On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite serious diseases.
On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.
Some of them:
- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it easier to control the population.
- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon
If it is highly effective moral arguments are moot. Genetic engineering will be like nuclear weapons. A nation that desires to be competitive or have economic dominance won’t have any choice, it will be forced to adopt its usage (or be left behind).
Even agreements to control nuclear weapons that could cause human extinction still leave nuclear weapons in the hands of many major nations (and a handful of tiny ones) so international agreements have little chance of curtailing genetic engineering.
I'm just trying to point out that the Gattaca situation people seem to be afraid of is not even in the top 10 of worst scenario's.
And in most Western countries you don't get imprisoned for speaking out against the government, or being a journalist without government permissions.
And most Western don't feel they have to ban innocuous search terms, such as "Big yellow duck", or "Square", or the letter 'n'.
The issue is more the genomics. We can tinker with genetic code quite effectively these days, however we can't reliably predict which developmental processes will be affected by our tinkering; in short, we are far behind in our understanding of the array of specific roles of genes beyond the narrowly defined disease pathways we want to affect.
Just as an example, say you want to change the encoding for one of the dopamine receptors to discourage dopaminergic activity, hoping to lessen the risk of addiction and reward-based activity. Well, dopamine is also involved in dozens of other processes, including movement, executive function, and more. Who's to say what effects will occur in a fully grown human?
The future? Compared to 1900 we already live in a widely different world, more diff today - 1900 than diff 1900 - 1000 B.C.
If I was a 1900’s citizen transported to 1000 BC? holy.. are you kidding me? I would be shell shocked.
Technology wise, 1900 cities more like 1000 BC than today. 1000 BC wasn't some cavemen running around, we had established civilizations, with writing, education, math, literature, laws, etc already in place.
One thing to consider is that via crispr and stem cell treatments, genetic changes can be affected in adults as well, you just need to wait for the kinks to be worked out now and apply large sums of money. Our definition of 'haves and have nots' is potentially going to change in ways we have never imagined.