Can Gene Editing Create an 'X-Men' Generation? Controversy Over Ethics and Boundaries Rage On

As the debates heat up over the ethics and boundaries of gene manipulation, scientists may have found an easier method for DNA editing. The old method of gene manipulation used viruses to effect the change. The new methods of gene editing can now lend more precision in copying genetic material onto the nucleus of a cell. While they are still not 100 percent accurate, they are less expensive and far easier to use.

This process has been made simpler and more accurate through improvements made to the Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) by Feng Zhang and a band of fellow experts from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard along with researchers from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. The improved method was tested in a lab setting on human kidney cells and to produce even better accuracy and less 'off-target effects'.

Zhang states that these effects are among the major safety issues that surround the gene editing. He says: "The field is advancing at a rapid pace, and there is still a lot to learn before we can consider applying this technology for clinical use."

Most of those who raise concerns over gene editing technologies voice out the possibility that manipulation will permanently change genes that are passed on by a parent to a child. This is perfect if its work can be accurately limited to eliminating abnormalities as sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis. Without this kind of guarantee, however, manipulation may trigger unplanned or unforeseen consequences. Who's to say whether this technology for eradicating a condition won't one day encourage people to ehance a desirable trait? Maybe a kind of future X-Men down the line? At the moment though, for example, gene editing that is intended to cure inherited immune system syndromes may possibly trigger leukaemia.

A voluntary freeze on germline editing has been requested by the White House and by Dr. Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health. While researchers from European countries have an imposed legal ban on this type of editing, the Chinese are forging on. In the US, private companies and researchers using private funds are also able to pursue this study.