The Chinese Genetic Experiments That Shocked The World | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by brilliant org on November 25th of 2018 a very interesting birth announcement was made on YouTube to twin girls Lulu and Nana had been born somewhere in China their parents were not the ones in the video announcing this it was just this guy sitting in a lab surrounded by equipment talking about sciency stuff the guy's a bio physicist named Asian qui previously of the southern university of science and technology in shenzhen china and the smartypants science stuff that he was saying was about how lu lu and nana were the world's first genetically engineered babies according to the doctor when they were only a single-cell old he and his team used CRISPR cast nine to edit their genome and what they did was they removed this gateway in the DNA that allows HIV to an effective person so he basically made these girls immune to HIV not the worst thing you can do to a person the problem is this was all done in secret and this kind of thing is just not something that the medical community is really ready for assuming the doctors telling the truth Lulu and Nana are the first children born with deliberately engineered inheritable genes we have officially entered the age of genetically engineered people unsurprisingly many medical experts aren't happy within days dr. Jin quiet study was immediately condemned almost universally and after months of debate and negative news stories 18 leaders in the scientific and ethical fields have proposed a moratorium on implanting genetically engineered embryos the one to be careful not to do a permanent ban but they did want to kind of curtail this sort of thing happening so that we can study and you know get an idea of how this is gonna affect things moving forwards they proposed a period of five years they also suggested that a quote broad societal consensus should be attained before we start doing this kind of thing which sounds great but genetic engineering is right up there with climate change on the split the room meter it also won't be easy once people realize just how big a deal this is because when you affect one person's DNA it doesn't just affect that one person it affects that person's children and their children and on and on this little snip of DNA could affect thousands of people over the years and we have to decide as a society if we're ready to take over the job from nature of creating human beings we're gonna be hearing a lot about this in coming years so let's just look and see how we got here in his announcement dr. Jim CAI compared the birth of Lulu and Nana to the birth of the first test-tube baby Louise joy brown in 1978 in vitro fertilization was really controversial at the time and in some circles it still is but in general the consensus toward IVF is softened over the years according to some estimates at least 8 million people have been born after being conceived under glass which is what in-vitro means and certainly the families of those people are okay with this technology basic IVF procedure means combining a sperm and an egg in a petri dish before it's implanted Lulu and Nana were conceived this way that part obviously is not controversial the controversial part is that while they were still a single cell dr. Jin Chi and his team used CRISPR cast nine to edit a gene called ccr5 I've covered CRISPR before on this channel but let's just do a quick primer so basically single-celled bacteria don't have an immune system the way we do because they're just a single cell but they do have a way of protecting themselves against viruses by snipping out little pieces of the viral DNA and inserting it into their own DNA that way the next time the virus comes around it knows how to beat it and the enzyme it uses to do this is called cast 9 in 2012 Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley and Emanuel sharp NTA of yuumei university in Sweden invented an easy way to trick the bacteria in an attacking pre selected genes and about that same time Feng Shang of MIT in George church of MIT and Harvard figured out how to get the bacteria to operate on human cells basically we can now get these bugs to mutate babies George Church by the way has recently used CRISPR to splice woolly mammoth genes in two elephants to try to bring back elephants and he actually thinks that he could bring back Neanderthals in the same way I mean movies about this haven't there so like so much in the body the ccr5 gene does lots of things one of which is that HIV gateway that I was talked about which by the way if you didn't know that HIV needed a gateway I'm right there with you this is news to me in fact using genetic mutation to protect people against HIV is not a new thing there's something like 10% of people in northern Europe that have this gene mutation it's actually thought that this mutation also helped people to survive the bubonic plague way back in the day so in places where the bubonic plague was especially bad this mutation is especially concentrated so yeh and actually today two people have been cured of AIDS by switching out bone marrow with those people that have this same mutation so this is the thing that naturally happens and what dr. Jan CAI was basically trying to do was to pass this on to human babies through artificial instead of natural means hiv-positive people actually have a lot of trouble getting fertility help in China and this is one of the things that apparently motivated dr. Jin Chi to help out Lulu and nan to be born because their father is HIV positive so technically we could eliminate HIV and AIDS in a single generation it sounds pretty great right according to the doctor his next target might be heart disease something else we could happily live without but Joey may be saying this all sounds so perfect and positive and in no way filling me with angst something must be wrong here and to that I say you know me well the first clue that something is wrong here is that this announcement was made on YouTube not in a medical journal or through some kind of peer reviewed process like legit science and according to new scientists somehow this secretly done with no oversight experiment may have been flawed possibly badly flawed the consequences did the children won't be known for years now but the study was so flawed that some people are already accusing dr. Jenkins negligence possible consequences to the rest of us well that's something else it's a discussion that's ongoing right now with lawmakers and experts and us the document that proposed the moratorium breaks down the reasons for this into four parts which I'll just kind of go through real quick the first is technical considerations now CRISPR is an amazing tool there's clearly a lot of stuff that we can do with it but it's still very new and where there's still a lot we still don't know even people who really want to do this in a really gung-ho about CRISPR are concerned about the kind of experiments that dr. Chen Kai's been doing shoo crab metalli pod for example is somebody who's done experiments on of different embryos that have not been implanted unemployed is the key word here and even he thinks that what's going on is dangerous he used the word premature for one thing according to scientists who saw some of the slides of Lulu and Donna's DNA it looks like they're single-cell that he did the genetic modification on may have already begun to replicate before he did the edit meaning that some of the ccr5 gene actually did get passed on so when different cells have different DNA when they're supposed to be similar it's a condition called Messiah sysm and in the case of Lulu and Nana this might just mean hopefully that the effect of this DNA editing might not be as strong but Messiah sysm can have terrible consequences there's a whole host of genetic diseases that are caused by this kind of mishmash of DNA so let's just hope that this isn't the case for Lulu banana another danger that they may face is that CRISPR casts 9 can often cut in the wrong place this has been seen in some mouse studies CRISPR is often called a genetic scalpel but even scalpels can cut where they're not supposed to the rate of errors when using CRISPR casts 9 has been considered to be more than what would happen through regular genetic mutation from DNA passed on by parents though it can be a little bit better than some environmental factors the point of the matter is there's still a lot we don't know about CRISPR and there's still a lot of research that needs to be done there are some scientific considerations that need to be addressed you know well Lulu and Nana actually be benefited by the ccr5 mutation since the changes that have been made are inheritable will this be passed on to their kids and how will this affect us as a whole species with all these questions in the air the genetic pioneer of Fang Shang actually said that the risks of knocking out the ccr5 gene outweigh the potential benefits apparently knocking out this gene can actually make somebody more susceptible to the West Nile virus or a more susceptible to death from flu and this is true of other genes there's a gene that makes you less susceptible to Parkinson's but removing it makes you more susceptible to Crohn's disease in schizophrenia which seemed like two totally different things but DNA the whole point is can we confidently say that if we make these kinds of edits in the genes that there won't be some kind of negative effect down the road these are all questions that need to be answered and many people say that dr. Jin Chi neglected his responsibility as a scientist by not address seeing those concerns and just charging forward just with the interest of being first dr. Jane Chi has said before that he wants to be considered the father of genetic editing so he wants to make a name for himself like Jonas Salk or Alexander Fleming which is not the best reason to do genetic editing on someone so some argue that he basically did a surgery that wasn't necessary this falls under the medical considerations here you know Lulu and Nana were not at severe risk of infection so did this really need to be done now other cases are different of course some doctors aren't actually support doing genetic editing when both of the parents have a genetic condition and they don't want to pass it on to their kids and there are some other techniques that can be used to produce the same effect but it usually requires producing a whole lot of embryos and then just kind of like finding the ones that don't have that genetic problem that you're trying to avoid that obviously means creating a lot of embryos and then destroying them but still some say that that's sort of more natural way of creating the embryos and instead of going in and actually cutting the genes as a safer way of doing it and then there's societal ethical and moral considerations there's a number of nightmare scenarios around genetic editing that exist in the literature and when I say literature I mean Netflix countless films and TV shows from Blade Runner to x-men have asked the question how much can we change human beings and still be considered a human being how do we create Beauty without creating monsters back in the mid 90s an interesting accident happened doctors thought that they could actually help out infertile women by using the jelly in the eggs from fertilized eggs into what the doctors didn't know is that the jelly that was donated actually has mitochondria in it mitochondria has its own DNA so the mitochondria was absorbed into the eggs and those eggs became fertilized about a dozen people were born before they realized this error and shut the program down so these dozen or so people are special because they actually have DNA from three different donors and they remain genetically abnormal now as far as we know they grew out to be perfectly functional in normal young adults but then mitochondrial replacement therapy has actually been used to avoid passing on a genetic condition in at least one case so far so we can do stuff like that clearly and not wreck the world as we know it the question is is it right to do it is it right to create embryos for the purpose of scientific experimentation and where do you draw the line between preventing diseases and improving people giving them special gifts and talents and abilities should we cure Down syndrome or autism or set minimum requirements for lean muscle mass and IQ that last one isn't even sci-fi evidence actually exists that people with the ccr5 mutation do better at school so we've already bred for brains so what's next Chinese scientists have already created tiny micro pigs and swoll beagles with twice the normal muscle mass there are conspiracy theories out there that they've already created super soldiers there's probably one behind you in ten years we might all know somebody that has a niece or a nephew that's been genetically engineered in some way someday these people are actually gonna be in charge when they are are they gonna thank us or arrest us or vaporize us so this is a frustrating topic for me because you know on one hand of course getting rid of things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's sounds amazing that would be a wonderful world to live in plus if we perfected this technology it could benefit us as well people who are already born there are people who talk about using viruses to implant genetically modified DNA that could spread that DNA throughout our bodies allowing us to take advantage of it while we're still alive but who says we have to stop there I mean really could i alter my genes so that I actually get a tan instead of bursting into flames that you're spending 10 minutes in the Sun that would be nice besides a little color and my skin really sets off my piercing blue eyes so honestly on one hand I'm kind of glad dr. Jim Chi took that first step you know I mean you can only you can only experiment on petri dishes so long eventually you got to actually do it in a human being and the sooner we do that the sooner I can get a tan and we can cure debilitating diseases no matter you know Edward Jenner first came up with the inoculation for smallpox by testing it out on his gardeners son it was risky and could have ended his life but it worked and because of that millions of lives have been saved so while the scientific can be is universally condemning dr. Jenkins actions they're also just kind of watching with interest at the same time oh this is terrible did it work but I'm curious what you guys think do you think this was out of line do you think he jumped too far ahead or do you think this is something we should be going ahead and working with trying out talked about in the comments and while you're talking in the comments all smart like if you'd like to talk even smarter like then you might want to check out the daily challenges feature on brilliant org I wouldn't tell you to check out the genetic experiments course on brilliant but they don't have that which is probably a good thing brilliance daily challenges are like little brain appetizers to get the juices flowing by solving problems on a variety of subjects subjects that you can then take a deeper dive on with their courses brilliant awesome because it doesn't just teach you a bunch of facts and figures and make you memorize stuff it actually walks you through problems and helps you to do problem-solving and teaches you how to do this yourself it helps you sort of frame it in your own context that's how learning is done you can get free access to brilliant and take advantage of their weekly puzzles and brainteasers by going to brilliant dorks last answers with Joe and the first 200 people that sign up for their premium subscription that gives you access to all their courses and get 20% off your subscription for life if you haven't checked out brilliant yeah just go check out those those free puzzles you got nothing to lose you can get a taste of it and if you like it you can sign up for more brilliant dork slice Angeles with Joe links down the description big thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video and a huge shout out to my patreon supporters my answer files on patreon that help support this channel they're growing a great community wonderful people all of them here's some more people that have joined let me murder their names look like we got Igor Vieira Nils Kohlberg Marc Ravel Christopher Jones Matt Harris Mark Alexander David Lyons Wayne Bowers William Harry Yann Kozak Paul woods Emmet Conlon Michael C Sanjay Matthew Jason Smith and Peter kadar thank you guys so much if you would like to join them get early access to videos access to me join our discord group and just talk and have a good time you can go to patreon.com/scishow and search with Joe t-shirts available at the store answers Oh Joe calm slash shirts not only are they fun not only are they cool not only will you like them but they also support the channel and they support an awesome designer named Michael Oberon who was an amazing person I loved working with him so I liked supporting him go check out answers with Joakim slashers please like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here check out this video Google things you like that any of my other videos on similar topics and if you are into it if you like the cut of my jib then I invite you to subscribe because I come back with videos every Monday and every Thursday alright thanks again for watching you guys go out now have an eye-opening rest of the week and I'll see you on Monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 471,880

Rating: 4.9043903 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, genetic editing, designer babies, crispr, crispr-cas9, jennifer doudna, He Jiankui, China, HIV immunity, HIV gene mutation, mosiacism, dangers of genetic editing, gene editing

Id: MXDpCVxksh8

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TheSn00pster]

I suspect we'll need to watch China closely for signs of transhumanist breakthroughs. They have far less conservative Christian fear.