Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR

Designer babies, the end of diseases, genetically modified humans that never age. Outrageous things that used to be science fiction are suddenly becoming reality. The only thing we know for sure is that things will change irreversibly.

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Jeffrey Schneider, Konstantin Kaganovich, Tom Leiser, Archie Castillo, Russell Eishard, Ben Kershaw, Marius Stollen, Henry Bowman, Ben Johns, Bogdan Radu, Sam Toland, Pierre Thalamy, Christopher Morgan, Rocks Arent People, Ross Devereux, Pascal Michaud, Derek DuBreuil, Sofia Quintero, Robert Swiniarski, Merkt Kızılırmak, Michelle Rowley, Andy Dong, Saphir Patel, Harris Rotto, Thomas Huzij, Ryan James Burke, NTRX, Chaz Lewis, Amir Resali, The War on Stupid, John Pestana, Lucien Delbert, iaDRM, Jacob Edwards, Lauritz Klaus, Jason Hunt, Marcus : ), Taylor Lau, Rhett H Eisenberg, Mr.Z, Jeremy Dumet, Fatman13, Kasturi Raghavan, Kousora, Rich Sekmistrz, Mozart Peter, Gaby Germanos, Andreas Hertle, Alena Vlachova, Zdravko Šašek
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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

The best book we read about the topic: GMO Sapiens

https://goo.gl/NxFmk8

(affiliate link, we get a cut if buy the book!)

– Good Overview by Wired:
http://bit.ly/1DuM4zq

–timeline of computer development:
http://bit.ly/1VtiJ0N

– Selective breeding:
http://bit.ly/29GaPVS

– DNA:
http://bit.ly/1rQs8Yk

– Radiation research:
http://bit.ly/2ad6wT1

– inserting DNA snippets into organisms:
http://bit.ly/2apyqbj

– First genetically modified animal:
http://bit.ly/2abkfYO

– First GM patent:
http://bit.ly/2a5cCox

– chemicals produced by GMOs:
http://bit.ly/29UvTbh
http://bit.ly/2abeHwU
http://bit.ly/2a86sBy

– Flavr Savr Tomato:
http://bit.ly/29YPVwN

– First Human Engineering:
http://bit.ly/29ZTfsf

– glowing fish:
http://bit.ly/29UwuJU

– CRISPR:
http://go.nature.com/24Nhykm

– HIV cut from cells and rats with CRISPR:
http://go.nature.com/1RwR1xI
http://ti.me/1TlADSi

– first human CRISPR trials fighting cancer:
http://go.nature.com/28PW40r

first human CRISPR trial approved by Chinese for August 2016:
http://go.nature.com/29RYNnK

– genetic diseases:
http://go.nature.com/2a8f7ny

– pregnancies with Down Syndrome terminated:
http://bit.ly/2acVyvg
( 1999 European study)

– CRISPR and aging:
http://bit.ly/2a3NYAV
http://bit.ly/SuomTy
http://go.nature.com/29WpDj1
http://ti.me/1R7Vus9

Imagine you were alive back in the
1980's and were told

the computers would soon
take over everything.

From shopping to dating
and the stock market.

That billions of people
would be connected via a kind of web.

That you would own a handheld device

orders of magnitude more powerful
than supercomputers.

It would seem absurd but
then all of it happened.

Science fiction became our reality
that we don't even think about it

We're at a similar point today with
genetic engineering.

So let's talk about it.

Where it came from?
What we're doing right now?

And about a recent breakthrough
that will change how we live

and what we perceive as "normal" forever.

Humans have been engineering life for
thousands of years. Through selective breeding

we strengthened useful traits
and plants and animals.

We became very good at this but
never truly understood how it works.

Until we discovered the code of life:
deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA,

a complex molecule the guide of
the growth, development function

and reproduction of everything alive.

Information is encoded in
the structure of the molecule.

Four nucleotides are paired
and make up a code that carries instructions.

Change the instructions and you change
the being carrying it.

As soon as DNA was
discovered people try to tinker with it.

In the 1960's, scientists bombarded
plants with radiation

to cause random mutations
in the genetic code.

The idea was to get
a useful plant variation by pure chance.

Sometimes, it actually worked too.

In the 70's, scientists inserted DNA snippets
into bacteria, plants and animals

to study and modify them for research,
medicine, agriculture and for fun.

The earliest genetically modified animal
was born in 1974,

making mice a standard tool for research,
saving millions of lives.

In the 80's, we got commercial.

first patent was given for a microbe
engineered to absorb oil today we

produce many chemicals by means of
engineered life like life-saving

clotting factors growth hormones and
insulin, all things we had to harvest

from the organs of animals before that.
The first food modified in the lab went

on sale in 1994: the Flavr Savr tomato,
a tomato given a much longer shelf life

where an extra gene that suppresses the
build-up of a rotting enzyme. But GM food

and the controversy surrounding them
deserve a video of their own.

In the 1990's there was also a brief
foray into human engineering. To treat

maternal infertility, babies were made
to carry genetic information from

three humans making them the first
humans ever to have three genetic

parents. Today there are super muscled
pigs, fast-growing salmon, featherless

chickens and see-through frogs. On the
fun side, we made things glow in the dark

fluorescent zebrafish are available for
as little as ten dollars.

All of this is already very impressive
but until recently,

gene editing was extremely expensive,
complicated and took a long time to do.

This has now changed with a
revolutionary new technology now

entering the stage: CRISPR. Overnight, the
costs of engineering have shrunk by 99%

Instead of a year.

it takes a few weeks to conduct
experiments and basically everybody with

a lab can do it. It's hard to get across
how big a technical revolution CRISPR is.

It literally has the potential to
change humanity forever.

Why did this sudden revolution happen
and how does it work?

Bacteria and viruses have been fighting
since the dawn of life.

So-called bacteriophages,
or phages, hunt bacteria.

In the ocean, phages kill 40% of them
every single day.

Phages do this by inserting
their own genetic code into

the bacteria and taking them over to use
them as factories.

The bacteria try to resist,
but fail most of the time

because their protection tools are too weak.

But sometimes, bacteria survive an attack.
Only if they do so can they activate

their most effective antivirus system.
They save a part of the virus DNA in

their own genetic code in a DNA archive
called CRISPR.

Here it's stored safely
until it's needed.

When the virus attacks again,
the bacterium quickly makes an RNA copy

from the DNA archive and arms a
secret weapon, a protein called Cas9.

The protein now scans the bacterium's
inside for signs of the virus invader by

comparing every bit of DNA it finds to
the sample from the archive.

When it finds a 100-percent perfect match

it's activated and cuts out the virus DNA
making it useless, protecting the

bacterium against the attack.

What's special is that Cas9 is very
precise, almost like a DNA surgeon.

The revolution began when scientists figured
out that the CRISPR system is programmable.

You can just give it a copy
of DNA you want to modify and put the

system into a living cell. If the old
techniques of genetic manipulation were

like a map, CRISPR is like a GPS system.
Aside from being precise cheap and easy,

CRISPR offers the ability to
edit life cells to switch genes on and

off and target and study particular DNA
sequences.

It also works for every type
of cell: microorganisms, plants

animals or humans. But despite the
revolution CRISPR is for science,

it's still just a first generation tool.
More precise tools are already being

created and used as we speak.

In 2015, scientists use CRISPR to cut the HIV
virus out of living cells from patients

in the lab, proving that it was possible.
Only about a year later they carried out

a larger scale project with rats that
had the HIV virus in basically all of

their body cells. By simply injecting
CRISPR into the rats tails, they were

able to remove more than 50%
of the virus from cells all over the body.

In a few decades, a CRISPR therapy
might cure HIV and other retroviruses.

Viruses that hide inside human DNA like
herpes could be eradicated this way.

CRISPR could also defeat one of our
worst enemies: cancer. Cancer occurs when

cells refused to die and keep
multiplying while concealing themselves

from the immune system. CRISPR gives us
the means to edit your immune cells and

make them better cancer hunters. Getting
rid of cancer might eventually mean

getting just a couple of injections of a
few thousand of your own cells that have

been engineered in the lab to heal you
for good.

The first clinical trial for a CRISPR
cancer treatment on human patients was

approved in early 2016 in the
US. Not even a month later, Chinese

scientists announced that they would
treat lung cancer patients with immune

cells modified by CRISPR in August 2016.
Things are picking up pace quickly.

And then there are genetic diseases. There
are thousands of them and they range,

from merely annoying to deadly or entail
decades of suffering. With a powerful

tool like CRISPR, we may be able to end
this. Over 3,000 genetic diseases are

caused by a single incorrect letter in
your DNA.

We are already building a modified
version of Cas9 that is made to

change just a single letter, fixing the
disease in the cell. In a decade or two

we could possibly cure thousands of
diseases forever. But all of these

medical applications have one thing in
common: they are limited to the

individual and die with them, except if
you use them on reproductive cells or

very early embryos. But CRISPR can and
probably will be used for much more:

the creation of modified humans, designer
babies and will mean gradual but

irreversible changes to the human gene
pool.

The means to edit the genome of a

human embryo already exists, though the
technology is still in its early stages.

But it has already been attempted twice:
in 2015 and 2016, Chinese scientists

experimented with human embryos and were
partially successful on their second

attempt. They showed the enormous
challenges we still face in gene editing

embryos but also that scientists are
working on solving them.

This is like the computer in the
seventies: there will be better computers.

Regardless of your personal take on
genetic engineering, it will affect you.

Modified humans could alter the genome
of our entire species because their

engineered traits will be passed on to
that children and could spread over

generations slowly modifying the whole
gene pool of humanity. It will start

slowly: the first designer babies will
not be overly designed, it's most likely

that they will be created to eliminate
deadly genetic disease running a family.

As the technology progresses and gets
more refined, more and more people may argue

that not using genetic modification is
unethical, because it condemns children

to preventable suffering and death and
denies them to cure. But as soon as the

first engineered kid is born, a door is
opened that can't be closed anymore.

Early on, vanity traits will mostly be
left alone, but as genetic modification

becomes more accepted and our knowledge
of our genetic code enhances,

the temptation will grow.

If you make your offspring
immune to Alzheimer, why not also

give them an enhanced metabolism?

Why not throw in perfect eyesight? How
about height or muscular structure?

Full hair? How about giving your child the gift of
extraordinary intelligence? Huge changes

are made as a result of the personal
decisions of millions of individuals

that accumulate. This is a slippery slope.
Modified humans could become the new

standard, but as engineering becomes more
normal and our knowledge improves, we

could solve the single biggest mortality
risk factor: aging. Two-thirds of the

150,000 people who die today will die
of age-related causes. Currently we think

aging is caused by the accumulation of
damage to ourselves, like DNA breaks and

the system's responsible for fixing
those wearing off over time. But there

are also genes that directly affect
aging. A combination of genetic

engineering and other therapy could stop
or slow down aging, maybe even reverse it.

We know from nature that there are
animals immune to aging. Maybe we could

even borrow a few genes for ourselves.
Some scientists even think biological

aging could be something that eventually
just stops being a thing. We would still

die at some point, but instead of doing
so in hospitals at age 90

we might be able to spend a few thousand
years with our loved ones. Research into

this is in its infancy, and many
scientists are rightly skeptical about

the end of aging. The challenges are
enormous, and maybe it is unachievable.

But it is conceivable that people alive
today might be the first to profit from

effective anti aging therapy. All we
might need is for someone to convince a

smart billionaire to make it their next
problem to solve. On a bigger scale we

certainly could solve many problems by
having a modified population. Engineered

humans might be better equipped to cope
with high-energy food, eliminating many

diseases of civilization like obesity.

In possession of a modified immune
system with a library of potential

threat, we might become immune to most
diseases that haunt us today.

Even further into the future we could
engineer humans to be equipped for

extended space travel and to cope with
different conditions on other planet,

which would be extremely helpful in
keeping us alive in our hostile universe.

Still a few major challenges await us.
Some technological, some ethical.

Many of you watching will feel uncomfortable and
fear that we will create a world in

which we will reject non-perfect humans
and preselect features and qualities

based on our idea of what's healthy.

The thing is we are already living in
this world. Tests for dozens of genetic

diseases or complications have become
standard for pregnant women

in much of the world.

Often, the mere suspicion of a genetic
defect can lead to the end of pregnancy.

Take Down Syndrome for example: one of
the most common genetic defects.

In Europe, about ninety percent of all
pregnancies where it's detected are

terminated. The decision to terminate
pregnancy is incredibly personal, but

it's important to acknowledge the
reality that we are preselecting humans

based on medical conditions. There is
also no use in pretending this will

change, so we have to act carefully and
respectfully as we advance the

technology and can make more and more
selections. But none of this will happen

soon: as powerful as CRISPR is, and it
is, it's not infallible yet. Wrong edit

still happen as well as unknown errors
that could occur anywhere in the DNA and

might go unnoticed. The gene edit might
achieve the desired result

disabling a disease, but also might
accidentally trigger unwanted changes.

We just don't know enough yet about the
complex interplay of our genes to avoid

unpredictable consequences. Working on
accuracy and monitoring methods is a

major concern as the first human trials
begin. And since we've discussed a

possible positive future, there are
darker visions too.

Imagine what a state like North Korea
could do if they embraced genetic

engineering. Could a state cement its
rule forever by forcing gene editing on

their subjects? What would stop a
totalitarian regime from engineering an

army of modified super soldiers? It is
doable in theory? Scenarios like this one

are far far off into the future, if they
ever become possible at all. But the

basic proof of concept for genetic
engineering like this already exists

today. The technology really is that
powerful. One of this might be a tempting

reason to ban genetic editing and
related research that would certainly

be a mistake.

Banning human genetic engineering would
only lead to the science wandering off

to a place with jurisdiction and rules
that we are uncomfortable with. Only by

participating can we make sure that
further research is guided by caution,

reason, oversight and transparency.

Do you feel uncomfortable now?
Most of us have

something wrong with them. In the future
that lies ahead of us, would we have been

allowed to exist?

The technology is certainly a bit scary,
but we have a lot to gain and genetic

engineering might just be a step in the
natural evolution of intelligent

species in the universe. We might end
disease, we could extend our life

expectancy by centuries and travel to
the stars. There's no need to think small

when it comes to this topic.

Whatever your opinion on genetic
engineering, the future is approaching no

matter what. What has been insane science
fiction is about to become our new

reality, a reality full of opportunities
and challenges.

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