'Designer babies' debate should start, scientists say
18 January 2015 Last updated at 19:47 ET
'Designer babies' debate should start, scientists say
By
James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website
Rapid progress in genetics is making "designer
babies" more likely and society needs to be prepared, leading scientists
have told the BBC.
Dr Tony Perry, a pioneer in cloning, has announced
precise DNA editing at the moment of conception in mice.
He said huge advances in the past two years meant
"designer babies" were no longer HG Wells territory.
Other leading scientists and bioethicists argue it is
time for a serious public debate on the issue.
Designer babies - genetically modified for beauty,
intelligence or to be free of disease - have long been a topic of science
fiction.
Dr Perry, who was part of the teams to clone the first
mice and pigs, said the prospect was still fiction, but science was rapidly
catching up to make elements of it possible.
In the journal Scientific Reports, he details precisely editing
the genome of mice at the point DNA from the sperm and egg come together.
Dr Perry, who is based at the University of Bath, told
the BBC: "We used a pair of molecular scissors and a molecular sat-nav
that tells the scissors where to cut.
"It is approaching 100% efficiency already, it's a
case of 'you shoot you score'."
New era
It is the latest development of "Crispr
technology" - which is a more precise way of editing DNA than anything
that has come before.
It was named one of the top breakthroughs in 2013, hailed
as the start of a new era of genetics and is being used in a wide-range of
experiments in thousands of laboratories.
As well simply cutting the DNA to make mutations, as the
Bath team have done, it is also possible to use the technology to insert new
pieces of genetic code at the site of the cut.
It has reopened questions about genetically modifying
people.
Prof Perry added: "On the human side, one has to be
very cautious.
"There are heritable diseases coded by mutations in
DNA and some people could say, 'I don't want my children to have these
mutations.'"
This includes conditions such as cystic fibrosis and
genes that increase the risk of cancer.
"There's much speculation here, but it's not
completely fanciful, this is not HG Wells, you can imagine people doing this
soon [in animals].
"At that time the HFEA [the UK's fertility
regulator] will need to be prepared because they're going to have to deal with
this issue."
He said science existed as part of a wider community and
that it was up to society as a whole to begin assessing the implications and
decide what is acceptable.
Time for debate
Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, from the UK Medical Research
Council, has been influential in the debate around making babies from three
people and uses the Crispr technology in his own lab.
Medical Research Council
He said testing embryos for disease during IVF would be
the best way of preventing diseases being passed down through the generations.
However, he could see such potential uses of
"germ-line therapies" for men left infertile by damaging mutations.
While they can have children through IVF, any sons would
still have the mutations and would in turn need IVF. Genetic modification could
fix that.
It would also be useful in circumstances when all embryos
would carry the undesirable, risky genes.
Prof Lovell-Badge told the BBC News website: "Obviously
in the UK, this is not allowed and there would have to be a change in
regulations, which I suspect would have enormous problems.
"But it is something that needs to start to be
debated.
"There has been a blanket ban on germ-line therapy,
so there needs to be a debate about that and some rational thought rather than
knee-jerk reactions that, 'No you can't possibly do that.'"
DNA
Such a debate would also have to move beyond therapies
into the field of babies designed to have desirable traits.
Some alternations would only require small changes to
DNA, such as some changes to eye colour or to make a child HIV-resistant.
The respected Nuffield Council on Bioethics is understood
to be considering a report on the issue.
Its verdict in 2012 that it was ethical to create babies
from three people formed a core part of the public debate on the issue.
At the time it said a much wider debate on germ-line
therapy was still needed.
Complex ethics
Its director, Hugh Whittall, told the BBC: "I think
this is a challenge, for all of us, we should get onto looking at this fairly
rapidly now."
He said the field raised questions of social justice
around techniques available only to the rich and what constituted identity as
well as "issues of governance and regulation".
Dr David King, from the campaign group Human Genetics
Alert, echoed calls for the public to engage with the issue.
He said: "I think it's pretty inevitable that we'll
get to a point where it's scientifically possible, certainly these new techniques
of genome editing have made something look much more feasible than it did five
years ago.
"But that does not mean to say it's inevitably the
way we have to go as a society."
This is still a matter of science fiction and there is a
huge amount of research - particularly on unwanted mutations, efficiency and
safety - that needs to be done before any attempt of humans would even be
considered.
A spokesman for the UK's Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority said: "We keep a watchful eye on scientific
developments of this kind and welcome discussions about future possible
developments."
He said it "should be remembered that germ-line
modification of nuclear DNA remains illegal in the UK" and that new
legislation would be needed from Parliament "with all the open and public
debate that would entail" for there to be any change in the law.
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