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| Photo credit: Mario Tama. Getty images. |
According to
an article published in NY times, Scientists at Harvard Medical School
discussed the prospect of using chemicals to synthesis DNA contained in human
chromosomes.
Scientists
are contemplating this feat in the next 10 years.
This concept
is very enthralling as it paves the way to create human beings without biological
parents. The project is still in its infancy but it has already started
sounding like the Sci-Fi movie plot becoming a reality. It was discussed as a closed
door meeting at the Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Organizers
call it as a follow up on ‘Human Genome project’, which aimed at determining
the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up human DNA,
and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from
both a physical and functional standpoint.
But, critics
call it otherwise as this consists of writing the whole sequence and not just
knowing it. In Fact, it implies at designing ‘custom built’ individual in
future, raising several ethical issues because it will make it possible to
breed human with certain kinds of traits, or it will make possible to make copies
of specific person like Einstein. The topic needs serious rumination and discussion.
According to
George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard medical school and a key
organizer of the proposed project, currently synthetic genomics is restricted to
creating novel microbes and animals and the whole meeting was about creating
long strands of DNA. Church told NYT “They’re painting a picture which I don’t
think represents the project. If that were the project, I’d be running away
from it.”
The last
known effort in synthetic genomics was by Craig Venter’s group, who was able to
create a simple bacterial cell, which is far simpler than building a human
cell.
A very good
article about the ethics of synthesizing human genome is published in the COSMOS.
It is a very interesting and ruminating read. Drew Endy and Laurie Zoloth stress that such important moral gesture should not be discussed behind the
closed door. Few excerpts from the article are quoted here:
In a
world where human reproduction has already become a competitive marketplace,
with eggs, sperm and embryos carrying a price, it is easy to make up far
stranger uses of human genome synthesis capacities.
Would it
be OK, for example, to sequence and then synthesise Einstein’s genome? If so
how many Einstein genomes should be made and installed in cells, and who would
get to make them?
Taking a
step back, just because something becomes possible, how should we approach
determining if it is ethical to pursue?
Given
that human genome synthesis is a technology that can completely redefine the
core of what now joins all of humanity together as a species, we argue that
discussions of making such capacities real, like today’s Harvard conference,
should not take place without open and advance consideration of whether it is
morally right to proceed.
References:
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