With humans on the cusp self-evolution, a new report emphasizes the need for a societal conversation that were not likely to have.
Last week, a U.S. patent court and a prestigious science academy weighed in on a potent new method for editing human DNA with the funny-sounding name of Crispr-Cas9.
The media gave it the standard important science story treatment, with the Economist publishing a cover story about how gene editing and other reproductive techniques were replacing sex for making babies. This comes a couple of years after the customaty wow! stories that typically herald a major discovery like Crispr-Cas9, followed by a steady stream of reports about this technique that allows scientists to inexpensively cut and paste stretches of DNA almost at will.
Crispr-Cas9 is not, however, like most scientific discoveries. The culmination of decades of probing the secrets of whats encoded in our DNA, Crispr takes Homo sapiens on a new journey that almost certainly will allow us to do something weve long talked about, and have watched play out in science fiction films: the ability of a species (namely, us) to self-evolve.
We have within our grasp the technology to change evolution, said Paul Berg, a genetics pioneer from Stanford, about Crispr-tech. This could change the course of biological life.
Nor is Crispr-tech following the usual pattern of scientific and technological breakthroughs, which typically take decades or even centuries to perfect, and for society to absorb them.
For instance, it took us thirty or forty years to properly build and learn to use the Internet. Even with genetics, the pace has been one of mostly incremental discoveries over decades, with society very slowly absorbing the basics of the science, and what it means for real people beyond what they saw in Jurassic Park and Gattaca.
People now know that glitches in a persons DNA can cause cancer and rare and tragic diseases in children. And that genetics can tell you if youre predisposed to lactic intolerance (which you probably already knew), or if your ancestry is predominately Italian, Native American, or Southeast Asian.
Gene editing, however, is not following the usual, slow-roll-out pattern of most new discoveries. Crispr-Cas9 is still in its early days, but scientifically is moving at warp speed, playing out in years rather than decades.
Invented just five years ago, the technology allows DNA to be edited with an ease and at a lower cost than previous versions of the technology. Last year, a Pennsylvania high school senior named Michael Zhang even won a prestigious Intel Science Talent Search award for a project using Crispr.
The ability to cut and paste DNA virtually at will has tremendous promise to treat or cure diseases caused primarily by genetic glitches, such as Huntingtons Disease and sickle-cell anemia. The technology also has the potential to allow scientists to one day go beyond fixes for diseases to enhance people by editing in favorable traits like greater stamina, or possibly a higher IQ or good looks, although not right away.
Crispr stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a natural process used by bacteria to remember the DNA of invading viruses so that that they can identify and destroy similar intruders, aided by DNA-slicing enzymes. In 2012 Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Swedens Umea University demonstrated in Science how to co-opt this process and intentionally edit DNA in any organism by using a slicer enzyme called Cas9.
Since Doudnas and Charpentiers breakthrough, a Crispr frenzy has generated thousands of scientific papers in hundreds of labs around the world. It has inspired the formation of companies like Editas, Intellia, and CRISPR Therapeutics that expect the gene editing market to one day generate billions of dollars. (All three companies have issued IPOs in record time). Last November, doctors began the first human trials in China using Crispr for patients with aggressive lung cancer.
Crispr-techs rapid deployment has also launched a brisk debate among scientists and bioethicists. In 2015, 18 prominent scientists and experts in law and ethicsled by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore and Jennifer Doudna published a call in Science magazine for a moratorium on some uses of this technology. As I reported at the time:
The group, which met in Napa, California, last January [2015] for a one-day summit, fretted about a possible slippery slope that might occur from using disease-curing applications that everyone wants, toward uses with less compelling or even troubling implications.They call on scientists to impose a voluntary stoppage while societal, environmental, and ethical implications of such activity are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations.
The group was particularly concerned about editing the germline cellsthe sperm and eggthat could pass alterations down to offspring. These are different than the somatic cells that make-up you and me and our organs and other body parts. They are not involved in reproduction, and wont impact progeny if edited.
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Not surprisingly, the Crispr-rush has led to a battle over rival patents. Last week, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board issued a 51-page ruling that sided with one of the first parties to file early patents, the Broad Institute in Boston. They won against an even early filer, the University of California at Berkeley. At issue was Berkeleys claim to patent uses of Crispr-Cas9 in all cells, versus the Broad claiming a patent for use in certain cells, including human cells. If this sounds confusing, it is, indicating that the legal wrangling over Crispr is just beginning.
Also last week the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) issued a 243-page report prepared after the call for the moratorium in 2015, and a subsequent international summit on gene editing held in December, 2015, in Washington, DC, sponsored by the NAS.
The report provides a detailed assessment of where the science is, and the ethical and societal issues. It lists a number of recommendations, most notably that in rare and limited cases, germline editing might be allowable to save lives, but only following much more research, according to the report, and only for compelling reasons and under strict oversight. One magazine called this a yellow light, although it does represent a big shift from traditional bioethics, which strictly forbade any modifications to the human germline.
The report is dense and written in academic-speak, but it does a good job of elucidating the science and the conundrums. It also cites polls suggesting that the public seems to be in favor of gene editing to treat grave illnesses and to save lives, but is very wary of using this technology for so-called "enhancement."
Last weeks pronouncements are important in beginning to create a scientific and societal undergirding for Crispr-tech. Yet we still seem a long way off from a societal zeitgeist. Even Hollywood has yet to start spinning Crispr-inspired plotlines, at least that Im aware of.
Nor does the politics of the moment bode well for a proper public conversation about Crispr-techor really about any new and fast-moving scientific enterprise that confronts us with a species-level set of risks and benefits. A failure to elevate this discussion, however, could cause this inevitable and rapidly moving technology to overrun our ability to absorb the implications, and our ability to make intelligent decisions about the future of us, our children, and humanity.
See the article here: