Why Is the US Against Embryo DNA Modification?

The director of the National Institutes of Health in the USA, Dr Francis Collins, has publicly and categorically stated that the US will not fund research into the modification of the DNA of human embryos.

The assertion came as a response to the revelatory news last week that scientists in China had successfully manipulated the DNA of abnormal embryos in a bid to avoid the potentially fatal blood condition beta-thalassaemia. Junjiu Huang, leader of the study at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, claimed no moral boundaries had been crossed, since the embryos were incapable of developing and would simply have been destroyed by the fertility clinic from which they were obtained.

Clearly, not everyone agrees, with Collins calling for an end to all such experimentation.

Dr Collins’ Case

 Collins was adamant that the National Institutes of Health would not be contributing any funding towards such studies in the US. In fact, he went further than that and actually called for a permanent halt to all studies worldwide, citing the moral grey area that is genetic modification, among other reasons. The safety implications, unpredictability of embryo manipulation and the absence of any real reason to dabble in such genetic experiments completed his reasoning.

“Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but the strong arguments against engaging in this activity remain,” he stated. “These include the serious and unquantifiable safety issues, ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent, and a current lack of compelling medical applications.”

Chinese Study only Adds to Concerns

The study in China did little to alleviate the concerns raised by Dr Collins. Though Huang and his team were able to successfully correct the diseased genome in seven out of 86 attempts, that is a very high margin of failure. Even more worryingly, the study revealed a whole host of “off-target edits,” which are essentially unintended alterations made to healthy genes. The unpredictability of the practice, as well as its poor rate of effectiveness, led to Huang and his team calling it off.

While the potential to pursue such technology remains, however, it’s almost inevitable that someone, somewhere, will continue to attempt it. This very viewpoint – that of investigating the science simply because we can and not for any tangible medical purpose – has also raised criticism from one of Dr Collins’ compatriots.

“There is no persuasive medical reason to manipulate the human germline because inherited genetic diseases can be prevented using embryo screening techniques, among other means,” stated Dr Marcy Darkovsky, a scientist from the Centre for Genetics and Society. “Is the only justification for trying to refine germline gene editing the prospect of so-called enhancement?”

For now, it appears that the research has paused. Whether or not it will be resumed remains to be seen, but it looks unlikely that American scientists will be behind it if it is.