Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking as Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says, d n A, You're
Speaker 1: in my heart d n A, in fact, you're in
Speaker 1: every part of my body. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And how true that is because d n
Speaker 1: A is truly the blueprint for life. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what it feels to me, Like I've heard you say
Speaker 1: that before. You might not have, because I don't think
Speaker 1: I said that last time. I just want to let
Speaker 1: the listeners in on a little secret. So the first
Speaker 1: time we recorded this episode, there was an audio glitch
Speaker 1: where we lost the first half of it. Yep. Um,
Speaker 1: So what we're going to be doing now is re
Speaker 1: recording part of this episode. I say that in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering why we might have like a callback joke
Speaker 1: at the end that calls back to nothing. It's like
Speaker 1: we're stuck in a time loop, like we went through
Speaker 1: that nebula with con and then what happens. We're definitely
Speaker 1: not trying to have like some sort of inside joke
Speaker 1: that you're not privy to. You would have been privy
Speaker 1: to it had the technical glitch not happened. That being said,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about today, Joe, Well, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Mr DNA. Someone someone's been watching the Jurassic World
Speaker 1: trailer and just what did you come from? You know,
Speaker 1: I always love that moment in Jurassic Parker, Mr DNA
Speaker 1: comes out and they explain to you about the wondrous
Speaker 1: of DNA. But everybody's heard about DNA by now. It's
Speaker 1: it's no longer a big surprise that we've that we've
Speaker 1: got these coding segments and the cells in our body
Speaker 1: that tell us what kind of body plans to produce.
Speaker 1: They make the proteins that make our bodies, and so
Speaker 1: we get our traits are sort of inherited physical traits
Speaker 1: from our d N A. And this is long led
Speaker 1: people to wonder like, Wow, could I make myself better
Speaker 1: if I could just change my DNA? Could I head
Speaker 1: off any disorders or diseases? More importantly, I mean, and
Speaker 1: this is the thing that we definitely said the first time,
Speaker 1: if we were going to change something about you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: it would absolutely be the color of your beard. That's right.
Speaker 1: That is something we did. Purple beard it would need
Speaker 1: to be purple. I'm so I'm so pleased that you
Speaker 1: remember that. I was listening back to the garbled audio
Speaker 1: that we had and we got to the point about
Speaker 1: my purple beard, and I thought, I don't worry about
Speaker 1: that being talked about again because it's not in our notes.
Speaker 1: But sucka darn it. Yeah. I mean, the technology that
Speaker 1: we have to change something like the color of someone's
Speaker 1: beard right now is like bleach and die. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: not something about, you know, changing the innate properties of
Speaker 1: me so that I'm growing purple beard here right. But
Speaker 1: if we want to change other traits, like, for example,
Speaker 1: diseases like like cancer, something that is heritable, you can't
Speaker 1: just drink bleach and die, or I mean you could,
Speaker 1: but I don't recommend that. That's not a medical treatment.
Speaker 1: Please don't do that. Don't do that. No, No, We're
Speaker 1: talking about a more serious scenario where imagine that, um,
Speaker 1: we've reached the level of genetic sophistication where you can
Speaker 1: produce an embryo that's going to be your child, and
Speaker 1: you can look at the d n A of that
Speaker 1: embryo and analyze it, run it through the computer and say, oh, No,
Speaker 1: it looks like this child is going to have a
Speaker 1: genetic condition which makes him or her prone to any
Speaker 1: number of you know, diseases, something that that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: want for this child that the embryo is going to
Speaker 1: grow to be. So could we make a little edit
Speaker 1: and fix the d n A so that the child
Speaker 1: doesn't have to suffer from this disease? If you could
Speaker 1: do such a thing, Obviously, lots of people would want
Speaker 1: that opportunity, right, And we've talked about this very subject
Speaker 1: a couple of times in previous episodes, including one about
Speaker 1: gene therapy. But the reason why we're bringing it up
Speaker 1: again now is that we wanted to really focus on
Speaker 1: a system that makes the potentially could make editing genes
Speaker 1: far simpler and more efficient, less expensive than previous methods,
Speaker 1: and therefore has the potential to revolutionize the way we
Speaker 1: work with genes. And because of this revolutionary quality, this
Speaker 1: new system is being heralded with caution, right, we should say,
Speaker 1: lots of scientists have recently spoken up saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: need to we need to take stock of where we
Speaker 1: are in gene editing technology right now and and make
Speaker 1: sure that we're taking all the proper precautions and sort
Speaker 1: of treading carefully on this ground because we get into
Speaker 1: some pretty weird territory when you talk about editing genes.
Speaker 1: But let's let's talk about the new system itself. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the crazy thing. The system, if you think of
Speaker 1: it as the actual process, is not new. The new
Speaker 1: part is that we're employing it or can employ or
Speaker 1: that we know that it exists at all. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: cool thing about this, the super cool thing about this,
Speaker 1: is that it's a natural process that was observed many
Speaker 1: years ago but not understood until relatively recently. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so this process is known as the Crisper cast nine system.
Speaker 1: And the Crisper cast nine system is based on a
Speaker 1: naturally occurring system found in bacteria. In it's an immune
Speaker 1: process in bacterial cells, right, And crisper is not referring
Speaker 1: to some kind of refrigeration system within bacteria. It's an acronym. Right,
Speaker 1: It's an acronym for clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,
Speaker 1: and that refers to sections of DNA code in these
Speaker 1: bacteria and how they use this system to protect themselves
Speaker 1: from viruses. So, the blocks of repeated gene sequences were
Speaker 1: first observed in bacterial cells and mentioned to paper by
Speaker 1: Japanese researchers in the Journal of Bacteriology in nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: and at the time scientists didn't know what they did.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, we saw these things, we don't know
Speaker 1: what the purpose is, right, It wouldn't be until several
Speaker 1: years later that more observations would give us insight into
Speaker 1: what was actually happening. A couple of decades. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we now know that these are used to create
Speaker 1: a system within the bacteria that protects the bacteria from viruses.
Speaker 1: And it's actually what's known as an adaptive immune system.
Speaker 1: Now what is that so? Adaptive means that you are
Speaker 1: building up like you're you're you're constantly evolving and tweaking
Speaker 1: your your immune system so that you can fight off
Speaker 1: a broader array of potential pathogens. All right. That's why
Speaker 1: vaccines work, because they give your body just a little
Speaker 1: bit of a inactive virus to look at, to observe,
Speaker 1: to take a little bit of the protein from the
Speaker 1: virus shell from and to incorporate that inter into your
Speaker 1: immune system so that in the future, your immune system
Speaker 1: can recognize that type of virus and say like no,
Speaker 1: thank you, sir, exactly. Yeah, And and so this is
Speaker 1: sort of bacteria's approach. Actually it's not sort of. It
Speaker 1: is bacterious approach to fighting off viruses. If a bacteria survives, uh,
Speaker 1: and encounter with a new type of virus, it adds
Speaker 1: that information to its quote unquote like database of viral info. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what these little crisper strands are there.
Speaker 1: There these strands of of little bits of repeating DNA
Speaker 1: that have little bits of viral codes smushed in representing
Speaker 1: all of the viruses that that bacteria or that bacteria's
Speaker 1: ancestors has run across. Right, because it's inheritable. So this
Speaker 1: is really interesting for lots of different reasons. Okay, so
Speaker 1: to get into how we could use this bacterial immune
Speaker 1: system or a version of it to edit jeans, let's
Speaker 1: look at how it actually works in the field in
Speaker 1: real life. Right, what happens when a bacterium that has
Speaker 1: this defense mechanism encounters of virus. Okay, here's how it
Speaker 1: goes down. You got your virus. Now your virus. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you've got a little it looks like a little spacecraft,
Speaker 1: especially if you played Yards Revenge, watched an Atari documentary recently. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so you've got this little virus inside this shell is
Speaker 1: viral DNA, and the way of virus replicates is it
Speaker 1: ends up infecting a host cell. So some viruses target
Speaker 1: very specific cells and ignore anything else. It's all through
Speaker 1: protein markers. Anyway, the virus lands on a host cell
Speaker 1: and it injects its own DNA into the host cell.
Speaker 1: That DNA essentially hijacks all the assets inside the host
Speaker 1: cell to start replicating more viral DNA and virus shells.
Speaker 1: So it's essentially telling the host, uh, sell, hey, I
Speaker 1: know what you're doing is tot's important, but you gotta
Speaker 1: drop it and make some of this stuff asap. And
Speaker 1: that's what the host cell does. It's it's getting new
Speaker 1: instructions and it just starts churning out more and more
Speaker 1: viruses until you know, more instances of the same virus
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, until you get to a
Speaker 1: point where the little virus shells all break free from
Speaker 1: the host cell, killing it in the process, and then
Speaker 1: they go on their merry way to do the same
Speaker 1: thing to other host cells. And that's how the virus
Speaker 1: spreads So that's how a virus typically would attack a bacterium.
Speaker 1: But let's say that the bacterium actually has this adaptive
Speaker 1: immune system we just mentioned what's going on there. Well,
Speaker 1: assuming that the bacterium or one of its ancestors had
Speaker 1: encountered that particular type of virus before, it's gonna have
Speaker 1: a strand in its DNA that matches part of the
Speaker 1: viral DNA. And when it detects the the intrusion of
Speaker 1: viral DNA that the bacteriums DNA will end up creating
Speaker 1: a strand of RNA, actually two strands one strand of
Speaker 1: that RNA. We'll have pairs well half of a pair, uh,
Speaker 1: that you would find in the double helix that match
Speaker 1: up to the viral DNA. Yeah. Sort of think about
Speaker 1: the way that a key is made to fit the
Speaker 1: pins in a certain lock. The key has these particular
Speaker 1: series of bumps and grooves that will fit into that lock.
Speaker 1: This immune system device has RNA that's like a key
Speaker 1: that fits the virus. Yeah. So if you think of
Speaker 1: h d NA, like, you know, you've got this double helix.
Speaker 1: If you imagine you straighten it out so it looks
Speaker 1: like it's a ladder, and each run of the ladder
Speaker 1: is actually a pair that joined together. The RNA is
Speaker 1: one half of that ladder that can match up to
Speaker 1: half of the virus DNA. Now it creates an enzyme
Speaker 1: um it's actually it's a protein that the casting line
Speaker 1: protein and creates a few things, but the castline protein
Speaker 1: is the one that's important for this discussion, known as
Speaker 1: an indo nuclea, and it ends up unwinding separating the
Speaker 1: viral DNA so that the RNA created by the bacterium
Speaker 1: will join up to the viral DNA, and it also
Speaker 1: will snip the viral DNA at a very specific point
Speaker 1: and this essentially deactivates the viral DNA, killing it so
Speaker 1: that the viral attack fails. It is not able to
Speaker 1: hijack the cells operations and create more viruses, uh, which
Speaker 1: is you know, pretty awesome. And also, like we were
Speaker 1: mentioning before, if it happens to be the case where
Speaker 1: the bacterium or its ancestors has never encountered that particular
Speaker 1: virus but it survives the attack, then for that information
Speaker 1: gets added to the bacteriums DNA so that future encounters
Speaker 1: with that virus will be handled with extreme prejudice for
Speaker 1: that bacterium and all its descendants, right, and in a
Speaker 1: word about these these these casts proteins and specifically CAST nine,
Speaker 1: which is the important one DAYA that stands for Crisper
Speaker 1: associated proteins and number nine a number nine like a
Speaker 1: like love potion number nine, yes, and are probably not.
Speaker 1: This is like death potion number nine. And the Crisper
Speaker 1: arrays make a bunch of these different cast proteins that
Speaker 1: all have different jobs, like like integrating those new bits
Speaker 1: of those like wanted wanted poster sequences into the Crisper strand.
Speaker 1: And CAST nine's job, which it is really good at,
Speaker 1: is uh, both to unzip the DNA and to snip
Speaker 1: the ends at that specific location along the helixes hees.
Speaker 1: So this indo nuclease, this CAST nine is it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a little pair of scissors. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have computed molecular scissors, and people say can go
Speaker 1: in and make little snips and cuts to DNA, which, obviously,
Speaker 1: once you see something like that in action in UH
Speaker 1: in the microbial world, you start to think, huh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if we could take advantage of that. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's able to cut it at a precise location and
Speaker 1: cut at the same location across both of the helices,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, so that you have an extreme
Speaker 1: level of control, which is really important if you want
Speaker 1: to do something like target a very specific strand of
Speaker 1: DNA or section of a strand of DNA, I should
Speaker 1: say right. And this is especially interesting because research has
Speaker 1: shown that this crisper cast nine SmackDown of genes may
Speaker 1: also occur within a bacterial cell itself. It's not just
Speaker 1: in application to viruses. In research that was published in
Speaker 1: Nature in from a team out of Emery University, a
Speaker 1: particular bacteria was shown to to use crisper Cast nine
Speaker 1: to shut down one of its own lipoproteins. And okay.
Speaker 1: In bacteria, lipoproteins help the bacteria attached to a host cell,
Speaker 1: but they also trigger inflammatory responses in a host, which
Speaker 1: triggers the host summune system, which sucks for the bacteria.
Speaker 1: Um By shutting off this lipoprotein, it lets the bacteria
Speaker 1: kind of fly under the radar, multiplying without interference and
Speaker 1: biding its time until it goes pathogenic. Interesting. Yeah, another
Speaker 1: cool thing. This is almost a tangent, but a cool
Speaker 1: side effect of This is that you can look at
Speaker 1: UH back you know, the the DNA of a bacteria
Speaker 1: and or or of bacteria I guess I should say UH,
Speaker 1: and be able to tell a lot about it, including
Speaker 1: you know, which viruses it has encountered in the past.
Speaker 1: And this kind of ends up being a fingerprinting approach.
Speaker 1: So let's say that there is a bacterial outbreak somewhere
Speaker 1: some some sort of illness that is due to bacteria.
Speaker 1: For example, let's call you know, food poisoning. We hear
Speaker 1: at how stuff works, are familiar or with that particular idea. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's say that you have an outbreak of food poisoning.
Speaker 1: You could end up analyzing the bacteria and by looking
Speaker 1: at the this information which viruses encountered in the past,
Speaker 1: you could possibly use that information to trace it back
Speaker 1: to wherever the source of the food poisoning was. So
Speaker 1: it's actually got some interesting forensic identification processes. It's being
Speaker 1: used like that by the cultured dairy industry to check
Speaker 1: whether the strains of helpful bacteria that they use in
Speaker 1: order to make cheese, at yogurt and delicious stuff like
Speaker 1: that that requires bacteria for the process to check whether
Speaker 1: their bacteria are immune against common viruses. They can then
Speaker 1: select bacteria colonies of bacteria that are stronger and more
Speaker 1: likely to remain effective at driving these processes. So it's
Speaker 1: it's like a more technical bacterial version of breeding really
Speaker 1: healthy animals to make sure that their offspring are healthy.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining, like the Saruman of cheese over his factory,
Speaker 1: breeding the uricai of bacteria to make delicious cheese. I
Speaker 1: don't get the reference. Tom kidding, kidding, says the guy
Speaker 1: with the Lord of the rings. Tonight we dine on cheese,
Speaker 1: all right. So where does the gene editing come in? Well,
Speaker 1: in a group led by Jennifer DOWDNA and Emmanuel Charpentier
Speaker 1: and apologies if I mispronounced that, I did my best,
Speaker 1: but they published findings in Science that the Crisper system
Speaker 1: could be used to edit any kind of DNA you
Speaker 1: want through quote RNA programmable genome editing. And that was
Speaker 1: in a paper called a programmable dual RNA guided DNA
Speaker 1: into nuclease Inadaptive Bacterial immunity. Yeah. So subsequent studies have
Speaker 1: shown that it works not only in bacteria with Crisper
Speaker 1: based immune systems, but in all kinds of organisms and
Speaker 1: potentially in humans. So with crisper based gene editing, it's
Speaker 1: a very similar process to what we just described with
Speaker 1: the bacteria fighting off of virus, except instead of trying
Speaker 1: to identify a virus and kill the d n A
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to worry about viruses replicating
Speaker 1: inside the cell, what it's looking for is a specific
Speaker 1: strand that relates back to a gene that you want
Speaker 1: to target. So, in other words, we make we can
Speaker 1: manufacture RNA that matches up to a specific gene and
Speaker 1: use the same sort of process. This this dual, these
Speaker 1: dual strands of RNA, one of which is matched to
Speaker 1: the gene to go. Uh, the same sort of thing happens.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll end up using creating the castinine protein that
Speaker 1: will end up unraveling the helix and uh, the RNA
Speaker 1: will bind to with chever gene you specifically want to target,
Speaker 1: and it can snip the ends of the helix exactly
Speaker 1: where you want it, and thus you can isolate a
Speaker 1: specific gene. And it's really not hard to do, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially compared to previous methods. So we we have a
Speaker 1: couple of capabilities here. One of them is the simplest,
Speaker 1: which is just to knockout genes you don't want, right,
Speaker 1: just to see what happens. Yeah, you can like deactivate
Speaker 1: a gene isn't right. So I know we've used an
Speaker 1: analogy to explain genes before, and I'm going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and rely on that again because I think it's
Speaker 1: helpful if you imagine your genes like a giant switchboard,
Speaker 1: and the switches have on and off, So whether a
Speaker 1: gene is on or off determines whether that gene will
Speaker 1: ultimately be expressed. However, it gets a lot more complicated
Speaker 1: from that point forward, right, because it's not always true
Speaker 1: that one gene directly correlates to one trade maybe in
Speaker 1: some cases, but in a lot of cases, you have
Speaker 1: complexes of gene that work together to create complexes of effects,
Speaker 1: and not all of them really go together in a
Speaker 1: logical way. Like I mean, this is a pure imaginative example,
Speaker 1: but it's the equivalent of like how fast your toenails
Speaker 1: grow being connected to your eye color being connected to
Speaker 1: whether or not you get cancer, and and these things
Speaker 1: are really complicated because, uh, nature, because stuff is messy
Speaker 1: and Uh, you know, nothing was really created in our
Speaker 1: gene sequences anticipating that we were going to want to
Speaker 1: go in and just flick switches on and off. So
Speaker 1: nature doesn't owe us an explanation. Yeah. And so in
Speaker 1: other words, isolating these genes and being able to turn
Speaker 1: them off can tell us more about what what is
Speaker 1: the the role of that gene and how does it
Speaker 1: affect the rest of the system. Right, So that that's
Speaker 1: really important information for us to have. Sure, But in
Speaker 1: addition to being able to just knock out and turn
Speaker 1: off specific gene, we could also make changes to genes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more accurately, I should maybe say changes to the genome. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is important in case you identify a gene
Speaker 1: that's undergone some form of mutation and is not, uh
Speaker 1: the way you would have expected it to be, and
Speaker 1: that it could potentially cause harm, you may wish to
Speaker 1: be able to go in snip that part out and
Speaker 1: replace it with a healthy gene. Right. Okay, Well, we
Speaker 1: now have this system, this Crisper cast nine system for
Speaker 1: editing genes. But this is not the only method there
Speaker 1: has ever been for editing genes. So what makes this
Speaker 1: one an especially big deal? The biggest deal is that
Speaker 1: it's way easier, like like way like way easier. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly precise, efficient, apparently really cost effective and simpler than
Speaker 1: the previous methods that have been employed to do essentially
Speaker 1: the same thing, because it goes about it in a
Speaker 1: very different way, right right, So the two leading types
Speaker 1: of gene editing right now, other than crisper are zinc
Speaker 1: finger nucleases z f ns and transcription activator like effect
Speaker 1: or nucleases or talents talent talents sounds much better than
Speaker 1: ziffens ziffens um. Both both of these depend upon creating
Speaker 1: a thing, a protein, which is what a nuclease is,
Speaker 1: that will bind to the sequence of DNA that you're
Speaker 1: interested in deactivating. So your z fns and your talents
Speaker 1: are only as good as your binding agent. If it's
Speaker 1: not specific enough or not strongly attracted enough to the
Speaker 1: sequence that you're targeting, it won't be very effective and
Speaker 1: could even have dangerous consequences. Like think think of your
Speaker 1: word processors search and replace function. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: create a protein that will bind to the DNA equivalent
Speaker 1: of a whole word like like tomatoes. Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: protein only binds to say tom or toe or toes.
Speaker 1: Then that binding agent could latch onto a lot of
Speaker 1: unintended bits of DNA by accident, which is potentially really
Speaker 1: bad times. Yeah, so very different from those approaches obviously, right,
Speaker 1: So by making this type of gene editing and research
Speaker 1: much faster, easier, more efficient, and in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: more precise. The positive side is a lot of researchers
Speaker 1: have pointed out that this could speed up research on
Speaker 1: genetic disorders, you know, any inherited genetic condition that we
Speaker 1: want to cure, like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, you know,
Speaker 1: heritability for a propensity to develop certain cancers, anything like that,
Speaker 1: like like dramatically to a point that's that's almost hard
Speaker 1: to imagine compared to what the progress had been before. Sure,
Speaker 1: the downside is that it's really easy. So it might
Speaker 1: be so easy that we are getting a little bit
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves and finally could also be the method
Speaker 1: that we use to you know, hack ourselves, like to
Speaker 1: to change things about people. This is the one that's
Speaker 1: raising some alarms, the idea of where we to decide
Speaker 1: we would go down this road right where we Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could potentially go beyond like let's make sure no
Speaker 1: one has cancer and go into like let's make sure
Speaker 1: everyone has the specific visual traits that we want or whatever.
Speaker 1: It is essentially non therapeutic uses for the technology, and
Speaker 1: that's something that could be a future possibility, but it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that raises a lot of ethical questions.
Speaker 1: And now we have to actually start looking at those
Speaker 1: ethical questions because something again that was hypothetical a few
Speaker 1: years ago is now something that could be a reality
Speaker 1: maybe a few years from now. Ah. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: not just you know, lay people who are disinterested in
Speaker 1: science as a whole who are freaked out about this. No,
Speaker 1: there are actual scientists who are legitimately concerned about this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There have been at least two high profile calls from
Speaker 1: scientists in the past month or so, well, in the
Speaker 1: past month from the time we're recording this, which one
Speaker 1: which is April. Yeah, so in uh March March twelve
Speaker 1: between a group of scientists published a comment in Nature
Speaker 1: basically calling for a moratorium on editing the human germ line.
Speaker 1: And this is a specific, uh specific portion of the
Speaker 1: application of crisper. They're they're they're not saying like like
Speaker 1: hall Doll, Crisper forever um. The human germ line is
Speaker 1: specifically human reproductive cells that can pass on heritable traits.
Speaker 1: It can it can lead to changes in generations down
Speaker 1: the line. Yeah, yeah, So what what is the fuss? Like?
Speaker 1: What are they concerned about? The big one that we
Speaker 1: don't know enough to know what consequences will from those
Speaker 1: sort of actions if we were to alter the germ line,
Speaker 1: we don't know which ones might be safe, which ones
Speaker 1: could be dangerous, which could harm harm future generations, and
Speaker 1: without knowing that, it is irresponsible to to to experiment
Speaker 1: in that field now. And that's the real concern is that,
Speaker 1: you know, in our efforts to do things like head
Speaker 1: off potential disease in children, which obviously is something that
Speaker 1: is an honorable pursuit, the trying to eradicate disorders and
Speaker 1: diseases that could affect the unborn is a big honorable pursuit.
Speaker 1: But if in doing that we end up creating more
Speaker 1: problems down the line, then obviously that was not necessarily
Speaker 1: the best choice, And that was really where their their
Speaker 1: objections came in. Um So, I think it's completely understandable.
Speaker 1: I I agree that there there needs to be caution.
Speaker 1: And again, like you were saying, Lauren, they're not suggesting
Speaker 1: that we completely abandoned using this methodology. I think it's
Speaker 1: more like, we'll hold up for a minute. We need
Speaker 1: to figure out what we're doing before we do it, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you're dealing with new human life, and especially
Speaker 1: especially when you're dealing with the types of cells in
Speaker 1: new humans that they can pass on to their new
Speaker 1: humans down the line. Right, And they even mentioned scenarios like,
Speaker 1: imagine that you were going to target uh, particular type
Speaker 1: of DNA that's going to be found within an embryo,
Speaker 1: and let's say the cells divide between when you have
Speaker 1: started your treatment and when it's actually over. It may
Speaker 1: be that some cells have been affected and the offending
Speaker 1: DNA has been clipped out, but in other cells it hasn't,
Speaker 1: and then you've got a genetic mosaic and it could
Speaker 1: potentially cause really severe issues done the LT we just
Speaker 1: don't know. In fact, we don't even know what it
Speaker 1: might do, and that is in itself unethical and problematic
Speaker 1: when you're talking about human life. So that's where the
Speaker 1: real concerns come in. And they you know, I think
Speaker 1: they raised some good points, and they weren't the only ones.
Speaker 1: So there was another group as well. Right, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was another comment in Science in March of from a
Speaker 1: group that included the Nobel Prize winning David Baltimore of Caltech,
Speaker 1: but also Jennifer DOWDNA, one of the creators of the
Speaker 1: Crisper technique. From that paper, and there's an actual quote
Speaker 1: that I would like to read from that where it
Speaker 1: says the group wishes to initiate an informed discussion of
Speaker 1: the uses of genome engineering technology and to identify proactively
Speaker 1: those areas where current action is essential to prepare for
Speaker 1: future developments. We recommend taking immediate steps towards ensuring that
Speaker 1: the application of genome engineering technology is performed safely and ethically.
Speaker 1: So again they're crying out for a responsible approach to
Speaker 1: research and saying, look, this tool is amazing and has
Speaker 1: the potential to make amazing advances in medicine and to
Speaker 1: truly help out human beings, but we need to make
Speaker 1: certain that we pursue that in a way that is
Speaker 1: going to be ethical and responsible and not put people
Speaker 1: in danger just because we now have the access to
Speaker 1: this amazing tool. Sure, and and governments are kind of
Speaker 1: already on this. There was a review that was done
Speaker 1: in by bioethicist Tetsi I. E. Of Hakkaido University UM
Speaker 1: and it found that of the thirty nine countries investigated
Speaker 1: already do have laws or guidelines that ban germline gene
Speaker 1: editing in humans. So so so, so that's pretty covered. Um.
Speaker 1: But even considering that, there's just a general concern within
Speaker 1: the scientific community that even if most researchers are responsible
Speaker 1: and ethical and follow these sorts of guidelines, that any
Speaker 1: breach into less responsible or non therapeutic modifications could cause
Speaker 1: a public outcry that would lead to a huge crackdown
Speaker 1: on on the funding and regulation of these genetic technologies,
Speaker 1: which would obviously not be of benefit to anybody. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so part of it is saying we shouldn't do this
Speaker 1: because it's wrong, and even if you don't think it's wrong,
Speaker 1: other people do think it's wrong, and it's gonna mess
Speaker 1: everything up for everybody if you do it, so just
Speaker 1: don't do it. I can get behind that, we get
Speaker 1: to a point now where we can talk about how
Speaker 1: we feel about this. I'm pretty much in line with
Speaker 1: the concerns that the scientists have have have raised. I
Speaker 1: think that this is definitely an amazing technology that could
Speaker 1: end up helping us in ways we can't even comprehend
Speaker 1: right now. But I also think that obviously we need
Speaker 1: to use some uh some logic, some uh you know, compassion,
Speaker 1: some rationality when we approach this, and and not go
Speaker 1: crazy with it just because it opens up lots of opportunities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as with UM, as with any new potential therapy, I
Speaker 1: think they're you know, they're competing interests. I mean you
Speaker 1: could look at it from the other point of view
Speaker 1: and say, well, what if you're somebody who is who
Speaker 1: has a heritable you know, trait that causes genetic defects
Speaker 1: that can I don't know, like kill a child or something,
Speaker 1: and you want to reproduce. I mean, you might be
Speaker 1: one of the people who's saying, like, no, I you know,
Speaker 1: I want these therapies sooner. I want them available so
Speaker 1: that I could feel that my you know, the child
Speaker 1: I have with my partner would be safe. And so
Speaker 1: I can see how somebody would could take that point
Speaker 1: of view as well, like you know, they want haste
Speaker 1: in a way, because this really does matter in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, but at the same time, the concerns
Speaker 1: voiced by these scientists or yes, I obviously quite valid ones.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think we're in any position to
Speaker 1: disagree with that whatsoever. Oh sure, No, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: once you get that full picture of like, well, we
Speaker 1: could stop this one thing from happening, but it could
Speaker 1: have all of these unintended consequences that we don't even
Speaker 1: know about, that we're not even aware of. Um. And
Speaker 1: so I would say that, you know, this is really cool,
Speaker 1: this is just unimaginably terrific. Uh. But also yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's proceed with caution. Let's let's co develop more
Speaker 1: knowledge about the human genome. Let's figure out how all
Speaker 1: of these things are interacting with each other, and not
Speaker 1: dive into anything before we know what we're doing. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you guys another question. Let's let's assume
Speaker 1: let's let's put ourselves into the far off distant future
Speaker 1: where we have a full understanding and appreciation for UH genetics.
Speaker 1: Let's let's assume that that eventually happens and we now
Speaker 1: know how to proceed without causing unintended consequence. Is obviously
Speaker 1: we're in an idealized world at this point. So so
Speaker 1: we're sort of imagining at this point the human genome
Speaker 1: is open source, and we understand it as well as
Speaker 1: we understand the lines of code and a computer proof
Speaker 1: and that, and that we can be we can be
Speaker 1: reasonably confident that any changes we make, we will be
Speaker 1: making in such a way as to not cause harm
Speaker 1: to unborn generations. At that stage where we have that confidence,
Speaker 1: do you think that the designer babies issue? Do you
Speaker 1: do you see that as being a bad thing where
Speaker 1: parents could make decisions upon how their babies may you know,
Speaker 1: the traits those babies might exhibit in the future. I
Speaker 1: think that's a really interesting question. I think you're sort
Speaker 1: of saying, like, if we we rule out the possibility
Speaker 1: of unintended effects, we just set that aside from it.
Speaker 1: Is it inherently wrong to mess with nature? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the question I'm getting at. What what what is your
Speaker 1: personal opinion on that? I don't know. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's a that's a tough decision. I feel like I
Speaker 1: would personally feel very iffy about doing that myself, But
Speaker 1: then again, I don't know if I would feel comfortable
Speaker 1: telling somebody else they couldn't do that. See, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a mood question for me. I've decided not to
Speaker 1: have kids, but assuming that I were to have kids,
Speaker 1: I almost feel like, um, that the idea of being
Speaker 1: able to choose things is no more sinister than leaving
Speaker 1: it up to chance. So you know, like saying like,
Speaker 1: well this is this, you know, whether you can determine
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Now, granted, you know you're not giving
Speaker 1: the kid any say in the matter, but the kid
Speaker 1: doesn't have any saying the matter either way. It's just
Speaker 1: is it wrong for the parent to have that input
Speaker 1: or is it you know, yeah, yeah, Well there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of questions wrapped up in that, and and
Speaker 1: you know, depending on different people's ideologies of what makes
Speaker 1: a better baby, like like what traits they would want
Speaker 1: to instill in their future generations. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it gets into really weird sticky territory like, are are
Speaker 1: the things that I think might be good for my
Speaker 1: potential kids actually good? Uh? You know, would we want
Speaker 1: would we want Kim Kardashian being able to choose how
Speaker 1: her babies come out? I mean, you know, this is
Speaker 1: sorry to be able to program like I want hyper
Speaker 1: obedient children don't question anything. Well, there's also the question
Speaker 1: about social pressures that could come in about you. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's science fiction that obviously has has tread all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and also you get dangerously close to weird
Speaker 1: stuff like eugenics. Like there's some definite, like huge ethical
Speaker 1: questions here. When you look at it from an individual basis,
Speaker 1: it seems simple, but then you've got to remember we're
Speaker 1: not all we don't all exist in a vacuum unto ourselves.
Speaker 1: We all work together in various cultures and societies, and
Speaker 1: there are other factors that will apply to these kind
Speaker 1: of decisions. They're never going to be something that is
Speaker 1: completely made by a person, I think, at least not
Speaker 1: if it's if it's a technology that's widely available. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there would be other questions too, Like let's say
Speaker 1: that the technology becomes widely available. I'm sure it would
Speaker 1: be one that would become widely available for specific segments
Speaker 1: of the population and not so right, and then you've
Speaker 1: got a disparity between you know, you talk about haves
Speaker 1: and have nots. I mean, this is why we have
Speaker 1: so many amazing science fiction stories that are based around this.
Speaker 1: Those are really kind of like their explorations of human behavior,
Speaker 1: human psyche, human society, and culture, and they ultimately are
Speaker 1: important because assuming that technology and our scientific knowledge continues
Speaker 1: to improve, we could potentially arrive at a day where
Speaker 1: it's truly relevant. It's not just speculative. So that's why
Speaker 1: I want to ask the question of you guys. Like, again,
Speaker 1: from an individual basis, I'm like, oh, I'm totally okay
Speaker 1: with it. It's when I start expanding that to everybody
Speaker 1: and what that might mean for the future where I
Speaker 1: think maybe I'm not that okay with it, And ultimately,
Speaker 1: for me, it's mood, so it's kind of a mean thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ask anyway, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining a world in which, even like, even like in
Speaker 1: a D and D game, if everyone could tweak their
Speaker 1: dice rolls to to roll their perfect character, how obnoxious
Speaker 1: would that be? He'd be like, I'm just gonna roll
Speaker 1: these seventeen sixcited die and pick the three topics, you know,
Speaker 1: really leaving things up to chance. Uh, this is kind
Speaker 1: of a you know, obviously one of those ongoing conversations,
Speaker 1: but is one that we need to have seriously, because
Speaker 1: we're again approaching an era when this is some of
Speaker 1: these things are are potentially possibilities, So I'm curious what
Speaker 1: our listeners think too. I would love to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this. Uh do you do you automatically think like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm perfectly cool with addressing things like disorders and diseases,
Speaker 1: but I don't ever want to think of this in
Speaker 1: a non therapeutic sense. Do you think the hacking the
Speaker 1: body is something that needs to be on the table
Speaker 1: as long as it's got certain qualifiers. Maybe you think
Speaker 1: there need to be no qualifiers at all. I want
Speaker 1: to hear what they think, so send us email. Let
Speaker 1: us know what your thoughts are on this subject. Our
Speaker 1: email addresses FW Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Also remember you can suggest future topics. You can uh
Speaker 1: leave any other comments or questions you have. You can
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