Do not lose your sleep in front of "genetically modified" babies

He claims that his experiment was successful and that his technique did not cause any unintended damage to the rest of the genome. Nobody has been able to verify it yet.

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We do not know if participants understood the purpose of the study. The consent forms described the project as an "AIDS vaccine development program".

The absence of informed consent would constitute a serious violation of ethics in any medical experiment, not to mention an unprecedented study like this one.

But what is most disturbing in these reports is that he would have conducted his experiment on healthy embryos for a questionable medical benefit.

The tweak that provides HIV resistance is a double-edged sword. Although these girls may never have to worry about the daily medication regimen and the life-long stigma of HIV infection, they are potentially more likely to have a life-threatening reaction to a relatively minor problem, such as the flu.

We have absolutely no way of predicting the real impact of such a change.

The edition of human genes will one day be an imperative. Already, there has been a huge success in animal models. For the time being, human gene editing trials are limited to conservative, well-designed, and transparent studies that do not produce heritable changes.

Introducing hereditary modifications into the gene pool for the treatment of the disease is not necessarily a mistake, but it should be justified by a serious medical need, a good understanding of the risks and benefits, and the absence of any alternative treatment. effective.

His experience does not seem to bear any of these characteristics. It is premature, aimless and unethical.

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The timing of this announcement, just before the International Summit on Human Gene Publishing, which is being held today in Hong Kong, is highly suspect. It seems that he and his colleagues were motivated by self-aggrandizement at the expense of the safety and well-being of the twins.

Moreover, if his claims are verified, the twins could become the center of international attention, condemned to live their lives under the eye of the field of research and the media.

What are we doing now?

Gene editing is far too important to yield to alarmism. Work in this area brings us tremendous progress in our understanding of the disease. For the first time, we can focus on the genetic accidents that cause cancer and possibly reverse it. We can reverse the changes made to our DNA by viruses like HIV, which copy and paste their genetic material into ours. These are gains that we can not simply ignore.

Many of us are rightly concerned about these reports, but we should not fall asleep about them. We can be comforted by the widespread condemnation of Him by his own university, his colleagues and academics around the world. This is a strong indication that the ethic is not negotiable for the overwhelming majority of scientists.

As researchers around the world come together today to build consensus on the appropriate use of gene editing in human embryos, they may be more encouraged to find an agreement.

Even though some technology critics may think that the issue of dishonest genes will be out of control now that the Pandora's box is open, the strong and unanimous position of the scientific community should indicate the opposite.

Fahad Ali is a geneticist and a member of the Sydney Nano Institute and the Sydney Institute of Agriculture. He is working on the development of new methods of administering the CRISPR mechanism in plant cells.