Fears over arrival of designer babies
GENE PIONEER ISSUES WARNING
A PIONEER of the gene editing tool that has taken bioscience by storm has spoken of her fear of the technology opening the door to designer babies.
Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier’s work in 2011 re-purposing a bacterial viral defence mechanism to edit DNA paved the way for the “cut and paste” technique known as Crispr-Cas9.
Today scientists stand on the threshold of a brave new world in which DNA and genes can be precisely altered to investigate and treat diseases and create genetically modified plants and animals.
But there are fears that the technology is racing ahead too fast and without enough safeguards.
Prof Charpentier said she shared concerns of critics who have raised the spectre of “designer babies”.
And she confessed that unlike many scientists in her field she steadfastly disagreed with editing the human “germ line” – the cells that pass inherited genes from one generation to the next.
Prof Charpentier, director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, said: “I’m worried about the use of the technology for editing human germ lines and designer babies. There is so far not really an example where it would make sense to work on the human germ line.
“You start like this and it opens doors to other usages that may be beyond selection against certain diseases.”