Designer Genes

attended in New York City. It's right Designer Jenes fashioning our Biological Future, which you can check out. Can just you can google w s F or excuse me, the World Science Festival, I should say, and designer jeans and look at a very spirited discussion about the future of reproduction and a couple of really great panelists on there. But we wanted to bring it to you guys as attention because some of the technology that's happening is fascinating and it brings up all sorts of ideas and problems

and solutions. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a lot of controversy in this this general area of scientific investigation and discovery, and there has been for some time because we're you end up diving down into some of the central ideas about what it is to be human and how the how humans work as a species, how we evolve or how we don't evolve and uh, and

people get a bit touchy about that. I mean, and to your point, they get a bit touchy about it in this panel you attended, and certainly that's what makes a great panel discussion. Yeah, in the premise of this panel, or a couple of questions thrown out there, like what if you could prevent disease through genetic engineering even before conception?

All right, would you do it? The Goud answered the yes, right, you'd want to give your child a leg up in the biological world and and um, you know you have that child not have to experience, um, some serious disease. But the other question was what if you could tinker a little bit more with genetics and give that child, say a propensity for uh, you know, more robust intellectual skills or powers or even athletic prowess. You kind of get into this area of of science and genetic science

as they is an honor system candy dish. Do you take the one piece of candy or do you or do you maybe you take out a one for later as well, or maybe you just reach it and get a whole handful. At what point do we self regulate? At which point do we stop? At what point do we need someone else saying don't get five candies, only get one? Yeah, And we do have a basis in reality to start judging these things by. So we're gonna

get in the time machine and go back a little bit. First, we're gonna go back to the nineties seventies in which there was a firestorm in Cambridge because there was this idea of recombinant DNA happening at a very serious level.

You have this moment once scientists in genetic engineering, we're trying to move forward with this, and they were trying to create guidelines with the National Institutes of Health, and we're doing that, and there were a couple of alarmist, couple of scientists who said, wait a second week, should sit back, because this is very important here. If you can take a bacteria and you can tinker with its genes, and you can do it in a way that this

bacteria survives this and thrives. Does this mean that will be unlashing pathogens? Does this mean that this ability also allows us to start to create Frankenstein chang the F word, the scientific f word. Uh, Yeah, and which inevitably comes up. And I don't believe we've podcasted on Frankenstein before, not only as a fictional character, but just as an idea, as a symbol of science gone too far. Science Uh, interfering with with with with the human condition in in

a meaningful way. Yeah, And this, of course is a discussion that has to happen. But out of this discussion comes again these guidelines for genetic engineering, many of which

are still in place today. And if you want to look at why they had a problem with this in the first place, well you have to go even back further in history and look at the American eugenics movement, which happened in the late eighteen hundreds and early neteen hundreds and is fundamentally a misunderstanding of genes and how

they work in our past. Down in people now be're familiar with the term eugenics, it probably carries a certain dark weight for you because it it has become synonymous with with with human breeding programs, essentially with force sterilization, and with the rise of of of the Nazi regime in Germany. Yeah, it's all bungled up in this. So if you look at the American eugenics movement, you see

that there's this oversimplification of how genetics works. So you start to have scientists say, oh, well, we think that these traits are passed down and and here's this imbecile and really this is the this is the jargon that that you used in these papers. Um, here's this imbecile breeding another imbecile, and how could we stop this? Well,

sterilization is one way that we could stop it. And they start to actually put this into practice because at the same time this is happening, there are a lot of people who are being institutionalized when they should not have been. So maybe a person had um a bad case of alcoholism or some other thing that didn't line up to society in the society's best solution at that

moment was, well, just put them in an institution. And then you have this problem with this eugenics coming online actually garnering um some credibility as a way to measure someone's uh not just i Q, but what their general traits were. Yeah, you see this push to to say, oh, well this person is I mean any in a sense, Eugenics at a very basic level has it's not setting out to do evil. A few few human endeavors really say all right, what can we do to just really

make a dark name for ourselves? I mean, the the idea is essentially, can we improve humans? Can we ensure healthy babies? But you quickly get into this area we're saying, well, let's just sterilize the the imbeciles, let's sterilize the criminals, let's sterilize the homosexuals, and uh and and inevitably you get into this very dark in human territory. And if someone is institutionalized in a sense, many of their rights

have been taken away, and there have been. There's actually a very famous case called Buck versus Bell that looks at whether or not someone has rights on this and it's still on the on the books, right, it's a law, and we won't go into it because, um, it's a pretty lengthy case. But basically someone was sterilize because the mom had been in an institution, and the line of reasoning was that she was genetically predis pose to be an imbecile like her mother. Therefore, let's sterilize her. So

this is a problem, right, this this line of logic. Moreover, you've got a bit of xenophobia going on at this time. There's a large immigrant population, So there's this idea again that, um, you know that there's a sort of purretty that's being muddied with their muddy in our waters. What can we do to purify ours? Yeah? And who does this what sort of a line of reasoning does this appeal to? Uh? The old Hitler? Yeah, yeah, the old the old Hitler, as you say, the Nazi Party. And clearly yeah, you

see uh, you look back in time. You see Hitler picking up on ideas of American American eugenics. You see mine comp referencing the language of the American eugenics movement. You see them sort of in a mutual admiration society, where the American eugenics movement individuals and that are saying, oh, look at the great work they're doing in Germany. They're doing there, there's so much more advanced than we are. And then likewise you have people on the German side saying, oh,

the American eugenics movement. They have it figured out. We we should be doing uh more of what they're doing, and both sides are kind of headed for for a very real disaster. Right. In fact, some of the ideas and writings of the American eugenics movement shows up in linkom right like this is to the this is the extent to which they are in bed with each other. However, there's a backing off by the American eugenic society because eventually what we see are these ideas manifesting themselves in

very real ways leading up to World War Two. So thankfully, this movement in America loses a lot of its momentum and people back away from it, and they begin to understand that this is we're going into a territory here that we don't necessarily want to go into. We don't want to sterilize people. At this point, I do want to point out that thirty states had adopted sterilization policies for those institutions or jails, So it really did make somewhat of a mainstream play here. Yeah, and you look

back through it some notable cases. I mean, for instance, you have Alan Turing central figure and computer science and AI prosecuted for homosexuality in nineteen fifty two when such acts were still criminalized in the UK, and he accepted treatment with the estrogen injections also known as chemical castration as an alternative to prison. Um. This little sad, yeah, tragic story. Um. Another interesting case that I ran across,

and this surprised me. Uh Sweden. Sweden has a reputation for being a very friendly to LGBT interest for the most part. Right, but up until two thousand thirteen, if a Swedish transgender person wanted to legally update their gender on official I D BIT I D papers Uh in nineteen seventy two, law required them to both get divorced and sterilized. First. Yeah, that came off the books in two thousand thirteen, so it's no longer reality. But two.

So all of this gives I think everybody a good idea of the basis that scientists are working off in nineteen seventy when all of a sudden, genetic engineering becomes a very real thing, and they look back to the past and how this how technology or science or ideas were used, and they go forward and we're still in the shadow of eugenics. Yeah, it's a very long shadow, and it's casting its shadow over some technologies. Now they're actually very helpful. But again there's a bit of a

firestorm about that. So let's take a quick break and when we get back, we are going to talk about the three person I v at all. Right, we're back, and we're going to talk about a little something called mitochondrial transfer or how might have we have heard of this in the media? Okay, it has been picked up as babies with three parents, also called three person in vitro fertilization and and not used yet. It would be

uh manajatifah, I think we can coin that one. You know, we could probably do that and there would be some there would be one person on the panel that it would be pretty annoyed with that, and for good reason, Yeah, I mean, because it is a this is a situation where if you're talking about this in terms of three person, three parents, babies, etcetera, you are focusing on one little detail of the situation and kind of blowing it out

of proportion. But how can you not when you're talking about a three genetics influencing the birth of a child instead of just two or one in the case of cloning. I just think it's funny that that sort of baggage comes to the table, that this idea that's like managua genetic material coming together, because it's not really that um and yet that's that's probably the sexiest way that the

media or anybody else can kind of describe it. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound as sexy because well, let me just to explain really quickly what mitochondrial transfer is. This is when doctors inject the cytoplasm from another woman's egg into the egg of a patient with mitochondrial disease. And the aim here is to eliminate mitochondrial disease from the resulting offspring. But the offspring in question essentially technically

those three genetic parents. Yeah, we'll get more into that to the actual statistics, but but that yeah, but that's just the the the endpoint of that, I mean, the important part is you're trying to help a woman who severs ther minochondrial disease have healthy offspring that does not suffer from it. That's the aim here. It's not let's get all Frankenstegni and make make three parent genetic families no, no. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA can cause rare but really serious

illnesses and defects, including heart failure, dementia, and blindness. And many of these conditions are fatal and diseases like diabetes, stroke, cardiac deffects, epilepsy, or muscle weak this may originate from mitochondrial defects. Okay, so there's a lot going on here, there's a preventative measure um, and let's just kind of back up a little bit up and go back to mitochondria because I know, I feel like everybody's probably in there, like fifth grade or sixth grade class right now. I'm

talking about the powerhouse of the cell um. But it's more than that. It has its own DNA and it's a separate DNA UH in the nucleus, and mitochondrial DNA is inherited via the maternal line from mother to child. That's why this is a problem, right, It's passed down. So when you do this, when when you make this transfer from a donor egg, the resulting egg, which has the nucleus from the intending mother, has nine nine percent

of its coding DNA from the intended mother. So we're talking about it just an infantesmal amount of genetic material from the donor egg. You cannot say this is like a three person embryo, but technically you can, yeah yeah, um yeah. And so of course people end up focusing on that. I can't I mean, I can fault them, but I can't fault people for for finding that idea kind of exciting because it again, it changes the way you sort of think about what. It changes the way

you think about just two person parentage or one person parentage. Well, I mean, it takes me back to when we talked about chimeras. Right, this is that case in which there was a person who had not absorbed her twin like intentionally, but you know, she survived and she, um, she did absorb her twins, so she had the genetic material from

her twin. But this is a single birth. Right. Later on, she would have children of her own, and she had a very serious illness and so that what it is that touched the children to see if they could, um, I believe give her Maybe it was a kidney or something like this, But they found that the at least two of her three children were not genetic matches. They matched the absorbed twins. So The idea here again is

that this kind of thing happens in nature. Sometimes it's not so crazy, it's not so frank Instinian, but then we end up we end up calling the cameras, which is of course the name of a monster as well. So you kind of can't help but fall into that trap with with language and our understanding of of these

these scientific principles. Well, the problem with minochondrial transfer, at least right now is twofold, and one is that there are objections that the embryo would contain genetic material from three different people, and they don't know how this would work, how this would interplay. In other words, would the embryo maybe reject some of that genetic material, would it cause

problems with that child later on? Um. The other part of this is there's a question about whether or not any of those mitochondrial genes from the mother may still be present. In the words, you can get all of them out, and that remains to be answered whether or not there there'd be a tiny colony um from the mom with the mutations that might eventually take over the

other mitochondrial DNA colony from the donor egg. So it's something we would need to proceed with with small scale scale studies on really but but then it involves embryos, it's a it's a hot button issue. How do you get the go ahead to actually research this even though it can be a tremendous aid to the individual suffering

from these mitochondrial diseases that they want to have children. Yeah, and so that's the problem right here, like how do you start human clinical trials with these concerns and with some scientists still on the fence of, hey, we shouldn't go down this road because it's a slippery slope. You start doing mitochondrial transfers now, and then all of a sudden you'll be creating super babies with all sorts of traits.

And so that's that's part and partial the problem with this right now, the reason why some doctors cannot get into human trials even though they've had successful creation of healthy human's eyegoats in animals. One of the individuals on that panel, uh it was a man by the name of a Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Urban and Environmental policy and Planning at Tufts University, and he he was kind

of the antagonist on the study. But like One of the things he was bringing up is, well, there's this so called m ao a warrior gene and human that is all about human aggression. And so then what parents wouldn't eliminate that to make their child less war Like, I guess if you really want a kid to succeed it at sports, you'd say give them two of those if you can. But um, you know, it's that kind of argument people want up making. You know, if you if you can take one one candy from the jar,

why wouldn't you take to why wouldn't you take three? Well, so what some of the other panelists said is we're not at that point yet anyway, and so it's not as simple as that. You can't really just go in and say, oh, well that's the aggression, Jane, take it

out now, we're good to go. Exactly. So Nita for honey, she's a genome science is in policy, the lawyer, UM, and actually the Obama administration UH was saying that we shouldn't really over worry this at this point because the technology is not a ready for us to select at that level, and be on some level we are already selecting for traits. So if you are a woman who

is looking for a sperm donor. You're going through a book and you might be selecting for blonde hair, you might be selecting for brown eyes, you might be selecting for their athletic prowess or intellectual abilities. This is kind of already being done at a very basic level. So what she's saying is this, it's time now to look

at the past, look at eugenics. You look at the nineteen seventies and some of the guidelines that were created then, and move the goal post a little bit and then reassess later, and just so that something like monochondrial transfer can be a reality for parents who are trying to have children who are free of these This is at lease diseases. Yeah, I mean you could. I mean, you could certainly argue that looking through a portfolio of ptital

sperm donors. So that's more like, I mean, there's a difference between um choosing something off a menu and going back into the kitchen and telling them what to put in the soup. Right, But on the other hand, it's it's it's very limiting to sort of shackle yourself to this idea that we cannot proceed because we will mess things up too much. I mean, we would we ever

get anything done scientifically if we went forward with that idea. Though, interestingly enough, it seems like we're really great at advancing science if we say we're doing this so we can kill people better and then in which case all the funding you need. Well exactly, but no, it might harm somebody even though we're trying to help people. We might use it to there might be some sort of moral

concern with it. Therefore, no no procession at all. So what's interesting about this is that some of the same arguments were presented when IVF first came um into public awareness. So in mutual fertilization, and obviously IVF could not have moved forward unless they did it in human trials and found it to be safe for both the mother and the baby, and lo and behold, they found out that that is the case, and that is actually a path for a lot of parents these days that they go

down IVF. And it's so it's so sort of wrote now that it's hard to believe that this was in that same category as minochondrial transfer twenty years ago. Yeah, I mean it was mentioned in Future Shock, and we we've talked about in our future shock episode and if you go back, I mean I certainly remember those uh editions of like Time magazine or Newsweek and the sort of the scary idea of the test two baby. Yeah, which today I mean nobody, nobody cares. We're past that

that that fear. Yeah. So in the same way, minochondrial transfer really needs to have those human trials in order to find out yes, this is safe for the child, is this say for the mother and um and to see what if any risks are associated with it. It's just interesting because again it brings up that can of worms of well, okay, we do this, and as uh Sheldon Crunsky on the the panel said, you do that, and there's this concern that we once we start, we

won't be able to stop. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess I kind of to a limited extent. Think of it in terms of taking the tyler to the playground. Yes, the toddler is going to injure himself, he's gonna fall off of something, he's gonna get in a tussle with another tydler. But what do you do. Do you not go to the playground at all? Do you just stay in the house on a beautiful day. No, you gotta get out there, right out there. I mean, we're humans.

We're going to mess things up. We're going to create all sorts of problems for ourselves. But science has been a tool that has allowed us, yes to to cause great harm in the world, but also do great good. I mean, science is really the thing that we do the best. I mean, that is the discipline that we've created that is greater than ourselves. Yeah, and there may be some other technologies coming online that actually know all

these arguments. And so I'm thinking about George Church. He is a geneticist and involved in in the Human Genome Mapping project, and he says that genetic diseases can be traced simply by examining sperm and then seeing if it maps against genetic diseases that a female may possess. So he has this whole system where they're like five hundred different genetic diseases that they can test for in sperm before it is actually um transferred into fertilize an egg.

The problem with this, of course, is that you know, if you have a couple who they're trying to do this, and they know that the mom has some mitochondrial DNA diseases that she carries, and they find out that the dad does too, well, then that kind of it doesn't really help them. But if you have a female who

is seeking u orm donor, that certainly helps. And then then other technology that maybe around the corner is embryonic genome mapping, and that is taking the embryo itself and testing it for possible genetic diseases before it's even transferred back into the mother. Interesting. Yeah, so there are these things that are happening, um that, yes, they're getting us closer to this idea of these designer babies, and yet at the same time you're so very far away from

that idea from from that actually happening. I ran across an interesting quote on this, uh this topic. This is from Ross Douthitt uh two thousand twelve opinion piece in New York Times entitled Eugenics Past and Future. He asked, is this sort of liberal eugenics in which the agents of reproductive selection are parents rather than the state entirely different from the eugenics of Fisher's area, which forced sterilization

on unwilling women and men. Alright, So it's an interesting question, and I feel like Nina Harani, who is on the panel, would say, this is not at all the same thing. These are parents who want to make sure that their child is as disease free and illness free as he or she could be in their lifetime and are trying to you know, sort a family This. This is not some sort of um like government industrial complex on trying

to create these designer babies. This is these are very individual personal choices versus sort of the state mandate of of how we're going to go forward with genetics. Yeah. I mean it's easy I find with myself when I when I think about this, it's easy to sort of think of it in terms of, all, right, well, they are going to be the people that are going to be conceivably making a designer baby. I tend to think, well, this is going to be sort of a an upper

crust sort of thing. So there's almost kind of a like a class envy there, you know, where you think, well, this would be technology that's only going to be available for a certain segment of the population. Yes, but then for far A. Honey points out that overwhelmingly when parents are trying to create biological children, they want them to look like themselves. It's sort of an ego thing. So most likely parents are going to go way outside of of even how they want their child to be as

a human being. And I mean traits like openness or uh, introverted or extroverted or you know, all these sort of certain things that determine our personalities, let alone their hair color or their eye color. So I think what Farah Honey is saying there is that, um, you know, just that we may just be over extrapolating this idea that we're going to create these children that are vastly different from ourselves. Yeah, yeah, I think so. All right, So

there you have it, designer children. Some of the uh, some of the current sciences out there. There's some of the near future science that's there as well, uh and a lot of just concerns over the ethics the morality of this whole topic. And so I'm sure a lot of you have some informed opinions on all of this. What do you what do you think about the idea of designer children? What would what would you do? What wouldn't you do? Uh to have healthy offspring? Yeah? Where

do you think the goal post would be set? Way too far down the field. I'm very interested in knowing that from you guys out there, Like, what do you think is okay in terms of genetic conkering and what is like No, forget it. I say no more than six arms and no metal skin, because it's just it's just gonna be difficult to handle the playground, Like I was just thinking, the playground, that's just such an advantage

for some children. Yeah, but then how are you gonna get them off the playground equipment you're trying to Let have you ever tried to pull your child off of like a ladder or something. It's like they have amazing grip. Imagine if they had six arms, it would be almost impossible. Yeah, you would need a special instrument for that. And you have to wipe all those hands after they're through, you know, decimating a bowl of apple sauce. It's just it's just

too much. Keeps limited to really two hands for Max. Al Right, guys, you knew where you can find us stuff that blow your mind? Dot Com, as Robert says, the mothership of everything that is s t B. I am, that's right. You can also find us on Tumbler, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus. Hey there's also mind Stuff Show on YouTube. That's where you will find all of our cool little

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