Archive: Opinions

The headline was 'Mastering Evolution', and it blares out from a full page story about Dr. He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist described as 'super bright' by his Stanford post-doc advisor. Mastering evolution, indeed, as a YouTube video announced the world's first 'gene edited' babies.

His laboratory is in the People's Republic of China, where he secretly performed the experiment using the process known as CrispR and the twin girls were 'products' (not my term, but I hardly understand the process; it's the upshot, the outcome and consequences which astound and confound my limited brain) of in-vitro fertilization. The IVF is something which we hardly even think twice about nowadays, but if you remember it was the source of its own controversy and table-pounding arguments more than twenty years ago.

---

Dr. He altered a single gene to make the twins less susceptible to the HIV virus (their father is HIV positive). This editing was done when the embryos were just a day old, able to be incorporated into the 'germline'. Thus the gene alteration will be passed on to succeeding generations of these twins.

Your first thought might be at the surface level (as mine was), something like: 'Well, if it might be an answer to HIV infection, then maybe...'. True, but on a purely scientific level, experts point out that altering a gene (which is actually old hat in scientific time) frequently has what is called unintended consequences. This particular edit, or any editing effort, could show up, according to critics, in another part of the genome in this or future generations, much as our own evolutionary changes happened over millennia. A single gene, according to Anjana Ahuja, Nicole Liu and Louise Lucas, might juggle more than one role, maybe several roles in a 'genomic balancing act that has evolved since the dawn of humans...the mutation in this gene may protect against HIV, but research suggests the alteration may also increase vulnerability to West Nile virus and influenza.'

I remember reading about the gene that appears to make people of African descent more vulnerable to sickle-cell anemia but research also suggested that the same gene had a role in protection against other tropical diseases including malaria. Not everything is as clear cut as editing a single gene. Kind of a genetic 'good news/bad news' issue.

The interesting problem is the appropriate reaction by scientific peers. Dr. He was immediately put 'on leave' by the Southern University of Science and Technology at Shenzhen. Some have called him a fraud, not surprising since there is no accompanying research paper in the hands of experts to establish the credibility and reproducibility of the experiment (though, come to think about it, 'experiment' appears to be a word in this case that needs to be questioned). I remember Dolly the sheep was called a fraud, too, at first. Maybe even the 'test tube babies' of an earlier generation were looked at as not possible by the peers of the white coat world. But, fraud or not, it appears the genie is out of the bottle. Forgive the well worn cliche.

Dr. He showed up at a convention in Hong Kong to present his research (a YouTube video) and implied there is another pregnancy in progress with the gene alteration. He supposedly has been the target of threats, and is reported to be scared at the reaction and stunned by the condemnation of his peers. Or are they really angry?

As a side note, the gene, CCR5, has also been tentatively associated with improved brain function (another of those multiple burdens carried by genes) and thus we may hear of genetic enhancement. In other words, creating what might be called 'super babies'. China's vice minister of Science and Technology seized the laboratory and called Dr. He's conduct 'shocking and unacceptable'.

The reason for this outrage is that the 'experiment' flies in the face of a 1997 convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine which protocol demanded that any genetically altered embryo be destroyed before developing and never implanted. That kind of reminds me of a weird law in a town in Ohio which stated that Limburger cheese was prohibited to be sold on Sunday, but if you did buy it on Sunday you had to consume it in the store. The Convention dictum implies a contradiction of the science involved in creating the gene alteration, like creating a Frankensteinian monster but killing it before you electrified it to life, much as Dr. Frankenstein regretted not doing.

The reason I question the outrage is the above protocol. Why would anyone go to the great expense and trouble to alter one gene and then destroy it? It would seem pointless to go to that much trouble just to say 'OK, this far and no farther'. The object of scientific inquiry is to look at what is currently known, hypothesize about results of a proposed experiment, then create a theory based on the results. The scientists who created the protocol in 1997 would know this because they spent their whole lives doing just that, known as the scientific method. But if you can't develop a theory because the experiment is prohibited, and your peers are hypocritically condemning that experiment, it seems to me that someone is going to do it, either out of spite, contrariness, or the desire to be first. Secretly, or eventually, tell the world, in this case in a YouTube announcement.

Now that he's the first (is he?) the taboo has been broken and all the hand-wringing and angst will start again, but this time with the theory now in hand, and science will have to figure out how to put the genie back into the bottle. Like catching smoke rings, no doubt.

I suspect we cannot do so, starting with a quote in the YouTube video by Dr. He, himself. He sees himself as a pioneer, not a rogue scientist, and if the scientific world doesn't quite see it the same way, then some of those in that rarefied world will also see themselves as the next pioneers, much like the astronauts following Neil Armstrong, though hitting a golf shot on the moon seems pretty quaint in comparison. Dr. He said in the video: "As a father of two girls I can't think of a gift more beautiful and wholesome for society than giving another couple a chance to start a loving family...we hope you have mercy for them." Note: 'for society' and 'mercy for them'.

I'd be willing to bet we have heard these sentiments from the other pioneers who created in vitro fertilization, and those who created Dolly the sheep, to name two examples of the advances in pro-creation (or does this qualify for the word 'creation'?). My problem, in my limited way of thinking, is that we don't know what is behind the 'door' which Dr. He has just opened a crack, despite the prohibitions currently in place, and which invited Dr. He to pick the lock. It's dark, and very unknown behind that door, and dystopic worrier that I am I hear Aldous Huxley's Brave New World becoming real, while that song from the sixties entitled 'In The Year 2525' starts to wind up and remind us that the future keeps a'happening on a daily basis. Good luck, says the cosmos to we fun-loving humans...we're going to need it.


v14i47