BIOTECHNOLOGY PAPER

Gene Editing Assignment 3

Joanna Nasser

SCI115

Professor James Cox

11/12/2018

Human gene editing is also referred to as genome engineering or genome editing. It is an approach to genetic engineering that involves the insertion, deletion, modification, or replacement in the genome of any particular living organism. This paper will give invaluable insights with respect to benefits, drawbacks, and ethical aspects of gene editing.

Benefits and Drawbacks

The benefits of human gene editing revolve around curing illnesses, stopping inherited illnesses in its tracks through snipping it out of the family line; creating desired genotype and phenotype characteristics (the so-called designer babies); saving endangered species, and the bringing back of extinct species. Concerning curing illnesses, it is worth mentioning that through the elimination of genes that bring about the disease, physicians could treat a broad range of illnesses (Kim et al., 2014).

There are several drawbacks of human gene editing. They include the fact that it can damage the human gene pool permanently if it was carried out to a particular extent. Secondly, gene therapy can modify human capabilities, and in that way, the standards of normal human life would be changed. Thirdly it is worth mentioning that gene editing can give rise to other disorders.

Ethical Aspects

Due to the probability of off-target effects (gene editing in the wrong place) and mosaicism (the moment some cells carry the edit but the rest do not), safety happens to be the main concern. More specifically, it is worth mentioning that until germline human genome editing is deemed completely safe through research, it should never be utilized for purposes of clinical reproduction; the risk can never be justified just because it is potentially beneficial. Apart from safety, informed consent is also another ethical concern (Hendel et al., 2015). Some people become concerned that it is not possible to get informed consent for germline therapy since the patients that are affected by the engineering are the embryo and future generations at large. What's more, there are concerns that genome editing will reach a point where justice and equity are overlooked, and the creation of social classes defined by people of ‘high’ quality engineered genomes take place. Finally, it is worth mentioning that a lot of people have religious and moral objections to the utilization of human embryos for research.

References

Kim, S., Kim, D., Cho, S. W., Kim, J., & Kim, J. S. (2014). Highly efficient RNA-guided genome editing in human cells via delivery of purified Cas9 ribonucleoproteins. Genome research, 24(6), 1012-1019.

Hendel, A., Bak, R. O., Clark, J. T., Kennedy, A. B., Ryan, D. E., Roy, S., ... & Bacchetta, R. (2015). Chemically modified guide RNAs enhance CRISPR-Cas genome editing in primary human cells. Nature Biotechnology, 33(9), nbt-3290.