![]() Another is that it could open the door to "designer babies" - children that are modified for nonmedical reasons, such as to be taller, stronger or smarter. One reason is that a mistake could introduce a new disease that could be passed down for generations. As a result, it's revolutionizing scientific research and raising high hopes for major breakthroughs, including preventing and treating many diseases.īut making changes in human DNA that could be passed down for generations has long been considered off-limits. Zhang noted that knocking out the CCR5 gene "will likely render a person much more susceptible for West Nile Virus."ĬRISPR enables scientists to make very precise changes in DNA much more easily than ever before. "Although I appreciate the global threat posed by HIV, at this stage, the risks of editing embryos to knock out CCR5 seem to outweigh the potential benefits," wrote Feng Zhang, a CRISPR pioneer at MIT. Mitalipov was the first scientist to report using CRISPR to successfully edit human embryos, but stopped far short of trying to use them to make babies. "It is premature at this stage of technology," wrote Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a scientist at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Ore. Nevertheless, other scientists questioned whether the editing really worked, and argue that it is far too soon for the team to try the experiment. "This verified the gene surgery worked safely," He says. ![]() The twins appear to be healthy, and underwent detailed genetic analysis. "No gene was changed except the one to prevent HIV infection," He says. He and his team say they used CRISPR to edit 16 embryos, and implanted 11 edited embryos into the wombs of women to attempt to create a viable pregnancy before the twin pregnancy was achieved, according to the Associated Press, which first reported He's claims. Scientists have long searched for ways to block this pathway to protect people from HIV. The CCR5 gene enables HIV to enter and infect immune system cells. "Why would you use this instead of an already established approach?"įor their research, He and his colleagues say they used CRISPR to make changes in one-day old embryos in a gene called CCR5. "If this was done to avoid HIV infection, there are alternative ways to prevent infection that are already effective," Doudna says, such as "washing" the sperm of infected sperm donors to eliminate HIV. She doesn't think that is the case in this situation. We just don't know yet," Doudna says.īut the claim "really reinforces the urgent need to confine the use of gene-editing in human embryos to settings where there's a clear unmet medical need and where there's no alternative viable approach," says Doudna. "All of us that are here at this conference are struggling to figure out what was done and also whether the process was done properly. Doudna helped discover CRISPR and organize the summit. "This work is a break from the cautious and transparent approach of the global scientific community's application of CRISPR-Cas9 for human germline editing," Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview. The claims by He sparked immediate widespread criticism from attendees at the summit and elsewhere. The summit was organized try to reach a global consensus on whether and how it would be ethical to create genetically modified human beings with CRISPR. He, the statement says, has been on unpaid leave from the university.Ĭhurch and He are among hundreds of scientists gathering at the Second International Summit on Human Gene Editing in Hong Kong. The university where He worked issued a statement that officials were "deeply shocked" by the experiment, which it stressed was conducted elsewhere. Meanwhile, He is now facing investigation by a local medical ethics board to see whether his experiment broke Chinese laws or regulations. ![]() ![]() "Both anecdotal - yet healthy baby girls can have an impact," Church wrote. "This event might be analogous to Louise Brown in 1978," wrote George Church, a prominent Harvard geneticist, in an email. "When Lulu and Nana were just a single cell, this surgery removed a doorway through which HIV enter to infect people," He says in the video, one of several posted online to justify and explain the work.īecause the research has not yet been published in a scientific journal or carefully vetted by other scientists, many researchers and bioethicists remain cautious about the claim.īut, if true, many said the move would be historic, comparing it to the birth of Louise Brown, the first baby created through in-vitro fertilization, IVF.
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