George Church's sensational statement

Vyacheslav Golovanov, GeekTimes based on The Washington Post: A Harvard professor says he can cure aging, but is that a good idea?In early December, Washington hosted a three-day conference on ethical and technological issues of the relatively new CRISPR genome editing technology. 

One of the participants of the congress, Professor of genetics, molecular engineer and chemist George Church made a sensational statement: he is sure that in five years modern advances in genetics will help reverse the process of human aging.

Church is one of the people responsible for the emergence of a new method of genetic engineering. CRISPR uses the natural ability of bacteria to fight foreign genetic elements. It makes it relatively easy to edit the genome, while all the changes made are then inherited.

This method was first demonstrated in 2012. It is so unique and revolutionary that surely its discoverers will soon be awarded the Nobel Prize. 

At the same time, according to Church, he is more concerned about the issue of healing people from various diseases, to the list of which he counts aging.

Church and his colleagues from the laboratory at Harvard Medical School are confident that in 5-6 years they will be able to reverse the aging process of the body. 

"We expect that everyone will be able to undergo such therapy. And not only for the treatment of some rare genetic and hereditary diseases like cystic fibrosis, but to combat common ailments - for example, aging."

Church believes that the most difficult of mankind's problems at the moment is the aging of the population. People have begun to live longer, but an increase in life expectancy has not yet been equated with an increase in the duration of the period in which a person feels cheerful and able to work. 

"If all these gray-haired people could feel young and healthy again, return to their jobs, then we would have prevented one of the biggest economic disasters."

Several general problems arise with the use of genetic technologies. If, on the one hand, they will help to fight terrible hereditary diseases, on the other hand, they will give rise to the temptation to use them for other purposes, for example, to make cosmetic changes in appearance. And here it is not far to eugenics and attempts to artificially purify the human gene pool – after all, all the changes made to the genes are passed on to the next generations.

Other experts urge to treat such experiments with extreme caution. Klaus Rajewsky, a specialist in molecular medicine, argues that although we have already learned how to manipulate genes, there is still no detailed and accurate description of their functions. 

Eric Lander, head of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, notes that unprecedented opportunities for genome editing require the same precautions. Thousands of genes associated with any diseases are not necessarily the direct cause of their occurrence. They, for example, can affect the severity of the disease, or even have several different tasks.

In addition, Lander wonders why nature has not been able to solve the existing genetic problems over millions of years of evolution. "At the moment we are in a state of limited knowledge. Before making long-term changes to the human gene pool, you need to work with extreme caution."

At the conference, scientists asked questions and exchanged opinions about editing the human genome. Are we trying to play God or are we just driving scientific and technological progress? Do we have enough grounds to try to irreversibly change the gene pool? Is aging a disease that can be cured? What will happen if successful? Will we see George Church's hair color again?

Church himself is confident in the success of the enterprise, and claims that mice are already successfully getting younger in his laboratory. Being an ardent supporter of technological progress, answering the journalist's question "when will people be able to grow wings for themselves?", he said: "We already have a Boeing 747. It's much better than wings."

Recently, scientists are increasingly offering solutions to the problem of aging. Clinical studies of metformin should show whether it reduces the likelihood of age-related diseases. The Japanese have discovered two genes, the functioning of which is associated with the mechanisms of aging, and disabling which theoretically can slow it down. (Recently published an article about 30 "aging genes", while disabling one of them prolongs the life of nematodes by 25% – VM). And a group of American scientists claims that they have discovered a new class of substances that can slow down aging by destroying aging cells.

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09.12.2015