The First Gene-Edited Babies Are Here, Like It or Not | SciShow News

once in a while there's a development in science that gets an unusual amount of press often that's a good thing we discover a new subatomic particle or detect gravitational waves for the first time or land something on Mars this time is different last week a researcher in China announced that he had used the gene editing technique known as CRISPR to change the DNA of human embryos created via in vitro fertilization and that these two embryos had been successfully implanted in their mom and developed into twin baby girls that were born last month the experiment has been universally condemned by scientists and according to practically every expert on medical ethics should never have been done in the first place here's why CRISPR is a revolutionary gene editing technique that's been used for a ton of research in the last few years it allows scientists to delete genes turn off genes or insert genes all more easily cheaply and accurately than ever before in this latest experiment Huijin quai a scientist at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen China used CRISPR to disable a gene called ccr5 in human embryos ccr5 is involved in the immune system and the HIV virus exploits it in order to infect human cells so by disabling this gene he aimed to make the babies resistant to HIV we don't know many of the details of this experiment because who's Jean qui hasn't published the research and a peer-reviewed scientific journal but according to reports the parents of the babies went through IVF and shortly after the eggs were fertilized her used the CRISPR technique to cause a genetic mutation that would disable the ccr5 gene the embryos were then implanted into their mother's uterus and were carried to term the twin girls were born around the beginning of November and so far they seem healthy there's been speculation that the parents may have decided to participate in this experiment because the father is HIV positive but there are other less risky ways to ensure that a baby with an HIV positive parent doesn't contract the virus and then episode we did on CRISPR back in 2016 we mentioned that scientists are aware of that just because you can doesn't mean you should principle but it seems like who's Jean qui was not CRISPR had been used to edit genes in human embryos before now but only for research purposes and never with the intention of implanting the embryos or allowing them to develop and the consensus among both scientists and policy makers was that we were nowhere near ready to implant genetically edited embryos we needed more research first ethically there are still some open questions about the implications of editing someone's entire genome before they're born whether it will lead to so-called designer babies for example or if it's okay to alter the course of human evolution in this way no matter how you feel about those questions we're not ready for CRISPR edited babies because of some pretty basic safety concerns CRISPR isn't perfect yet and sometimes it will change a gene in unexpected ways causing an unintended mutation and the last thing you want is an accidental potentially dangerous change in every single cell in someone's body the few approved gene therapies that involved directly editing someone's DNA inside of their body use older better studied techniques not CRISPR there are a few CRISPR based treatments in trials right now but they work by taking certain types of cells out of the patient modifying them and then putting them back in and no matter what technique they use all these treatments have something in common they don't touch the germline germline cells are the ones that divide to produce eggs or sperm and by making sure they stay unmodified you can't pass on the edited DNA to a child so even if something goes wrong you avoid the risk of introducing that problem to future generations who's Jean quiet basically took all those precautions and threw them out the window for the experiment he used CRISPR to edit DNA and very early embryos consisting of only a few cells at most at that stage CRISPR can alter genes in every cell of the embryo which eventually generate every cell in the fetuses body including their germline cells even if everything had gone exactly as planned this research would have been controversial because it skipped so many steps in the usual careful process that goes into developing new treatments especially new gene editing treatments but it didn't all go exactly as planned the babies are healthy right now but the mutations in their ccr5 genes are slightly different from the naturally occurring ones who was trying to reproduce you have no idea if those new mutations will have other effects and now the girls are stuck with them for the to their lives it also seems like in at least one of the babies only half of the ccr5 genes were edited depending on how the edited genes are distributed that could mean that she didn't even get the HIV resistance after all that so yeah it turns out there are reasons we are cautious about research like this but it's not just about the fact that hood tried a treatment and it didn't work out exactly as expected that happens all the time it's that he went against scientific consensus so strong that there are laws to enforce it the Chinese government now seems to be investigating him although the details of that are not yet clear either way this was not a good strategy for pushing scientific progress scientists said pretty much agreed that if they ever used CRISPR on a human embryo that would be carried to term they would use it to correct a genetic disease for which there was no other reasonable treatment in a youtube video he posted because of course this all came out via a YouTube video who explained that he'd show us the gene because it's extremely well studied thanks to years of HIV research but there was no medical need for this the goal was just to make the babies more resistant to HIV infection which they didn't have and again could have prevented in a number of less expensive and much less controversial ways scientists are all for progress that's kind of their job and gene editing has the potential to completely transform the face of medicine but if there's anything scientists have learned from past mistakes it's that we need to be careful about how we wield that type of power because it can be dangerous too and with CRISPR being such an amazing potential treatment the last thing we want to do is sour the whole world on its use because of some mistakes made early in the process here at scishow we believe the more you know about the universe and how scientists come to understand it the easier it is to recognize good research and realize when science has gone astray it's one reason we do what we do so thank you for watching these videos we are glad you're here and if you're looking for more ways to share your passion for science you might be interested in a new project we're 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Channel: SciShow

Views: 428,364

Rating: 4.8820901 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, torf, news, crispr, gene, genes, gene-editing, embryo, embryos, twins, in vitro, fertilization, china, splicing, gene splice, genetic mutation, mutation, genetic

Id: 1qx7x8X9wLw

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/plurwolf7]

GATTACA!

[u/the_marxman]

If I remember my star trek correctly it's only -13 years until the great gene wars that creates the ban on all genetic engineering

[u/Secretively]

The man who did it has been reported missing for at least a week now.

[u/FalavelWavles]

Heads up: Dr. He is a physicist, and the editing he did to the twins does more harm than good....