Chinese scientists have taken a leap of faith as they started testing the CRISPR gene technology.
Chinese scientists have taken a leap of faith as they started testing the new, revolutionary CRISPR gene technology in the first ever human trials.
CRISPR-Cas9 is a new gene-splicing technology, a revolutionary technique which could come to mark a new method of fighting disease and improving health.
At the same time, CRISPR has been raising quite a number of controversies as it poses questions in both the medical and the ethical domains.
The technology is based on an actual cutting off of the DNA’s nucleotides. By using it, scientists could alter, modify or even replace genetic defects.
Chinese Sichuan University of Chengdu Scientists may have just initiated another global race as they have declared to have started a human patient study.
They have used and are currently analyzing the results of the CRISPR technology on a patient suffering from an aggressive form of lung cancer.
The gene-splicing method was used as a way of boosting the sufferer’s immune system so that it may better fight the cancer cells.
This would also mark the first ever human patient to have been treated in the CRISPR study.
The United States are expected to begin its own series of human trials sometime next year. They will seek to test and determine the technology’s efficiency and possible pro and counter effects.
One of the scientists that will be involved and help in the United States trials, the University of Pennsylvania scientists, Carl June, went to comment on the matter.
According to June, this first trial may mark the start of a new global race in the biomedical medical.
Furthermore, he considers that such a competition will most likely help move along the studies towards faster and better results and end product.
The recently emerged CRSIPR could come to mean a new chance in our current and future health treatments and measures. But it also comes with quite a number of possible severe countereffects.
Its immense potential is as such countered by its irreparable possible damages. One of these damages could come in the form of an error in the gene pool.
As genes are an extremely exact, although unpredictable factor, a mistake in the usage of the technique could potentially lead to the introduction of an error in the gene pool.
As the error could also lead to a new disease that would be able to transmit throughout generations, its effects are quite unpredictable.
CRISPR has also given rise to another debate, one which seems to stem from the pages of a famous science-fiction novel and is centered on the moral and ethical implications of such a.
The contesters claim that the technique could come to be used so as to influence the human condition before it even appears as parents will modify their babies.
Although CRISPR will most probably continue to make headlines because of this issue, its health benefit could be massive.
As China has taken a first, important step in that direction, it remains to be seen if CRISPR will truly come to improve our chances in the battle against diseases.
Image Source: Wikimedia
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