✣ Human embryos ‘edited’ to alter risky gene
What happened? Researchers in Oregon have successfully “gene edited” human embryos to remove a mutation that causes sudden heart failure, the first such success reported outside China. The US-Korean study used gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to fix mutations in embryos made with the sperm of a man who had inherited a heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. If embryos were edited at the time of fertilisation the mutation was “fixed” in 42 out of 58 cases. What the media are saying "Humanity has gained the power to engineer its own evolution,” the Financial Times declared, celebrating the project’s “laudable aims” in a leader. “The project’s success should inspire governments, regulatory authorities and medical academies around the world to prepare more actively for clinical trials leading to genetically engineered babies,” it said. Dr David King, founder of the secular group Human Genetics Alert, said that “if you peel away the hype, the truth is that we already have robust ways of avoiding the birth of children with such conditions, where that is appropriate, through genetic testing of embryos”. Writing in the Guardian, he said money would be better spent on developing cures for these conditions. “Gene editing” will fast lead to a consumer market for “designer babies”, he said. What Catholics are saying Dr David Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, a Catholic institute in Oxford, said the study was “the essence of eugenics”. “We are manufacturing new human beings for manipulation and quality control, and experimenting on them with the aim of forging greater eugenic control over human reproduction. This is not a case of using bad means for a good end, but of bad means to a worse end,” he said. “Eugenics involves not only scientific experimentation but social experimentation, and we have seen the results of such experiments.” Dr Anthony McCarthy, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, noted that the study created modified embryos and then destroyed them: it was “hard to think of a worse use of gene editing technology”.
