Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ for the children

Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by daniel-thompson on Saturday March 19, 2022 @08:26PM (#30738823)

The gene CCR5 encodes for a protein that one strain of HIV uses to enter cells. These kids may (depending on how accurate the editing actually was) have reduced susceptibility or even immunity to _that strain_ of HIV.

However, this CCR5 mutation has also been shown to worsen outcomes for other diseases (influenza, west nile, certain forms of encephalitis). And it almost certainly has other effects, in isolation or with other gene combinations, that haven't been discovered yet. The human body is _incredibly_ complex and we are nowhere near a complete understanding of the genome.

To make this kind of change without the consent of the patient, or a full understanding of the effects, or a way to turn it off, or a way to prevent it from being inherited by descendants (short of doing another round of CRISPR on each descending embryo) is incredibly reckless and unethical.

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Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by _3u10 on Saturday March 19, 2022 @09:17PM (#30739111)

So this change to the DNA exists naturally and occurs without the consent of those born with it?

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Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by daniel-thompson on Saturday March 19, 2022 @10:02PM (#30739352)

The change that has been studied is a naturally-occurring 32 base pair deletion of the CCR5 gene (see https://www.google.com/search?q=ccr5+delta+32). In the literature, this allele is called CCR5-Δ32, and it modifies the expression of the CCR5 protein by, among other things, eliminating the receptor used by some HIV strains.

He Jiankui intended to use CRISPR to effect CCR5-Δ32, but didn't succeed; instead, his use of CRISPR made other, never-studied-before mutations to the CCR5 gene.

Will those mutations result in a CCR5 protein which confers HIV resistance? Probably, at least to some strains, since as far as we know, the full CCR5 gene is needed for an HIV-compatible receptor on the CCR5 protein.

Will they have other effects? What is their safety profile? These mutations have never been studied before, so no one knows.

See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6813942/#__p275 for more on this.

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Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by mensetmanusman on Sunday March 20, 2022 @07:38AM (#30741818)

Yes, just like autism.

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