With the introduction of the inexpensive and very effective gene-editing technology, CRISPR, there is potential to alter all manner of genes, allowing scientists to alter genes for cancer and many other diseases.  

This is a scientific breakthrough. On the other hand, CRISPR comes with ethical issues: on what and on whom to use it? What could go wrong and how can one reverse mistakes?  Is its use harmless, or even acceptable in food in the long term? Genes are complex things – if you alter one to eliminate multiple sclerosis, for instance, how can you be sure that it won’t cause, say, heart disease as an unexpected consequence?

With sufficient money a small team of rogue biologists and IVF doctors could create the first gene edited baby right now. “This is the thing that scares me the most,” says Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute. “You can easily imagine clinics trying to boost their revenue by offering this,” says Lovell-Badge, who points out that unregulated clinics offering unproven stem-cell treatments are springing up all over the world.

Another risk comes from something called “gene drives“, which CRISPR is making both easier to create, and more powerful. Normally a genetic variant in an organism has a 50 per cent chance of being inherited by offspring. But a gene drive can insert a copy of itself into the DNA inherited from the other parent, which guarantees it gets passed to all of the organism’s offspring. Thus it can spread very rapidly through a population. In theory gene drives could be deliberately unleashed to wipe out unwanted species such as disease-carrying mosquitoes. But there are fears they could also spread uncontrollably in the wild as a result of lab accidents. Fortunately, in species that reproduce slowly – like us – they would spread extremely slowly.

Positive developments from CRISPR will come from genetically altering plants, animals, fungi and bacteria to create drought resistance, salt tolerance, faster growth, or pathogen resistance. The technique has already been used to create extra-muscular dogs for police work, hornless cattle for farmers and micropigs for pets. The worst-case scenario is that CRISPR is accidentally or deliberately used to engineer a pathogen that infects people or crops – a biological weapon, although it is already possible to do this in other ways. (precised from an article by Michael Le Page, New Scientist)

Epicurus would probably advise to sort out the ethical problems right now, while there is time, and to supervise the results with vigour.