Four cells with infinite ethical and moral charge. A human embryo of a few days.
On June 1, Dieter Egli's team (Columbia University, New York) published on a preprint server (news, no less, in the New York Times) the editing of three genes in human embryos using a technique called base editing. Let's remember: preprints are scientific articles open to the public that have not yet been reviewed by other scientists in the community.
Base editing is a second-generation tool: instead of cutting both DNA strands, as CRISPR-Cas9 does, it changes a single letter of the genetic code. The team modified the 'PCSK9’
gene, related to cholesterol, and the HBG1 and HBG2 genes, involved in hemoglobin production. The same work, however, limits its scope: the editing is not capable of reaching all cells and – importantly – the molecular editor caused cell division to stop. The authors are explicit: in its current state, the technique is not applicable to the clinic.
The case reopens a fundamental debate. In 2018, He Jiankui edited embryos with CRISPR and implanted them; babies were born, and he was sentenced to prison. Now, several researchers warn that these advances may push towards the genetic 'enhancement' of babies. There is also commercial interest: one of the co-authors of the present study is the clinical director of Nucleus Genomics, the embryonic screening company that will finance the next phase (research with human embryos does not receive public funds), controversial for its advertisements on the New York subway with the phrase "have the best baby." Editing embryos to cure, recalls another researcher, is "a solution that pushes us towards a bigger problem," since the genetic screening practiced today already allows us to select embryos to avoid certain genetic diseases.
A recent case in Spain shows another loophole around science and communication. The journal
PNAS retracted a study by Mariano Barbacid
that had eliminated pancreatic tumors in mice with a triple therapy. The retraction does not question the data, but rather responds to an undeclared conflict of interest: some authors had shares in the drug company. Months earlier, however, the announcement had been widely disseminated in the media, and the CNIO received an avalanche of inquiries from patients interested in a clinical trial that does not yet exist. Barbacid himself had warned that it would take years to get there.
Both cases are opposite: in one, a preliminary result bypasses filters; in the other, a reviewed work is disseminated beyond what the data support. Both with suspicious commercial conflicts of interest. In the case of genetic editing of embryos, the company involved benefits from a “social normalization” of these types of scientific applications.
We have already commented on other occasions: the line between promise and hyperbole is thin. Communicating science well means positioning each advance with precision: stating what has been proven, in which model, and how far it can currently go. The distance between a result and a cure is not a flaw to be corrected; it is the very space where research advances. Keeping it in sight, from the laboratory to the general public, is also doing science.
