The Economist: Editing Humanity

Article description

Editing humanity is an article published in The Economist, regarding the impact of various gene-editing methods on humanity. Specifically, this article discusses the impact of new technology dealing with Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 and Gene Drive. CRISPR requires a piece of RNA, chemical messenger, targeted removal area, and nuclease to “cut and paste” DNA (The Economist, 2015). Gene Drive is where one edited gene passes through the germline and introduced permanently into the population. This article further explains that doctors are looking more towards advancement in CRISPR than traditional methods, for example, patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, HIV, cancer etc.

As helpful as it may be, there is many areas of the topic that need to be discovered, thus many legal ethical, social ethical and ethical implications exist. Furthermore, many technical issues exist as well, some issues include immune response against the correcting gene, and disrupting important genes in target cells, mutations will be passed down to the next generation in germline gene therapy (Campbell et al, 1998), improper regulation (Ginn et al, 2013). The story of Jesse Gelsinger illustrates these challenges. Gelsinger, who had a rare liver disorder, participated in a 1999 gene therapy trial (Sibbald et al, 2001). He died of complications from an inflammatory response. His death halted all gene therapy trials in the United States for the time being, and started a discussion on the feasibility and regulatory of human experimental trials (Sibbald et al, 2001). This case shows the implications of initiating new technology before all the research, legislation, and policies have been implemented. Some social issues that exist with CRISPR are “Damaged gene pool: definition of normal changes, cost: dictates who has access to the therapy, Religious beliefs: humans playing god. The cost of this technology is not a light matter, CRISPR verges on the line of social justice where, how rich do you have to be to use this technology and what about the individuals that

In many cases, traditional medicine is not a viable option for treatment and or cure, thus the advancement in biotechnology needs to occur. With the help of Gene Editing/CRISPR, many individuals that suffer from genetic disorders have the possibility of acquiring viable cures (Ginn et al, 2013). The benefits of Gene therapy include repairing mutation, silencing genes, cure immune deficiencies, eradicate disease, replace defective cells and many more treatments are possibilities (Ginn et al, 2013). Essentially Gene therapy holds untapped potential that needs to be attained for human longevity and advancement (Campbell et al, 1998). For example, if both parents carry a genetic disorder, their option of having a child is limited, thus having an the ability to edit out the genetic disorder, so the child can live a long and healthy life would be a revolutionary concept (CRISPR, 2016). Gene Editing may be new concept, but a previous generation to gene editing is gene therapy and with advancement in technology biotech reaching new heights. Gene Therapy has allowed the scientific community to cure immune deficiencies such as “Severe Combined Immune Deficiency(SCID)” , “Adenosine deaminase (ADA) Deficiency” , and other illnesses hereditary blindness, hemophilia are just to name a few (Campbell et al,