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cancer, cardiovascular disease, sickle cell anemia,<br />

or even high cholesterol. Crispr-cas9 for humanembryos<br />

can bring about positive changes to the<br />

still-born in the form of 20/20 vision, perfect<br />

pitch, strong durable bony structures, and other<br />

changes such as a specific eye color, height, or<br />

skin complexion.<br />

By Amnh Alasker<br />

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short<br />

Palindromic Repeats, or better known as Crispr is<br />

sure a mouthful, yet it carries implications that<br />

could potentially revolutionize the way we treat<br />

people with genetic diseases such as Huntington’s<br />

disease or cystic fibrosis, and applications that<br />

could never come to fruition due to their hefty<br />

ethical backdrops such as human-embryo<br />

modification and cosmesis. For decades, the<br />

Crispr system for genetic engineering has been at<br />

the for front of medical and biochemical research.<br />

It is only when Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle<br />

Charpentier, two scientists out of the University<br />

of California and Umea University, Sweden<br />

respectively, discovered a new way to use Crispr.<br />

The buzz created around this was because both<br />

scientists were able to construct the simplest,<br />

cheapest, most versatile, and the most accurate<br />

tool for genetic manipulation compared to other<br />

previously described techniques. So how does<br />

Crispr work?<br />

Crispr utilizes two key components to bring about<br />

change or mutation into a person’s DNA. The<br />

first, an enzyme called Cas9. This acts as a pair of<br />

‘molecular scissors’ that can cut the two strands<br />

of DNA at a specific location in the genome so<br />

that bits of DNA can then be added or removed.<br />

The second component, a piece of RNA called<br />

guide RNA (gRNA), an RNA sequence is<br />

essentially DNA’s cousin. The gRNA makes sure<br />

that Cas9 cuts the specific genomic segments in<br />

target. It is for this reason Jennifer Doudna and<br />

Emmanuelle Charpentier rendition of the Crispr<br />

system is the most accurate to date.<br />

The applications and implications of the Crisprcas9<br />

system are extremely promising. Crispr-cas9<br />

has the potential to treat a long range of medical<br />

conditions that have a genetic component such as<br />

Such a massive discovery does not go without its<br />

fair share of critics, especially in the ethical side<br />

of things. Many of the proposed applications<br />

involve editing the genomes of somatic (nonreproductive)<br />

cells but there has been a lot of<br />

interest in and debate about the potential to edit<br />

germline (reproductive) cells. Already in 1997<br />

UNESCO issued the Universal Declaration on the<br />

Human Genome and Human Rights<br />

recommending a global conversation for<br />

modifying human germlines. In December 2015,<br />

the International Summit on Human Gene<br />

Editing, which gather members of national<br />

scientific academies of America, Britain, and<br />

China, discussed the ethics of germline<br />

modification. They agreed to proceed further with<br />

basic and clinical research under appropriate legal<br />

and ethical guidelines, but altering of<br />

gametocytes and embryos to generate inheritable<br />

changes in humans was claimed irresponsible.<br />

What if such technology would be at the hands of<br />

a fascist regime? or a terrorist organization? The<br />

consequences would be dire. They could<br />

potentially breed ‘super humans’ capable of<br />

withstanding the toughest physical injuries. Using<br />

such creations for terror and terror alone. Another<br />

Issue would be the use of Crispr-cas9 for nontherapeutic<br />

interventions solely for personal<br />

enhancement, the cost of such genomic<br />

modification, and the creation of animal chimeras<br />

with human germline cells all have played a role<br />

in delayed world-wide use of the Crispr<br />

technology.<br />

(Rodriguez E. Ethical Issues in Genome Editing<br />

using Crispr/Cas9 System. Journal of Clinical<br />

Research & Bioethics. 2016)<br />

(Jennifer Doudna. How CRISPR lets us edit our<br />

DNA. TED talk.)<br />

(Ellen Jorgensen. What you need to know about<br />

CRISPR. TED talk).<br />

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