Modification of human genes is almost a reality.

Antonio Regalado, editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review, talked with staff at Harvard Medical School who specialize in developing methods for gene modification. The main conclusion to which he arrived is the following: interference with human DNA is already a matter of ethics rather than a scientific problem. What interventions are permissible and what can they cause? Is society ready for the fact that a person can be constructed before his birth? And how soon the plot of the film “Gattaka” will become an everyday reality?

A young Harvard employee, Dr. Luhan Yang, one of the key figures in the development of the genetic manipulation method CRISPR-Cas9 , recently founded a biotechnology company that is engaged in altering cattle genomes. He says that the same method can be used to modify human genes. For example, now nothing prevents scientists from replacing the defective gene responsible for the appearance of sickle cell anemia or Alzheimer's disease in humans.

Despite the shortcomings, CRISPR has already been successfully applied not only to domestic animals, but also to primates. For example, the genes of a pair of macaques were modified last year in order to regulate their metabolism and the production of stem cells. Monkeys were born healthy, but it would take three years to test the success of a gene modification before they reach puberty. Now, as the genetics of Harvard say, there are about 20 monkey embryos at their disposal, so they estimate the expected time for the same manipulations with human DNA to be 10-20 years.


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With the help of CRISPR-Cas9, quite recently a group of scientists led by Professor Salk Institute (USA) Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte conducted a successful experiment to remove fragments of immunodeficiency virus from human DNA. Special markers in the form of RNA molecules were identified in the viral DNA, marking the fragments to be deleted. This method was tested on lymphocytes and other cells of the immune system infected with HIV. The first version of RNA markers was able to remove the virus and its traces in 72% of the cells. Both the "fresh" DNA of the virus and its "sleeping" copies were destroyed.

A recent case study in the United States has shown that modern society as a whole is ready for such manipulations. Adults were asked if they agreed that a genetic modification would be performed with the genes of their child so that it would become “smarter” and less susceptible to serious diseases. A significant number of respondents expressed positively: