Gene editing technology offers new hope for humanity’s dream of a disease-free future. However, the technology still poses technical and ethical challenges that need to be addressed.
All humans hope for a disease-free future. But it’s a wish that has never been fulfilled in human history. Mankind was too weak in the face of disease, and longevity was a mythical ideal. Even Qin Shi Huang, the once-king of China, could not find the elixir to fulfill this wish. Even though human life expectancy has increased over time, the notion that humans will never overcome disease still seems self-evident.
Nevertheless, throughout human history, the search for a disease-free future continues. In the modern world, the herb that will ensure this future is called science. Medicine has been studying the human body for a long time and has provided many avenues for treating diseases. However, cancer still threatens human survival, and many genetic diseases are stigmatized and passed down from generation to generation. As a result, medical advances to overcome disease have stagnated in recent years and seem to have reached their limits. However, humanity has not stopped trying to overcome disease. With the limitations of medicine, the dream of a long and healthy life has now reached the realm of engineering. In recent years, one of the most recent means of overcoming diseases is gene editing. Gene editing is a technology that modifies genes to benefit humans. Despite its promise as a way to overcome diseases that medicine cannot cure, it has been met with a lot of resistance. In this article, we’ll talk about gene editing, its promise, and the arguments for and against it.
A few decades ago, the greatest achievement of engineering was simply confirming the existence of genes. Simply identifying and characterizing the structure of the human gene was not enough to fulfill the dream of a long and healthy life; more research was needed to get there. Thirty years later, scientists have finally gotten their hands on the genes of living things. Restriction enzymes found in microorganisms such as bacteria were able to cut the DNA that holds genes. Restriction enzymes could cut out specific sequences of DNA, which offered the promise of being able to pick and choose which genes were needed and which were not, and eliminate unnecessary genes. However, restriction enzymes could only function in microbial genes and could not be used to edit human DNA. This led scientists to develop various techniques, such as Zinc Finger and TALENs, that could be used on human DNA, but they were not successful.
By 2012, however, scientists had broken new ground in the stagnant field of gene editing. CRISPR, a gene-editing technique that can be used on the DNA of almost any organism, not just human DNA. Discovered in 1987, CRISPR is a part of a bacterial gene that is a structure in which a DNA sequence is repeated at specific intervals. The structure went largely unnoticed at the time, but was rediscovered in 2012 by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The Berkeley researchers discovered that in bacterial cells, a specific protein that binds to the crispers locates and cuts out invading DNA, a phenomenon that they realized could be used to guide the crispers to cut the intended DNA. Since then, gene editing using CRISPR has advanced significantly and has been studied in a wide variety of biological cells. In April, gene editing was performed on a human fertilized egg, which was reported as the first attempted human gene modification.
This is the gene editing technology that has emerged as the best means to overcome modern diseases. Now that humanity has reached the point of genetic engineering, gene editing technology holds the cards. Gene editing technology offers a new way to treat diseases in a way that has never been done before, by modifying genes. There are two main methods: gene editing in fertilized eggs and in vitro treatments. If we consider the causes of human diseases to be largely congenital and acquired, the above two technologies address each of these factors. Each of these technologies in and of itself offers positive effects and prospects for gene editing technology, which can be understood through a detailed discussion of each.
Fertilized egg gene editing is a technology that modifies genes present in human fertilized eggs before development. Congenital diseases, also known as inherited diseases, are usually caused by the expression of disease factors that are written into genes in the parents. Because of this, if the disease factor is removed from the gene, the inherited disease will not occur. Gene editing technology is a means of removing this disease factor, and can selectively remove only the disease-causing gene from a fertilized egg, reducing the likelihood of future individuals expressing the disease.
In contrast to gene editing, in vitro treatments can address acquired diseases. Acquired diseases are usually caused by the body’s inability to respond properly to an abnormal situation. In this case, treatment typically goes in two directions: one is to remove the cause of the abnormal situation, and the other is to try to get the body to return to normal on its own. Medicine usually follows the first approach to treat diseases. However, diseases that are essentially incurable by modern medicine, such as cancer, need to be approached in the second direction due to the risk of recurrence. This is where in vitro therapies come in, where certain cells, such as immune cells, are taken out of the body and injected with genetically modified genes to induce the body to spontaneously overcome the disease.
The above-mentioned applications of gene editing are in line with the outcome of gene editing as a means to overcome disease in the body. This is where gene editing technology gains its legitimacy. However, despite the positive effects of gene editing, there is still a strong backlash against it. These objections can be summarized into two main categories: technical and ethical, and we need to look at each of them in order to determine the validity of gene editing. The first technical issue stems from the fact that CRISPR gene editing technology is not perfect. While there have been successful experiments with gene editing, there have been no reports of successful modification of specific genetic traits. This suggests that there are still technical challenges before gene editing technology is ready for prime time, and is a variable that provides uncertainty as to whether the technology can be used as intended as a means to overcome disease.
Gene editing technology is also fundamentally controversial on ethical grounds. This can be summarized simply as concerns about the expansion of gene editing technology. Gene editing is not limited to treating diseases, and if expanded, it could be used to modify any aspect of a human being that is innately determined. This doesn’t just include our physical appearance, but also our “nature,” which ranges from personality to intelligence. This, in turn, could lead to social and ethical controversy over the abuse of gene editing technology. If this technology is abused, humans could be homogenized to be tall and compliant on the outside, with high intelligence and a good personality on the inside. In the end, this would impose a set of preferred traits on the majority of humans, and could hinder the development of a modern society that celebrates diversity.
However, research into gene editing technology should continue. The two issues raised above are the result of a myopic interpretation of gene editing technology. As stated in the problem above, gene editing technology is not yet complete. This in itself suggests that there is still room for improvement. Gene editing has become one of the hottest topics in genetic engineering, and there is a lot of research being done on the technical issues. Genetic engineering has only been around for 30 years, from identifying genes to modifying them. It’s likely that it won’t take that long for gene editing technology to be refined and used to overcome diseases.
Furthermore, the technological improvements also provide clues to overcoming ethical issues. One example of this is stem cell technology. Stem cell research was once ethically controversial because it used human fertilized eggs. However, as the technology has evolved, research has expanded to use cells from adults, which is free of ethical controversy. As you can see, any modern technology that involves life inevitably comes with ethical controversy. However, these are issues that arise in the early stages of the technology’s application and will likely be resolved as research continues. Gene editing technology is also in the early stages of research, so if it is focused on overcoming diseases and is free from ethical controversies such as overuse of technology, it can be free from such objections.
In the end, it all comes back to technology. In the modern world, advances in science and technology have provided us with answers to many problems. Every technology has raised various questions and controversies during its development and evolution. However, humanity has a history of using science and technology in a positive way for its own good. Humans develop through trial and error. The problem of human disease is an earthly challenge for humanity to solve. Since classical medicine has recently reached its practical limits, the need for gene editing technology is self-evident. Although gene editing technology may be controversial in its development, there is no doubt that it is a weapon to overcome diseases that medicine cannot solve.
In the history of overcoming diseases that mankind has been unable to avoid, gene editing technology offers a new avenue. Although it tends to be dismissed as mere wishful thinking shrouded in controversy, the way has been shown. It’s just a matter of time before the challenges are met. Challenging the realm of the divine, gene editing is a weapon of science and the promise of a disease-free future for humanity that is, realistically, the most compelling.
