Cloning Humans?

Money corrupts even the most ethical people.  We see this happening every day.  So why then, did universities around the world believe that they could research gene editing technology using CRISPR with an ethical code to not experiment with human cloning? CRISPR (or this technology) was first developed in 1987, and was hoped to revolutionize everything from medicine to agriculture. In 2017, I was appalled to find CRISPR used in virtually every university in American and around the world.  Hmm. What could go wrong?

In China, the first twin girls with altered DNA were born in November 2018.  At the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, He Jiankui used CRISPR to change their DNA to make them immune to HIV infection.  This type of gene editing is banned in the US because these DNA changes (good or bad) can be passed along to future generations.  Just last week, the Chinese university fired the professor for “seriously violating” government regulations.

Then, we find that an American professor at Rice University, Michael Deem, was involved in this research. ARGH! According to Kiran Masunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene-editing expert and editor of a genetics journal called this “unconscionable” and that experimenting on humans is “not ethically defensible.”

How are we going to prevent people from using this gene-editing technology to produce bionic people or to create a super race or gender? When asked if the genie was really out of the bottle, George Church, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor, responded, “Yes.”

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