As humans are main purpose is to maintain and improve our species for future generations. With all the advancements in science and technology genetic modification was sure to come up eventually. Recently a scientist in China actually figured out how to do this, he successfully edited the embryos of two twin girls so to resist an HIV infection. This created some issues within the scientific community though, a lot of people had issues with the ethics behind gene editing. So any further tests on embryo’s have been prohibited and will be allowed around the year 2023 to 2024.
With that said, how did the scientist actually do this? The scientist used something called a CRISPR which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR is basically a DNA archive that saves the information on genetic information. A protein called CAS9 can identify strands of DNA from virus’s and remove them from the cell, preventing the virus from hurting the cell. Scientists found out that CAS9 is very precise, because of this they realized that CRISPR is programmable.
With the revelation that CRISPR is programmable, scientists started numerous studies. A few studies have been done on mice to get rid of HIV cells and it actually worked. Since CRISPR can actually edit our immune cells, it is possible for CRISPR to be the cure to cancer and a variety of other diseases. A modified version of the protein CAS9 is being developed to prevent genetic diseases. CRISPR seems to be something that can seriously benefit the human race, but the drawback is that any edits made are limited to the individual and die with them. The only way for the ideal genes to be passed on to future generations would be to edit the genes of embryo’s and that is where the issue of ethics comes in. People have to measure if it is worth editing embryo’s to improve future generations and possibly prevent aging and every single disease that can harm humans. Sadly right now people are still scared of making a decision so the progress for gene editing technology will be halted for the time being.
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