Gene-Editing Babies: What Went Wrong and Could Go Wrong

During the second World Summit of Human Gene Editing an associate professor, Jiankui He, presented his gene-editing project, which he did in secret, that led to two baby girls being immune to HIV infection. During his presentation, he reveals serious violations and misconduct. He attempts to optimize microinjection and despite many trials, mosaicism ( the presence of two or more populations of cells with different genotypes in one individual who has developed from a single fertilized egg) remains a problem in the monkey embryo experiments.

Even so, he carries on to use his microinjection protocol on human embryos. Mosaicism is a major concern as scientists cannot sequence all cells in an embryo. A child could still develop the disease that gene editing was supposed to prevent. It also means testing wouldn’t be able to tell for sure whether the mutation has been fixed. Similarly, tests to ensure there aren’t any unwanted or dangerous mutations elsewhere in the genome wouldn’t be reliable. This being said the risk of unpredictable gene sequencing does, in fact, outweigh the HIV infection. Improved technologies, such as microinjection, may provide solutions for genetic diseases; however, it is key that they are only used when consensus has been met and a regulatory framework has been put in place for treating specific medical implications.

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