We don’t actually know that JK He accomplished what he said he did. He may have tried. But the results have not been independently verified. That would require genotyping the parents and children. So, premature to say that germline editing appears safe in humans.
I’m not saying his experiments show germline editing is safe in humans. In fact He Jiankui’s technique likely WASN’T safe. Based on some talks I heard from Dieter Egli at Colombia, He was likely deleting chromosomes in a lot of embryos, which is why (if I recall correctly) only 3 out of about ~30 embryos that were transferred resulted in live birth. Normally the live birth rate per transfer rate would be between 30 and 70%.
It’s also not entirely clear how effective the editing was because the technique He used likely created a fair degree of mosaicism since the editing continued after the first cell division. If the cells that ended up forming hematopoietic stem cells DIDN’T receive the edits then there would have been basically no benefit to the editing.
Anyways, I’m not really trying to defend He Jiankui. I don’t think his technique was very good nor do I think he chose a particularly compelling reason to edit (HIV transmission can be avoided with sperm washing or anti-retroviral drugs to about the same degree of efficacy as CCR5 knockout). I just think the reaction was even more insane.
It doesn’t make sense to ban germline editing just because one guy did it in a careless way. Yet in many places that’s exactly what happened.
You might not be tracking that there’s a “unilateralist cloud” of behaviors. There’s the norm of behavior, and then around that norm, there’s a cloud of variation. The most extreme people (the unilateralist frontier) will do riskier things than the norm, and bad stuff will result. If a unilateralist doing unilateral stuff results in a deformed baby, or even of a legit prospective risk of a deformed baby (as you acknowledge existed in He Jiankui’s experiments), that’s bad. If society sees this happen, it means that their current norm is not conservative enough to keep the unilateralist frontier in the safe zone. So they adjust the norm to be more conservative.
When you write
This method has actually been used in human embryos before! In 2018 Chinese scientist He Jiankui created the first ever gene edited embryos by using this technique. All three of the children born from these embryos are healthy 6 years later (despite widespread outrage and condemnation at the time).
it sounds like you’re implying that the outrage and condemnation were a claim that the experiment would actually have bad results. Which, surely to some extent they were. But also they were (legit, as you agree!) a claim that prospectively the experiment was bad to do, and therefore that the norm of the unilateralist cloud is in the wrong place.
You might respond: “The response shouldn’t be to just ban everything. That’s a super blunt force result.” To which I will give a reply so succint and forceful that you will not be able to argue further: “I agree.”
But arguing with the unilateralist-cloud-norm-movers by saying “but the experiment turned out fine” is missing their point. They are correct that IF the only lever available is to move the cloud-norm, THEN the only way to avoid the legit risk of HJK-like experiments is to move the cloud-norm. The solution, I’m sure you’ll agree, is to make there be more precise levers for them. If their need for levers is driven by a need to control the unilateralist-cloud, then one key thing to do is make the unilateralist cloud less stupid.
We don’t actually know that JK He accomplished what he said he did. He may have tried. But the results have not been independently verified. That would require genotyping the parents and children. So, premature to say that germline editing appears safe in humans.
I’m not saying his experiments show germline editing is safe in humans. In fact He Jiankui’s technique likely WASN’T safe. Based on some talks I heard from Dieter Egli at Colombia, He was likely deleting chromosomes in a lot of embryos, which is why (if I recall correctly) only 3 out of about ~30 embryos that were transferred resulted in live birth. Normally the live birth rate per transfer rate would be between 30 and 70%.
It’s also not entirely clear how effective the editing was because the technique He used likely created a fair degree of mosaicism since the editing continued after the first cell division. If the cells that ended up forming hematopoietic stem cells DIDN’T receive the edits then there would have been basically no benefit to the editing.
Anyways, I’m not really trying to defend He Jiankui. I don’t think his technique was very good nor do I think he chose a particularly compelling reason to edit (HIV transmission can be avoided with sperm washing or anti-retroviral drugs to about the same degree of efficacy as CCR5 knockout). I just think the reaction was even more insane.
It doesn’t make sense to ban germline editing just because one guy did it in a careless way. Yet in many places that’s exactly what happened.
You might not be tracking that there’s a “unilateralist cloud” of behaviors. There’s the norm of behavior, and then around that norm, there’s a cloud of variation. The most extreme people (the unilateralist frontier) will do riskier things than the norm, and bad stuff will result. If a unilateralist doing unilateral stuff results in a deformed baby, or even of a legit prospective risk of a deformed baby (as you acknowledge existed in He Jiankui’s experiments), that’s bad. If society sees this happen, it means that their current norm is not conservative enough to keep the unilateralist frontier in the safe zone. So they adjust the norm to be more conservative.
When you write
it sounds like you’re implying that the outrage and condemnation were a claim that the experiment would actually have bad results. Which, surely to some extent they were. But also they were (legit, as you agree!) a claim that prospectively the experiment was bad to do, and therefore that the norm of the unilateralist cloud is in the wrong place.
You might respond: “The response shouldn’t be to just ban everything. That’s a super blunt force result.” To which I will give a reply so succint and forceful that you will not be able to argue further: “I agree.”
But arguing with the unilateralist-cloud-norm-movers by saying “but the experiment turned out fine” is missing their point. They are correct that IF the only lever available is to move the cloud-norm, THEN the only way to avoid the legit risk of HJK-like experiments is to move the cloud-norm. The solution, I’m sure you’ll agree, is to make there be more precise levers for them. If their need for levers is driven by a need to control the unilateralist-cloud, then one key thing to do is make the unilateralist cloud less stupid.
Yes, I pretty much agree with this