Gene editing and CRISPR-cas9 – suspended public animation?

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CRISPR-cas9 gene editing allows for ‘cut-and-paste’ genetic engineering, targeting ‘faulty’ traits with ‘unprecedented’ accuracy for removal and/or replacement. Development has been fast.  It is considered easy and cheap, and has been demonstrated as highly effective, with ‘limited’ off target impact.  The discovery was first announced in 2012, and since then CRISPR research across human, animal, bacteria and plants has ballooned.  Potential applications are considered vast, so too potential unintended and unpredictable consequences.  

Governments, research bodies and companies have welcomed and endorsed the technology. See the UK Government’s ‘GM and gene editing evidence check’, or the Medical Research Council’s ‘We must keep using CRISPR-Cas9’.  NGOs highlight concerns and dangers, particularly with regard to agricultural applications – ‘Gene Editing in Agriculture poses New Risks to Health, Environment’. Research is emerging that reveals potentially pathogenic risks, slightly dampening the inevitable early hubris.  A familiar pattern is emerging.  Calls have been made for public engagement for several years, yet relatively little has occurred.

Science and society have co-evolved over recent decades.  Politicians, social and natural scientists, and publics have participated in effective interactions.  The 2003/3 ‘GM Nation?’ project marked a watershed in the UK, with public opinion gathering resulting in the suspension of commercial GM crops.  Publics have effected regulatory and market pressures – limiting GM foodstuffs across Europe.  Seen as a disastrous by the European agricultural biotech industry, and dismissed as retrograde and unscientific.  Wise words emanating from interactive and co-productionist theorists respond with the lesson that early integration of wide and varied publics could have revealed such market and regulatory risks before investments were made, thus enabling more appropriate research and development in line with society’s goals and concerns. Potentially creating greater technological acceptance, and more ethical and equitable output.  

One might hope that the timing of revolutionary gene editing technology generated immediate scientific engagement with publics to shape and establish firmer ground for future endeavours.  Expert review panels have been convened post-hoc, reporting of the far-reaching issues in relation to ethics, society, regulation and politics –a ‘global’ summit (US, UK & China) on the human genome in the US in 2015, extended to plants, animals and the environment in 2016 in the UK.  The WHO convenes an expert panel next month on the legal challenges of human gene editing.  Science is ruffling its concerned ethical, moral, and political feathers; initiating self-regulation, such as the self-imposed moratorium on editing human germlines (ie. embryonic stage, thus altering the resultant person’s entire DNA).  An ‘easy win’ some might decry.  No discernible public participation here, none earlier.

CRISPR-cas9 has quickly revealed some interesting fault lines with the traditional linear pattern of science management.  The technology is fast, cheap and accessible.  Harvard University offers an 8-week course, and CRISPR kits are available online,.  The ‘biohacker’ movement spawned DIY gene editing (‘I want to help humans genetically modify themselves’).  A renegade Chinese researcher announced the birth of twins whose genes he edited to induce HIV resistance – US-trained, yet contravening the global moratorium.  The announcement was met by total disavowment from ‘the scientific community’, Chinese authorities quickly cut ties with He Jiankui. Plant scientists brood here as their initial excitement at gene editing’s clear differentiation (!) from GM has been diluted by the European High Court’s decision to apply the same level of regulatory caution and control – ‘A Bleak Future for Agricultural Innovation in the EU’.  Of note, this was contrary to the Opinion of the Advocate General.  US scientists are moving livestock R&D to South America, frustrated at regulatory burdens and market aversion.  Public responses are being created across the globe.  

The language of CRISPR subtly constructs the technology for public consumption.  ‘Editing’ has been likened to word processing software, implying a tidy and exact amendment to textual coding.  References to second generation genetic engineering have been overtaken – GMO 2.0 (NGOs) or Biotech 2.0 (agritech).  The scientific establishment issued disapproval at recent experiment in China, but now publish on the likely side-effect of gene editing improving the children’s cognitive function – China’s CRISPR twins may have had their brains inadvertently enhanced.  Further imagining of the potential benefits and loading of unintended consequences will hatch from early references, moulding new publics.  

A cosmopolitan international interdisciplinary observatory has been called for ‘to invite_ voices and concerns [_] currently inaudible to those in centres of [_] innovation, and to draw on the full richness of humanity’s moral imagination’.  Given the diverse challenges to date, to act as a truly global clearing house of views in adequate time will be difficult, to say the least.

  

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