Rewriting Nature

In 2004, a group of scientists grew the first batch of something called golden rice. Golden rice is rice that has been genetically modified to produce more beta-carotene, a chemical that eventually gets converted to vitamin A in your body. It was made to help reduce vitamin A deficiency around the world. But despite that, it's just one of many engineered nutrient-boosted crops that face opposition from anti-GMO groups.

The concept of genetic engineering was first proposed in 1934, but it took 39 years for a breakthrough: in 1973, genes coding for antibiotic resistance were inserted into bacteria, making it the first artificially modified organism.

CRISPR-Cas9, Bring Me A Gene

Before we talk about the ethics of gene editing, we should first try to understand how it works, and how we got here in the first place.

The most widely used gene editing tool nowadays is called CRISPR-Cas9, a protein complex that actually originates from bacteria. They use the Cas9 protein to defend against viruses that infect bacteria, or bacteriophages. (I wrote a blog post about phages if you're interested.) In 2012, it was first repurposed into generic DNA scissors, for which the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded. (It also spawned a discussion about who should receive the Nobel prize when so many people contribute to the same goal.)

To get CRISPR-Cas9 to work, you need a short piece of "guide RNA", which will bring Cas9 along and bind to the region you wish to cut. Since scientists can make any guide RNA they want, if all goes well, Cas9 will snip and replace exactly where you need it to.

The Future is Now, Thanks to Science!

As this science comedian explains, gene editing is already used in some countries on embryos, usually to remove potentially fatal illnesses that result from genetic mutations. Certain countries allow editing other things such as eye color, while others restrict it to only removing genetic health risks.

The first embryo-editing tests in the US faced a lot of backlash, but the scientists used embryos merged outside of the womb and stopped without implanting them, so no births happened. Their method of injecting CRISPR and affected sperm at the same time into an egg was successful in 70% of their tests. The gene they removed causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart disease.

But in 2018, a Chinese scientist announced the first gene-edited babies' successful births (they were twins), who were now theoretically resistant to HIV. It turns out he'd carried out this experiment in secret a year before. He was jailed for three years because of this, though he's already back in the lab.

Playing God

Personally, I support using whatever tools we have to eradicate severe illnesses, including genetic ones. But the main concerns for bioethicists are the risk of damaging other genes, as well as eugenics. Besides editing humans, the main concern is for bioweapon engineering.

A certain group of people also believe that "natural" things are absolutely superior, and that we shouldn't meddle with the natural course of things... well, clothes and the Internet aren't natural, are they? I don't think mother nature would mind if we mess around a little more, espically if we could easily improve the quality of life (or even save lives!) of humans and other organisms around the world.

Besides that, I do think the concerns are valid, especially the bioweapon thing. Humans have been (very recently) proven to be terrible at being mildly inconvenienced to keep themselves and others out of danger in the face of a pandemic, after all...

Still, I don't think we should ban gene editing, since it opens up a wide array of possibilities for medications and such. (Plus it's just really cool.) At most, we should heavily regulate it so that only people who know what they're doing and aren't evil are allowed to handle it. As with most other tools, it can be used for both good and evil, and it's up to the wielder to decide which category they fall under.