Actress Kiruna Stamell debates gene editing with ethicist Dr. Christopher Gyngell – Medical Xpress

April 27, 2017

Two papers published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, debate gene editing and the health of future generations. Stage and screen actress Kiruna Stamell, who has a rare form of dwarfism, proposes that gene editing does not represent an improvement in healthcare; while Dr Christopher Gyngell, a research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, argues that provided it is well regulated, gene editing could greatly improve the health of our descendants.

Stamell writes that if gene editing is used simply to 'disappear' certain conditions and thus certain types of people, we must look at the ethics and impact of this more broadly and redefine what it means to be 'healthy' on a micro and macro level.

She believes that gene editing has far-reaching complications that affect more than individual health. She says: "Gene editing, if only available to certain groups, will drive social inequality further as those who can't afford it are left behind or discriminated against for having been born, when the opportunity was there for them to never have existed at all."

Stamell asks: "Will those people be left unsupported by a society that prefers to weed them out rather than allow them access and a share of its wealth and benefits?" She voices concern for future generations as variation is edited out. "Small differences begin to be perceived as greater ones and society's ability to adapt and accommodate differences will shrink" she says. She concludes that a community of people who have forgotten how to adapt and embrace diversity can't be healthy for anyone.

Gyngell discusses the difficult and complex questions raised about disability, diversity and risks to human health. How to distinguish healthy forms of human diversity from disease and disability is, he writes, a subject of intense debate in philosophy but we should not let conceptual uncertainty be a barrier to the development of gene editing.

The use of gene editing in research, he writes, will greatly increase our knowledge of development and could lead to novel treatments for disease. He says: "Using gene editing to study early development could lead to a greater understanding of the causes of infertility and to better treatment options."

Gyngell goes onto describe how gene editing will be able to correct the mutations associated with fatal genetic disorders such as Tay Sachs disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The incidence of these conditions can be reduced by using genetic selection techniques but, according to Gyngell, we may have reasons to prefer gene editing. He says: "Selection prevents disease by changing who comes into existence, whereas gene editing ensures those who come into existence have the best shot of living a full life."

Gyngell concludes that a case-by-case system of regulation for gene editing could work to both reduce rates of fatal genetic disease and avoid risking traits that may represent valuable types of diversity.

Explore further: Will AAV vectors have a role in future novel gene therapy approaches?

More information: Christopher Gyngell. Gene editing and the health of future generations, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1177/0141076817705616

Kiruna Stamell. Why gene editing isn't the answer, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1177/0141076817706278

An international study based at UT Southwestern Medical Center revealed a striking genetic-environmental interaction: Obesity significantly amplifies the effects of three gene variants that increase risk of nonalcoholic fatty ...

Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have identified a previously unrecognized step in stem cell-mediated muscle regeneration. The study, published in Genes and Development, provides new ...

These changes, known as epigenetic modifications, control the activity of our genes without changing the actual DNA sequence. One of the main epigenetic modifications is DNA methylation, which plays a key role in embryonic ...

The pathologies (damage) in the brain that stroke, Alzheimer's disease and other neurological conditions cause in older adults only partially explain the memory loss, reduced reasoning ability and other cognitive impairments ...

The search for the genetic determinants of extreme longevity has been challenging, with the prevalence of centenarians (people older than 100) just one per 5,000 population in developed nations.

Researchers intent on understanding how too little sleep can undermine health have long suspected a relationship between short sleep duration and the actions of specific genes, but finding the genes involved has proven difficult. ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See the article here:
Actress Kiruna Stamell debates gene editing with ethicist Dr. Christopher Gyngell - Medical Xpress