from Chinese researchers [5] who used CRISPR to alter human embryos. The test was ineffective, but shows that anyone can use CRISPR in new, unregulated, and potentially harmful ways. In light of these concerns and the widespread availability of CRISPR technology, the summit called for a moratorium on the editing of human embryos, laid down guidelines for basic laboratory gene-editing research, and established an ongoing international forum to oversee genetic development.[1] Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the International Gene-Editing Summit will be enough to control the power of CRISPR.[6] According to Nicholson Price, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, “The Washington Summit has no international authority, so there is still no legal restriction on what people are allowed to do. The Conference laid down a plan, but it may have a hard time enforcing it.”[7]
Why be concerned? “The prospect of rapid and efficient genome editing raises many ethical and societal concerns, concerns we may not have enough time to address,” said Feng Zhang, a leading MIT biomedical engineer, at the international summit. [3] CRISPR may one day be used to create ‘designer babies,’ and could change
physical traits like hair color, height, or even disease resistance in human embryos. For ethical and social reasons these types of editing have not been tried on human embryos until this past summer, when the Chinese team experimented on inviable human eggs.[5] Bo Huang, a biophysicist at the University of California in San Francisco, was quoted in a Nature publication called CRISPR, the disruptor saying, “People just don’t have the time to characterize some of the very basic parameters of the system. There is a mentality that as long as it works, we don’t have to understand how or why it works.” For a system so powerful, Huang said, “That seems very scary.”[3] The Chinese scientists who altered human embryos published their paper in a scientific journal called Protein and Cell. Their goal was to correct the gene defect that causes the blood disease beta-thalassemia, a condition that reduces the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in the body.[5] The team found that CRISPR successfully cut the target gene, but also cut other genes, and the repair mechanisms did not incorporate the right DNA back into the cut areas. They concluded that “our work highlights the pressing need to further improve the fidelity and specificity of the CRISPR/Cas9 platform, a prerequisite for any clinical applications of CRSIPR/ Cas9-mediated editing.”[5]
Price said that “The Chinese used CRISPR on human embryos because there are no strict regulations; I have not seen any repercussions for those scientists. CRISPR will be used internationally—how we control this technology will be a huge question for society.”[7]
Why CRISPR is Revolutionary “CRISPR has the potential to open up doors in human gene therapy, in controlling pests like mosquitoes, in disrupting viral genes and pathogens, and in agriculture, altering crops and animals,” said Jennifer Doudna, the co-inventor of CRISPR and professor of cell biology at U.C. Berkeley, in a recent TEDtalk.[2] Gene-editing technologies have been around since the 1970’s, but what makes CRISPR so new and different?[8] Older technologies are more expensive, less precise, and harder to use than CRISPR. With older technologies, a scientist must produce a synthetic protein that matches up with the targeted DNA section. It is very difficult to ensure that this protein goes to the right place, and even harder to make sure it cuts the DNA strand correctly.[8] Older gene-editing technologies can cost as much as $5000, while basic CRISPR systems can be purchased for $500 per target.[8] Nature quotes Stanley Qi, a systems biologist at Stanford
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