Scientists Sound Alarm as Gates, WEF Promote Gene-Editing Technology for Everything From Fake Meat to Designer Babies
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum are among the biggest promoters of CRISPR, a recently developed gene-editing technology, but scientists interviewed by The Defender warned about the technology’s flaws and risks.
CRISPR, a recently developed gene-editing technology is promoted as a potential solution to numerous diseases, to food security and climate change — even as a way to deliver “designer babies” and bring extinct mammals back to life.
The technology has attracted significant investments and the attention of actors such as Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum (WEF).
But many scientists express concerns about the technology’s potential harmful effects.
In interviews with The Defender, Dr. Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London, and Claire Robinson, managing editor of GMWatch, provided insights into the flaws of this technology, its potential consequences and the risks associated with not regulating it sufficiently.
What is CRISPR?
CRISPR — which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats — acts as a “precise pair of molecular scissors that can cut a target DNA sequence, directed by a customizable guide.”
Put differently, this technology allows scientists to edit sections of DNA by “snipping” specific portions of it and replacing it with new segments. Gene editing is not a new concept, but CRISPR technology is viewed as being cheaper and more accurate.
This stems from the 2012 discovery that RNA can guide a Cas protein nuclease to any targeted DNA sequence, and to (theoretically) target only that one specific sequence. Indeed, CRISPR technology is often referred to as CRISPR-Cas9 for this reason.
The Media and many scientists have expressed optimism about the technology.
Medlineplus.gov, for instance, said CRISPR “has generated a lot of excitement in the scientific community because it is faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient than other genome editing methods.”
Wired, in 2015, described CRISPR as “revolutionary,” writing that it had “already reversed mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS.”
The technology also made wheat “invulnerable to killer fungi,” and altered yeast DNA “so that it consumes plant matter and excretes ethanol,” according to Wired.
In the same article, Wired wrote that “Technical details aside, CRISPR-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around — any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people.”
A scientist quoted in the story added, “These are monumental moments in the history of biomedical research.”
Bloomberg, in 2016, said CRISPR will “change the world,” quoting scientist Andrew May of Caribou Biosciences, who described CRISPR as “potentially, a cheap and quick way to fix anything about a genetic code” and “almost as fundamental as the transistor.”
The discovery of CRISPR’s gene-editing applications was viewed as so significant that two scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, even as a patent dispute between Doudna and another scientist, Feng Zhang — also viewed as instrumental in CRISPR’s development — continues to this day.
Other scientists, though, do not share the same optimism about CRISPR.
A ‘genetic modification procedure’ that is ‘not precise’ and ‘not breeding’
Robinson told The Defender that “in general terms, CRISPR is a gene-editing tool” that “cuts the DNA across the double strand” and can be targeted “to a precise sequence in the genome.”
CRISPR can be used with three potential aims, Robinson said: disrupting the function of a gene, modifying the function of a gene or inserting entirely new genes.
According to Antoniou, “Gene editing has been around … for far longer than the CRISPR-Cas9 system has been. It’s been around for decades.”
Antoniou described gene editing as:
“A DNA manipulation method or methods with which the intended outcome is to make a very targeted change in the genetic material of the organism, which could be anything from a bacterium, a plant, animal or human.
“Gene editing, I guess the operative word here is editing, which implies an alteration in a very precise, targeted way. You’re trying to make a very specific alteration in the genetic material of your target organism.”
Robinson said that while CRISPR is said to be site-specific, it is actually “sequence-specific … it will look for that particular sequence and cut the DNA at that point.” This has led many to tout CRISPR’s “precision breeding” ability.
For Antoniou though, “It is clearly a genetic modification procedure. It is not precise and it’s not breeding.”
Gene editing is often confused with gene therapy, but Antoniou said they are two different things. With gene therapy, a “normal functioning copy” of a gene is added to existing cells, he said.
However, he added, “With gene editing, you’re not adding another gene. You’re trying to alter a gene that’s already there in the DNA, in order to either correct the defective gene directly or alter some other gene function that compensates for the defective gene function in the patients.”
Designer humans ‘no longer science fiction’
Doudna, in a 2015 TED Talk, described genetic engineering as the “future” of human evolution, even touting CRISPR’s potential applications in creating “enhanced” or “designer” human beings and declaring this is no longer science fiction.
She said:
“Many scientists believe that genetic engineering is the future of our evolution. It provides us with a chance to give ourselves any traits we want, such as muscle mass or eye color.
“Imagine that we could try to engineer humans that have enhanced properties such as stronger bones or less susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, or even to have properties that we would consider maybe to be desirable like different eye color or to be taller … Designer humans, if you will. Geo-engineered humans are not with us yet. But this is no longer science fiction.”
Others in the scientific community expressed similar techno-utopianism. For instance, Wired wrote that CRISPR could deliver anything from designer babies to species-specific bioweapons.
In 2018, for instance, a Chinese biophysicist announced that he and his team created the world’s first gene-edited babies.
An article last month in The Intercept noted that the CIA has invested in a biotechnology startup, Colossal Biosciences — along with Peter Thiel, Paris Hilton and Tony Robbins — that aims to use CRISPR technology to “jumpstart nature’s ancestral heartbeat” by resurrecting extinct mammals, even the woolly mammoth.
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[Ed – one of the main objectives of the bioeconomy executive order Biden signed last month is to reduce “regulation” on these technologies, ie allow them to be marketed with minimal human testing for safety and effectiveness. See https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/10/biden-issues-executive-order-promoting-agriculture-and-food-biotechnology/%5D
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