- 2 years ago
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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00:00Imagine you were alive back in the 1980s and were told that computers would soon take over
00:06everything from shopping to dating and the stock market, that billions of people would
00:12be connected via a kind of web, that you would own a handheld device orders of magnitude
00:17more powerful than supercomputers.
00:20It would seem absurd, but then all of it happened.
00:24Science fiction became our reality and we don't even think about it.
00:28We're at a similar point today with genetic engineering.
00:31So let's talk about it.
00:34Where it came from, what we're doing right now, and about a recent breakthrough that
00:38will change how we live and what we perceive as normal, forever.
00:53Humans have been engineering life for thousands of years.
00:56Through selective breeding, we strengthened useful traits in plants and animals.
01:01We became very good at this, but never truly understood how it works, until we discovered
01:06the code of life, deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA.
01:11A complex molecule that guides the growth, development, function and reproduction of
01:15everything alive.
01:18Information is encoded in the structure of the molecule.
01:20Four nucleotides are paired and make up a code that carries instructions.
01:25Change the instructions and you change the being carrying it.
01:29As soon as DNA was discovered, people tried to tinker with it.
01:33In the 1960s, scientists bombarded plants with radiation to cause random mutations in
01:38the genetic code.
01:40The idea was to get a useful plant variation by pure chance.
01:44Sometimes it actually worked too.
01:46In the 70s, scientists inserted DNA snippets into bacteria, plants and animals to study
01:52and modify them for research, medicine, agriculture and for fun.
01:57The earliest genetically modified animal was born in 1974, making mice a standard tool
02:02for research, saving millions of lives.
02:05In the 80s, we got commercial.
02:08The first patent was given for a microbe engineered to absorb oil.
02:12Today, we produce many chemicals by means of engineered life, like life-saving clotting
02:17factors, growth hormones and insulin, all things we had to harvest from the organs of
02:21animals before that.
02:23The first food modified in the lab went on sale in 1994, the flavor savor tomato, a tomato
02:29given a much longer shelf life via an extra gene that suppressed the buildup of a rotting
02:34enzyme.
02:35But GM food and the controversy surrounding them deserve a video of their own.
02:40In the 1990s, there was also a brief foray into human engineering.
02:44To treat maternal infertility, babies were made that carried genetic information from
02:48three humans, making them the first humans ever to have three genetic parents.
02:54Today, there are super-muscled pigs, fast-growing salmon, featherless chickens and see-through
03:00frogs.
03:01On the fun side, we made things glow in the dark.
03:04Fluorescent zebrafish are available for as little as $10.
03:08All of this is already very impressive, but until recently, gene editing was extremely
03:13expensive, complicated and took a long time to do.
03:17This has now changed with a revolutionary new technology now entering the stage.
03:22CRISPR.
03:23Overnight, the costs of engineering have shrunk by 99%.
03:28Instead of a year, it takes a few weeks to conduct experiments and basically everybody
03:32with a lab can do it.
03:35It's hard to get across how big a technical revolution CRISPR is.
03:39It literally has the potential to change humanity forever.
03:43Why did this sudden revolution happen, and how does it work?
03:52Bacteria and viruses have been fighting since the dawn of life.
03:56So-called bacteriophages or phages hunt bacteria.
04:00In the ocean, phages kill 40% of them every single day.
04:04Phages do this by inserting their own genetic code into the bacteria and taking them over
04:08to use them as factories.
04:10The bacteria try to resist, but fail most of the time because their protection tools
04:14are too weak.
04:16But sometimes bacteria survive an attack.
04:19Only if they do so can they activate their most effective antivirus system.
04:24They save a part of the virus DNA in their own genetic code in a DNA archive called CRISPR.
04:30Here, it's stored safely until it's needed.
04:34When the virus attacks again, the bacterium quickly makes an RNA copy from the DNA archive
04:40and arms a secret weapon, a protein called Cas9.
04:44The protein now scans the bacterium's insides for signs of the virus invader by comparing
04:49every bit of DNA it finds to the sample from the archive.
04:53When it finds a 100% perfect match, it's activated and cuts out the virus DNA, making it useless,
05:00protecting the bacterium against the attack.
05:03What's special is that Cas9 is very precise, almost like a DNA surgeon.
05:09The revolution began when scientists figured out that the CRISPR system is programmable.
05:14You can just give it a copy of DNA you want to modify and put the system into a living cell.
05:20If the old techniques of genetic manipulation were like a map, CRISPR is like a GPS system.
05:25Aside from being precise, cheap, and easy, CRISPR offers the ability to edit live cells,
05:31to switch genes on and off, and target and study particular DNA sequences.
05:36It also works for every type of cell, microorganisms, plants, animals, or humans.
05:42But despite the revolution CRISPR is for science, it's still just a first-generation tool.
05:48More precise tools are already being created and used as we speak.
05:56In 2015, scientists used CRISPR to cut the HIV virus out of living cells from patients
06:02in the lab, proving that it was possible.
06:05Only about a year later, they carried out a larger-scale project with rats that had
06:09the HIV virus in basically all of their body cells.
06:12By simply injecting CRISPR into the rats' tails, they were able to remove more than
06:1650% of the virus from cells all over the body.
06:20In a few decades, a CRISPR therapy might cure HIV.
06:24And other retroviruses, viruses that hide inside human DNA like herpes, could be eradicated this way.
06:32CRISPR could also defeat one of our worst enemies, cancer.
06:36Cancer occurs when cells refuse to die and keep multiplying while concealing themselves
06:40from the immune system.
06:42CRISPR gives us the means to edit your immune cells and make them better cancer hunters.
06:47Getting rid of cancer might eventually mean getting just a couple of injections of a few
06:51thousand of your own cells that have been engineered in the lab to heal you for good.
06:56The first clinical trial for a CRISPR cancer treatment on human patients was approved in
07:00early 2016 in the US.
07:03Not even a month later, Chinese scientists announced that they would treat lung cancer
07:06patients with immune cells modified with CRISPR in August 2016.
07:11Things are picking up pace quickly.
07:13And then there are genetic diseases.
07:16There are thousands of them, and they range from mildly annoying to deadly or entail decades
07:21of suffering.
07:22With a powerful tool like CRISPR, we may be able to end this.
07:27Over 3,000 genetic diseases are caused by a single incorrect letter in your DNA.
07:33We are already building a modified version of Cas9 that is made to change just a single
07:37letter fixing the disease in the cell.
07:40In a decade or two, we could possibly cure thousands of diseases forever.
07:45But all of these medical applications have one thing in common.
07:48They are limited to the individual and die with them, except if you use them on reproductive
07:53cells or very early embryos.
07:56But CRISPR can and probably will be used for much more.
08:00The creation of modified humans, designer babies, and will mean gradual but irreversible
08:06changes to the human gene pool.
08:13The means to edit the genome of a human embryo already exists, though the technology is still
08:19in its early stages.
08:21But it has already been attempted twice.
08:24In 2015 and 2016, Chinese scientists experimented with human embryos and were partially successful
08:30on their second attempt.
08:32They showed the enormous challenges we still face in gene-editing embryos, but also that
08:36scientists are working on solving them.
08:39This is like the computer in the 70s.
08:42There will be better computers.
08:45Regardless of your personal take on genetic engineering, it will affect you.
08:50Modified humans could alter the genome of our entire species because their engineered
08:54traits will be passed on to their children and could spread over generations, slowly
08:58modifying the whole gene pool of humanity.
09:01It will start slowly.
09:03The first designer babies will not be overly designed, it's most likely that they will
09:07be created to eliminate a deadly genetic disease running in a family.
09:11As the technology progresses and gets more refined, more and more people may argue that
09:15not using genetic modification is unethical, because it condemns children to preventable
09:21suffering and death and denies them the cure.
09:24But as soon as the first engineered kid is born, a door is opened that can't be closed
09:29anymore.
09:30Early on, vanity traits will mostly be left alone, but as genetic modification becomes
09:35more accepted and our knowledge of our genetic code enhances, the temptation will grow.
09:41If you make your offspring immune to Alzheimer, why not also give them an enhanced metabolism?
09:47Why not throw in perfect eyesight?
09:49How about height or muscular structure?
09:52Full hair?
09:53How about giving your child the gift of extraordinary intelligence?
09:57Huge changes are made as a result of the personal decisions of millions of individuals that
10:02accumulate.
10:03This is a slippery slope.
10:06Modified humans could become the new standard.
10:09But as engineering becomes more normal and our knowledge improves, we could solve the
10:13single biggest mortality risk factor, aging.
10:17Two-thirds of the 150,000 people who die today will die of age-related causes.
10:22Currently, we think aging is caused by the accumulation of damage to our cells, like
10:27DNA breaks and the systems responsible for fixing those wearing off over time.
10:32But there are also genes that directly affect aging.
10:35A combination of genetic engineering and other therapy could stop or slow down aging, maybe
10:41even reverse it.
10:43We know from nature that there are animals immune to aging.
10:46Maybe we could even borrow a few genes for ourselves.
10:50Some scientists even think biological aging could be something that eventually just stops
10:55being a thing.
10:56We would still die at some point, but instead of doing so in hospitals at age 90, we might
11:02be able to spend a few thousand years with our loved ones.
11:05Research into this is in its infancy.
11:09And many scientists are rightly skeptical about the end of aging.
11:13The challenges are enormous, and maybe it is unachievable.
11:17But it is conceivable that people alive today might be the first to profit from effective
11:22anti-aging therapy.
11:24All we might need is for someone to convince a smart billionaire to make it their next
11:27problem to solve.
11:29On a bigger scale, we certainly could solve many problems by having a modified population.
11:35Modified humans might be better equipped to cope with high-energy food, eliminating
11:38many diseases of civilization like obesity.
11:42In possession of a modified immune system, with a library of potential threats, we might
11:46become immune to most diseases that haunt us today.
11:50Even further into the future, we could engineer humans to be equipped for extended space travel
11:55and to cope with different conditions on other planets, which would be extremely helpful
12:01in keeping us alive in our hostile universe.
12:08Still a few major challenges await us, some technological, some ethical.
12:14Many of you watching will feel uncomfortable and fear that we will create a world in which
12:18we will reject non-perfect humans and pre-select features and qualities based on our idea of
12:23what's healthy.
12:25The thing is, we are already living in this world.
12:28Treatments for dozens of genetic diseases or complications have become standard for
12:32pregnant women in much of the world.
12:35Often the mere suspicion of a genetic defect can lead to the end of a pregnancy.
12:41Take Down syndrome, for example, one of the most common genetic defects.
12:45In Europe, about 92% of all pregnancies where it's detected are terminated.
12:51The decision to terminate a pregnancy is incredibly personal, but it's important to acknowledge
12:55the reality that we are pre-selecting humans based on medical conditions.
13:00There is also no use in pretending this will change, so we have to act carefully and respectfully
13:05as we advance the technology and can make more and more selections.
13:09But none of this will happen soon.
13:12As powerful as CRISPR is, and it is, it's not infallible yet.
13:17Wrong edits still happen, as well as unknown errors that can occur anywhere in the DNA
13:21and might go unnoticed.
13:23The gene edit might achieve the desired result, disabling a disease, but also might accidentally
13:28trigger unwanted changes.
13:31We just don't know enough yet about the complex interplay of our genes to avoid unpredictable
13:35consequences.
13:37Working on accuracy and monitoring methods is a major concern as the first human trials
13:42begin.
13:43And since we've discussed a possible positive future, there are darker visions, too.
13:49Imagine what a state like North Korea could do if they embraced genetic engineering.
13:54Could a state cement its rule forever by forcing gene editing on their subjects?
13:59What would stop a totalitarian regime from engineering an army of modified super soldiers?
14:05It is doable in theory.
14:07Scenarios like this one are far, far off into the future, if they ever become possible at
14:11all.
14:12But the basic proof of concept for genetic engineering like this already exists today.
14:17The technology really is that powerful.
14:20While this might be a tempting reason to ban genetic editing and related research, that
14:24would certainly be a mistake.
14:27Banning human genetic engineering would only lead to the science wandering off to a place
14:31with jurisdiction and rules that we're uncomfortable with.
14:35Only by participating can we make sure that further research is guided by caution, reason,
14:40oversight and transparency.
14:42Do you feel uncomfortable now?
14:49Most of us have something wrong with them.
14:51In the future that lies ahead of us, would we have been allowed to exist?
14:56The technology is certainly a bit scary, but we have a lot to gain and genetic engineering
15:01might just be a step in the natural evolution of intelligent species in the universe.
15:06We might end disease.
15:08We could extend our life expectancy by centuries and travel to the stars.
15:13There's no need to think small when it comes to this topic.
15:17Whatever your opinion on genetic engineering, the future is approaching no matter what.
15:22What has been insane science fiction is about to become our new reality.
15:27A reality full of opportunities and challenges.
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