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On my earlier post, I was ignorant of the fact that genetic engineering on human embryos is being done successfully now. I'm sorry that I had not checked when the article was posted. Now that I know that genetic engineering is being done successfully now, I can say that I do support it. If true professionals are conducting it safely, I feel that this will help a lot of people. Weather it is 100% correct or not, i think it is worth trying to save someone than to let nature take its toll on them. Still I have no right to make a person's decisions for them, but shouldn't they have as many options as possible? All I'm saying is that this feet of science should be controlled  but legal. 

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On my earlier post, I was ignorant of the fact that genetic engineering on human embryos is being done successfully now. I'm sorry that I had not checked when the article was posted. Now that I know that genetic engineering is being done successfully now, I can say that I do support it. If true professionals are conducting it safely, I feel that this will help a lot of people. Weather it is 100% correct or not, i think it is worth trying to save someone than to let nature take its toll on them. Still I have no right to make a person's decisions for them, but shouldn't they have as many options as possible? All I'm saying is that this feet of science should be controlled  but legal. 

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In my opinion, genetically modifying humans is wrong, because there is no absolute way to make sure that the outcome will come out okay. Without this information, it would be unethical to perform this experiment on an embryo since many other genetic disorders may occur.

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In my opinion, genetic engineering seems very dangerous because it could put people at risk to being born with defects if something goes wrong.

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In my opinion, genetic engineering is a not ethical because you do not know how it can damage others. As well as the experiment might not end up having the result they thought it might have had.

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In my opinion, genetic engineering is a not ethical because you do not know how it can damage others. As well as the experiment might not end up having the result they thought it might have had.

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In my opinion, genetic engineering is unethical not only because the outcome of the experiment is unknown but because it may also result in even more damage to the individual than how its mutated DNA would.

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In my opinion i think that genetic engineering is okay because it can save lives, even thogh there are many risks i think it is okay.

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In my opinion, this can put people at risk, put it can potentially help cure many individuals. I think this because if i was it their position i would want my loved one to be saved, i would do whatever is possible to give them the chance to live out their life.

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in my opinion, i think genetic engineering should not be a thing it can harm humans.

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I don't like this idea much ,maybe if the scientist knows more without hurting the human being then i'll be fine.But till then i rather not let the people continue.

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No ,because The notion of testing the technology on a live human baby is problematic indeed

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No ,because The notion of testing the technology on a live human baby is problematic indeed

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in my opinion, genetic modification is okay considering the positive affects outweigh the negative ones

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I think genetic engineering on humans is not right because it requires alot of human lives. Although it can probably lead to something greater, its to much a risk to take. This can help us in for example, space exploration.

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In my opinion, I think genetic engineering is a good thing to be done because it can end up saving lives in the future and is not negatively affecting an already living persons life rather affecting an embryo that will not survive long enough to be born

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In my opinion, I think genetic engineering is a good thing to be done because it can end up saving lives in the future and is not negatively affecting an already living persons life rather affecting an embryo that will not survive long enough to be born

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In my opinion, I think that genetic engineering shouldn't be tested on people.

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In my opinion, testing it on babies is a high risk 

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In my opinion, testing it on babies is a high risk 

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I think that genetic engineering shouldn't be tested on humans.We don't know what could go wrong with the embryos. There could be a possibility that they would harm the person that is being tested.

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In my opinion,yes we should genetically modify a human(embryo),because it will target certain diseases in the DNA. However, It can cause other problems like targeting the wrong piece of DNA. It might make more diseases with the embryo. To reiterate,with the right safety equipment and precision we will save a baby's life.   

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In my opinion,yes we should genetically modify a human(embryo),because it will target certain diseases in the DNA. However, It can cause other problems like targeting the wrong piece of DNA. It might make more diseases with the embryo. To reiterate,with the right safety equipment and precision we will save a baby's life.   

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in my opinion, Genetic engineering should not be a thing because it could potentially harm or 🤬 the baby which i being tested upon

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i think genetic engineering could bring  lot of problems since not all dangers are listed and a lot can go wrong. genetic engineering can also harm the rest of the cell they engineered

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In my opinion, no its not okay for genetic engineering to be done on humans because it can be life threatening.

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I still think that, when safe, genetic engineering should be performed on people. However, I do not think this should be done in the foreseeable future. Based on the article, I know that on non-viable embryos, genetic engineering is not reliable. This fact proves that genetic engineering is to risky to test on live embryos at this point and time.

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Comment on the article attached with full justification explaining your stance on this current topic, before responding to other posts.

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The genetic modification of humans make many people feel very uncomfortable. Tatiana Vdb/Manuel/Flickr, CC BY

It all started with a rumour. Then just six weeks ago, a warning rang out in the scientific journal Nature, expressing "grave concerns regarding the ethical and safety implications" of creating the world's first genetically-modified human embryo.

Then last week, a Chinese group from Sun Yat-sen University, reported that they had, in fact, done it: they had created the first genetically-modified human embryo.

They reported that, in a world first, they had taken "human tripronuclear embryos", and altered mutant DNA that causes the human disease β-thalassemia, which is life-threatening and affects 100,000 people worldwide.

But one person's stern warning is another's delight. The promise of technologies like this - to cure diseases like cystic fibrosis or Huntington's, or even to remove the BRCA mutation, which dramatically increases a woman's risk of dying from breast or ovarian cancer - have been exciting biologists for years.

Cut and paste

So what exactly did the Chinese researchers do? And why has it caused such an uproar?

First, the experiments were performed on human embryos. The researchers collected non-viable embryos from IVF clinics. Then they used this non-viability argument as the ethical justification for performing the work. Scientists know that the embryos were not capable of resulting in a human life, because they were tripronuclear. That means one egg had been fertilised by two sperm, a biological situation we know cannot result a live baby.

Into these embryos, the scientists injected "molecular scissors", known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system, which can target a specific segment of DNA.

In this case, they targeted the HBB gene, which causes β-thalassemia. They then cut out the disease-causing region and replaced it, almost as simply as you may cut and paste in a word-processing document.

But it wasn't quite that clean and simple. The researchers reported "off target effects" and "mosaicism". This means the editing sometimes occurred at the wrong place in the DNA and that it wasn't occurring in all embryos equally. There were many mistakes, which they could not have predicted.

Made to order?

This raises at least two issues. The first is the ethical issue surrounding the use of human embryos for scientific research, and associated concerns around creating designer babies. The second is the fact that this editing went so wrong in so many embryos.

Without total control of the DNA editing process, the outcome for a baby born from a technology like this one is completely unknown.

This unpredictability and uncertainty means the promise of eliminating certain diseases by editing the DNA of embryos is likely to be a very long way off. There is also the issue of testing whether the technology is safe.

The notion of testing the technology on a live human baby is problematic indeed. Should a scientific research ethics committee ever agree to let this research be performed?

Fortunately, in Australia, all research performed on human embryos is tightly regulated by the NHMRC, which prohibits human cloning as well as many other technologies, and enforces strong penalties for non-compliance. This means that, for the foreseeable future, this type of research is very unlikely in Australia.

While the scientific world is divided as to the possibilities for this technology in embryos, including the reality of preventing or curing disease, there is consensus that this research must proceed with extreme caution.

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World's first genetically modified human embryo raises ethical concerns

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It all started with a rumour. Then just six weeks ago, a warning rang out in the scientific journal Nature, expressing "grave concerns regarding the ethical and safety implications" of creating the world's first genetically-modified human embryo. Then last week, a Chinese group from Sun Yat-sen University, reported that they had, in fact, done it: they had created the first genetically-modified human embryo.