Finally Scientists have been given go ahead to edit genes so as to solve genetic issues and study more about the effect of modifying genes at the earliest stages of conception.However the Naysayers are complaining and do not want humans to play god…LOL Naysayers.
There is nothing to fear about Genetic editing . In fact , Scientists should also be allowed to clone humans and not just humansfor earthly habitation , but humans for planetary habitation.
Cloned humans can be used for space exploration , making them have a respiratory system that can survive in Jupiter or Venus .We are on the threshold of great stuff , genetically speaking .
Thus with genetic editing one does not just create life but make life better for one whose genes bound them to suffering .
The beauty of genetic editing is that it shows WE ARE CHEMICALS .DNA is a chemical and thus humans show off a large array of different chemicals .
Some are black, white , brown chemicals which have LGBT properties, some straight , others asexual etc ….We are a galaxy of terrestrial stars or meteorites wrapped up in unique genetic material …LOL !!!
The point is Genetic Diversity makes up for the Sexual ,Racial, Biological diversity we possess as humans and all efforts to advance genetic science should be lauded .
Rex Arthur
Genetic editing is like playing God – and what’s wrong with that?
Johnjoe McFadden
British scientists are getting permission to alter embryos’ DNA. We have the chance to correct devastating diseases in the womb, so let’s get on with it
Baby playing with DNA model
‘Gene editing of human embryos to eliminate disease should be considered to be ethically the same as using laser surgery to correct eye defects.’ Photograph: Tetra Images/Getty Images
The announcement that scientists are to be allowed to edit the DNA of human embryos will no doubt provoke an avalanche of warnings from opponents of genetic modification (GM) technology, who will warn that we are “playing God” with our genes.
The opponents are right. We are indeed playing God with our genes. But it is a good thing because God, nature or whatever we want to call the agencies that have made us, often get it wrong and it’s up to us to correct those mistakes.
British researchers get green light to genetically modify human embryos
Sadly, of the half a million or so babies that will be born in the UK this year, about 4% will carry a genetic or major birth defect that could result in an early death, or a debilitating disease that will cause misery for the child and their family. This research will eventually lead to technologies that could edit DNA in the same way that we can edit text – to correct the mistakes before the child’s development goes to its final draft. Its successful implementation could reduce, and eventually eliminate, the birth of babies with severe genetic diseases.
But surely our DNA cannot be compared to the patterns of printer ink on page? Our DNA is considered to be so special that the phrase “it’s in his/her DNA” is said with the same sense of fatalism that our ancestors would have spoken of their fate or their soul. Anti-GM activists, many of whom are devout atheists, often insist that our DNA is somehow special, something donated to us by an all-powerful, wise and benevolent nature, which has taken God’s place as our creator. But nature is just blind chance – mutation – combined with the survival of the fittest. There’s no grand plan and no reason why nature shouldn’t, like the rest of us, occasionally make terrible mistakes. When those errors could lead to terrible human suffering, it is our duty to try to correct them.
Gene editing could provide revolutionary benefits to our children
Our DNA is just a chemical. Schoolchildren isolate it from cells in the class laboratory and it can be spooled out on a glass rod looking like slimy cotton wool. When dried, it looks like fibrous paper. You can eat it or burn it and it will return to those simple atoms and molecules from which it is made. There is no special magical ingredient between the atoms, no soul, just atoms and space. DNA is the most amazing chemical in the known universe, but it’s just a chemical – made of the same atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen you can find in the air. It is no more spiritual than your fingernails or hair. And we don’t mind clipping those when we need to.
Gene editing of human embryos to eliminate disease should be considered to be ethically the same as using laser surgery to correct eye defects, or a surgeon operating on a baby to repair a congenital heart defect. DNA is just another bit of our body that might go wrong.
If you start screening sperm donors for dyslexia, where do you stop? | Anne Perkins
Yet gene editing could provide revolutionary benefits to our children. A team based at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London recently used gene editing to treat a one-year-old girl with leukaemia, who is now in remission. More technology is in the pipeline. A team based at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported in this week’s Nature Biotechnology that they were able to correct a genetic liver disease in newborn mice. Taking this technology into human embryos could correct devastating genetic diseases in the womb.
But isn’t this a slippery slope to designer babies genetically engineered to be healthier, cleverer or more beautiful than they would otherwise be? Wouldn’t it provide a technology that would only be available to the super-wealthy, potentially creating the kind of divided society that HG Wells envisaged in his futuristic novel, The Time Machine? Perhaps. But let’s worry about the future in the future.
In the present, if those of us with mostly healthy children are worried about the ethics of gene editing, then we should ask the parents of children born with haemophilia, cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy whether they would have used this kind of technology if it had been available to them. If science can be used to eliminate human suffering, then let’s get on with it.
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Genetics Embryos Ethics Biology Health Medical research
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