Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff or production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. I'm Jorge cham and today we're answering
Speaker 1: the question is it safe to edit your DNA? In
Speaker 1: case you haven't been keeping up, humans now have the
Speaker 1: ability to change their genes. You could, for example, take
Speaker 1: a pill that will change the DNA of your eyes,
Speaker 1: or your skin, or even your brain. And it's all
Speaker 1: due to a technology called Crisper. But how far can
Speaker 1: we take this technology? Is it safe or even ethical
Speaker 1: to use. We're gonna talk to two geneticists who work
Speaker 1: with Crisper, and we're gonna learn where it came from
Speaker 1: and how it works. So start thinking about how you
Speaker 1: would upgrade yourself and edit your genes as we answer
Speaker 1: the question is it safe to edit your DNA? Hey? Everyone,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like
Speaker 1: the future arrived and I wasn't paying attention. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like yesterday to me that we were able
Speaker 1: to sequence the human genome, and now apparently we can
Speaker 1: basically edit it as easily as editing a word. Document.
Speaker 1: If you don't like the gene that you have inside
Speaker 1: of you, you can just cut it and paste it.
Speaker 1: So I had a lot of catching up to do.
Speaker 1: And so before we get to the question of whether
Speaker 1: it's safe to edit your DNA, we're gonna learn where
Speaker 1: this technology came from and how it works, because to
Speaker 1: understand its limits and what makes it potentially dangerous, we're
Speaker 1: gonna eat both of those things. And the history of
Speaker 1: how crisper came to be is actually kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It all started in a small lab in the south
Speaker 1: of Spain that was looking at tiny creatures called Archaea.
Speaker 1: To Phillisen. Here's Professor Louis Montealieu, a geneticist and the
Speaker 1: deputy director of Spain International Center for Biotechnology in Madrid. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, doctor Montaliu for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So we have a very general audience who may not
Speaker 1: have heard of crisper or even gene editing. So for
Speaker 1: people who are not familiar, can you tell us about
Speaker 1: the history of gene editing. When did this idea start
Speaker 1: becoming a reality for people?
Speaker 2: Well, genomeediting is one of these revolutions you never know
Speaker 2: that you will be able to winness so this are
Speaker 2: tool that enable precise genetic modification of georgenome and as
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, any genome of any creature, any bacteria,
Speaker 2: any plan and including human beings. At the end of
Speaker 2: the previous century we had a first generation of geno
Speaker 2: mediating Those were called megan nucleases that were not very versatile,
Speaker 2: so they were not used much. Then we had two
Speaker 2: different families of geneo mediting tools, and for some time
Speaker 2: there were okay, but the real revolution came across when
Speaker 2: we discover crispa. Crispa is an acronym for a cluster.
Speaker 2: Let me see I have it here because we always say,
Speaker 2: say chrispa, and we always forget this by is cluster
Speaker 2: regularly interspace short palindromic rapids.
Speaker 1: The acronym is too catchy, it's too easy.
Speaker 2: It is very sexy exactly so it looks like what
Speaker 2: you're having for breakfast, chrispher from Kellos and Crispa was invented,
Speaker 2: by the way, by one the young microbiologist at the
Speaker 2: University of Licante at the south of Spain. So the
Speaker 2: origin of crispa, it's actually in Spain, and this is
Speaker 2: normally forgotten.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to get to the origin of this revolutionary technology,
Speaker 1: we have to go back even further than the turn
Speaker 1: of the millennium. Back in nineteen ninety three, a young
Speaker 1: researcher in Spain called Francis Mohika was interested in something
Speaker 1: very few people thought was important and that was completely
Speaker 1: unrelated to gene editing. He wanted to know how a
Speaker 1: very primitive form of life called urkia, which are kin
Speaker 1: of the cousins of bacteria, could survive in super salty
Speaker 1: pools of water. So he did what everyone was doing
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen nineties, which was to sequence the
Speaker 1: DNA of these supers dirty or KaiA to see if
Speaker 1: there were any clues there. But when he looked at
Speaker 1: their DNA, he noticed something odd.
Speaker 2: He saw repetitions the same sequence, same shot sequence, repeated
Speaker 2: many times. That was his discovery in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and this puzzled Mohika.
Speaker 1: Why did these archaia have this stretch of genetic code
Speaker 1: all over its DNA? And while you and I might
Speaker 1: just shrug this off and move on with our lives,
Speaker 1: Mohika spent the next ten years of his life trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out.
Speaker 2: And he did, and it took him about ten years
Speaker 2: to discover by someow of two thousand and three that
Speaker 2: this was the basis of an immune system, of a
Speaker 2: defence system the bacterias were using to fight the viruses.
Speaker 1: Yes, even bacteria and primitive organisms like archaea have to
Speaker 1: fight viruses. What Uhika found was that the repeating sequence
Speaker 1: of DNA was part of a pretty badass system for
Speaker 1: killing viruses. Here's how it works. Whenever a virus attacks
Speaker 1: the Arkaia and the Archaea survives, it grabs a piece
Speaker 1: of the virus DNA and remembers it. It stores the
Speaker 1: little virus sequence in its own DNA.
Speaker 2: So the bacterias that have been visited by many viruses
Speaker 2: over thousands or hundreds of millions of years, they had
Speaker 2: bits and bits and bits of different viral genomes and
Speaker 2: this was like a picture they kept from the virus.
Speaker 2: So next time the same viruses wanted to infect this bacteria,
Speaker 2: they say, hey, I know you, I know who you are,
Speaker 2: and because I know who you are, I can fight
Speaker 2: you and I can destroy your DNA.
Speaker 1: So the Arkaea or bacteria remember every single virus they've
Speaker 1: ever interacted with, and they lay a trap for them.
Speaker 1: They create a molecule called CAS nine or CAST nine,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a sharp DNA scissor, And to
Speaker 1: each copy of this scissor they give it the memory
Speaker 1: of each virus they've ever met. So now the archaea
Speaker 1: has a bunch of scissors rooting around, each of them
Speaker 1: keyed to a snippet of the DNA of every virus
Speaker 1: it's ever encountered. You can start to see how this
Speaker 1: could be used to cut your own DNA.
Speaker 2: This is a very efficient system that was invented by bacterias.
Speaker 2: This was invented probably more than three billion years ago,
Speaker 2: so this is something that has been drunning for many years.
Speaker 2: So next time a virus wants to insert the DNA,
Speaker 2: if the virul is known by the lacteria, this will
Speaker 2: trigger a signal and the signal will start cutting the
Speaker 2: viral DNA. And if you cut the vital DNA, basically
Speaker 2: you destroy They may that you destroy the intruth.
Speaker 1: All right. This was a discovery that eventually led to Crisper.
Speaker 1: These Archaia and bacteria basically figured out how to make
Speaker 1: a DNA scissor, and they figured out how to key
Speaker 1: the scissor to a particular sequence of DNA, So the
Speaker 1: scissors are floating around looking for a particular stretch of DNA.
Speaker 1: When it finds, it cuts the DNA, but only in
Speaker 1: the spot where it finds the sequence. Now, at first,
Speaker 1: nobody thought this could be used at a DNA. It
Speaker 1: was just some discovery about the immune system of bacteria,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Mohika had trouble getting it polished.
Speaker 2: He submitted this discovery to the top journal's Nature Science
Speaker 2: Cell and they all rejected because what really they all
Speaker 2: rejected because this was coming from Alicante, was not coming
Speaker 2: from Stanford, from Yale, from Oxborg, Cambridge, so he didn't
Speaker 2: include any kind of foreign researcher. It was him with
Speaker 2: his students, and eventually he took him like two years,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and five he published his discovery
Speaker 2: in a very historical journal, but kind of very far
Speaker 2: away from the top journals. The journal was a journal
Speaker 2: of molecular evolution, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So Mohika publishes this in a not so prominent journal,
Speaker 1: and that could have been the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Maybe nobody would have read it or thought it could
Speaker 1: be used for anything other than understanding how bacteria work.
Speaker 1: But the two special people happened to read the paper
Speaker 1: and they had an idea.
Speaker 2: What happens since that that paper in two thousand and
Speaker 2: five was read by many other people. Jennifer Downa and
Speaker 2: Emmanuel Charpantier, and these two working independently, they met in
Speaker 2: San Juana, Puerto Rico in spring of twenty and eleven
Speaker 2: and they decided to collaborate because they both have read
Speaker 2: Francis paper that was published like six years before, and
Speaker 2: they had the idea to transform this defense system into
Speaker 2: a genomediting tool, into a tool that you could use
Speaker 2: to eraise and to replace letters so in order to
Speaker 2: correct mutations. And that's exactly what they decided to do.
Speaker 2: And it took them only one year to do this collaboration,
Speaker 2: and that's the only time they collaborated. They never have
Speaker 2: collaborated again. And they published this in Science and eight
Speaker 2: years later, in October twenty twenty, they were awarded a
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize of Chemistry.
Speaker 1: And that's how we got Crisper. From a scientists getting
Speaker 1: curious about how bacteria basically survive a cold, we get
Speaker 1: to a Nobel price and a technology that might revel
Speaker 1: uianized medicine, and even who we are.
Speaker 2: And the beauty of this is that this was basic science.
Speaker 2: So when he was discovering how bacteria fight viruses, nobody cared.
Speaker 2: He said, what is this? Who is interested how the
Speaker 2: bacteria decide to fight viruses? Well, what happens is that
Speaker 2: the same mechanism that is used by bacteria to fight
Speaker 2: viruses is what Manuel Chaptee and Jennifer Downer transformed into
Speaker 2: a genomeedicing tour. Basic science became an application many years later,
Speaker 2: I think, and this is the poetry behind these ideas,
Speaker 2: because he was sharing his knowledge about what the bacterias
Speaker 2: are capable of doing, and then that was illominating new
Speaker 2: ideas in the mind of all the researchers many years later.
Speaker 1: All right, when we come back, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to another scientist about how crisper actually works to edit
Speaker 1: your DNA, what you can do with it, and then
Speaker 1: later we'll talk about whether it's safe to edit your
Speaker 1: DNA or even morally right, So stay with us. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back, and we're back. We're talking about whether
Speaker 1: it's safe to edit your DNA, and the main way
Speaker 1: scientists and doctors are doing this is with a technology
Speaker 1: called Crisper, which we learn is what most archaea and
Speaker 1: about half of all bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses.
Speaker 1: But around twenty twelve scientists figure it out it could
Speaker 1: be used for gene editing. Now, the basic idea of
Speaker 1: crisper is this, there's a special kind of molecule that
Speaker 1: acts like a scissor to DNA, meaning it can cut
Speaker 1: strands of DNA. But there's a way to attach as
Speaker 1: nippit of genetic code to this scissor, so that the
Speaker 1: scissor will only cut in the places where it sees
Speaker 1: the nippet in the DNA strand. It's like imagine if
Speaker 1: you have a book and you only wanted to cut
Speaker 1: the book in places where it had the word hippopotamus
Speaker 1: printed on it. Well, you would print the word hippopotamus
Speaker 1: on a little strip of paper, and you'd attach this
Speaker 1: strip to a special kind of scissors, and the scissors
Speaker 1: would check every word on the book, and whenever it
Speaker 1: saw the word hippopotamus, it would cut the page, breaking
Speaker 1: the flow of words. Now, the question is how do
Speaker 1: you use this to edit human DNA and is it safe.
Speaker 1: To help explain how crisper works, I reached out to
Speaker 1: doctor Leanna Pelea, a researcher at the University of Zurich
Speaker 1: and one of the co authors of a well cited
Speaker 1: paper on Crisper titled Past, Present and Future of Crisper
Speaker 1: Genome Editing Technologies. Thank you so much, doctor Pellia.
Speaker 3: For Joe, thank you so much for having me. It's
Speaker 3: really a pleasure.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Peleia, in just the last ten or
Speaker 1: twelve years, there have already been three generations of Crisper technologies,
Speaker 1: and each one is more advanced than the last. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the iPhone.
Speaker 3: Because I think Krisper twos are a bit like the iPhone.
Speaker 3: It's always like a newer version.
Speaker 1: Each one has a better camera.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a better camera, better features, and it's always
Speaker 3: getting better. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to talk about what each of these
Speaker 1: generations that Chrisper can do, because that's going to help
Speaker 1: us when we talk about what makes these technologies risky.
Speaker 1: Here's how doctor Pellia describes what we'll call Crisper one
Speaker 1: point zero.
Speaker 3: Yes, so the original Chrispher systems are just Cast nine
Speaker 3: or Cast TWELVEA. They cut both strands of DNA, so
Speaker 3: in human sales the DNA. We know it's like double stranded,
Speaker 3: which means it has two strands of DNA, and these
Speaker 3: enzyme cut both the top and the bottom strand of
Speaker 3: the DNA. So by producing double strand break, meaning cutting
Speaker 3: both strands of the DNA, that means that the cells
Speaker 3: undergo damage into their DNA. So when there is a
Speaker 3: double strand break, a dour gene of interest, the DNA
Speaker 3: repair mechanism, that is something that the human cells have
Speaker 3: by themselves, would fix the brake. And in fixing the brake,
Speaker 3: it's going to introduce some small mutations. And in this
Speaker 3: way we can disrupt the activity of human genes, which
Speaker 3: is something that's very useful.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Crisper one point zero is essentially a gene breaker.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have a gene in your DNA that
Speaker 1: has mutated or a gene that you inherited that is
Speaker 1: giving you a disease. For example, sickle cell disease, which
Speaker 1: affects about one hundred thousand people in the US, can
Speaker 1: be traced to a single mutation in your DNA that
Speaker 1: it causes red blood cells to have the wrong shape.
Speaker 1: So to cure this disease, you want to take out
Speaker 1: this gene, Well, you can do it with Crisper by
Speaker 1: writing down this gene in that little piece of paper
Speaker 1: I described before attaching it to the cutting molecule that
Speaker 1: acts like a scissor, and then letting these scissors loose
Speaker 1: on the patient's bone marrows themselves. The scissors will then
Speaker 1: find this gene in the DNA sequence and cut the gene. Now,
Speaker 1: human DNA has a self prepaired mechanism that would normally
Speaker 1: fix this cut. But this mechanism is not perfect. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while it makes a mistake. But if
Speaker 1: the human body fixes the break, doesn't that defeat the
Speaker 1: purpose of knocking out the gene.
Speaker 3: So that's the thing. So the human body fixes the break,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't fix it perfectly. Sometimes it could fix
Speaker 3: it properly. But even if it's fixed properly, then it's
Speaker 3: going to be cut again by another cast nine molecule
Speaker 3: and cut again and again, so in the end it's
Speaker 3: going to be probably mutated. So that would cause disruption
Speaker 3: of the gene.
Speaker 1: So Crisper will cut the DNA. Then the DNA will
Speaker 1: repair itself, so Crisper will cut it again, and this
Speaker 1: will repeat until the repair mechanism makes a mistake, and
Speaker 1: so you'll end up with a different version of the gene.
Speaker 1: And because it's different, it's not going to work. And
Speaker 1: because it doesn't work, the patient is not going to
Speaker 1: have the disease anymore. So that's level one of editing
Speaker 1: your DNA. You can basically kill a gene and this
Speaker 1: has been shown to work in people. After about nine
Speaker 1: years of research and pre clinical trials and clinical studies,
Speaker 1: the FDA in December twenty twenty three approved the use
Speaker 1: of Crisper for treating sickle cell disease. Okay, now we
Speaker 1: move on to Crisper two point zero.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the second generation involved in engineer risper and
Speaker 3: so and these enzyme is engineered so it cannot cut
Speaker 3: both strands of DNA, but they can only cut one
Speaker 3: of the DNA strands. Okay, And instead of making a
Speaker 3: double strand DNA break, they make a single strand DNA break.
Speaker 3: And this is less toxic than the double strand break.
Speaker 1: I see, because the cell doesn't freak out as much. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so then how does it work? It breaks one strand?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it breaks one strand. But that's not all they do.
Speaker 3: So they are also fews with an enzyme called damnas,
Speaker 3: which could convert one DNA letter to another, So it
Speaker 3: makes the letter change on the strand that it doesn't break.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is where we get to actual gene editing.
Speaker 1: The first of the second generation of Chrisper tools, called
Speaker 1: base editing, goes in, breaks one strand of DNA and
Speaker 1: then replaces one letter in your DNA sequence. So before
Speaker 1: if your gene read something like ATTAGC, it might now
Speaker 1: read adt cgc. Wow. So now this tool has two things,
Speaker 1: the cutter and something that it replaces one letter.
Speaker 3: Yes. So these are very powerful for maybe correcting mutations
Speaker 3: that are just defecting one letter.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's base editing, and you said there was another one.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's prime editing, where this technology makes also a
Speaker 3: single strand break off the DNA and then it extends
Speaker 3: one of the DNA strands with a new sequence of interest.
Speaker 3: And depending on how these prime editors are engineered, one
Speaker 3: could make up to maybe one hundred nucleotide modifications into
Speaker 3: the genome.
Speaker 1: And when you say one hundred nickelodies, you mean like
Speaker 1: one hundred letters in your DNA.
Speaker 3: One hundred letters of DNA. You could add up to
Speaker 3: a hundred letters and also delete something in the ten
Speaker 3: two hundred range.
Speaker 1: All right, now we're getting even more advanced. What can
Speaker 1: the second generation Crisper tools called prime editing, can go in,
Speaker 1: cut your DNA and replace up to one hundred letters
Speaker 1: in your DNA sequence, and then we get to Crisper
Speaker 1: three point zero.
Speaker 3: You know, with first generation and second generation, these are
Speaker 3: very powerful, but the range of the mutations that they
Speaker 3: can make are still relatively small. So if we imagine
Speaker 3: different patients and they all have mutations in a certain gene,
Speaker 3: maybe some patients would have a mutations more towards the
Speaker 3: beginning of the gene, some patients more towards the end
Speaker 3: of the gene, some patients more in the middle of
Speaker 3: the gene. And with these first and second generation tools,
Speaker 3: in general, we would need a different correction strategy for
Speaker 3: different parts of a gene. But that's where the third
Speaker 3: generation tools come into place, where you could have large
Speaker 3: insertions into the genome and you could insert gene size
Speaker 3: fragments where in theory you could replace the whole mutant
Speaker 3: gene with the correct version.
Speaker 1: So Crisper three point oh can replace whole genes at
Speaker 1: a time, that's like being able to edit several pages
Speaker 1: in a book and not just one letter or a paragraph.
Speaker 1: And scientists are even working on Crisper four point zh.
Speaker 1: Well not technically Crisper four point oh, because these new
Speaker 1: tools use a different system than Crisper, but they work
Speaker 1: the same way.
Speaker 3: Then we have an emerging class of engineer gcombinaces. This
Speaker 3: is a bit complicated, but these enzymes allow us to
Speaker 3: make large deletions in the genome, large inversions, and large
Speaker 3: insertions in the same time. I think at this point
Speaker 3: we could make megabased mutations.
Speaker 1: Like a million letters. So we're at the point where
Speaker 1: we can change millions of letters at a time. Yes,
Speaker 1: So then what's the next step to change whole chromosomes
Speaker 1: and things like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, Like we are waiting. I think
Speaker 3: that would be quite interesting for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, we're at the stage where we're waiting for
Speaker 1: Tim Cook to announce when the next generation of iPhones
Speaker 1: are Yes, do you have to stand in line at
Speaker 1: the Apple store for a really long time, I'll say,
Speaker 1: or no.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: So basically we're almost at the point where we can
Speaker 1: change anything about our DNA. You're not happy with the
Speaker 1: genes you inherit it from your parents. You could, in theory,
Speaker 1: just cut and pay some new genes. But now the
Speaker 1: question is it safe to do this? What are the
Speaker 1: risks of this technology, and maybe more important, is it
Speaker 1: right to change your DNA? When we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: dig into the risks of using Crisper and the ethics
Speaker 1: of gene editing. Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff,
Speaker 1: and we're back. We're talking about whether it's safe to
Speaker 1: edit or change your DNA, which is a relatively new
Speaker 1: question in the history of humanity. As we learn from
Speaker 1: our experts, we are getting close to the point where
Speaker 1: we can alter our genes in almost any way we want.
Speaker 1: And all of this has only recently come up with
Speaker 1: a new technology called Crisper. Now the question is is
Speaker 1: it safe to change your DNA. Here's how doctor Juana
Speaker 1: Pella answers that question. Now, maybe step me through it.
Speaker 1: Let's say I want to have blue eyes. Okay, what
Speaker 1: would be the first step?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think that we are there yet to
Speaker 3: make you know, genome edits for these kind of features.
Speaker 3: We can edit DNA, but this comes with certain limitations
Speaker 3: and certain problems. That are actually associated with these Yeah,
Speaker 3: we can edit DNA associated with certain diseases, but we
Speaker 3: take this risk because the benefit of editing the DNA
Speaker 3: outweighs the problems caused by this disease. And having blue eyes,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. I think maybe easiest is
Speaker 3: to get contact lenses that blue eyes.
Speaker 1: That does sound easier, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: I don't think that at the moment, like the benefits
Speaker 3: of having blue eyes with gene editing would justify this.
Speaker 1: What Tarcapilla is saying is that there are still risks
Speaker 1: in editing your DNA, so at the moment, you probably
Speaker 1: don't want to use it for something as trivial as
Speaker 1: changing your eye color. Okay, what are these risks? Well,
Speaker 1: there are three things that can go wrong when using crisper.
Speaker 1: The first is that crisper might cut your DNA in
Speaker 1: places that you don't want it to cut. I heard
Speaker 1: that one of the risks in gene editing is that
Speaker 1: the guide sequence is made to match a certain part
Speaker 1: of your DNA, but it's possible that the same sequence
Speaker 1: exists somewhere else in your DNA.
Speaker 3: I think this is for sure one of the major
Speaker 3: problems there might be similar sequences in other parts of
Speaker 3: the genome.
Speaker 1: Remember that the way crisper works is that you attach
Speaker 1: a sequence of DNA letters to a molecular scissor and
Speaker 1: the scissor will look through your DNA and where it
Speaker 1: finds the sequence, it will make a cut. Well, that
Speaker 1: sequence might be in more than one place in your DNA,
Speaker 1: so the scissor might end up cutting your DNA in
Speaker 1: places you didn't want it to cut. This is a problem,
Speaker 1: although according to doctor Pelea, there are ways to avoid it, like,
Speaker 1: for example, checking all three billion letters in your DNA
Speaker 1: to make sure the sequence doesn't repeat. This is a
Speaker 1: lot of work, but it's getting cheaper to do.
Speaker 3: So you need to check it very carefully. Make sure
Speaker 3: it's not somewhere else. Make sure that the sequence even
Speaker 3: if if you change of your nucleotizing these twenty nuclodized sequence,
Speaker 3: it's also not somewhere else, or other sequences that are
Speaker 3: very similar with these sequence are also not present into
Speaker 3: the genome.
Speaker 1: The second risk in editing your DNA is that sometimes
Speaker 1: crisper in the different ways to use crisper don't always
Speaker 1: make the edit that you want. Sometimes it makes a
Speaker 1: mistake Okay, so you're saying the second risk is that
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't edit it the way you want it
Speaker 1: to edit. Yes, that happens, It could happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And even if it doesn't happen often, when you
Speaker 3: edit a population of sales, and even if let's say
Speaker 3: one percent or less than one percent has an edits
Speaker 3: that you don't want, let's say that edit makes the
Speaker 3: sales grow better or gives them growth advantage, this very
Speaker 3: rare population could actually take over.
Speaker 1: What doctor Pillar is saying is that even if mistakes
Speaker 1: happen very rarely with Crisper, those stakes could be crucial.
Speaker 1: It might result in mutant cells that take over or
Speaker 1: have bad effects on your health. Then, the last risk
Speaker 1: in editing your genes is that the human body is
Speaker 1: really complicated. Changing a gene might have consequences you didn't expect.
Speaker 3: There might be other consequences in the cell that we
Speaker 3: still don't understand fully how the affects later generations of cells,
Speaker 3: for example, like how the selle might get stressed, or
Speaker 3: how this could affect the future of the cell. Or
Speaker 3: if we make an edit, would the cell behave exactly
Speaker 3: like a normal cell. There are many things that we
Speaker 3: know about, but there are also many things that we
Speaker 3: don't know that we don't know. It's always good to
Speaker 3: research these from every possible avenue.
Speaker 1: So those are the risks in editing your DNA. Now,
Speaker 1: a question I was also interested in is whether it's
Speaker 1: right to edit your DNA? What are the ethics of
Speaker 1: gene editing? As it turns out, this is also something
Speaker 1: that your Louis Want to You has written about. When
Speaker 1: I heard about the ethics of gene editing, what it
Speaker 1: brought to mind was the question should we be editing
Speaker 1: our genes? Like, is it something that we should be
Speaker 1: doing philosophically? Is it something that seems right to you,
Speaker 1: to me, to the average person. Does it seem right
Speaker 1: to change we are in this way? Is that something
Speaker 1: that's in the discussion. Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I'll tell you there are different opinions on this.
Speaker 2: So there are some people that consider that the human
Speaker 2: genome as a psychred thing, so something that should not
Speaker 2: be touched. We should not be messing around with our geno.
Speaker 2: There are all the opinions in which they say, well,
Speaker 2: if we find a way to cure the congenital disease
Speaker 2: that is affecting this person, we have an ethical imperative.
Speaker 2: If we can't solve the question, we should do this.
Speaker 1: What if there's a third category of people who just
Speaker 1: want edit their genes to be thin or to be smarter.
Speaker 2: Oh well, this is the other aspect, which is enhancement.
Speaker 2: So you want to enhance your gena, you want to
Speaker 2: see better, you want to be thinner, you want to
Speaker 2: be taller.
Speaker 1: So there are people that might reject gene editing out
Speaker 1: of principle, others who say it's a no brainer in
Speaker 1: the case of serious diseases, and there are others who
Speaker 1: might use it to change who they are. For example,
Speaker 1: in sports, you might change a gene so your body
Speaker 1: makes more glucose so you can run faster or longer.
Speaker 1: Or you might change a gene to have better lung
Speaker 1: capacity or even better eyesight.
Speaker 2: All this is called enhancement, and this is very controversial.
Speaker 1: Well, what's the ethical argument against that.
Speaker 2: The ethic or undergoment against do this? You increasing the difference,
Speaker 2: you're increasing inequity, you increasing injustice. And basically you have
Speaker 2: to want that who is able to go down this road,
Speaker 2: who is want to be paying for them, Those that
Speaker 2: are wealthy, those that are wealthy are the ones that
Speaker 2: can be afforded the cost of such a treatment.
Speaker 1: So the argument against is that it gives people an
Speaker 1: unfair advantage and that will probably reject it, maybe the
Speaker 1: same way that we reject steroids and sports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like dopy, So this is biodopy.
Speaker 1: If I edit my genes, is it possible for me
Speaker 1: to edit them back?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it shouldn't be a problem. Modifying a
Speaker 2: gene can be in both directions. You can clean a mutation,
Speaker 2: you can rain certain mutation I see, and actually, if
Speaker 2: you think it carefully, this is also a biological weapon
Speaker 2: because if you're distributing this and you're killing some important genes,
Speaker 2: you might be affecting the health of your enemy. So
Speaker 2: this is why there is also some biosafety concerns and
Speaker 2: by your security concerns regarding CRISPA, because eventually you can
Speaker 2: spray nanoparticles with CRISPA that will be inactivating a gene
Speaker 2: that is fundamental for cell cycle regulation until the body
Speaker 2: will stop functioning.
Speaker 1: Wow, you can use it as a weapon exactly.
Speaker 2: We always talk about anapetics. Now we started talking about enhancement.
Speaker 2: But there is also the evil side and the evil
Speaker 2: side is that you can use it as a web.
Speaker 1: So this is definitely uncharted territory for human ethics. Okay,
Speaker 1: to summarize, I asked our experts how they would answer
Speaker 1: the main question of the episode. If I asked you
Speaker 1: is it safe to edit your DNA? How would you
Speaker 1: answer that question?
Speaker 3: I would say it depends. I think it depends on
Speaker 3: the reasons why you would want to edit your DNA.
Speaker 3: And if the reason is because of a rare disease
Speaker 3: or because the editor would really benefit the quality of life,
Speaker 3: then we bring a better life. Then I think there
Speaker 3: are instances where this might be a good idea.
Speaker 2: It's worth for those people that have no cure, have
Speaker 2: no read man, and they might be dying or they
Speaker 2: might be suffering. But if it's not for a CBA disease,
Speaker 2: I will think it twice. Because the technique at the
Speaker 2: current moment is not one hundred percent safe.
Speaker 3: It's always that the risk of editing should be smaller
Speaker 3: than the risk of not editing. For these two makes sense.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you do end up editing your genes,
Speaker 1: don't forget to make a backup, you know, just in case.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, see you next time you've been
Speaker 1: listening to Science Stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced
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