In 2018, Chinese Scientist Jiankui shocked the world when he revealed that he had created the first programmed children. Using Crispr, he cloned the genomes of three human embryos in an attempt to protect against HIV and used the embryos to start pregnancies.
The backlash against it was imminent. Scientists have said the technology is too new to be used for human reproduction and that DNA modification has led to genetic improvement. The Chinese government convicted him of ‘illegal medical practices,’ and he served a three-year prison sentence.
Now, a new York-based startup called Manhattan Genomics is rekindling the debate about gene-edited children. Its stated goal is to eliminate genetic diseases and alleviate human suffering by correcting harmful mutations at the embryonic stage. The company announced a group of “scientific” opponents that included a prominent doctor who only in vitro doctors, scientists who work for the highest biosciences company, and two reproductive scientists from a large research center. The scientist who pioneered the process of creating embryos using DNA from three people is also involved.
“I like to take challenges when I see them,” says Cashiy Tie, a former college student who left college at 18 to start his first company, Ranomics, a genomics testing service. As it is taken from them, the challenge is to make the idea of human planning a socially acceptable plan.
The idea of editing human embryos is tantalizing, because any changes made to reproductive cells are harmless. Seizure of infectious diseases from the view and will be removed from future generations. But gene editing technology also has the potential to cause less-than-intended consequences. Edit the wrong gene by mistake and it can trigger cancer, for example. Those mistakes will be passed down to any future children.
While new forms of gene editing are more accurate, there are still ethical issues to contend with. The prospect of being able to manipulate the DNA of a human embryo has sparked fears of a new form of eugenics, where parents with the means to do so can create “artificial children” with selective traits.
Bond says the goal of Manhattan Geromics — originally called the Manhattan Project when the company was first launched in August — is disease correction, not development. Unlike the original Manhattan Project, the US government’s secret program during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons, Tie said his profits would operate openly and transparently. “We’re revolutionizing medicine, and this technology is really powerful. That’s what I think is typical here of manipulating the nucleus of an atom,” he said.
