global summit on gene editing taking place in Hong Kong tomorrow. The primary people involved in the discovery of CRISPR-editing are attending and presenting. This is incredible, I can't wait to tune in tomorrow to hear reactions.

 

Also from a ethical stand point it is superficially it is pretty uncontroversial.  No more HIV (at least superficially) isn't something people are going to complain about.

[No Excuses]

1 minute ago, PeterMP said:

 

Also from a ethical stand point it is superficially it is pretty uncontroversial.  No more HIV (at least superficially) isn't something people are going to complain about.

 

I think it's the downstream effects of this that will be interesting. We should know and expect that the Chinese will not hesitate to push this further. IMO, this is really going to hasten the policy and ethics debate on CRISPR-edited babies in the West. We should expect the Chinese to push this beyond medical use, especially in light of the kinds of genomics research they are conducting and are interested in doing. 

 

If the Chinese are extremely liberal in their use of CRISPR, it will really dictate how we approach the issue as well.

[PokerPacker]

9 minutes ago, Springfield said:

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.

[TheGreatBuzz]

I personally look forward to CRISPR babies.  Those SOGGY babies are far less palatable. They are quite similar to lettuce.

[PokerPacker]

Just now, TheGreatBuzz said:

I personally look forward to CRISPR babies.  Those SOGGY babies are far less palatable. They are quite similar to lettuce.

Soggies may rule

[redskins59]

 Looking quickly at CCR5, it is a co-receptor for HIV.  If you delete the gene, it will protect you from HIV, but does the actual gene have functions we don't know about?  You need to think about the side effects before you make these changes.  50 years from now, people might be saying that this was a mistake.  Who knows, deleting the gene might make us vulnerable to something else.  

The bottomline to me is that we still don't know every function of every gene.  This seems stupid to me.  

[Momma There Goes That Man]

Everyone just remember, Robert Neville will be at the South Street Seaport, everyday at mid-day when the sun is highest in the sky. He can provide food, he can provide shelter, he can provide security. 

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 minute ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

Everyone just remember, Robert Neville will be at the South Street Seaport, everyday at mid-day when the sun is highest in the sky. He can provide food, he can provide shelter, he can provide security. 

But not a dog, at least towards the end.😔

[PeterMP]

59 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

 

I think it's the downstream effects of this that will be interesting. We should know and expect that the Chinese will not hesitate to push this further. IMO, this is really going to hasten the policy and ethics debate on CRISPR-edited babies in the West. We should expect the Chinese to push this beyond medical use, especially in light of the kinds of genomics research they are conducting and are interested in doing. 

 

If the Chinese are extremely liberal in their use of CRISPR, it will really dictate how we approach the issue as well.

 

Realistically, I'd rather allow the Chinese to rush ahead by decades and then see what happens.  It is likely there are going to be mistakes (sometimes small and subtle, but still at a large population level expensive).

 

We're still struggling to determine the consequences of IVF and C sections.

 

https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/19/3/232/727781

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5384197/

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-c-section-children-food-allergies-opposed.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5837358/

 

To add CRIPSR edited genomes onto the already unknowns is going to be problematic.

 

However, I'm not sure how practical that is going to be as people that want CRISPR edited babies will just go to China to have them if that's where they can have it done (and people will want CRISPR edited babies even if by and large the science says the jury is still out).

 

40 minutes ago, redskins59 said:

 Looking quickly at CCR5, it is a co-receptor for HIV.  If you delete the gene, it will protect you from HIV, but does the actual gene have functions we don't know about?  You need to think about the side effects before you make these changes.  50 years from now, people might be saying that this was a mistake.  Who knows, deleting the gene might make us vulnerable to something else.  

The bottomline to me is that we still don't know every function of every gene.  This seems stupid to me.  

 

There is a deletion in the CCR5 gene that is most heavily found in some African related populations where those people make a shortened copy (and non-functional based on what we know of the CCR5 protein) CCR5 protein.  To my knowledge, there hasn't been extensive wide spread studies on the people with the deletion other than that they are heavily HIV resistant and otherwise superficially, they appear to be healthy and normal.  However, it isn't like we don't know anything about CCR5, and its function.  CCR5 is not an uncharacterized protein/gene.

 

However, the genotype of the population is relatively limited (e.g. people that are African or have ancestors pretty directly descended from Africa).  To my knowledge, there hasn't been much done to looking at that mutation in other genotypes, really following those people over their lives to determine long term health affects, or asking are there benefits to making a partial CCR5 protein.

[No Excuses]

It would be quite foolish to not seriously consider allowing private enterprise in the US to move forward with CRISPR editing in implantable human embryos. 

 

With more and more genome wide association studies fueling insights into the genetic basis of complex traits, we are already seeing the first signs of companies popping up who are offering more sophisticated pre-implantation genetic diagnoses. In 10 years, China will likely be doing PGID and CRISPR in-tandem. 

 

There will be mistakes along the way but the country with a leg-up on this technology will hold a massive technological advantage.

[PeterMP]

2 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

It would be quite foolish to not seriously consider allowing private enterprise in the US to move forward with CRISPR editing in implantable human embryos. 

 

With more and more genome wide association studies fueling insights into the genetic basis of complex traits, we are already seeing the first signs of companies popping up who are offering more sophisticated pre-implantation genetic diagnoses. In 10 years, China will likely be doing PGID and CRISPR in-tandem. 

 

There will be mistakes along the way but the country with a leg-up on this technology will hold a massive technological advantage.

 

eh, I'd generally disagree.  There appear to be very little advantages historically in being the first to develop a new technology, and with the ease of transferring information, knowledge, and people in the modern world the importance seems to be shrinking.

 

What does tend to happen is that it is difficult to determine the costs associated with new technology as many of the negative aspects are subtle, aren't easily identified, and so costs associated with them are difficult to determine so we tend to ignore them.

 

(IVF and C-sections being two examples.)

[No Excuses]

I don't know how much knowledge transfer will happen with China within this space. They are quite secretive about a lot of their science and tech work, especially in genomics. We know they're undertaking quite a lot of high-risk or ethically-murky genomics work without much insight into the data that is being produced or where the research is headed.

 

This particular project is a good example: https://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-genetics-of-genius-1.12985

 

Five years later, we basically don't know anything about this project at BGI.

[Kosher Ham]

Can we agree that ethically and morally is subjective?

[PeterMP]

40 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

I don't know how much knowledge transfer will happen with China within this space. They are quite secretive about a lot of their science and tech work, especially in genomics. We know they're undertaking quite a lot of high-risk or ethically-murky genomics work without much insight into the data that is being produced or where the research is headed.

 

This particular project is a good example: https://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-genetics-of-genius-1.12985

 

Five years later, we basically don't know anything about this project at BGI.

 

First, the director of the program is at MSU and has started a company in the US.  I'm pretty comfortable saying that any interesting finding from that work has transferred to the US.  While they might be in the public domain, the information has likely transferred.

 

Second, we don't need China to help us identify genetic markers associated with intelligence.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2017121

https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869

 

In an era where information transferred much less easily, we worked very hard to keep military secrets from transferring to other people and largely failed.

 

(China's likely to have failures in this area where the true extent and nature of the failure are never completely and properly communicated because of the political aspects of the situation.)

[PokerPacker]

3 minutes ago, Kosher Ham said:

Can we agree that ethically and morally is subjective?

Most things are.

[Elessar78]

2 hours ago, No Excuses said:

My assumption is that they chose CCR5 because breaking a gene is a lot less riskier with CRISPR than attempting to make an edit. 

 

There was inevitably going to be a push from scientists to be the first to lead a project on gene-edited babies.

 

This news is coming on the eve of a major global summit on gene editing taking place in Hong Kong tomorrow. The primary people involved in the discovery of CRISPR-editing are attending and presenting. This is incredible, I can't wait to tune in tomorrow to hear reactions.

They selected CCR5 because “resistant to HIV, smallpox, and Hep” is more palatable to the general public than “developing humans to be impervious to pain and fatigue”.

 

Weaponizing tech is always the ultimate goal.

[PeterMP]

With this technology in general, China will be stuck between limiting access and limiting utility.  The more people's DNA they change, the easier it will be for other countries to get the DNA (we're finding DNA sticks well enough to all sorts of things for very small amounts to be left behind, but we are needing less and less to get the sequence) and figure out what they are doing.  However, if they change fewer people's DNA, then the less impact it will have.

 

They could make a few super soldiers and keep them in well controlled environments, but that has limited utility.  If they generate a lot of soldiers with modified DNA and use them, it will be relatively easy to get the DNA and reverse engineer the changes.

 

The most valuable information is in the best way to carry out the changes, but that information (so far) seems to be flowing relatively freely and certainly people in the US could do this work.

[No Excuses]

AP is confirming that the CRISPR edited babies, twin girls, were born this month. 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/ap-exclusive-first-gene-edited-babies-claimed-in-china/2018/11/25/bb9b74de-f124-11e8-99c2-cfca6fcf610c_story.html

 

One with homozygous edits, the other with an edit only on one chromosome.

[Renegade7]

I believe NASA said GATTACA was most plausible sci-fi movie, we are asking for it creating this technology and limiting access to it. Right now we control our evolution as a species, we have to be really careful hear.

 

Wasn't there a report or huge amounts of human allergic reactions to CRISPR?