5 ms·

Few slightly technical things not addressed in the linked article but worth pointing out: - The most prevalent types of HIV prevalent in Asia are the T-tropic

Few slightly technical things not addressed in the linked article but worth pointing out: - The most prevalent types of HIV prevalent in Asia are the T-tropic X4 strain which does not depend on CCR5 for infection. The proper genetic target CXCR4 is not a viable target for germline gene editing because it's essential for embryo development[0]. In other words, the children would not be immune to HIV in any case. - The editing was done using a single sgRNA template and a 20bp+ deletion cannot be produced with this setup. Therefore it's likely that the experimenters never attempted to replicate the naturally occurring Δ32 variant in the first place. - Δ32 is well studied and known to abolish CCR5 function at both RNA and protein levels. However, both of Nana's CCR5 alleles are novel and it's possible that some function may still be retained because the DNA changes are not extensive enough[1]. These edits really serve no purpose and should never have been implanted. [0]:https://www.nature.com/articles/31261 https://www.nature.com/articles/31261 [1]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25043019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25043019

vibrio 8y ago
"The most prevalent types of HIV prevalent in Asia are the T-tropic X4 strain " Great comments. There is (at least there was when I followed this more than a decade ago) some data to support that x4 tropic HIV is more aggressive/pathogenic, so forcing the infection towards x4 tropism by removing CCR5 may increase the virulence of the infection.(with some caveats on this). Independent of that. This is mind-blowingly unethical. At very least, He should be ostracized and provided no opportunity to do science, let alone medicine.
- mmirate 8y ago
  (Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the details of HIV in particular.) Given that a particular person shall catch a terminal contagion of some sort, is it not preferable that he die to it sooner than later, so as to reduce the number of other people to whom he spreads his infection?
dhimes 8y ago
I thought that this was to be immune from one of the parent's infection. (I haven't read this article though so maybe my info is outdated).
- vibrio 8y ago
  Even if true that the mother was HIV positive, this situation wouldn't justify He's actions for a few reasons. i)They are implanting an embryo in an HIV+ mother, there are other alternatives; ii) For 20 or so years AZT has been used effectively to prevent material transmission of HIV at birth
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    According to #1 in the article it was the father who was HIV+ anyway: "Although Nana and Lulu’s father is HIV-positive, neither of the infants actually had HIV."
- jcranmer 8y ago
  That was He's justification for the editing. The general consensus from the rest of the community is a) AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence, and b) there is already effective protocols in place to guard against HIV transmission in this scenario. Well, on top of that, there's c) he appears to have gone around telling people that he was working on an HIV vaccine instead of admitting that he's attempting to CRISPR humans, and d) he seems to have done a pretty bad job of the CRISPR edits themselves. (How bad? We can't even be sure that his CRISPR edit didn't do something like accidentally delete an entire chromosome)
  - dhimes 8y ago
    Yikes!
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I thought that this was to be immune from one of the parent's infection. Why would a child need immunity from the father's HIV infection that hadn't infected the mother?

vibrio 8y ago

"The most prevalent types of HIV prevalent in Asia are the T-tropic X4 strain " Great comments. There is (at least there was when I followed this more than a decade ago) some data to support that x4 tropic HIV is more aggressive/pathogenic, so forcing the infection towards x4 tropism by removing CCR5 may increase the virulence of the infection.(with some caveats on this). Independent of that. This is mind-blowingly unethical. At very least, He should be ostracized and provided no opportunity to do science, let alone medicine.

mmirate 8y ago
(Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the details of HIV in particular.) Given that a particular person shall catch a terminal contagion of some sort, is it not preferable that he die to it sooner than later, so as to reduce the number of other people to whom he spreads his infection?

dhimes 8y ago

I thought that this was to be immune from one of the parent's infection. (I haven't read this article though so maybe my info is outdated).

vibrio 8y ago
Even if true that the mother was HIV positive, this situation wouldn't justify He's actions for a few reasons. i)They are implanting an embryo in an HIV+ mother, there are other alternatives; ii) For 20 or so years AZT has been used effectively to prevent material transmission of HIV at birth
- dwighttk 8y ago
  According to #1 in the article it was the father who was HIV+ anyway: "Although Nana and Lulu’s father is HIV-positive, neither of the infants actually had HIV."
jcranmer 8y ago
That was He's justification for the editing. The general consensus from the rest of the community is a) AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence, and b) there is already effective protocols in place to guard against HIV transmission in this scenario. Well, on top of that, there's c) he appears to have gone around telling people that he was working on an HIV vaccine instead of admitting that he's attempting to CRISPR humans, and d) he seems to have done a pretty bad job of the CRISPR edits themselves. (How bad? We can't even be sure that his CRISPR edit didn't do something like accidentally delete an entire chromosome)
- dhimes 8y ago
  Yikes!
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I thought that this was to be immune from one of the parent's infection. Why would a child need immunity from the father's HIV infection that hadn't infected the mother?