Research Paper

            Throughout the history of mankind, medicine has increasingly gotten more complex and more efficient. It started with people having some bizarre idea and sticking with it or having luck and finding a cure with a mistake. In 1928, Scottish doctor Alexander Fleming, returned to his lab after a month long holiday, he found that the culture he was working on staphylococcus aureus, was destroyed by mold. Fleming has unintentionally discovered the first antibiotic, which was called penicillin. This drug has saved countless of lives and Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1945 (Chainey). Genome therapy has been just a simple thought between engineers, scientists and doctors for the past decades or so. It was merely just a thought that could potentially change the face of medicine and ultimately, the human race. Through the years there has been many attempts on creating such a machine, although recently they have managed to build one, it has not been used on humans or saved a single life. But it is being regarded as one of the greatest technological advancements in the history of engineering and medicine.

            As this technology is creeping closer to working, a huge question is still in the air, which is, “How far can we take genome editing in an ethical standpoint?” Some of the topics that will be covered are gene modification used for babies, modifying genes to cure diseases or prevent them, and testing with human embryos.

            The new machine that they have built is CRISPR Cas 9, and the purpose of it is to be able to edit the genome. The purpose that it carries is that it can potentially cure disease that have no cure, stop the transmission of genetic diseases and even change the features of a human. Before CRISPR, there have been other genome editing machines which include Zinc finger nucleuses(ZFN) and transcription activator like effector nucleuses(TALEN), these machines are broad based genome editing which are paving the way for new technology like CRISPR (Gaj).

CRISPR is Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, Cas is CRISPR associated proteins which are RNA- mediated adaptive immune system of bacteria and archaea that protects from phages and plasmids (Singh). Phage, short for bacteriophage, is a virus that parasitizes a bacterium by infecting it and reproducing inside it (Clokie). Plasmids are Plasmids are DNA molecules, generally circular, which can replicate in bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic cells (Lipps). CRISPR is categorized into three types, the one that we are mainly focused on is Type II system which utilizes RNA-guided Cas9 endonuclease that has been used for the development of a genome editing technology (Singh). This is used for the editing of the genome, which is a strand of DNA. Genome editing is having the ability to get a strand of DNA and be able to manipulate it in any way. This would include cutting pieces out, inserting new ones, modifying or replacing them in the genome or a living organism.

As mentioned before, this new technology has not been used on actual humans just yet. This new technology is going to be used for many causes, such as detecting, curing, and preventing diseases. CRISPR- Cas 9 and technology like human genome mapping will work together, these two technologies together will help detect small mutations in the human genome and ultimately, cure or prevent them (Jia). Being able to detect small mutations could be critical in curing certain diseases or understanding them in a new aspect. The technology has been used on mice for some time now. The studies on mice has been relatively successful in the sense that there have not been any noticeable effects on the genome apart from the ones that were trying to be edited (Bosley).

There are also discussions about climate change and how it is going to affect the human race, specially with the temperature increasing. Being able to genetically modify the human genome gives humans the ability to modify their DNA to being able to withstand the rising heats of climate change, whether it’s getting colder or hotter (Lehmann). The human body’s average internal temperature is between 97.7 – 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If the internal temperature of the human body goes up or down by 6 degrees, it could be catastrophic, it could be between hypothermia or hyperpyrexia. Having the ability to manipulate the genome and have the body be able to adapt to different temperature could mean the possibility of inhabiting places were unimaginable. Having the ability to alter a human’s body could bring about a lot of significant advantages that deal with temperature. An inarguable fact is that climate around the world is rising, there has been may debates about the traveling to other planets when the earth becomes too hot or too cold but genome modification will help our bodies adapt.

Genome modification is not only available for human but also plants, since they are indeed living things. Genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) is already something that has been implemented into daily lives, but with CRISPR it can give a new edge to these modified organisms. Cures to disease can be put into plants or anything in particular, this could help a vast amount of people with a low cost (Shinwari).

Imagine a world where you can choose what your baby would look like, this new technology can help you do that. Being able to genetically modify your own baby would be a possibility with CRSIPR-Cas 9 (Sas). But how ethical is this? Do we really have the right to be able to modify our baby to our liking? Genetically modifying a baby will go much deeper, scientist could modify sperm, eggs, and even embryos (Sas). There would be an ethical dilemma because of this, parents genetically modifying their babies to their likings. Research has been found that some parents would like to genetically modify their babies into their own liking. There are many risks that comes with genetically modifying a baby since the process of genome editing occurs when it’s an embryo (unborn offspring in the process of development). These risks include mutations of genes, and possible death to the mother since, there could be an imbalance of genes between the host and embryo (Sas).

When conceiving a baby, there is the passing of DNA from both parents. Parents with genetic diseases such as: Huntington’s, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia could potentially be passed down to their babies. CRISPR-Cas 9 will have the ability cut genetic diseases from parents which would completely stop the transmissions of a specific genetic disease for the coming generations (Hung). Curing genetic diseases will ultimately be cured because the strand will be eliminated before it gets to the rest of the generations, if the genetic disease is stopped then it will give CRISPR less value because it is no longer needed. People will begin using this technology to cut out disease that are manageable, disease that have a chance on occurring because of its late on set, or even height and intelligence (Bosley).

In a research article, that included many ethical questions regarding the individual risks with CRISPR Cas 9. Hank Greely, a researcher of CRISPR, mentions that some of the risks with this technology are off target effects and genetic chimerism (Bosley). Off target effect is, for example, CRISPR being used to cure HIV/AIDS but in the process of the genome editing, the gene that prevents tumors turn into a cancer causing gene. Chimerism is from the word chimeria, genes with different tissues, which is basically a mutation within the gene. Regarding the same question about the risks of this technology, Weizhi Ji mentions that there are three main problems/ risks. These include, that the only people that would be able to afford such technology are the rich, being able to genetically modify a human will put a great strain on “natural selection in populations and cause unanticipated effects in diversity of human variants in the gene pool, gene modification will give humans the ability to prolong life and the issues of how to sustain this life on earth will also become a huge challenge. The chances of having on target effects are also a possibility, “One could unintentionally convert sickle cell disease into beta thalassemia.” (Bosley).

The discovery of this new machine and the possible outcomes that come with it are extremely helpful and very much real, no one has really discussed its socio economic value. Many of the conversations about CRSIPR include what it does and how it could help society, but it does not mention the price of using it or how it could affect the public health care budget. There has been implementation of first approve genetic therapy in Glybera, which is priced at an outstanding 1 million US dollars. This proves that genetic therapy is only for wealthy individuals, a machine that could possibly cure anything would only be viable to those who have a million dollars. If people are to receive financial aid with this machine, on what merit should this financial aid be on. A conversation comes up on whether this financial aid be given to the people that are trying to cure a “right” disease, which does not include diseases that only a few minorities include (Baumann).  It is not ethically correct to treat a disease just based on the amount of people that have it. CRISPR was to develop to tackle the extremely rare diseases that only a few minorities have, the price of its usage is not beneficial to the masses because of its price. With CRISPR, it has the ability to create an embryo, this technology also brings up challenges when it comes to regulating it. Many countries make it illegal to create embryos, while other don’t, research finding of germline editing was recently prohibited in the US because of this (Baumann).

Although the idea of genome editing has been around for some time now, there has never been anything that could actually perform but now that there is, we have not yet really taken a full grasp of it. This technology is brand new to the biological and engineering field, there are many unforeseen, undesirable effects with the application of genome editing (Shinwari). The usage of CRISPR will have ethical questions raised regarding religion, there would be regulations implemented for this new technology. Religious scholar or people will be against such a machine due to its ability to modify a human being, so this brings about many ethical questions of its usage.   Some of the troubling possibilities from genome editing include: cloning, designer babies drugs that enhance rather than heal and the creation of human-animal hybrids (Fukuyama). This type of bio technology should be regulated just like anything these, there should be a limit to what people can do with such power. One of the biggest problems with this new bio technology is the fact that we could potentially change human nature and completely change the way our species operates, we could become, in a weird way, aliens.

The ethical question that came up with the creation of CRISPR Cas 9 is, where do we draw the line when it comes to its usage. CRISPR has many abilities, it can cure diseases even genetic ones, and designer babies. This technology should be regulated by the government due to its significant power. I believe that more research should be done before we start using such technology, there is still a lot that we don’t know and learning more about it will help tremendously. At the end of the day, when it comes to designer babies, it is completely up to an individual because people should have the right to choose. The question asked depends on the person that’s reading this, you can either believe that there’s a limit to what you can do with such a machine or you can think that there’s no limit. CRISPR is an extremely beneficial machine that could possibly change millions of lives with curing diseases and stopping genetic ones’ form passing on but more research and testing needs to be done before that.

 Bibliography

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2)     Jia, Chenqiang, et al. "Research Paper: New Applications of CRISPR/Cas9 System on Mutant DNA Detection." Gene 641 (2018): 55-62. Web.

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4)     Bosley, Katrine S., et al. "CRISPR Germline Engineering--The Community Speaks: Nature Biotechnology Asks Selected Members of the International Community to Comment on the Ethical Issues Raised by the Prospect of CRISPR-Cas9 Engineering of the Human Germline." Nature Biotechnology, no. 5, 2015, p. 478. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.415562329&site=eds-live

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7)     Lehmann, Lisa Soleymani. "Is Editing the Genome for Climate Change Adaptation Ethically    Justifiable?" AMA Journal of Ethics, vol. 19, no. 12, Dec. 2017, p. 1186. EBSCOhost, login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=126549272&site=eds-live.

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