WEBVTT - Designer Genes 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.240 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:14.239 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to law your Mind. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.000 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.640 in this episode we're talking about designer jeans with a G, 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.680 not with a J. Yeah, I know you wore your 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.440 best I have my george As jeans on. You can 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:30.479 still enjoy wearing them, but uh, but yeah, we're taking 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.479 things to pigmentic level here. And this is based in 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.320 large part on a World Science Festival panel that you 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:41.080 attended in New York City. It's right Designer Jenes fashioning 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.280 our Biological Future, which you can check out. Can just 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:46.720 you can google w s F or excuse me, the 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:50.080 World Science Festival, I should say, and designer jeans and 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:55.160 look at a very spirited discussion about the future of 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.520 reproduction and a couple of really great panelists on there. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.120 But we wanted to bring it to you guys as 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.600 attention because some of the technology that's happening is fascinating 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:10.520 and it brings up all sorts of ideas and problems 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:13.640 and solutions. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.280 lot of controversy in this this general area of scientific 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.120 investigation and discovery, and there has been for some time 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.160 because we're you end up diving down into some of 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.400 the central ideas about what it is to be human 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.759 and how the how humans work as a species, how 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.800 we evolve or how we don't evolve and uh, and 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:34.600 people get a bit touchy about that. I mean, and 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:36.560 to your point, they get a bit touchy about it 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:39.720 in this panel you attended, and certainly that's what makes 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.720 a great panel discussion. Yeah, in the premise of this panel, 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.800 or a couple of questions thrown out there, like what 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:50.440 if you could prevent disease through genetic engineering even before conception? 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.040 All right, would you do it? The Goud answered the yes, right, 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:55.760 you'd want to give your child a leg up in 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.920 the biological world and and um, you know you have 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:01.960 that child not have to experience, um, some serious disease. 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:04.800 But the other question was what if you could tinker 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.559 a little bit more with genetics and give that child, 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.080 say a propensity for uh, you know, more robust intellectual 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.959 skills or powers or even athletic prowess. You kind of 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.280 get into this area of of science and genetic science 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.359 as they is an honor system candy dish. Do you 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.880 take the one piece of candy or do you or 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:27.600 do you maybe you take out a one for later 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:29.000 as well, or maybe you just reach it and get 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.760 a whole handful. At what point do we self regulate? 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:33.240 At which point do we stop? At what point do 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.600 we need someone else saying don't get five candies, only 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.560 get one? Yeah, And we do have a basis in 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.720 reality to start judging these things by. So we're gonna 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.280 get in the time machine and go back a little bit. First, 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.840 we're gonna go back to the nineties seventies in which 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:53.240 there was a firestorm in Cambridge because there was this 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:58.040 idea of recombinant DNA happening at a very serious level. 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.920 You have this moment once scientists in genetic engineering, we're 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.519 trying to move forward with this, and they were trying 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.920 to create guidelines with the National Institutes of Health, and 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.040 we're doing that, and there were a couple of alarmist, 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.080 couple of scientists who said, wait a second week, should 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:15.960 sit back, because this is very important here. If you 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:20.080 can take a bacteria and you can tinker with its genes, 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:22.320 and you can do it in a way that this 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.440 bacteria survives this and thrives. Does this mean that will 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:31.040 be unlashing pathogens? Does this mean that this ability also 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:36.360 allows us to start to create Frankenstein chang the F word, 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:41.800 the scientific f word. Uh, Yeah, and which inevitably comes up. 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.520 And I don't believe we've podcasted on Frankenstein before, not 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.120 only as a fictional character, but just as an idea, 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:52.000 as a symbol of science gone too far. Science Uh, 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.400 interfering with with with with the human condition in in 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.200 a meaningful way. Yeah, And this, of course is a 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.840 discussion that has to happen. But out of this discussion 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.280 comes again these guidelines for genetic engineering, many of which 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.880 are still in place today. And if you want to 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.040 look at why they had a problem with this in 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.680 the first place, well you have to go even back 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:18.200 further in history and look at the American eugenics movement, 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:21.880 which happened in the late eighteen hundreds and early neteen 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:27.560 hundreds and is fundamentally a misunderstanding of genes and how 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:29.800 they work in our past. Down in people now be're 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:34.200 familiar with the term eugenics, it probably carries a certain 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.840 dark weight for you because it it has become synonymous 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:44.400 with with with human breeding programs, essentially with force sterilization, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:49.920 and with the rise of of of the Nazi regime 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.960 in Germany. Yeah, it's all bungled up in this. So 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:56.480 if you look at the American eugenics movement, you see 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:00.040 that there's this oversimplification of how genetics works. So you 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.320 start to have scientists say, oh, well, we think that 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.560 these traits are passed down and and here's this imbecile 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:07.599 and really this is the this is the jargon that 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.000 that you used in these papers. Um, here's this imbecile 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:16.120 breeding another imbecile, and how could we stop this? Well, 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:18.360 sterilization is one way that we could stop it. And 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:21.760 they start to actually put this into practice because at 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.200 the same time this is happening, there are a lot 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.680 of people who are being institutionalized when they should not 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:31.400 have been. So maybe a person had um a bad 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.720 case of alcoholism or some other thing that didn't line 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.880 up to society in the society's best solution at that 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.279 moment was, well, just put them in an institution. And 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.160 then you have this problem with this eugenics coming online 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:50.679 actually garnering um some credibility as a way to measure 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:54.880 someone's uh not just i Q, but what their general 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.040 traits were. Yeah, you see this push to to say, oh, 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.840 well this person is I mean any in a sense, 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.559 Eugenics at a very basic level has it's not setting 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.200 out to do evil. A few few human endeavors really 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:09.320 say all right, what can we do to just really 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.400 make a dark name for ourselves? I mean, the the 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.520 idea is essentially, can we improve humans? Can we ensure 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.320 healthy babies? But you quickly get into this area we're saying, well, 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:24.200 let's just sterilize the the imbeciles, let's sterilize the criminals, 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:29.080 let's sterilize the homosexuals, and uh and and inevitably you 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.760 get into this very dark in human territory. And if 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:36.279 someone is institutionalized in a sense, many of their rights 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:39.120 have been taken away, and there have been. There's actually 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.000 a very famous case called Buck versus Bell that looks 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:43.919 at whether or not someone has rights on this and 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.240 it's still on the on the books, right, it's a law, 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.159 and we won't go into it because, um, it's a 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:53.719 pretty lengthy case. But basically someone was sterilize because the 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.640 mom had been in an institution, and the line of 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.560 reasoning was that she was genetically predis pose to be 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.360 an imbecile like her mother. Therefore, let's sterilize her. So 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.240 this is a problem, right, this this line of logic. Moreover, 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.560 you've got a bit of xenophobia going on at this time. 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:16.120 There's a large immigrant population, So there's this idea again that, um, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.080 you know that there's a sort of purretty that's being 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.200 muddied with their muddy in our waters. What can we 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.680 do to purify ours? Yeah? And who does this what 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.880 sort of a line of reasoning does this appeal to? Uh? 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.600 The old Hitler? Yeah, yeah, the old the old Hitler, 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.240 as you say, the Nazi Party. And clearly yeah, you 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.720 see uh, you look back in time. You see Hitler 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.679 picking up on ideas of American American eugenics. You see 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:47.880 mine comp referencing the language of the American eugenics movement. 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.560 You see them sort of in a mutual admiration society, 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.000 where the American eugenics movement individuals and that are saying, oh, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.400 look at the great work they're doing in Germany. They're 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.360 doing there, there's so much more advanced than we are. 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.040 And then likewise you have people on the German side saying, oh, 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.000 the American eugenics movement. They have it figured out. We 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.280 we should be doing uh more of what they're doing, 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:12.480 and both sides are kind of headed for for a 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.360 very real disaster. Right. In fact, some of the ideas 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.440 and writings of the American eugenics movement shows up in 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.360 linkom right like this is to the this is the 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.440 extent to which they are in bed with each other. However, 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.640 there's a backing off by the American eugenic society because 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.520 eventually what we see are these ideas manifesting themselves in 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:37.400 very real ways leading up to World War Two. So thankfully, 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.880 this movement in America loses a lot of its momentum 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:43.839 and people back away from it, and they begin to 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.160 understand that this is we're going into a territory here 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:50.040 that we don't necessarily want to go into. We don't 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.040 want to sterilize people. At this point, I do want 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:57.119 to point out that thirty states had adopted sterilization policies 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.760 for those institutions or jails, So it really did make 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.880 somewhat of a mainstream play here. Yeah, and you look 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.320 back through it some notable cases. I mean, for instance, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:09.719 you have Alan Turing central figure and computer science and 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:14.120 AI prosecuted for homosexuality in nineteen fifty two when such 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.400 acts were still criminalized in the UK, and he accepted 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.960 treatment with the estrogen injections also known as chemical castration 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.840 as an alternative to prison. Um. This little sad, yeah, 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.840 tragic story. Um. Another interesting case that I ran across, 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:35.040 and this surprised me. Uh Sweden. Sweden has a reputation 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.960 for being a very friendly to LGBT interest for the 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:43.360 most part. Right, but up until two thousand thirteen, if 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.120 a Swedish transgender person wanted to legally update their gender 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.840 on official I D BIT I D papers Uh in 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:53.520 nineteen seventy two, law required them to both get divorced 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.920 and sterilized. First. Yeah, that came off the books in 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.480 two thousand thirteen, so it's no longer reality. But two. 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.199 So all of this gives I think everybody a good 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.719 idea of the basis that scientists are working off in 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.640 nineteen seventy when all of a sudden, genetic engineering becomes 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:12.920 a very real thing, and they look back to the 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.520 past and how this how technology or science or ideas 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.200 were used, and they go forward and we're still in 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.199 the shadow of eugenics. Yeah, it's a very long shadow, 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:27.200 and it's casting its shadow over some technologies. Now they're 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.160 actually very helpful. But again there's a bit of a 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.480 firestorm about that. So let's take a quick break and 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:34.360 when we get back, we are going to talk about 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:45.640 the three person I v at all. Right, we're back, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.600 and we're going to talk about a little something called 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.560 mitochondrial transfer or how might have we have heard of 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.280 this in the media? Okay, it has been picked up 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:58.640 as babies with three parents, also called three person in 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:04.240 vitro fertilization and and not used yet. It would be 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:09.319 uh manajatifah, I think we can coin that one. You know, 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:11.640 we could probably do that and there would be some 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:13.319 there would be one person on the panel that it 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.600 would be pretty annoyed with that, and for good reason, Yeah, 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:18.559 I mean, because it is a this is a situation 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.200 where if you're talking about this in terms of three person, 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:26.319 three parents, babies, etcetera, you are focusing on one little 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.240 detail of the situation and kind of blowing it out 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.160 of proportion. But how can you not when you're talking 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:37.079 about a three genetics influencing the birth of a child 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.079 instead of just two or one in the case of cloning. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.480 I just think it's funny that that sort of baggage 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.640 comes to the table, that this idea that's like managua 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:51.640 genetic material coming together, because it's not really that um 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.440 and yet that's that's probably the sexiest way that the 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.320 media or anybody else can kind of describe it. Yeah, 0:11:57.320 --> 0:11:59.760 I mean, it doesn't sound as sexy because well, let 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.400 me just to explain really quickly what mitochondrial transfer is. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.800 This is when doctors inject the cytoplasm from another woman's 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.240 egg into the egg of a patient with mitochondrial disease. 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:13.920 And the aim here is to eliminate mitochondrial disease from 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:19.200 the resulting offspring. But the offspring in question essentially technically 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:23.079 those three genetic parents. Yeah, we'll get more into that 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.000 to the actual statistics, but but that yeah, but that's 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.120 just the the the endpoint of that, I mean, the 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:33.360 important part is you're trying to help a woman who 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.600 severs ther minochondrial disease have healthy offspring that does not 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.400 suffer from it. That's the aim here. It's not let's 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:44.559 get all Frankenstegni and make make three parent genetic families no, no. 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.720 Mutations in mitochondrial DNA can cause rare but really serious 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:53.520 illnesses and defects, including heart failure, dementia, and blindness. And 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:57.160 many of these conditions are fatal and diseases like diabetes, stroke, 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.560 cardiac deffects, epilepsy, or muscle weak this may originate from 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.280 mitochondrial defects. Okay, so there's a lot going on here, 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.240 there's a preventative measure um, and let's just kind of 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.360 back up a little bit up and go back to 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.320 mitochondria because I know, I feel like everybody's probably in there, 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:16.559 like fifth grade or sixth grade class right now. I'm 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:19.439 talking about the powerhouse of the cell um. But it's 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.880 more than that. It has its own DNA and it's 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.520 a separate DNA UH in the nucleus, and mitochondrial DNA 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.120 is inherited via the maternal line from mother to child. 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.400 That's why this is a problem, right, It's passed down. 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:37.280 So when you do this, when when you make this 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:41.520 transfer from a donor egg, the resulting egg, which has 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:46.000 the nucleus from the intending mother, has nine nine percent 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.960 of its coding DNA from the intended mother. So we're 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:55.080 talking about it just an infantesmal amount of genetic material 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.880 from the donor egg. You cannot say this is like 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:04.880 a three person embryo, but technically you can, yeah yeah, 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.760 um yeah. And so of course people end up focusing 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:09.960 on that. I can't I mean, I can fault them, 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.520 but I can't fault people for for finding that idea 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:14.520 kind of exciting because it again, it changes the way 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:16.959 you sort of think about what. It changes the way 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.800 you think about just two person parentage or one person parentage. Well, 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.880 I mean, it takes me back to when we talked 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.320 about chimeras. Right, this is that case in which there 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:32.080 was a person who had not absorbed her twin like intentionally, 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.120 but you know, she survived and she, um, she did 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.440 absorb her twins, so she had the genetic material from 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.680 her twin. But this is a single birth. Right. Later on, 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.360 she would have children of her own, and she had 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.760 a very serious illness and so that what it is 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.240 that touched the children to see if they could, um, 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.520 I believe give her Maybe it was a kidney or 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.080 something like this, But they found that the at least 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:00.160 two of her three children were not genetic matches. They 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.960 matched the absorbed twins. So The idea here again is 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:08.360 that this kind of thing happens in nature. Sometimes it's 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.640 not so crazy, it's not so frank Instinian, but then 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.040 we end up we end up calling the cameras, which 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:16.600 is of course the name of a monster as well. 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:19.960 So you kind of can't help but fall into that 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:23.480 trap with with language and our understanding of of these 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:27.360 these scientific principles. Well, the problem with minochondrial transfer, at 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:29.760 least right now is twofold, and one is that there 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.360 are objections that the embryo would contain genetic material from 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.840 three different people, and they don't know how this would work, 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.640 how this would interplay. In other words, would the embryo 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.640 maybe reject some of that genetic material, would it cause 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.440 problems with that child later on? Um. The other part 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.520 of this is there's a question about whether or not 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:52.000 any of those mitochondrial genes from the mother may still 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:54.480 be present. In the words, you can get all of 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:59.160 them out, and that remains to be answered whether or 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.400 not there there'd be a tiny colony um from the 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.840 mom with the mutations that might eventually take over the 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.560 other mitochondrial DNA colony from the donor egg. So it's 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:11.840 something we would need to proceed with with small scale 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:16.760 scale studies on really but but then it involves embryos, 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:19.120 it's a it's a hot button issue. How do you 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.280 get the go ahead to actually research this even though 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.880 it can be a tremendous aid to the individual suffering 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.200 from these mitochondrial diseases that they want to have children. Yeah, 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:31.800 and so that's the problem right here, like how do 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:35.360 you start human clinical trials with these concerns and with 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.080 some scientists still on the fence of, hey, we shouldn't 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.280 go down this road because it's a slippery slope. You 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.080 start doing mitochondrial transfers now, and then all of a 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:47.200 sudden you'll be creating super babies with all sorts of traits. 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.560 And so that's that's part and partial the problem with 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.840 this right now, the reason why some doctors cannot get 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.800 into human trials even though they've had successful creation of 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:03.080 healthy human's eyegoats in animals. One of the individuals on 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.480 that panel, uh it was a man by the name 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.080 of a Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Urban and Environmental policy 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.640 and Planning at Tufts University, and he he was kind 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.840 of the antagonist on the study. But like One of 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:17.919 the things he was bringing up is, well, there's this 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:22.080 so called m ao a warrior gene and human that 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:26.080 is all about human aggression. And so then what parents 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:30.080 wouldn't eliminate that to make their child less war Like, 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:31.800 I guess if you really want a kid to succeed 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.440 it at sports, you'd say give them two of those 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.399 if you can. But um, you know, it's that kind 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:39.480 of argument people want up making. You know, if you 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:41.920 if you can take one one candy from the jar, 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.280 why wouldn't you take to why wouldn't you take three? Well, 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.040 so what some of the other panelists said is we're 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.720 not at that point yet anyway, and so it's not 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:52.560 as simple as that. You can't really just go in 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.679 and say, oh, well that's the aggression, Jane, take it 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.760 out now, we're good to go. Exactly. So Nita for honey, 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.840 she's a genome science is in policy, the lawyer, UM, 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:07.040 and actually the Obama administration UH was saying that we 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:10.840 shouldn't really over worry this at this point because the 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.479 technology is not a ready for us to select at 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.320 that level, and be on some level we are already 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.560 selecting for traits. So if you are a woman who 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:22.720 is looking for a sperm donor. You're going through a 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:24.920 book and you might be selecting for blonde hair, you 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.879 might be selecting for brown eyes, you might be selecting 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:32.640 for their athletic prowess or intellectual abilities. This is kind 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.680 of already being done at a very basic level. So 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:40.680 what she's saying is this, it's time now to look 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.040 at the past, look at eugenics. You look at the 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:45.560 nineteen seventies and some of the guidelines that were created then, 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.200 and move the goal post a little bit and then 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.960 reassess later, and just so that something like monochondrial transfer 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.320 can be a reality for parents who are trying to 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.439 have children who are free of these This is at 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.440 lease diseases. Yeah, I mean you could. I mean, you 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.959 could certainly argue that looking through a portfolio of ptital 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.000 sperm donors. So that's more like, I mean, there's a 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.680 difference between um choosing something off a menu and going 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.120 back into the kitchen and telling them what to put 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:20.560 in the soup. Right, But on the other hand, it's 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.000 it's it's very limiting to sort of shackle yourself to 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.160 this idea that we cannot proceed because we will mess 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.320 things up too much. I mean, we would we ever 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.600 get anything done scientifically if we went forward with that idea. Though, 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.200 interestingly enough, it seems like we're really great at advancing 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.520 science if we say we're doing this so we can 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.560 kill people better and then in which case all the 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:47.240 funding you need. Well exactly, but no, it might harm 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:49.920 somebody even though we're trying to help people. We might 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:52.400 use it to there might be some sort of moral 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:55.840 concern with it. Therefore, no no procession at all. So 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.200 what's interesting about this is that some of the same 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:03.600 arguments were presented when IVF first came um into public awareness. 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:08.600 So in mutual fertilization, and obviously IVF could not have 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.000 moved forward unless they did it in human trials and 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:14.560 found it to be safe for both the mother and 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:17.880 the baby, and lo and behold, they found out that 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.280 that is the case, and that is actually a path 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.800 for a lot of parents these days that they go 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:29.600 down IVF. And it's so it's so sort of wrote 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.359 now that it's hard to believe that this was in 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:38.400 that same category as minochondrial transfer twenty years ago. Yeah, 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.280 I mean it was mentioned in Future Shock, and we 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.240 we've talked about in our future shock episode and if 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.399 you go back, I mean I certainly remember those uh 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.200 editions of like Time magazine or Newsweek and the sort 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:49.680 of the scary idea of the test two baby. Yeah, 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.320 which today I mean nobody, nobody cares. We're past that 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.400 that that fear. Yeah. So in the same way, minochondrial 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:58.640 transfer really needs to have those human trials in order 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:00.960 to find out yes, this is safe for the child, 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:03.800 is this say for the mother and um and to 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.000 see what if any risks are associated with it. It's 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.560 just interesting because again it brings up that can of 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.920 worms of well, okay, we do this, and as uh 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.719 Sheldon Crunsky on the the panel said, you do that, 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.080 and there's this concern that we once we start, we 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:26.480 won't be able to stop. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah, 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:29.200 I guess I kind of to a limited extent. Think 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.240 of it in terms of taking the tyler to the playground. Yes, 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:34.480 the toddler is going to injure himself, he's gonna fall 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:37.000 off of something, he's gonna get in a tussle with 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:39.000 another tydler. But what do you do. Do you not 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:41.359 go to the playground at all? Do you just stay 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.560 in the house on a beautiful day. No, you gotta 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.760 get out there, right out there. I mean, we're humans. 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.240 We're going to mess things up. We're going to create 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:53.560 all sorts of problems for ourselves. But science has been 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.520 a tool that has allowed us, yes to to cause 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:58.760 great harm in the world, but also do great good. 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.320 I mean, science is really the thing that we do 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.040 the best. I mean, that is the discipline that we've 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.640 created that is greater than ourselves. Yeah, and there may 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:09.040 be some other technologies coming online that actually know all 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:12.520 these arguments. And so I'm thinking about George Church. He 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:16.320 is a geneticist and involved in in the Human Genome 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.879 Mapping project, and he says that genetic diseases can be 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:23.520 traced simply by examining sperm and then seeing if it 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:27.360 maps against genetic diseases that a female may possess. So 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:29.800 he has this whole system where they're like five hundred 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:34.080 different genetic diseases that they can test for in sperm 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:39.560 before it is actually um transferred into fertilize an egg. 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:42.560