Finding a cure for genetic disease is one of medical science’s great frontiers. Conditions such as cystic fibrosis have stalked our species down the centuries and a new American-led study claims to have made a breakthrough. For the first time scientists have removed an inherited disease from a human embryo.
The researchers used a protein to snip away a faulty gene that causes heart problems. They injected it into an egg as it was fertilised; the egg then repaired the damage with a healthy version of the gene. The embryo had inherited a nasty condition. It was now free of it.
The implications are exciting. At last count some 7.9 million babies are born each year with congenital defects. About 3.2 million of these were disabled for life. The results of this study do not take us to the clinic. Much more research, including safety tests, would first need to be done, but they do take us a step closer. A world free of Huntington’s chorea and sickle cell disease has shifted out of the realms of fantasy.
Should the technology become a treatment, however, it would hit a roadblock in Britain. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act forbids gene editing in embryos due for implantation. If scientists find a safe way to eliminate genetic disease, Britons will not benefit as the law stands.
This blanket rule rests on a bad argument: that it is wrong to meddle with the DNA of future generations. This process, of course, is otherwise known as reproduction. (“Will you be the father of my next child?” Isadora Duncan is said to have asked George Bernard Shaw. “A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world.” Mr Shaw declined.)
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Medical meddling is common, too. Roughly 90 per cent of women in Britain who know their child will be born with Down’s syndrome choose to have an abortion. A procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, in which embryos are screened for diseases, and only the healthy ones implanted, is legal in the UK.
There are better arguments against gene editing, but they are practical rather than ethical. Some scientists fear the process cannot be made entirely safe; it is difficult to prove side-effects will never occur. A 2015 Chinese study that used gene editing to cure embryos of a fatal blood disorder found that it caused unexpected effects on other parts of the genome. These changes can lead to health complications, some of which could be fatal. Others worry about maverick doctors setting up lucrative clinics without proper safeguards. A third fear is that it could be the first step into altogether marshier ethical ground, ending in wealthy nurseries of blue-eyed designer babies, guaranteed to get first-class degrees.
These concerns can be mostly answered by good regulation. Britain even has a template for coming up with a suitable code. Current rules for creating so-called three-parent babies, in which a mother’s faulty mitochondria can be replaced with those of another woman, were drawn up following a ten-year ethical consultation.
Gene editing has too much important potential to dismiss. Scientists suggest its use may even extend to reducing the spread of pandemics such as HIV/Aids. Britain has been at the forefront of advances such as in vitro fertilisation and three-parent babies. Other nations follow its lead. It should not falter here.