We could potentially be entering the age that ends genetic diseases, cures cancer, and eliminates birth defects. Crazy, right?
Maybe, but apparently not impossible. This week, news started to circulate of scientists from China beginning a new and very promising treatment on cancer patients. This is the first time this new treatment has been tested in live human beings and gained a huge amount of attention in the scientific and medical communities.
But what is this new technique? It’s called CRISPR.
Now, the actual science behind CRISPR is enough to fill a textbook, so I will try my best to give you the most important nuggets from the scientific community. CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is essentially a way to specifically target and edit our genes. Individuals' cells can be modified to possess new qualities and then be injected back into the patient’s body. These now modified cells can then get to work fixing bodily concerns. Or at least, that is the current way that this treatment is being used.
At Sichuan University in China, Scientists made a huge medical leap by being the first to inject CRISPR-modified white blood cells into patients suffering from metastic lung cancer. In its simplest explanation, the white blood cells are edited to make them better cancer-fighters and more able to detect hidden cancer cells. These patients will be closely monitored for the next six months to see how the body reacts to such a new treatment, as well as how other cells react to the genetically modified ones. We will soon see how these patients progress and whether these and other CRISPR-related treatments are a viable method for eliminating some of our most threatening diseases.
That being said, there are many other applications to consider in regards to using CRISPR techniques. Being able to select and modify sections of DNA and individual cells to produce new and improved characteristics is a powerful thing. Some of its applications haven’t even been discovered yet. But the ones we know about now sound as if they’re coming straight out of science-fiction.
Imagine a world without Down Syndrome. Without cancer. Without malaria. Maybe even without aging.
Scientists have started to speculate that with more research into CRISPR’s applications, we could see, in our own lifetime, the end of some of our most life-threatening conditions. Human embryos have already been tested on in China. In the near future, we could begin to see human engineering become an actual possibility. Dozens of genetic defects, family medical conditions and more could be eliminated or modified before a child even enters the world.
But with all of those possibilities comes many ethical questions. People have very different opinions on how much we should allow ourselves to change humanity. And this technology would certainly change humanity forever.
For more information, and a more scientific breakdown of the CRISPR technology, check out this quick YouTube clip that details the potential techniques and uses that CRISPR could bring.
