LifestyleRadiation-bearing astronauts or bioweapons-resistant 'supersoldiers': what are the limits of gene editing?

Radiation-bearing astronauts or bioweapons-resistant ‘supersoldiers’: what are the limits of gene editing?

CRISPR, gene editing technology developed by researchers Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, was one of the greatest scientific innovations of recent years. So much so that it earned them the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The technique, known as CRISPR-Cas9, works like molecular scissors that allow you to cut and paste pieces of genetic material into any cell. Which makes it possible to alter and repair genes in virtually all living things, from corn to humans.

Its applications are as many, then, as you can imagine. It makes it possible to improve crops, design new drugs or fight genetic diseases or cancer. At its most dystopian extreme, the gene-editing technique could also introducing genetic changes into human embryos to improve their physical or mental abilities.

“It is something very profound, we have a tool that can be used to control human evolution,” one of its creators, Jennifer Doudna, warned the agency in 2017. SYNC.

The biggest example so far of eugenics made thanks to this technique the one made by He Jiankui, the researcher, who then worked at the South China University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, responsible for having modified the genetic makeup of 3 girls when they were embryos to make them resistant to HIV. After violating medical regulations, he was sentenced to several years in prison, and was released last year.

This controversial scientific act could be far from being an exception in the not too distant future. Radiation resistant astronauts or “super soldiers” are some possibilities that CRISPR has already put on the table.

Could genome editing give rise to superhumans?

Altering the physiology of astronauts so that they are better protected in order to reach Mars is something that scientists are already studying.

They have identified more than 40 genes that could be edited in the future to make humans resistant to radiation damage, have harder and denser bones, or be able to live with less oxygen.

“You could also think about modifying liver enzymes so that men and women are better able to eliminate the toxins used in chemical warfare, or introducing changes that make them more resistant to biological weapons,” he recently suggested in an article. in Guardian Robin Lovell-Badge, professor at the Francis Crick Institute in London.”That’s the kind of human enhancement that military researchers are now thinking about“.

Lovell-Badge, organizer of the upcoming International Summit on Human Genome Editing to be held this month in London, UK, went even further to suggest that one could also “contemplating altering humans so that they could see in the infrared or ultraviolet range, as some animals can.” “Such improvements would be ideal for troops fighting at night or in other hostile conditions,” he says.

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The capacity of give life to a true Captain America it is something that many countries are exploring. United Kingdom, Russia or China are some of them, sums up an article in The Conversation.

In 2019, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) announced its intention to investigate whether the Gene editing could make your soldiers resistant to diseases and chemical or biological warfare agents.

“Although the harnessing the potential of CRISPR to enhance human capabilities in the future battlefield remains only a hypothetical possibility for now, there are signs that Chinese military researchers are beginning to explore its potential,” Elsa Kania, an expert on Chinese defense technology at the Center for a New American Security, and Wilson VornDick, a consultant on China affairs and a former Navy officer.

In 2020, France gave its armed forces the go-ahead to start research into developing “enhanced soldiers.” The conditions imposed aspects such as implants that could “improve brain power.” However, the military ethics committee warned that you could not cross red lines, such as genome editing or eugenics.

At the moment the French country seems to settle for creating an Ironman and not so much a Spiderman. However, as highlighted in the report, collected at the time by the BBC, progress in this field is due to “other nations exploring such possibilities and France must keep up”.

In this scenario the exposure Cut + Paste (Cut and Paste), included within the International Summit on Human Genome Editing, encourages reflection on what changes can be introduced into humans safely and ethically using gene editing technology.

As they state from the show, all these futuristic improvements may seem like something only typical of science fiction, “but many of the ways in which we try to improve our minds and bodies today would have seemed incredible to past generations,” they value.

Ethical limits are not the only thing that the scientific community should value with responsibility and concern.

“Experiments have also shown that, in about 20% of cases, these genome editing changes can lead to substantial rearrangements of a person’s genome, which is very, very dangerous. could cause cancer“Adds Lovell-Badge to the British newspaper.

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