There’s a relative, partner or friend in the grip of incessant pain, caused by a heritable genetic condition.
Shinya Yamanaka gained a Nobel Prize, in 2012, for discovering “induced pluripotent” stem cells. This was material that could be taken from biological adults – thus relieving the need to make embryos. JK was jailed for three years by the Chinese government in 2019, for breaking their national bio-regulations. He has been rendered persona-non-grata by many of his fellow genetics scientists.
What He did was to use CRISPR to “cut out” a gene called CCR5 from the DNA sequence of these human embryos. CCR5 is known to increase human receptivity to HIV/Aids . A gene editing expert, Fyodor Urnov, provides the scariest quote. It’s all too easy for heritable editing to be used for “non-therapeutic modifications”, says Urnov . He gives us three “use-case scenarios which we should be very afraid about”.
When gene-splicing between species was made possible in the 70s, the Asilomar conference of 1976 saw a global collection of scientists – gathering even across Cold War lines – impose tight and mutually-monitored controls on such experiments. They feared superbugs and other abnormalities.