A momentous technological revolution is unfolding in our very real, no longer fictive ability to easily and cheaply alter the human germ line. A technological development called CRISPR, which stands for โclustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,โ allows scientists to both delete and add heritable genetic variants. Worried about Alzheimerโs? Ovarian cancer? Parkinsonโs? Simply edit it out of your body, or that of your childrenโs children. Donโt like red hair? Short stature? Big nose? Ditto. Want strong bones? Resistance to heart disease? Oh, snap. The process is so simple and low-cost that, according to Harvard University geneticist George Church, itโs โgoing to get to the point where itโs like you are doing the equivalent of cosmetic surgery.โ
Real debate about this is emerging in the scientific community. In the past few weeks, there have been calls from an impressive array of scientistsโincluding Church and a number of those involved in the discovery of CRISPRโto slow down its use in humans. Some scientists have called only for a public conversation; others have called for a moratorium, arguing that the technology effectively allows non-consensual experimentation on future human generations.
But many more scientists see this technology as an irrefutably good thing. Says bioethicist John Harris, of Manchester University in the UK, โThe human genome is not perfectโฆ Itโs ethically imperative to positively support this technology.โ Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health launched an initiative โto leverage genomics, informatics, and health information technology to accelerate biomedical discoveries.โ This week, NIH announced the panel overseeing the project. It includes representatives of corporations like Intel and Google, the Defense Department, and a healthy array of venture capitalists. The goal is to create a โnational research cohort of about 1 million people, whose biological data, as well as environmental, lifestyle and behavioral informationโ is to be shared with researchers.
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Read full, original article: Who’s Getting Rich Off Your Genes?
