A quantum leap in biomedicine

Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos

Today you should have a look at Nature. The reason is genome editing of human embryos. Although a chinese team performed something similar in 2015, right now the details are clearly explained. The trial has been developed to fix a mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.If you don't want to read the whole article, check the news. Genome editing is gaining momentum as I said some months ago, it is closer than you may think.


PS. Why FBI is concerned about CRISPR? The answer in FT Big Read
PS. The news in FT.
PS. A useful article from Nature 2015:

Genome editing: 7 facts about a revolutionary technology

What everyone should know about cut-and-paste genetics.

• Lucy Odling-Smee,
• Heidi Ledford
• & Sara Reardon

30 November 2015

Article toolsediting is in the spotlight again as a large international meeting on the topic is poised to kick off in Washington DC. Ahead of the summit, which is being jointly organized by the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Britain’s Royal Society and held on 1–3 December, we bring you seven key genome-editing facts.

Yorgos Nikas/Science Photo Library

Human embryos are at the centre of a debate over the ethics of genome editing.

1. Just one published study describes genome editing of human germ cells.

In April, a group led by Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, described their use of the popular CRISPR–Cas9 technology to edit the genomes of human embryos. Only weeks before the researchers’ paper appeared in Protein & Cell¹, rumours about the work had prompted fresh debate over the ethics of tinkering with the genomes of human eggs, sperm or embryos, known collectively as germ cells. Huang and colleagues used non-viable embryos, which could not result in a live birth. But in principle, edits to germ cells could be passed to future generations.

2. The law on editing human germ cells varies wildly across the world.

Germany strictly limits experimentation on human embryos, and violations can be a criminal offence. By contrast, in China, Japan, Ireland and India, only unenforceable guidelines restrict genome editing in human embryos. Many researchers long for international guidelines, and some hope that the upcoming summit in Washington DC could be the start of the process to create them.

Ramon Andrade 3Dciencia

The CRISPR-Cas9 system makes editing genomes cheap and easy.

3. You don’t have to be a pro to hack genomes.

The CRISPR–Cas9 technology has made modifying DNA so cheap and easy that amateur biologists working in converted garages or community laboratories are starting to dabble.

4. Cas9 is not the only enzyme in town.

A key ingredient in the CRISPR–Cas9 system is the DNA-cutting enzyme Cas9. But in September, synthetic biologist Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported the discovery of a protein called Cpf1, which may make it even easier to edit genomes².  (Zhang is one of those who pioneered the use of CRISPR-Cas9 for genome editing in mammalian cells).

BGI

A gene-edited micropig created by the BGI in Shenzen, China. 

5. Pigs are on the front line of genome-editing experiments.

Dogs, goats and monkeys are all part of the growing CRISPR zoo. But pigs in particular have been at the heart of several eye-catching announcements — from micropigs that weigh about six times less than many farm pigs, to super-muscly pigs, to a pig whose genome has been edited in 62 places (the aim being to produce a suitable non-human organ donor).

6. Gates, Google and DuPont want a piece of the genome-editing action.

In August, several high-profile investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google Ventures, pumped US$120 million into the genome-editing firm Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Big Agriculture is following suit: DuPont forged an alliance with the genome-editing firm Caribou Biosciences of Berkeley, California, in October, and announced its intention to use CRISPR–Cas9 technology to engineer crops.

Eloy Alonso/Reuters/Corbis

Microbiologists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.

7. The CRISPR–Cas9 system is at the centre of a patent row.

Zhang was granted a US patent on CRISPR–Cas9 in April 2014. But several months before he filed his application in 2012, molecular biologists Jennifer Doudna at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, now at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, had filed their own patent. UC Berkeley has since requested that the United States Patent and Trademark Office determine who should get credit for harnessing the CRISPR–Cas9 system, in particular for its application in human cells. And a similar debate is playing out in Europe, where oppositions to a patent that Zhang and his colleagues won in February have been filed. All three scientists co-founded companies that make use of CRISPR–Cas9.

Germline genome editing under scrutiny

Societal and Ethical Impacts of Germline Genome Editing: How Can We Secure Human Rights?

Geneva Statement on Heritable Human Genome Editing: The Need for Course Correction

A CRISPR Moratorium Isn't Enough: We Need a Boycott

The Human Right to Science and the Regulation of Human Germline Engineering

The last frontier in genome editing (if it exists) is germline. The special issue of The Crispr journal on bioethics contains an article of special interest and proposes a third process for evaluating individual and societal harms: a Human Rights Impact Assessment.

Human germline alteration is possible, due in part to democratization of genetic tools required for genome editing, and international scientific and legislative bodies are developing frameworks to manage the ramifications of this technology. Common among these frameworks are two pillars: public engagement and foundational principles. These components are necessary for respecting the autonomy of individuals and for fair processes and respecting diverse values.

However, they are not sufficient for protecting the most vulnerable members of society who may not even be in a position to participate in democratic processes. We propose implementing a HRIA, which captures concerns of public health and offers an opportunity to evaluate and anticipate the societal impact of GGE iteratively as the technology advances, public sentiments evolve, and cultural contexts shift. We recognize that this will raise new challenges of how such assessments are shared and implemented and how they can be enforced. We urge regulatory bodies and policy makers to consider this assessment approach in helping to establish robust regulatory frameworks necessary for the global protection of human rights.

And the Geneva Statement on Heritable Human Genome Editing says:

No decision about whether to pursue heritable human genome modification can be legitimate without broadly inclusive and substantively meaningful public engagement and empowerment. Such deliberations may be challenging and messy. They will take time and organizing them will necessitate creativity, hard work, and significant human and financial resources. The course correction proposed here is essential to these efforts.
We must in the meantime respect the predominant policy position against pursuing heritable human genome modification, if we are to prevent individual scientists or small committees from making this momentous decision for us all. This will preserve time to cultivate an informed and engaged public that can consider and discuss the societal consequences of altering the genes of future generations and make wise, democratic decisions about the shared future we aspire to build. 

I agree.

PS. CRISPR in 2020  Two major reports on germline editing, from the National Academies/Royal Society and the World Health Organization, will be released in 2020. We hope the reports will coordinate, with all the voices of CRISPR being heard, so we can build consensual and broadly acceptable frameworks to ensure we use CRISPR responsibly, especially regarding usage in human embryos for germline editing. The public has asked for it, and the community has been working on it. The science versus society gap will be bridged.

Diagnosing diseases and editing genes

CRISPR: The gene-editing tool revolutionizing biomedical research
The WIRED Guide to Crispr
A New Startup Wants to Use Crispr to Diagnose Disease

Take your time and read Wired and watch CBSNews. It will provide an exciting perspective of CRISPR. And just to end, imagine that diagnostic tests could be based on CRISPR while you read the last piece of WIRED.
We are closer than you may think.

The long and bumpy road to CRISPR

A Crack in Creation:The New Power to Control Evolution

I've read the same book than Diane Coyle this summer. If you want a clear understanding of what's going on in genomic editing, it should be your first choice. A crack in creation is a description and analysis by Jeniffer Doudna the main researcher on the topic. For those that are excited by genome editingit is good to read this statement:

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. The fact that gene editing might be able to reverse the course of a disease—permanently—by targeting its underlying genetic cause is thrilling enough. But even more so is the fact that CRISPR can be retooled to target new sequences of DNA and, hence, new diseases. Given CRISPR’s tremendous potential, I’ve grown accustomed over the past several years to being approached by established pharmaceutical companies asking for my help in learning about the CRISPR technology and about how it might be deployed in the quest for new therapeutics.
But therapeutic gene editing is still in its infancy—indeed, clinical trials have only just begun—and there are still big questions about how things will progress from here. The decades-long struggle to make good on the promise of gene therapy should serve as a reminder that medical advances are almost always more complicated than they might seem. For CRISPR, too, the road leading from the lab to the clinic will be long and bumpy.
Deciding what types of cells to target is one of the many dilemmas confronting researchers—should they edit somatic cells (from the Greek soma, for “body”) or germ cells (from the Latin germen, for “bud” or “sprout”)? The distinction between these two classes of cells cuts to the heart of one of the most heated and vital debates in the world of medicine today.
Germ cells are any cells whose genome can be inherited by subsequent generations, and thus they make up the germline of the organism—the stream of genetic material that is passed from one generation to the next. While eggs and sperm are the most obvious germ cells in humans, the germline also encompasses the progenitors of these mature sex cells as well as stem cells from the very early stages of the developing human embryo.
Somatic cells are virtually all the other cells in an organism: heart, muscle, brain, skin, liver—any cell whose DNA cannot be transmitted to offspring.

Therefore, caution is required and ethical implications are huge as I've said before.
Highly recommended.

Genome editing, closer than you think

Human Genome Editing Science, Ethics, and Governance

Last week the US patent office ruled that hotly disputed patents on the CRISPR revolutionary genome-editing technology belong to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. In a former post I explained the dispute. Genome editing in my opinion shouldn't be patented and will see exactly the impact of such ruling in US and elsewhere in the next future.
If you want to know in detail what does genome editing means for the future of life sciences, have a look at NASEM book.

It is now possible to insert or delete single nucleotides,interrupt a gene or genetic element, make a single-stranded break in DNA, modify a nucleotide, or make epigenetic changes to gene expression. In the realm of biomedicine, genome editing could be used for three broad purposes: for basic research, for somatic interventions, and for germline interventions.

CRISPR (which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) refers to short, repeated segments of DNA originally discovered in bacteria. These segments provided the foundation for the development of a system that combines short RNA sequences paired with Cas9 (CRISPR associated protein 9, an RNA-directed nuclease), or with similar nucleases, and can readily be programmed to edit specific segments of DNA. The CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing system offers several advantages over previous strategies for making changes to the genome and has been at the center of much discussion concerning how genome editing could be applied to promote human health.

I would just want to say that these patents destroy the soul of science, since access should be available with no barriers for the development of  innovation. Patents are not the incentive for discovery in this case, as I explained in my post, natural processes should'nt be patented. And this is why today is a really sad day.

PS. My posts against patents

Michael Kiwanuka. Home again

Are we prepared for CRISPR?

¿Estamos preparados para la edición genética?

The July-August issue of La Maleta de de Port-Bou publishes several articles on ethical and societal implications of CRISPR. It is specially helpful for those that have never read anything about it before. Tomàs Marquès provides an introductory text in accesible language. The conclusion after reading all the articles is that we are not prepared for CRISPR, but we are never prepared to understand all the uncertainties surrounding any innovation. The key question is to analyze concrete implications of outcomes and define what should be done.
My surprise was that you'll not find any reference to the word epigenetics. And most of the articles seem to focus on the genes as our fate. As you know, "We are not our DNA". Therefore, take care while reading it.

Changing the production function of diagnostic tests

Next-generation diagnostics with CRISPR

Last week while reading Science I noticed a short and crucial article. Up to now CRISPR technology was focused on gene editing, now we can say that its usefulness is widening into diagnostics. It may change completely molecular diagnostics of "infectious diseases through detection of Zika virus (ZIKV), Dengue virus (DENV), and human papillomavirus (HPV) in human  samples, and noninfectious diseases, such as detection of gene mutations in circulating cell-free DNA from lung cancer patients." The production founction of lab testing would change completely.
Several articles explain details about it. The fight for patents is going to start again on CRISPR diagnostics. And this are unfortunately bad news.
Anyway, Science article reminds us:

These emerging diagnostic tools will by necessity be compared to standard diagnostics to ensure sensitivity and specificity and will need to be field-tested to guarantee performance in patient care settings, as environmental conditions and end-user application might affect performance. Proven assays, if affordable, promise to improve care in resource-limited settings where undifferentiated febrile illness is the norm and where gaps or delays in diagnosis, targeted care, and infection control contribute to infectious disease mortality and spread.

More details in The Verge.

Medicine trends

The future of medicine

A new supplement in Nature explains the main trends in Medicine. It is really helpful to have a quick look focused on those approaches that are the more promising for the next future. From the issue, I would pick one article: A CRISPR edit for heart disease, A one-off injection to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease is now a prospect thanks to advances in gene editing.This is amazing, it changes current perspectives on the first cause of death worldwide (18 million people per year).

 In 2014, Musunuru and his team showed that more than half of Pcsk9 genes in the mouse liver could be silenced with a single injection of an adenovirus containing a CRISPR–Cas9 system directed against Pcsk9. This led to a roughly 90% decrease in the level of Pcsk9 in the blood and a 35–40% fall in blood LDL cholesterol⁴. Next, they used a mouse engineered to contain human liver cells, and tuned the CRISPR–Cas9 payload to target human PCSK9⁵. The team succeeded in showing that the human gene can also be switched off.

This is changing the focus of drug research, and a recent article explains the new approach.  Let's see if finally delivers what they say.

How to change individual letters of your DNA?

Gene editing has made another step forward. And maybe a complementary to the former one, the CRISPR-Cas9,  that was proved viable by Jennifer Doudna and I explained some months ago in this post. No it is indeed more interesting. Two different approaches, base editing and CRISPR-Cas13, have been described in Science and Nature. Adenine base editing allows to correct mutations, it doesn't cut the gene to insert a new one. It is a sharp pencil rather than scisors. With CRISP-Cas13 it is possible to edit RNA, which converts genetic information into proteins. An exciting approach, you correct a book with temporary ink that disappears, rather than making a permanent mark (like in CRISPR-Cas9).
These are exciting times for genetic research, though we'll have to wait for specific clinical applications

Modigliani, now at Tate Gallery

Repairing DNA: a review

The promise and challenge of therapeutic genome editing

Jenifer Doudna publishes a must read review article on genome editing in Nature this week. 

Current clinical trials using the CRISPR platform aim to improve chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell effectiveness, treat sickle cell disease and other inherited blood disorders, and stop or reverse eye disease. In addition, clinical trials to use genome editing for degenerative diseases including for patients with muscular dystrophy are on the horizon.

 Notably, all of the genome-editing therapeutics under development aim to treat patients through somatic cell modification. These treatments are designed to affect only the individual who receives the treatment, reflecting the traditional approach to disease mitigation. However, genome editing offers the potential to correct disease causing mutations in the germline, which would introduce genetic changes that would be passed on to future generations.

 At the time of writing, international commissions convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) and by the US National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine, together with the Royal Society, are drafting detailed requirements for any potential future clinical use.

Meanwhile, CRISPR is closer than you think.

Fig. 1: Ex vivo and in vivo genome editing to treat human disease.

Fig. 2: The genome editing toolbox.

Fig. 3: Emerging tools.

Fig. 4: Editing the human germline.

The constraints to genomic editing

CRISPR… ¿debemos poner límites a la edición genética?

A new publication by Fundació Grifols highlights the potential constraints to genomic editing. It is a good moment to have a look at it. Savador Macip says:

Los peligros, pues, son muchos, tantos como las cosas buenas que la edición genética nos puede aportar. De alguna forma, recuerda la energía nuclear. Descubrir los secretos del átomo nos ha permitido acceder a una cantidad inimaginable de energía, que usamos diariamente, pero que se debe regular de una forma muy precisa para evitar accidentes terribles y contaminaciones no deseadas. Y, lo que es más peligroso aún, la misma información sirve para fabricar una de las armas más mortíferas que conocemos, capaz incluso de destruir el planeta. A otra escala, CRISPR/Cas9 podría tener efectos parecidos.

La ciencia no se detiene, siempre continúa avanzando, y la sociedad corre el peligro de quedarse atrás. Por ello es importante que los debates sobre hacia dónde queremos ir empiecen cuanto antes mejor y que en ellos participe una muestra amplia de la población, no solo los científicos. Para conseguirlo es necesario que el máximo número posible de gente esté bien informada acerca de los avances más recientes, que entienda su alcance y sus implicaciones y que haga el esfuerzo de contribuir en los debates. A la vez, los científicos deben salir a explicar qué está pasando en sus laboratorios y los políticos deben proporcionar plataformas necesarias para estas discusiones. Solo así nos aseguraremos de que estos descubrimientos son usados

A must read.

Side effects, a good film to watch

Genome editing: understanding CRISPR-CAS9

Excellent speech by Salvador Macip at Grifols Foundation conference on CRISPR (in catalan):

Genome editing: a potential weapon of mass destruction

The Patent Dispute Over Gene Editing Technologies: The Broad Institute, Inc. vs. The Regents of the University of California

Nobody could imagine two decades ago that a small part of wide range of bacteria's immune system could represent so much for genome editing. Known as CRISPR, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, such mechanism can recognise and defend against viruses. The other part of the defense mechanism is a set of enzymes called Cas that can cut DNA and avoid the invasion of viruses. Mostly, these research was originated in Les Salines d'Alacant by Francisco Mojica a microbiologist.
As far as this is a natural process Dr. Mojica didn't show interest in patenting it. Now the row over patents is hot between UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute. I will skip details, you may find it in The Economist.
It seems that the fight is only to determine who was the first, and the Court will have to decide on March 9th. However, my question is: why is it still possible to file a patent over human nature?.
Meanwhile the public debate may be moved towards the use of such CRISPR technology for genome editing, and Science was publishing an article about the threat that misuse represents for human beings. Are we facing a new weapon of mass destruction?
Both issues, patents and bioethical implications are crucial at the moment. Former examples provide clear guidance of outcomes that should be avoided. Unfortunately, the race for the biggest size of the pie (billions of $) seems to be a priority over health and humanity.

Fighting against techno-eugenics

A Chinese scientist who shocked the medical community last year when he said he had illegally created the world's first gene-edited babies has been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in southern China.
He Jiankui announced in November 2018 that he had used a powerful technique called CRISPR on a human embryo to edit the genes of twin girls. He said he modified a gene with the intention of protecting the girls against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Many scientists expressed concerns about possible unintended side effects of the genetic changes that could be passed down to future generations.
Last fall, He also indicated there might be another pregnancy involving a gene-edited embryo. The court indicated that three genetically edited babies have been born.
The closed court in Shenzhen found He and two colleagues guilty of illegal medical practice by knowingly violating the country's regulations and ethical principles with their experiments, Xinhua news agency reported. It also ordered He to pay a fine of about $430,000.

Such unethical medical behavior is the worst news of 2019. And this article explained last June the reasons:

The link between CCR5 and HIV is fairly well studied. Disabling CCR5 removes the doorway HIV uses to enter and infect cells, but it does so only for some strains of HIV; there are others that don’t need CCR5. Further, the genetic sequence He’s edits produced does not match this well-studied variant of CCR5; in fact, it has never been observed in humans or animals. In other words, no one has any idea whether the variant with which Lulu and Nana are now living will affect HIV immunity or anything else.
That’s a key issue: Genes don’t do just one thing. Most illnesses and traits are influenced by dozens, hundreds, even thousands of DNA variations. Each of our roughly 20,000 genes is linked to many different aspects of our physiology and health. So what else does CCR5 do? A variant that provides protection against HIV also seems to increase susceptibility to a number of more common diseases, like flu and West Nile virus.
CCR5 has also been linked to brain function, which led to some sensational headlines and media speculation that the gene-edited babies might have enhanced brains. There are likely myriad other processes to which CCR5 contributes that we don’t know about yet. To that point: before the recent study, no one had researched whether the CCR5 mutation resulted in better or worse health over a person’s lifetime.
The CCR5 story illustrates a flaw in the logic that underlies gene editing. Efforts to change one gene to affect one illness in a future person ignore the fact that health is the result of infinitely complex interactions within and outside a person’s body. In most cases, the presence or absence of a particular genetic variant is not the sole determinant of a disease or condition.

And this article reminds us that, despite the appearance of agreement, ethical questions that have surrounded human germline editing for years have yet to be properly addressed.

Unnatural Selection: Season 1 | Main Trailer | Netflix

Gen-ethics (2)

Special Issue: The Ethics Of Human Genome Editing

The CRISPR journal has released a special issue on ethics. You'll find an article with the title "Heritable Genome Editing and the Downsides of a Global Moratorium". This is exactly the opposite argument that Françoise Baylis provides in her book. I think that it is unacceptable a recommendation that nations should "regulate HGE for safety and efficacy only and without distinguishing between therapeutic and enhancing modifications". We can't leave such decisions to scientists and practitioners. I'm really concerned about it.

Gauguin Portraits

Gen-ethics

Altered Inheritance
CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing

Our future belongs to all of us. Or maybe not? Maybe somebody could decide for us without noticing it?. The "decisions about the use of genetic technologies in humans are too important to be left to scientists", society has to achieve a broad consensus. Françoise Baylis in her new book sheds light on this issue. She explained his position in an article last spring and now she has published a remarkable book on ethics and genome editing. Her calls for an open and comprehensive international process to reach political, scientific, and social/ethical consensus on regulation of human genome editing have been  unattended up to now. Her ultimate goal:

I want to live in a world that promotes equity and justice and celebrates difference, a world where everyone matters. I want to live in a world where we embrace neighborliness, reciprocity, social solidarity, and community in pursuit of human flourishing and the common good. I want to live in a world where we value collegial as opposed to competitive relations. I don’t want to live in a world where a select, privileged few are able to inscribe their privilege in their DNA and thereby exacerbate unfair class divisions and other social injustices. For these reasons, I want for all of us to reflect on whether heritable human genome editing is a boon or a threat.

I agree. An essential reading highly recommended.

Genome editing: the game of biology is about to change

Hacking the Code of Life: How gene editing will rewrite our futures

The foundations of gene editing came about because a scientist in Alacant, Dr. Mojica started to find weird DNA sequences in some bacteria he was studying. After that Profs. Doudna and Charpentier and later Prof. Zhang translated initial findings into practice. Therefore it all started when a microbiologist studied the arms race between bacteria and viruses.
You'll find all these details in a book by Nessa Carey. If you want to understand in plain words what CRISPR is and what may represent for biology, then you have to read it.

The gene editing revolution is creating a technological toolkit that almost any half-decent scientist can lean into and find something useful. On the one hand, that should make us very excited. We can both solve problems and simply indulge our curiosity. But should it also make us worried? Using chisels and a mallet, Michelangelo created some of the most exquisite sculptures we have ever seen. But give the same heavy, sharp tools to someone else, and we can get a very different and much bloodier outcome.

But the same technology can also be used to alleviate human suffering, and if we are smart enough, lessen the impact that our heavy-footed species has on the only planet we know of in the entire universe that supports complex life. We cannot un-invent this technology, we probably can’t even control its spread. So what choice do we really have but to embrace it and use it well, to create a safer, more equal world for all?

Claiming for global regulation of genome editing

Genome editing and human reproduction

The Nuffield Council of Bioethics release last July a key document on Bioethics of Genetics. Now that a chinese "scientist" claims to have edited the genomes of twin baby girls is the right moment to read it. And the key principles are:

Principle 1: The welfare of the future person

Gametes or embryos that have been subject to genome editing procedures (or that are derived from cells that have been subject to such procedures) should be used only where the procedure is carried out in a manner and for a purpose that is intended to secure the welfare of and is consistent with the welfare of a person who may be born as a consequence of treatment using those cells.

Principle 2: Social justice and solidarity

The use of gametes or embryos that have been subject to genome editing procedures (or that are derived from cells that have been subject to such procedures) should be permitted only in circumstances in which it cannot reasonably be expected to produce or exacerbate social division or the unmitigated marginalisation or disadvantage of groups within society.

New concerns are arising from CRISPR application and international regulations would be necessary to cope with them. The Association for responsible research and innovation in genome editing is precisely requesting this effort. The only precedents are the Declaration of Human Rights and it seems that it will not be an easy task to fulfill.

PS. Check the former post on Nuffield reports on this topic

Anticipating public concern over genome editing

Genome editing: an ethical review

The Nuffield Council has released a key document on ethical implications of genome editing. You'll notice that it is an open document, a work in progress because technology is evolving. If you want an excerpt check this short guide.

It should be remembered that most prospective technologies fail, and that some lead to undesirable consequences, a fact often obscured by ‘whig’ histories that reconstruct the history of successful technologies and their beneficial social consequences. Scientific discovery and technological innovation is important but not inevitable. Most important among the factors shaping technological development is human agency. It is human agency, in terms of decisions that are made about directions of research, funding and investment, the setting of legal limits and regulatory principles, the design of institutions and programmes, and the desire for or acceptance of different possible states of affairs, that will determine whether, and which, prospective technologies emerge and, ultimately,
their historical significance.

Nuffield council work is of interest, meanwhile, China is already testing CRISPR technology in humans, no ethical concerns...

Josep Segú - Barcelona