Dr. Kathy Niakan from the Francis Crick Institute is seeking approval from the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in order to genetically modify human embryos:
A scientist has been making her case to be the first in the UK to be allowed to genetically modify human embryos. Dr Kathy Niakan said the experiments would provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life and could reduce miscarriages. The regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), will consider her application on Thursday. If Dr Niakan is given approval then the first such embryos could be created by the summer.
[...] Dr Niakan, from the Francis Crick Institute, said: "We would really like to understand the genes needed for a human embryo to develop successfully into a healthy baby. The reason why it is so important is because miscarriages and infertility are extremely common, but they're not very well understood."
Of 100 fertilised eggs, fewer than 50 reach the blastocyst stage, 25 implant into the womb and only 13 develop beyond three months. She says that understanding what is supposed to happen and what can go wrong could improve IVF. "We believe that this research could really lead to improvements in infertility treatment and ultimately provide us with a deeper understanding of the earliest stages of human life."
However, she says the only way to do this is to edit human embryos. Many of the genes which become active in the week after fertilisation are unique to humans, so they cannot be studied in animal experiments. "The only way we can understand human biology at this early stage is by further studying human embryos directly," Dr Niakan said. Her intention is to use one of the most exciting recent scientific breakthroughs - Crispr gene editing - to turn off genes at the single-cell stage and see what happens. [...] She aims to start with the gene Oct4 which appears to have a crucial role.
Related: UK Approves Three-Person IVF Babies
The Rapid Rise of CRISPR
Group of Scientists and Bioethicists Back Genetic Modification of Human Embryos
Related Stories
The BBC reports that three-person IVF will soon be legal in the United Kingdom. The procedure involves replacing mitochondrial DNA in an embryo from that of a second woman in order to eliminate deadly mitochondrial genetic disorders. Alana Saarinen was successfully conceived in the U.S. using the procedure back in 2000, but the FDA banned ooplasm transfer in 2001.
The UK has now become the first country to approve laws to allow the creation of babies from three people. The modified version of IVF has passed its final legislative obstacle after being approved by the House of Lords. The fertility regulator will now decide how to license the procedure to prevent babies inheriting deadly genetic diseases. The first baby could be born as early as 2016. A large majority of MPs in the House of Commons approved "three-person babies" earlier this month. The House of Lords tonight rejected an attempt to block the plan by a majority of 232. Estimates suggest 150 couples would be suitable to have babies through the technique each year.
Additional coverage at Wired UK and The Guardian.
Related: UK Parliament Gives Three-"Source" IVF the Go-Ahead.
Nature has a comprehensive analysis and history of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), the disruptive technique that is allowing genetic engineering and gene therapy to flourish:
CRISPR methodology is quickly eclipsing zinc finger nucleases and other [genetic] editing tools (see 'The rise of CRISPR'). For some, that means abandoning techniques they had taken years to perfect. "I'm depressed," says Bill Skarnes, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, "but I'm also excited." Skarnes had spent much of his career using a technology introduced in the mid-1980s: inserting DNA into embryonic stem cells and then using those cells to generate genetically modified mice. The technique became a laboratory workhorse, but it was also time-consuming and costly. CRISPR takes a fraction of the time, and Skarnes adopted the technique two years ago.
Researchers have traditionally relied heavily on model organisms such as mice and fruit flies, partly because they were the only species that came with a good tool kit for genetic manipulation. Now CRISPR is making it possible to edit genes in many more organisms. In April, for example, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported using CRISPR to study Candida albicans, a fungus that is particularly deadly in people with weakened immune systems, but had been difficult to genetically manipulate in the lab. Jennifer Doudna, a CRISPR pioneer at the University of California, Berkeley, is keeping a list of CRISPR-altered creatures. So far, she has three dozen entries, including disease-causing parasites called trypanosomes and yeasts used to make biofuels.
Yet the rapid progress has its drawbacks. "People just don't have the time to characterize some of the very basic parameters of the system," says Bo Huang, a biophysicist at the University of California, San Francisco. "There is a mentality that as long as it works, we don't have to understand how or why it works." That means that researchers occasionally run up against glitches. Huang and his lab struggled for two months to adapt CRISPR for use in imaging studies. He suspects that the delay would have been shorter had more been known about how to optimize the design of guide RNAs, a basic but important nuance.
Original Submission
Following a September 3-4 meeting in Manchester, England, the Hinxton Group, "a global network of stem cell researchers, bioethicists, and experts on policy and scientific publishing" has published a statement backing the genetic modification of human embryos, with caveats:
It is "essential" that the genetic modification of human embryos is allowed, says a group of scientists, ethicists and policy experts. A Hinxton Group report says editing the genetic code of early stage embryos is of "tremendous value" to research. It adds although GM babies should not be allowed to be born at the moment, it may be "morally acceptable" under some circumstances in the future. The US refuses to fund research involving the gene editing of embryos. The global Hinxton Group met in response to the phenomenal advances taking place in the field of genetics.
From the statement:
Genome editing has tremendous value as a tool to address fundamental questions of human and non-human animal biology and their similarities and differences. There are at least four categories of basic research involving genome editing technology that can be distinguished: 1) research to understand and improve the technique of genome editing itself; 2) genome editing used as a tool to address fundamental questions of human and non-human animal biology; 3) research to generate preliminary data for the development of human somatic applications; and 4) research to inform the plausibility of developing safe human reproductive applications. These distinctions are important to make clear that, even if one opposes human genome editing for clinical reproductive purposes, there is important research to be done that does not serve that end. That said, we appreciate that there are even categories of basic research involving this technology that some may find morally troubling. Nevertheless, it is our conviction that concerns about human genome editing for clinical reproductive purposes should not halt or hamper application to scientifically defensible basic research.
BBC has this beginner's guide to the designer baby debate.
Related:
The Rapid Rise of CRISPR
NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
Chinese Scientists Have Genetically Modified Human Embryos
UK Approves Three-Person IVF Babies
Scientists with The Francis Crick Institute have received UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approval for using gene editing techniques on human embryos:
The aim of the research, led by Dr Kathy Niakan, a group leader at the Crick, is to understand the genes human embryos need to develop successfully. The work carried out at the Crick will be for research purposes and will look at the first seven days of a fertilised egg's development (from a single cell to around 250 cells).
[...] In line with HFEA regulations, any donated embryos will be used for research purposes only and cannot be used in treatment. These embryos will be donated by patients who have given their informed consent to the donation of embryos which are surplus to their IVF treatment. The genome editing research now needs to gain ethical approval and, subject to that approval, the research programme will begin within the next few months.
The decision marks the first approval by a regulator of gene editing in human embryos:
In a world-first last year, scientists in China announced they had carried out gene editing in human embryos to correct a gene that causes a blood disorder. Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, a scientific advisor to the UK's fertility regulator, told the BBC: "China has guidelines, but it is often unclear exactly what they are until you've done it and stepped over an unclear boundary. This is the first time it has gone through a properly[sic] regulatory system and been approved."
[Continues...]
U.S. scientists have genetically modified human embyros using CRISPR and have apparently avoided the worst of the off-target effects that have plagued previous efforts. The results are unpublished and the team is not commenting yet:
The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, Technology Review has learned.
The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR, according to people familiar with the scientific results.
Until now, American scientists have watched with a combination of awe, envy, and some alarm as scientists elsewhere were first to explore the controversial practice. To date, three previous reports of editing human embryos were all published by scientists in China.
Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases.
Although none of the embryos were allowed to develop for more than a few days—and there was never any intention of implanting them into a womb—the experiments are a milestone on what may prove to be an inevitable journey toward the birth of the first genetically modified humans.
Also at STAT News.
Previously: Chinese Scientists Have Genetically Modified Human Embryos
NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
Group of Scientists and Bioethicists Back Genetic Modification of Human Embryos
The International Summit on Human Gene Editing
UK Scientist Makes the Case for Editing Human Embryos
Second Chinese Team Reports Gene Editing in Human Embryos
Scientists Keep Human Embryos Alive Longer Outside of the Womb
Francis Collins Retains Position as Director of the National Institutes of Health
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dltaylor on Friday January 15 2016, @09:14AM
There's a lot of money available for vanity medicine (the world deserves another instance of us, in this case), but there seems to be a dearth of effort to treat, or better, cure conditions that plague a large number of not-so-well-off humans. Maybe if some of the effort to stroke vanity was spent on the other issues a great of of real suffering could be alleviated.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @10:42AM
A lot of people would disagree with or ignore your point about vanity.
The researchers throw out infertility as a primary reason for the research, but this is very fundamental bioengineering. The ability to knock out single genes and study the effects will certainly yield more knowledge about cellular division and cellular signalling. Some of that will be applicable to curing diseases, not just fertility. If we replaced infertility with cancer, would you have commented?
They have to go to the regulator with some sort of medical reason because like many other nations (at the urging of ethicists, evangelicals, the Vatican, et al.) the UK has put hoops in place to jump through, slowing this valuable research. These are some of the very first scientists to attempt to edit human embryos, which is why it made the top of BBC's RSS feed. They will likely discover something applicable to infertility treatment, and perhaps a whole lot more.
You say there seems to be a dearth of effort to treat or cure conditions. Maybe that's because it's just not that easy. Disease eradication is possible but it doesn't necessarily involve research, just decades of effort to monitor [wikipedia.org] and vaccinate in places with poor infrastructure, distrust of vaccines [nationalgeographic.com], or war in general. Finding a magic compound that will alleviate symptoms, cure or manage a disease involves a multi-billion dollar effort, drug trials, and greed [wikipedia.org]. The costs of drug discovery are rising. By contrast, genome sequencing is getting cheaper with the $100 genome in sight, and embryo editing techniques are becoming cheaper and more reliable by orders of magnitude.
There's plenty of money being spent by the Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health, etc. to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Ebola got a late response... in areas of Africa with poor infrastructure, a bigger problem than fighting disease. And they even made experimental vaccines for it and rushed them into production. Billions and billions are being spent on non-vanity suffering with little or no expectation of profit. "Vanity" medical products will get made, because somebody will buy them. Taking away researchers from the infertility field will not help cure malaria/ebola/etc. much faster.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2016, @11:17AM
whether you like it or not, it is perfectly natural for individuals of any species to want to procreate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2016, @09:32AM
A scientist has been making his case to be the first in the Amazon to be allowed to consume human embryos.
Dr Canna Bull said the experiments would provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life and could reduce hunger. The regulator, the Human Consumption and Dipping Sauce Authority (HCDS), will consider his application on Friday.
If Dr Bull is given approval then the first such embryos could be BBQ'd by "The Fall."
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Geezer on Friday January 15 2016, @10:47AM
Once this cow is out of the barn, geneticists will find all sorts of good reasons for "improvements" that can only lead to a Frankenstein-esque future of custom cloning and manipulation. Once that happens, how do we even begin to define what is human? Any monster with an ancient early 21st-century genetic ancestor?
Natural selection and mutation are just that: natural. When mad scientists starting tweaking the gene pool, "nature" goes out the window.
The potential unforeseen consequences alone are enough to give one pause.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @11:09AM
Mankind hasn't been "natural" for millennia. Why start now? So we are lead to a "Frankenstein-esque future of custom cloning and manipulation". What exactly is the problem with this? Nothing, that's what. There's no valid reason to actively avoid this horror scenario of yours. Humanity has evolved, and will continue to evolve, just faster.
In any case, the science described in the article will be done responsibly and with regulations in mind. So if you want this research blocked, you will only be delaying the inevitable acquisition of knowledge.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Geezer on Friday January 15 2016, @11:16AM
You, sir, have elevated wishful thinking to an art form.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @11:26AM
What's it going to be? Super plagues? Genocidal gene drives? Superintelligence for the super rich? Cosmetic gene editing and gender therapy? Vanity cloning? Malicious mutations?
Bring it all on. These problems will either be insignificant compared to the benefits or swiftly self-correcting. In the meantime, scientists will learn about the consequences by doing fundamental research such as this proposal.
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(Score: 2) by Geezer on Friday January 15 2016, @11:29AM
Possibly all of the above. Thing is, we're not talking about some juvenile sci-fi flick or video game scenario here. There is no "edit" or "replay" when something goes horribly wrong.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @11:34AM
You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. And some people eat eggs every day.
The worst of the worst I mentioned will not be the norm. Meanwhile, people will unnecessarily die of genetic diseases, cancers, etc. because geezers and the religious are slowing or blocking genetic engineering.
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(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday January 15 2016, @06:03PM
Superintelligence for the super rich? Cosmetic gene editing
What need do the super rich have for intelligence? Extended life, perfect skin and hair, blue eyes, body parts of various desirable sizes, tallness. That's what the super rich will want.
gender therapy
No way my taxes are going to pay for some damned Obamacare sex change! I don't care what he looks and sounds like or how many weeks pregnant he is, I don't care how many X chromosomes he has, he's a man whether he likes it or not!
Ok, let's move on to the less than obvious.
Super plagues
How do you know HIV isn't one? I've still got my tin foil hat on about that one. An airline steward as patient 0 spreading the disease to thousands of gay men? Now it's conveniently infested Africa, not to mention the cargo cult science that circumcision is a cure combined with the folk remedy of having sex with virgin women as a cure? Pretty fishy. Also note the barrage of propaganda out of the “left” painting gay men and trans women as murderers and diseased sex addicts. It seems one's not allowed to have a gay male or trans female character without that character either having HIV or being a sociopathic murderer.
Super plagues make good science fiction, but they can work much better if you want to keep an entire demographic marginalized and viewed as being unclean.
Genocidal gene drives
How many people here would fund such an effort if it would eradicate Arabs?
Malicious mutations
Hmm… this one actually has me stumped. Ah, let's try this. Work at the wrong call center? Employer pissed off the local hospital? Guess what! All of your babies somehow mysteriously all have Down's syndrome!
Oh! Oh! I can do better than that! New conspiracy theory: those damned devil-worshipping liberal scientists who want me to believe the world isn't 7,000 years old and that warp drives aren't possible are going to inject my sons and make them gay tranny devil-worshippers!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @08:58PM
Superintelligence is a choice off a menu that could include height, hair color, eye color, athletic disposition, genital size/shape, etc. Genes are being found right now that have at lead a mild effect on IQ. The effect may only be a few percentage points, but people will pay for a small advantage for their designer baby. Obviously nurture also plays a major role in intelligence and body development, but those that can afford to optimize things on the genome side can afford to offer their spawn access to balanced nutrition and aggressive early education.
The super plague threat just refers to the ability of governments or even individuals to create new strains of disease from scratch and then release them into the wild, which could be a lot faster than waiting around for the next influenza/ebola. On the research side, we have already seen virulence research spark calls to muzzle the scientists and block publication [sciencemag.org].
I don't even know what I mean by malicious mutations. Maybe gene editing to purposefully grow a deformed child in an artificial womb for your own amusement? Geezer didn't list what he was talking about, so I threw some "scary" things together.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 16 2016, @02:29AM
How do you know HIV isn't one? I've still got my tin foil hat on about that one.
HIV is derived from a virus of non-human primates (simian immunodeficiency virus) in the 1920s (decades before we even knew what nucleic acids did).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 15 2016, @11:54AM
geneticists will find all sorts of good reasons for "improvements" that can only lead to a Frankenstein-esque future of custom cloning and manipulation.
Humans have been improving their own lives for thousands of years already. Even farming is hardly "natural."
Once that happens, how do we even begin to define what is human?
So... your first thought is for the problems philosophers will face? Doesn't sound like a very scary future...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 15 2016, @03:16PM
Once this cow is out of the barn, geneticists will find all sorts of good reasons for "improvements" that can only lead to a Frankenstein-esque future of custom cloning and manipulation. Once that happens, how do we even begin to define what is human? Any monster with an ancient early 21st-century genetic ancestor?
Was there supposed to be a problem hiding in there?
Natural selection and mutation are just that: natural. When mad scientists starting tweaking the gene pool, "nature" goes out the window.
Still not seeing why that is supposed to be a problem.
The potential unforeseen consequences alone are enough to give one pause.
Doesn't sound like you're speaking of a pause, but rather of a full stop. To forbid (ineffectually, I might add) something forever because something bad might happen is foolish.
(Score: 1) by Fishscene on Friday January 15 2016, @02:33PM
Anyone who dives into the lore of the Jove in the game EVE Online knows gene-editing for society as a whole is a very, VERY bad idea. Thousands of years ago, it destroyed an empire that even today, is much more powerful than what players are accustomed to. The Jove now spend their days trying to reclaim their humanity.
Anywho, I might be fine with gene editing of eggs and sperm, as long as it is to fix errors/issues and not change attributes. Any editing after that is a no-go until they become a fully responsible adult or something life-threatening.
But at the same time, if that were to be the case with my wife, I wouldn't have the wonderful human being I know and love today. Maybe gene errors help shape us as amazing human beings.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2016, @05:08PM
Video games, horror stories, and movies about mad scientists or utopian sci-fi media should not be used to make these types of decisions.
A risk/cost benefit analysis should be done and elected officials and judges should decide if public money should fund these types of studies or if they are allowed to be done.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 15 2016, @09:00PM
Let's study Star Trek and EVE Online fiction in America's universities instead of bioengineering. We can all get degrees in creative writing and use them to scare each other shitless.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 16 2016, @01:58AM
The reason why it is so important is because miscarriages and infertility are extremely common, but they're not very well understood."
There are more than 7 billion people on this planet and you want to claim miscarriages and infertility is "so important" a problem?
It's time to focus on quality instead of quantity.
There is no need to mess about with human embryos like that at this stage of our society.
1) We already have more than enough humans on this planet to avoid extinction via underpopulation or lack of genetic diversity.
2) We can detect serious genetic problems in embryos at an early stage and thus abort them. If you can't detect the disease early you can't fix it at human embryo stage so easily either ;). Plenty of people believe that abortion is fine so they should have no problems with aborting seriously flawed embryos. Those that don't believe abortion is fine tend to believe we shouldn't be messing with human embryos either.
3) Many of our problems are due to too many people being born who shouldn't have been born in the first place than too many people not being born.
4) As for "other applications" I don't think we should be going about modifying humans (or creating hybrids - another "popular" direction) "just because we can technologically" till society is ready to accept the full consequences and costs. Right now we can say fairly easily that B is human and C is a nonhuman animal and thus they have different rights and responsibilities. What happens when those lines are blurred or stretched? What would be the real benefit? And what would it cost us?
The resources on our planet aren't infinite and many of the resources we like to use are not cheaply renewable. So if your genes are too faulty or if you will make terrible parents please don't have children (you should be happy to know that I do not intend to have any children). Support and make room for those who will be wonderful parents and produce wonderful children. That would be what I call making real progress.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 16 2016, @10:34PM
The infertility research could be used for space colonies, which will not simply be able to import people.
This is also basic research with infertility mentioned to make it easier to get the grant.
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