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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  India joins the ‘designer babies’ debate
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India joins the ‘designer babies’ debate

The Indian scientific community is wary of gene editing on human embryos

Genomic editing is an area of research in which genes of living organisms are modified to find therapeutic ways to correct genetic abnormalities.Premium
Genomic editing is an area of research in which genes of living organisms are modified to find therapeutic ways to correct genetic abnormalities.

New Delhi: The debate on the ethics of gene editing, mainly regarding ‘designer babies’ or genetically engineered babies has arrived in India. The debate started when on 18 April, Chinese researchers published a study describing their efforts to use CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to modify a gene in abnormal human embryos.

Genomic editing is an area of research in which genes of living organisms are modified to find therapeutic ways to correct genetic abnormalities. This area shows huge potential to fight off genetic diseases, but also leaves inhibitions among scientists on crossing the line between preventing genetic diseases and modifying the genes of generations in the process.

The research carried out by Junjiu Huang and colleagues at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, was published in Protein and Cell journal, which is co-published by Springer, after Nature and Science journals did not publish the research—mostly because of ethical objections. While keeping the details of their review processes confidential, the journals acknowledged that gene-editing of human embryos is a complicated issue for them. “This is a rapidly evolving and complex area for which we cannot—and should not—easily offer simplistic policies," says Ritu Dhand, editorial director for Nature in a news article in the journal explaining its editorial stance on the subject.

The Chinese researchers were trying to repair a defect that causes beta thalassemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder, in the embryos.

The Indian scientific community is wary of gene editing on human embryos. Even the Union minister of science and technology, Harsh Vardhan, raised the issue with scientists in Kolkata on Friday, stating that DNA editing and other developments have placed a tremendous pressure on society.

“Recently, some scientists in China carried out DNA editing on a human foetus. This is considered very dangerous and unethical," Vardhan added.

In institutes working in the area of genomics, the topic of genetically engineered babies has become part of lunchtime discussions. “I am not in favour of gene editing in human embryos for the straightforward reason that you can end up having a few non-specific effects. When you edit a gene during an embryo stage, one or two mistakes can have a large impact," said Anurag Agrawal, principal scientist at CSIR Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB) in New Delhi.

He observed that the specificity of the CRISPR editing was not as high as originally thought as per the results of the Chinese research and that there was a reasonable amount of off-target effects. “This is good science in terms of learning. But there is a long way to go before designer babies becomes reality," Agrawal said.

The US has vehemently opposed such research and its National Institutes of Health (NIH) last week wrote it would not be funding any use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos. “Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but the strong arguments against engaging in this activity remain," Francis S. Collins, director, NIH said in an online statement. “These include the serious and unquantifiable safety issues, ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent, and a current lack of compelling medical applications justifying the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in embryos," Collins added.

However, the UK has made several strides in this direction. Christopher Gynghell, a bioethicist from Oxford made a case for genetically engineered babies in an article published in The Guardian on Friday. While Gynghell said it would be highly unethical if a child was born whose genome was edited with current techniques, he added the Chinese study was performed entirely on abnormal, unviable IVF embryos that could never lead to a live birth.

“Gene editing techniques could be greatly advanced by experiments conducted entirely in petri dishes, with embryos that would otherwise be destroyed and in accordance with existing regulations," he said.

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Published: 05 May 2015, 08:25 PM IST
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