Future of childhood on the line with genetic edits? Picture: Kylie Kaiser Most malls have a build-a-plushie toy station where everything about the plaything’s look, feel, and stuffing is predetermined. Soon, all of humanity will be customised in the same way to design the next generation.
Gene editing may be in the very near future, and the science already exists. Genetic editing is no longer science fiction. It’s called CRISPR-Cas9, a standard tool in many research laboratories, and it works much like a pair of molecular scissors that head to a specific spot in a person’s DNA, cut it, and either remove a faulty section or insert a corrected one.
It reprogrammes the body, on demand. When it is used on embryos or reproductive cells, the changes are carried into every cell of the developing child and passed on to future generations. Genetic interference is not new, though.
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Global food security was given a massive boost in the 1990s when genetically modified crops were first approved for human consumption. Somatic cells were reprogrammed in 1996 to clone Dolly the Sheep. In 2018, a Chinese researcher claimed he had altered a gene in embryos to reduce the risk of HIV.
Editing genetics could mean the beginning of personalised medicine, eventual eradication of hereditary disease or susceptibility to it, and it could also mean customised children. It’s a potential moral minefield, and psychologist and medical doctor Dr Jonathan Redelinghuys said the South Africans, and the world, may not be remotely prepared to contemplate such interventions. “The ethics and morality surrounding fetal gene editing remain widely debated, and current legislation does not allow such intervention.
Even pre-implantation sex selection is illegal in South Africa,” he said. “When we talk about editing genes to eliminate diseases like Huntington’s or Cystic Fibrosis, or repeat the case in China, we open a Pandora’s box of consequences.”
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