China edited human embryos through CRISPR/Cas9, SUPERHUMANS are not far

A large number of scientists around the globe have been talking about the importance of the stopping the studies involving genetic editing of human embryos. Now, the call for the halt has become even stronger as a Chinese team has recently succeeded in genetically engineering human embryos. This news was first reported on Wednesday by Nature News.

The said study was led by Sun Yat-sen University’s gene function researcher Junjiu Huang, who was ably supported a group of Chinese scientists.

The researchers have explained the process adopted by them for editing genomes of human embryos acquired from a fertility clinic. The collected embryos were nonviable and their chances of resulting in live birth were zero as they carried an additional set of chromosomes because of being fertilized by a couple of sperms.

China-edited-Embryos

The Chinese researchers tried to modify a gene that according to them was responsible for beta- thalassemia; for those who don’t know: thalassemia is an inherited recessive blood disorder marked by abnormal hemoglobin formation. They carried out the modification using a gene-editing technique called CRISPR/Cas9.

As many as 86 embryos were injected by the researchers; following this, they waited for 48 hours to allow the molecules replacing the missing DNA to begin its operations. Out of the 86 embryos, 71 managed to survive; tests were carried out on 54 of them.

During the tests, researchers found that just 28 got spliced successfully; they also discovered that just a tiny fraction of those possessed the substituted genetic material. According to Huang, for carrying out the process on normal embryos, being close to 100% is an absolute necessity.

http://www.thehoopsnews.com/2015/04/23/4592/bees-eat-less-food-due-pesticides-consumption/

He added that failure of achieving that 100% is the only reason why they have decided to stop the study for now. Huang and his team feels that the technique adopted by them is still not mature enough for being tested on human embryos.

What was more concerning was the surprisingly high number of unintentional mutations taking place during the process. The rate was significantly higher than those seen in any other gene-editing experiment carried out previously; these include both studies carried out on mice cells and studies conducted on cells of adult humans.

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  • In Ward Kendall’s dystopian sci-fi novel, Hold Back This Day (amazon.com) he presents a powerful story of what happens when whites in America and Europe forsake the world to the Chinese, allowing them to technologically dominate us – as this story clearly suggests they’re trying to do. Coupled with the non-white invasion of America (now well over 35 million Mexican/Central Americans) we are headed for a much lower national IQ, while the Chinese are headed for a much higher national IQ. They know what they’re doing. The question is: do we?

    .

    • Another novel involving genetic modification: Building Better Babies: a novel of law, science and suspense. Here’s the back cover blurb:

      Patent lawyer Hank Hannah is hired by Jean-Luc Rameau, CEO
      of World BioTech, to protect a process for building better babies. Sections of
      the DNA of athletes, scientists, musicians and beautiful people can be
      transplanted into the parents’ genes, and hereditary disease eliminated.

      All goes well until the babies start getting sick. Chief
      inventor David Alexander develops a vitamin cocktail that can save them, and a
      disaster is averted.

      Then the US government learns of the development, and
      decides that it wants control of the technology. Rameau and Alexander are
      arrested. Only Hank Hannah has the keys
      to the jail. But can he save them?

  • You engineer IQs over 170, and dollars to dimes that 90% of theme are schizophrenic.

  • ” . . . the high number of unintentional mutations.” And yet GMOs are perfectly safe, move along, nothing to see, and the biggest lie, you’re anti-science if you even want to label GMOs in food, never mind regulating the experimenters. In fact, the true scientific mind waits until all the evidence is in to make such wholesale declarations.

    It’s hard to believe Monsanto, the corporate embodiment of human evil, is not behind this shameless attempt to stampede over those who would at least like to see that we continue to have the right to know what is in our food.

  • In a future world of superhumans, what would we need robots for? Oh, that’s right! I kind of forgot how fat and lazy we all are. Chances are our future superhumans will just be super fatter and super lazier than we are with much better super robots.

  • Smarter, stronger, faster, how much would you pay to have a super-child?
    People have modified all of their crops, and livestock to be better. Why not their children as well?
    What if China could reliably have genius children?
    This research will be pursued and eventually be applied.
    Getting rid of hereditary diseases is the first step. Manipulating complex traits like intelligence is unlikely to happen soon because we are just starting down the long road of recreating ourselves.

    • But Like everything else we human manipulated, serious problems will rise as a result.

      Americans for example are suffering a lot of health problems because of genetic engineering of food. Humans are not as smart as they think, we will create frankensteins instead of super humans.

      • We would be so lucky as to create Frankensteins. As Frankenstein was the name of the scientist that created the monster.

    • Yes! Exactly what I’m looking for! A cheat code that will free me up from having to parent a child and still end up with a super genius wealthy NBA star multi-platinum singing artist and cover model who becomes the Pope one day and saves the world. Right??? Listen this science is so far away from creating anything but stupid pseudo news that thinking super people are the end product of any of this is a lot like thinking nuclear testing will produce giant monsters like Godzilla. We are wasting our imaginations on this crappy story.

      • Corn is not what it used to be 20 years ago or 1,000 years ago. If the Chinese could make similar progress with their children they will rule the world while we are debating the ethics of something that will happen anyway and provide great benefits to those that achieve it. Science is replete with examples of knowledgeable people who said it couldn’t be done. People flying like birds? Absurd! You must be a lunatic if you think people will ever go to the moon.

        • Uh… If you are impressed by corn science you’re exactly who they write stuff like this for. Corn today is not smarter than it was 20 years or 2000 years ago, even in China. Cloning sheep, building Nukes, and dropping drones on Mars did not require superhuman intellect or tinkering with any genetic codes. This story is just dumb. Your argument isn’t much better. More precisely superhuman artificial intelligence will very likely make genetic human intelligence obsolete before any of us figure out how to make super genetically smart humans. Oh wait we can just merge AI with humans and robotics. There I figured it out for you. Notice how that didn’t take or use any superhuman genetically enhance brain power. I’m going to stop responding to you now. I want you to think harder and if you repost anything, show your work and include your citations so I’ll know you’re not just making things up on the fly.

    • china already has genius children …..everyone knows the little asian kid is the straight a student

      • No bad students from Asian, the Orient, or China? Or the U.S.? You must not know very many Asians.

  • The headline writer is an unwitting troll. “China edited human embryos” is gobbledegook along the lines of “Tall women digested nitrogen molecules.” Yes, you can edit a gene, and yes, there are genes in embryos. But you can’t edit an embryo.

    • Those who use the word ‘troll’ are usually the trolls themselves. Did you read the article? Who cares if he wrote edited embryo or gene? Genes are also not ‘editable’. Indirectly, the embryo was ‘edited’, in other words altered. The author is writing for the lay public, not geneticists. Getting a clue might help you!

      • I have a couple clues, and here they are:

        If the lay public conclude that scientists are editing embryos, that’s a serious flaw in their thinking, and it came from this headline. I used the term “unwitting troll”, to mean two things: 1) the headline in and of itself, as it appeared on Google’s main news page, was attracting readers like me who get alarmed at formulations such as “edited human embryos”; and 2) the headline writer, out of ignorance, is not likely to have intended to get attention this way.

        But they did, so either way it’s good for their ad numbers.

    • Thanks for that link. I was alarmed to see how the journal Nature distilled eight paragraphs about IVF and gene research down to their short misleading headline.