Pig avatars rush to the rescue
10 facts from the book "Unnatural selection: Genetic engineering and the Man of the Future"
Eduard Lukoyanov, Gorky Media
"The design of children" until recently seemed to be just a plot for not the highest quality science fiction, but now it is one of the most pressing puzzles facing genetic engineers and specialists in the field of applied ethics. Where is the acceptable boundary between correcting the mistakes of nature and a dangerous game of God? The book of the scientific journalist Torill Kornfelt is devoted to this problem, which we have carefully read in order to retell the main facts set out in it.
1. Recognized as a blatant violation of scientific ethics, He Jiankui's experiment had an ethical justification
(This story is described in much more detail in the article "Modern Prometheus" –VM.)
2. "Planet of the Apes" is closer than it seems
At least such suspicions involuntarily arise after reading the chapter in which Torill Kornfelt talks about visiting the Yunnan Center for Biomedical Research of Primates. The institution was founded by academician Ji Weizhi, who initially dealt with the conservation of rare species of monkeys.
Now, the main task of Ji and his subordinates is to study genetically modified primates. They claim that their activities are aimed at finding remedies for Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other genetic diseases. This is at least the official version.
The Swedish journalist, however, had doubts about the sincerity of the center's leadership. She discovered that in one of the interviews, an employee of the institution Su Bin mentioned conducting experiments on genetic modification of the monkey's brain not only in order to bring its physiology closer to human, but also, possibly, to improve the intelligence of the primate. The suspicions were not unfounded.
"No, no, we don't do that. There is nothing like this in our center,“ he [director Ji Weizhi] replied, adding that Su Bing no longer works here and they are no longer colleagues.
However, six months later, a scientific article by Su Bin was published in a Chinese scientific journal. The experiments mentioned in it were conducted in a center known to us, and Ji Weizhi's name was mentioned in the list of authors. The researchers took a gene that apparently affects the size of the human brain and injected it into several monkeys. Then they carried out brain measurements and various cognitive tests. <...> Apparently, the specialists of the center were doing this during my visit."
3. Pigs-avatars will help you find a cure for many diseases
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has proposed a curious way to find treatments for various diseases. Specialists are engaged in breeding sick pigs, "embedding" in their genome, for example, neurofibromatosis. A child with a corresponding disease is attached to a group of animals. Pigs become avatars of the patient. As they mature rapidly, scientists can make relatively accurate predictions about how the treatment methods applied to them will affect the human patient as well.
Currently, the Avatar project is only a kind of scientific startup, which has yet to confirm or deny the possibility of application in mass medicine. However, Kornfelt already points out its ambiguity.
"We want to prevent situations when events develop faster than we have time to think about their ethical consequences," admits [scientist] Dhanu Shanmuganayagam. — One of the central issues is to determine the degree of permissible "blindness". Who will decide which of the pigs corresponds to which child? What should I do if something happens that the patient needs to know about? We have been thinking about all this for quite a long time, but we have not yet come to definite answers."
4. All people can be made vegetarians
Theoretically, it is enough to remove the genes that allow a person to digest animal products. Because of this, meat would turn into a deadly poison for us, which would certainly have a positive impact on the environment. (Kornfelt, however, considers this hypothetical method "clumsy and dictatorial").
Actually, we owe the fact that millions of adults today can drink milk without harm to their health to mutation. It has been established that its first carrier was an unknown man who lived ten thousand years ago on the territory of modern Turkey and transmitted a distorted gene to offspring. So don't forget: "Gene technologies give us hope both for correcting mutations that cause problems and for creating new mutations with positive properties."
5. "Pedigree tests" have an applied meaning
(On DNA databases and criminology, we recommend a more complete excerpt from the book by T. Kornfeld – VM.)
6. However, you should trust them with caution
This is especially true for ethnicity tests. The fact is that there is still no "separate genetic mapping of populations of different countries." Simply put, if your most distant ancestors were born, say, on the territory of modern Syria, and then moved to the territory of modern Italy, then most likely the people who took money from you for the analysis of the test will report that you have Italian roots.
"But there are also inspiring stories about adopted children who have found distant biological relatives, and about friendly, warm contacts between people who did not know each other before. Similar tests are also used to prove to right-wing extremists that they, too, are genetically descended from other parts of the world."
7. You are unlikely to be happy to find out why home genetic tests are relatively affordable
"You don't pay money for using Google because it sells information about you, and it's no coincidence that Google is one of the main investors of the largest genetic company 23andMe. For the same reason, the cost of genetic tests is low: information about your genome is preserved."
As a rule, Kornfelt notes, these data are resold to pharmaceutical companies. But, in general, those who fear that the collection of genetic information can cause harm are right. Thus, sports functionaries are already seriously discussing "genetic doping": in a number of countries, governments are using relevant research to find children who potentially have outstanding athletic abilities. However, this is just a rather harmless ghost of the not-so-distant future. Much more worrying is the fact that huge amounts of genetic data can be used to catch those who are considered criminals. It seems like — what's wrong with that? In America, after all, thanks to geneticists, it was possible to punish a serial killer, otherwise he would have remained unpunished!
The fact is that the word "crime" has a lot of interpretations. In the same China (and not only), genetic data can be used against dissidents participating in civil protest actions.
8. "Genetic scissors" are already defeating diseases that seemed like a verdict yesterday
A striking example of this is the success of the staff of the Memphis Children's Hospital, who managed to cure a group of patients with severe combined immunodeficiency (colloquially known as the "bubble boy syndrome"):
"The bone marrow of eight children was modified using a combination of CRISPR and another innovative technology to make sure that the genetic scissors really worked inside the cells. Less than a year after therapy, all eight children were able to go home from the hospital, and everyone's immune system, apparently, worked as it should and without serious side effects.
"Now they are ordinary children, they are learning about life and can go to kindergarten," says Dr. Evelina Mamkarts, the program manager."
9. The future belongs to genetically modified bacteria
For example, people living with diabetes are well aware of this: in developed countries, insulin has been obtained for a long time thanks to GMO bacteria, and it is not isolated from the pancreas of a pig. Scientists promise that soon "most of the complex molecules used in perfumes, vitamins, medicines and cosmetics will be produced mainly with the help of genetically modified bacteria or yeast cells."
Great hopes are pinned on the fact that genetically modified bacteria will revolutionize the energy sector, and can also be useful in the fight against environmental pollution. However, the creators of new technologies will have to solve one rather funny paradox:
"Genetically modified bacteria that can feed on plastic will help us rid the ocean of floating islands of garbage. However, first you need to think about how to protect food containers and electrical wiring from these bacteria before they get to the landfill."
10. Yuval Noah Harari — intellectual
And this is probably the most amazing fact in the whole book by Torill Kornfelt. Quote: "There are many intellectuals all over the world, including <...> Yuval Noah Harari, they say that we live in the age of biology."
(Click on this link – you won't regret it. There would be less of such self-taught intellectuals and futurologists-science fiction writers, who are popularized in the Mass Media of Idiocy.)
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