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Chinese researchers have used genetic engineering tools to create twins theoretically immune to HIV, smallpox and cholera. Review of MIT technology reported. The medical breakthrough is controversial, as many worry about eugenics and baby designers for the rich.
The twins, named Lulu and Nana, according to chief scientist He Jiankui of Shenzhen in a YouTube video, were the result of an in vitro fertilization (IVF). A few weeks, they seem to be in good health. When they were a cell, genetic surgery using a popular tool, CRISPR, "removed the gateway through which HIV enters to infect people".
After a normal pregnancy, the mother, named only Grace, gave birth to the two girls. The father, Mark, has HIV.
According to the Associated Press, he and his team performed the genetic surgery of seven different couples during fertility treatments. The couples refused to be identified or interviewed. It is the first birth.
The researchers' claims still need to be independently verified or reviewed.
In this way, harmful genetically transmitted diseases could be stopped. But the genetic modification applied to humans is controversial.
"[W]We have never done anything that can change the genes of the human race, nor anything that can have effects that will continue from generation to generation, "said biologist David Baltimore, chairman of the Second International Summit on Climate Change. 39, edition of the human genome. , which begins tomorrow, said in pre-recorded remarks. A change that has finally turned out to be an error might be impossible to cancel.
There are also other ethical concerns. According to Dr. David King, a former molecular biologist and founder of Human Genetics Alert, human genetic engineering could lead to the conception of babies. "The free market actually leads to eugenics" and will generate greater inequality, he wrote guardian last year.
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