Experiments That Led To The First Gene-Edited Babies
The rapid development of science and technology in China has lead to more and more progress with the innovation that happens there.
It got to the point where lots of questions were being asked regarding the ethical governance in the biomedical field specifically.
As the development of China continued, a new emerging technology appeared in the medical field, gene-editing. With methods like TALEN, ZFN, and most recently, CRISPR-CAS9, the full emergence of this technology has been more and more anticipated.
It was only a matter of time until we saw real-life experiments with these methods of gene-editing.
The First Gene-Edited Baby:
And after years of anticipation, it happened. In 2018, we saw the first-ever experiment of gene-edited babies. It was a huge step for not only China but the entire world of genomics.
Unfortunately, the news immediately triggered a lot of criticism, hate, and debate over the scientific and ethical legitimacy of the Chinese scientists genetic experiments.
We’ll get more into that later but for now, let’s go more into the actual experiment.
These gene-edited babies were designed to be naturally immune to the human immunodeficiency virus or (HIV).
Let’s quickly talk about HIV….
HIV or AIDS is ranked as the 14th leading cause of death in the world. It works by infecting a type of white blood cell in the body’s immune system called a CD4 cell.
The CD4 cell plays a key role in the immune system, fighting off diseases and infections. HIV itself can’t replicate which is why it attaches to the CD4 cell and fuses with it.
Once the virus does that, it takes control of the cell’s DNA, replicates itself inside the cell, and finally releases more HIV into the blood — continuing the multiplication process.
You can probably see how over a period of time, the HIV virus can significantly weaken or destroy the immune system which causes the disease AIDS.
How the experiment went down
Jian-kui HE, a Chinese scientist and his team of researchers had recruited eight couples from an HIV volunteer group. All the male participants were HIV-positive, and all the female participants were HIV-negative.
The participants’ sperm was “washed off” to get rid of HIV and then it was injected into eggs collected from the female participants.
Once this was complete, they used clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-CAS9 to edit the gene.
They disabled a gene called CCR5 in the embryos. The goal of this was to close the protein doorway that allows HIV to enter a cell. By doing this the baby would then be immune to the virus.
This very process led to at least one successful pregnancy and the birth of the twin baby girls.
What it means for gene-editing
Before I talk about, just try to think about that. One of the best implications of gene-editing is to cure some of the world's biggest diseases. For example, cancer, HIV, etc.
Here we have one of the first cases of this effectively working. THIS IS HUGE FOR THE INDUSTRY.
Once we know that it is actually possible to do something like this, there’s a way bigger incentive for people to start developing this technology and making it as good as it can be.
Even to the public, it was considered extraordinary. For example, People’s Daily Online, one of the most influential newspapers in the Chinese mainland, described HE’s research as “a historical breakthrough in the application of gene-editing technology for disease prevention”.
Unfortunately, it went completely downhill from there…
Understanding the ethical implications
As I mentioned, when the experiment was first released, there was so much hype about it and everyone thought it was the next huge step in gene-editing.
While the idea of it still remains true, the ethics of it did not appeal to the public. As more detailed information on how HE and his team conducted the experiment came out, the legitimacy was increasingly challenged by scientists, bioethicists, lawyers, and the general public.
To make matters even worse, it wasn’t only in China but internationally as well.
It got worse and worse. Here’s a quote from one of the research papers:
“On the night of 26 November, 122 Chinese scientists issued a statement strongly condemning HE’s action as unethical. They stated that while CRISPR-Cas is not a new technology, it involves serious off-target risks and associated ethical considerations, and so should not be used to produce gene-altered babies.”
The Scientific Ethics Committee of the Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also declared their opposition to any use of gene-editing methods because of the potential effects.
Pretty much, there was a lot of hate, backlash, and criticism on this experiment, and in my opinion it makes sense. It’s very dangerous to do something like this when the technology isn’t fully developed yet.
I mean at least it can’t get any worse right?
Because of a gene-editing experiment that technically worked, this person will be in jail for 3 years. While this is not a good thing, it is a really good opportunity to truly understand how much power gene-editing has.
My Personal Opinion
I’ve mentioned this in previous articles but I 100% think that in order to advance with this technology, we have to combat the current issues that gene-editing has. We can’t just move on, because these issues are extremely big.
I would say the two main ones are the ethics and the off-target effects. Which we saw in this experiment.
That being said, I see so much potential to solve these problems by using exponential technologies. While ethics is more complicated, I’ve personally been thinking about leveraging AI to deal with off-target effects.
If people really open there mind to this it, we can really change the course of gene-editing for the better. AI is just one of what could be hundreds of solutions.
