What was one critical fact that we covered in our overview of He Jainkui's creation of the world's first CRISPR babies?
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Step 1: Identify the event in question — He Jiankui’s 2018 announcement that he had created the world’s first gene‑edited babies using CRISPR technology. Show more…
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The first known attempt at creating a genetically modified human embryo in the United States was carried out in 2017. What do you think are the potential of this technology for eliminating diseases as well as the ethical implications of editing a person’s genome?
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Audrey and her partner Andrew sat in the corner of the diner, trying to process the information they had received during their meeting with the team from the research hospital. Many couples planning for a pregnancy have anxieties and questions, but this pair felt they had more than most. During her teenage years, shortness of breath had led to genetic tests that revealed Audrey was heterozygous for a mutation in the dystrophin gene. The dystrophin gene is X-linked; since Audrey had a functional allele on her other X chromosome, the impacts on her health had been minimal. But now she and Andrew wanted to have children, and they were concerned about the possibility of having a son with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a disorder that results when no functional dystrophin is made. At their first meeting with a genetic counselor, they had talked about in vitro fertilization (IVF) and pre-implantation diagnosis (PGD), which would allow them to select only female embryos or embryos that did not carry the altered dystrophin allele. They understood that this would allow for genetic screening of embryos, and then a decision would have to be made about which embryo(s) to transfer to Audrey's uterus, hopefully for successful implantation. But then one of Audrey's friends on Facebook highlighted a report about a new technology that helped mice with muscular dystrophy (CRISPR helps heal mice with muscular dystrophy), and the couple realized they had more questions about their possible options. What advantage does the CRISPR-Cas9 system offer compared to previous genome editing technologies? 1. There are potential technical challenges with genetic modification in general and with CRISPR-Cas9 specifically. a. In research, a critical ethical issue to be considered is the balance between risk and benefit—benefits must be greater than risks. Greater attention must be placed on risks since they may damage living beings or the environment. The application of CRISPR/Cas9 technique involves risks since it may produce off-target mutations, which can be deleterious. One problem is that large genomes may contain multiple DNA sequences identical or highly homologous to the intended target DNA sequence. *CRISPR/Cas9 may also cleave these unintended sequences, causing mutations that may lead to cell death or transformation. How would you argue the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in the case of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy? (i.e., are the benefits of CRISPR/Cas9 greater than the risks?)
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