Every year, over 3 million children under the age of five die due to birth defects caused by genetic mutations, and more than 70 million people in the world are affected by genetic abnormalities. Genetic mutations have been a longstanding issue throughout human history, leading to cases of disease, deformities, and other health complications.  

These mutations mostly occur due to an error in DNA coding during replication, resulting in non-functioning proteins. Though in the past there has seemingly been no way to cure these abnormalities, many recent breakthroughs in medical science and advancements in the field of gene editing have led scientists to believe that they may have found a solution.

The development of modern genetic engineering began with the discovery of DNA, by scientists Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953. Following the discovery of the structure and function of DNA, the discovery of restriction enzymes in the 1970s continued the development of gene editing technology. Other discoveries such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and projects such as the Human Genome Project, which was a collaboration between scientists all over the world to sequence the entire human genome, further built upon previous findings. These discoveries all led to one pivotal breakthrough, made by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012 when they were able to unearth a new gene-editing tool known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, or CRISPR.

CRISPR is naturally occurring in most bacterial genomes, where they serve as a defense system against viruses. When a virus injects its DNA into a bacteria, the bacteria collects segments of the viral DNA in the CRISPR region of their DNA. CRISPR essentially acts as a backlog of every viral infection that bacteria have encountered and serves as a “memory” of viruses. Then, if any viral DNA attempted to infect the bacteria in the future, proteins called Cas-9 would be told what line of code was viral and cut it out with the help of a guide RNA. The guide RNA tells the protein what to cut. This way, foreign and potentially harmful strands of DNA could be removed from the bacteria, preventing viral infection. 

Scientists can now use the Cas-9 protein to cut out specific lines of DNA code by replacing the guide RNA with the specific code they want to replace. Using this discovery, specific strands of DNA can now be extrapolated and altered to fix potential issues. 

The sudden boom in bioengineering technology can be a huge positive, and it has already been shown that genetic engineering has the potential to save thousands to millions of lives. So far, CRISPR Cas-9 and other gene therapy tools have been used to find cures for sickle cell anemia, allow blind dogs with inherited genetic degenerative diseases to see again, and treat other hereditary conditions. In the future, CRISPR could play a huge role in treating cancer, HIV, and neurological degenerative diseases that currently have no cures. Furthermore, gene editing helps with the development of genetically modified organisms, or GMOS, specifically for consumption. With the help of genetic engineering, we can create crops that are more resistant to pests and climate change, have a higher production rate, and are more nutritionally viable.

However, despite the many benefits of genetic engineering, there are still some doubts about the safety and ethics of gene editing. Many moral concerns have been raised. One topic skeptics bring up is the subject of “designer babies,” a term used to describe a baby whose genetic makeup has been deliberately altered and influenced to result in the most ideal traits. Questions have been raised about whether or not it is ethical to control the traits of children just for aesthetic purposes. “Part of me thinks it’s sick,” says David Smail–a MLWGS faculty member with a degree in biotechnology–on the topic of designer babies. Furthermore, genetic engineering is still considered a relatively new technology, so some things are unpredictable and the long-term effects are still widely unknown. For example, though CRISPR usually allows doctors to remove specific, faulty genes, they can move in unpredictable ways and unintentionally change the function of crucial code. 

The field of medicine is rapidly changing, and with the rise of genetic engineering and a multitude of revolutionary technologies, we should weigh the pros and cons carefully. Whether good or bad, all these discoveries are still very new, and we haven’t discovered the full capabilities of what this field could offer, nor do we know what long-term effects they might have on us and the environment. Ultimately, the power of recombinant DNA technology is world-changing, and it’s up to the future generation of doctors and scientists to navigate the moral complexities and ambiguity of gene editing.

Information retrieved from the National Human Genome Research Institute, the World Health Organization, and Britannica.