As the head of my biochemistry department often taught: Question, question, question, question, question! Given that "personalized medicine" and the use of CRISPR on human adults, human fetuses, human embryos, and human sperm and "eggs" will be formally discussed this week at a Washington biology summit (See, "Top biologists debate ban on gene-editing", at: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/28/gene-editing-weapon-against-disease-or-ethical-nightmare ), it is time again to address what no one wants to talk about before it is too late : the extensive lack of objective scientific knowledge and understanding that even intellectually honest human geneticists -- not to mention genetic "engineers" (most of whom have little or no formal graduate level course work or academic degrees in human genetics or in biology in general) -- have about the extensive intricacies of biological living systems such as those studied in genetics. And what about the devastating consequences of applying such techniques?
Which is all to say that these genetic "editing" manipulations are no more than hyped up shots-in-the-dark -- leading one to question what the real ultimate purpose is . The biological consequences of such ignorance and manipulations to a single human individual are bad enough, but such genetic "editing" guesswork will also be passed down through the future generations of that individual. This is not just a "subjective" opinion. The in-the-flesh consequences of such scientific fraud and manipulations will be permanent and experienced for many decades to come.
The purpose of this short article is to provide just a few current relevant scientific references -- the tip of the iceberg -- to help people get a grip on this and so many inherently related issues, and hopefully look further into this problem themselves. Here are, once again, the objective scientific facts admitted and posted even by those involved (and what is true for genetic "editing" is also true for "personalized medicine", 23&Me, etc.).
Generally, these two references are the quickest way to determine what the real issues (and real scientific facts) are:
To get an idea of how the technique works, check this company that supplies CRISPR: LifeTechnologies "GeneArt CRISPR", at: http://www.lifetechnologies.com/us/en/home/life-science/cloning/gene-synthesis/geneart-precision-tals/geneartcrispr.html?s_kwcid=AL!3652!3!27886712481!b!!g!!+crispr&ef_id=UnsXtgAAABXZ4whY:20131107043150:s
Then go to their PDF Handbook , at: http://www.lifetechnologies.com/content/dam/LifeTech/global/life-sciences/synthetic-biology/pdfs/0913/GeneArt%20CRISPR%20Nuclease%20USER%20MANUAL.pdf . For those who have worked at the bench, you can probably find, as I did, at least a dozen points during the described methods and procedures that could cause serious errors in the final product, especially if applied to humans (including the derivation from the bacterium E. coli ). In fact, the Handbook even has a "trouble shooting" section, as well as multiple warnings all along the way.
Thus people should seriously question all the " hype " about how safe, error free, simple, exact, accurate, precise etc., this CRISPR system is. It is also interesting how many others, including real intellectually honest scientists, have identified error, imprecision, lack of control with targeting, etc., in several of the genetic techniques that up to now have been "hyped" as reliable genetic techniques that will bring spectacular "cures", etc. Of course, the "BIOethics" ethical principle of " Beneficence " is always hyped (in order to get funding -- as lobbyists learned decades ago). That same BIOethics principle claims that every citizen of a society has a "strong moral duty" to volunteer for even high risk experimental research "for the greater good of society" -- as in "clinical trials" and related human subject research! Note especially how excited these researchers are to use this gene editing technique in human sperm, "eggs", and IVF/ART embryos . The use of any of these related techniques will result in these "genes" being passed down through the generations (germ line DNA transfer). Obviously, these researchers know this and must be what they want .
Especially relevant for use in IVF and ART "infertility" research laboratories and clinics , how does a woman really know "what" is being implanted into her (or forced into her during illegal forced surrogacy , etc.)?! And the same for the women participating in the proposed " clinical trials ". If the researchers themselves don't know the exact genetic changes (or biological consequences) brought about by their gene "editing", then how can a woman be given the necessary "information" and thus ever give truly ethical and legal "informed consent" to have such genetically-scrambled embryos implanted into her? No wonder they want to get rid of "informed consent" altogether. See also the Video of the CRISPR technique at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/crispr-technique-genetic-editing-video-8925604.html .Note the overwhelming joy over CRISPR by molecular geneticist George Church ; see his book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves , at: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22George+Church%22+%22Regenesis%22+%22CRISPR%22 . Of course, a "molecular geneticist" is not a "human embryologist". See Church's deep roots in transhumanism , at: https://www.google.com/#q=%22George+Church%22+%22transhumanism%22 . Relatedly, note too that the owner of 23andMe is the wife of Russian Google co-founder Brin. Google executive Ray Kurzweil and NASA executive Peter Diamandis co-founded [see: http://singularityu.org/community/founders/#founders-2 ] the transhumanist/futurist/posthumanist Singularity "University" in Silicon Valley , California [learn about their programs, at: http://singularityu.org/faq/#faq_a_3 ], creators of the digital currency Bitcoin now used on the Dark Net and Deep Web for myriad illegal purposes [see: " Transhumanism and the History of BitCoin ", at: http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/01/08/transhumanism-and-the-history-of-bitcoin/ ; also, " The Face Behind Bitcoin ", at: http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html ].
The " Singularity ", of course, is the cosmic state ( Cosmic Consciousness ) we fuse into when we achieve ultimate " longevity " and " immortality " by transferring our brains into computers in 2045 to reach " immortality " (and one has to question just who is going to design that computer program and why -- " who guards the guardians? "). All of this is explicitly explained by the Russian Transhumanist Party explains: (home) http://2045.com/ ; (avatars) http://2045.com/manifest/; see also, Russian Cosmism, Transhumanism and Space Exploration , at: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/giulio20120317 . Lincoln Cannon , a graduate of The Singularity University [ http://lincoln.metacannon.net/p/about.html ], is one of the founders of the Mormon Transhumanist Association [ http://transfigurism.org/pages/about/board-of-directors/ ; also, http://transfigurism.org/pages/about/ ; also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Transhumanist_Association ]. Cannon (and several others at the Mormon Transhumanist Association) also works for Ancestry.com [ http://blogs.ancestry.com/techroots/author/lcannon/ ; also, http://lincoln.metacannon.net/p/about.html ] where he is their Director of Engineering [ http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Lincoln-Cannon/-1916536448 ].
For more extensive scientific and historical documentation, see Irving, " Tangled Webs and History: Bioethics, Hastings Center, Eugenics, Gates, GMO's, Transhumanism " (Oct. 14, 2014), at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_225tangledwebsandhistory.html
It's no secret. It's even on their own website -- and on many others:
The following is relevant to all these debates involving "genetics" -- including CRISPR, these DNA "kits", "regenerative medicine", "stem cell research", genetic engineering/synthetic biology/nanotechnology, etc. And if the whole human genome is still unknown , then how can we even convert unique chromosomes of individual humans to "data" and upload our unique brains (full of DNA!) into computers or "clouds" as the transhumanists/futurists/posthumanists claim [" Google invites geneticists to upload DNA data to cloud ", at: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Google-invites-geneticists-to-upload-DNA-data-to-5325793.php ]?
If you don't know the identity of every atom of every molecule of every gene on every chromosome in a "kit" or a sample (and engineers, physicists and mathematicians don't -- even human geneticists -- don't! ), then you don't know the identity of the genome, you can't accurately identify any diseases or mutations, you don't know how any of the foreign genes necessarily used as "vectors" will react with drugs or other genes , and you don't know the immunological effects these unknown, damaged, mutated or foreign genes will have when injected into a patient as "regenerative medicine", etc. Indeed, as all of us bench researchers in radiation immunology at the NIH knew decades ago, even a change in "space" (stearic) of one antigen molecule causes the production of serious "stearic antibodies" when injected into patients (see, e.g., https://www.google.com/#q=%22antibody%22+%22steric%22&spell=1 ). Just imagine what the patients' immune responses would be to all the unknown and artificially fabricated whole entire genes and chromosomes, and/or their bits and pieces, when injected into them!
As is also well known, even as noted on the official government website for " The" Human Genome Project , even the billion-dollar and decades-old efforts to decode "THE" Human Genome has still decoded only about 15% (if that!) of the genes in "the" human chromosome (which is a misnomer because every individual human being's genome is unique). A single chromosome is composed of genes called " introns " (composing the middle of the chromosome, constituting up to over 90% of the chromosome) and "extrons" (at either end of the chromosome, constituting roughly 15% of the chromosome). The " extrons " are the only genes they've addressed and tried to "decode". They have still not decoded more than 85% of the human genome that they call "junk DNA" which composes the "introns" , they decoded only the nuclear DNA (not the mitochondrial DNA which is also part of the human genome) of the "extrons", and the various samples used was from multiple people all over the world that was pooled all together . Etc. Just how accurate and reliable is that data? ! What is now scientifically documented is that all that "junk" DNA critically REGULATES what the other DNA does, and more! Why aren't any of the documented empirical facts ever mentioned??
** Official website of The Human Genome: (project started in 1990, and was to last for 15 years), at: http://web.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/index.shtml . See especially "How many genes are in the human genome?" and following for their own admissions:
" How many genes are in the human genome? The current consensus predicts about 20,500 genes, but this number has fluctuated a great deal since the project began . ... Even with improved genome analysis, computation alone is simply not enough to generate an accurate gene number . Clearly, gene predictions have to be verified by labor-intensive work in the laboratory ( 6 ). ...
" Whose genome was sequenced in the public (HGP) and private projects?
The human genome reference sequences do not represent any one person's genome. Rather, they serve as a starting point for broad comparisons across humanity. ... In the international public-sector Human Genome Project (HGP), researchers collected blood (female) or sperm (male) samples from a large number of donors. Only a few samples were processed as DNA resources . ... HGP scientists also used white cells from female donors' blood to include samples originating from women. In the Celera Genomics private-sector project, DNA from a few different genomes was mixed and processed for sequencing. DNA for these studies came from anonymous donors of European, African, American (North, Central, South), and Asian ancestry . The lead scientist of Celera Genomics at that time, Craig Venter, has since acknowledged that his DNA was among those sequenced. ... Although the HGP has been completed, SNP studies continue in the International HapMap Project , whose goal is to identify patterns of SNP groups (called haplotypes, or "haps"). The DNA samples for the HapMap Project came from 270 individuals, including Yoruba people in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and the French Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH) resource .
What is clear is that human DNA is actually not well understood. 97% of human DNA is called �junk� because scientists do not know its function . The workings of a single cell are so complex, no one knows the whole of it. Yet the biotech companies have already planted millions of acres with genetically engineered crops , and they intend to engineer every crop in the world." [See, "Genetic Engineering and 'Junk' DNA", Genetic Engineering , at: http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/ramyasekaran-1541143-genetic-engineering/ ]. Is this the blind leading the blind, or something more?
Just the tip of the iceberg:
In genomics and related disciplines, noncoding DNA sequences are components of an organism's DNA that do not encode protein sequences. Some noncoding DNA is transcribed into functional non-coding RNA molecules (e.g. transfer RNA , ribosomal RNA , and regulatory RNAs ), while others are not transcribed or give rise to RNA transcripts of unknown function. The amount of noncoding DNA varies greatly among species. For example, over 98% of the human genome is noncoding DNA
... Initially, a large proportion of noncoding DNA had no known biological function and was therefore sometimes referred to as "junk DNA" , particularly in the lay press. However, it has been known for decades that many noncoding sequences are functional. These include genes for functional RNA molecules (see above) and sequences such as origins of replication, centromeres, and telomeres.
The "genome" of any given individual is unique; mapping "the human genome" involves sequencing multiple variations of each gene.[ 4 ] The project did not study the entire DNA found in human cells ; some heterochromatic areas (about 8% of the total genome) remain unsequenced.
... The project began with the culmination of several years of work supported by the US Department of Energy. ... According to Francis Collins , "[T]he first serious discussion of the possibility of sequencing the human genome was convened in 1985 by Robert Sinsheimer, then chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz."
In 1990, the two major funding agencies, DOE and NIH , developed a memorandum of understanding in order to coordinate plans and set the clock for the initiation of the Project to 1990.[ 13 ] At that time, David Galas was Director of the renamed "Office of Biological and Environmental Research" in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and James Watson headed the NIH Genome Program. In 1993, Aristides Patrinos succeeded Galas and Francis Collins succeeded James Watson , assuming the role of overall Project Head as Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Human Genome Research Institute . A working draft of the genome was announced in 2000 and a complete one in 2003, with more detailed analysis still being published.
... In the IHGSC international public-sector Human Genome Project (HGP), researchers collected blood (female) or sperm (male) samples from a large number of donors. Only a few of many collected samples were processed as DNA resources. Thus the donor identities were protected so neither donors nor scientists could know whose DNA was sequenced. DNA clones from many different libraries were used in the overall project, with most of those libraries being created by Dr. Pieter J. de Jong (or rather the researchers in his lab). Much of the sequence (>70%) of the reference genome produced by the public HGP came from a single anonymous male donor from Buffalo, New York ( code name RP11)
HGP scientists used white blood cells from the blood of two male and two female donors (randomly selected from 20 of each) - each donor yielding a separate DNA library. One of these libraries (RP11) was used considerably more than others, due to quality considerations . One minor technical issue is that male samples contain just over half as much DNA from the sex chromosomes (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome ) compared to female samples (which contain two X chromosomes ). The other 22 chromosomes (the autosomes) are the same for both sexes.
Although the main sequencing phase of the HGP has been completed, studies of DNA variation continue in the International HapMap Project , whose goal is to identify patterns of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) groups (called haplotypes , or "haps"). The DNA samples for the HapMap came from a total of 270 individuals : Yoruba people in Ibadan , Nigeria ; Japanese people in Tokyo ; Han Chinese in Beijing ; and the French Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisms Humain (CEPH) resource, which consisted of residents of the United States having ancestry from Western and Northern Europe .
In the Celera Genomics private-sector project , DNA from five different individuals were used for sequencing. ...
Imagine the supposed "data" derived from such "experiments" matching the real world!
As noted, the above is just the tip of the iceberg. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand and acknowledge this giant pile of JUNK for what it is, and the questions persist: Why do we continue to accommodate and fund this Junk, and Why don't people care about the devastating in-the-flesh biological consequences of its application for both individuals and their future generations?
CRISPR, similar gene "editing" techniques, and synthetic biology/nanotechnology are Junk.
"The" Human Genome Project is Junk.
"Personalized medicine" (other than for identifying simplistic broad bands) are Junk.
"23&Me" and similar "gene kits" are Junk.
Singularity "University" is Junk.
Transhumanism/futurism/posthumanism is Junk.
NBIC/WTEC is Junk.
Gnosticism is Junk.
Questions abound. But time is up. Responsible intellectually honest scientists and citizens need to pressure the leaders about to assemble in Washington and abroad to put a long-deserved stop to this outrageous Junk and its long-known and long-established inherent dangers to humanity.