RE: The Future of Health and Medicine #2.1 - Applications of CRISPR/Cas9
Quite a nice post.
While scientists have claimed for years that there's nothing to worry about, even just a little research can dig up some pretty legitimate concerns.
Concerns are legitimate but there isn't any evidence to validate the concerns. CRISPR isn't going to change anything either. At least not with regards to GMO foods.
Some are a great idea, most are completely unconcerning (adding vitamin production pathways, stopping apples from Browning by killing an oxidase enzyme) but others (adding pesticide/herbicide resistance) give me more pause.
Over all the concerns are overblown for the tech as a whole.
By learning how to switch the cancer causing genes on and off with extreme ease and precision, treating cancer may become as easy as taking a pill and forgetting about it.
Not that simple. Many of the genes which cause cancer are also necessary for cellular function , it's all about expression levels, and precision regulation of enzyme activities in many cases. CRISPR has a lot of hurdles before it could effectively treat an adult too. Who knows where this technology will take us.
Thanks for the input @justtryme90! I always appreciate experienced and educated responses!
I completely agree with you when it comes to most of the GMO concerns being overblown. It seems most of the concerns come from a place of fear and misunderstanding rather than an educated and researched opinion on the matter. As with most things, people hear that it's genetically modified, and they suspect the worst without any evidence to suggest such an opinion.
Although, I do respectfully disagree with the effect CRISPR will have on GMO's. Now, I openly admit this is speculative, but using CRISPR and Fourth Generation Gene Editing will be vastly more precise and efficient in comparison to TALENs and ZFNs, and other gene editing techniques. At first, I agree that the differences will be negligible compared to current GMO techniques (such as browning), but as the technology gets better (again, there are several hurdles in front of this), the differences will become much more dramatic and noticeable.
As for cancer treatments, I also agree that it isn't so simple as taking a pill -- yet. Again, I'm being speculative here, but with an effective enough delivery system, there's no reason that it isn't possible. CRISPR has already demonstrated an ability to effect expression levels through the epigenome. It's natural to speculate off of that. Are there hurdles? Undoubtedly. But I'm not pretending there aren't.
I guess we will just have to wait and see how CRISPR progresses, and whether or not the challenges are able to be overcome or if some are just inherent limitations of the system. :)
I am apparently not nearly as optimistic about it as you are.
Believe it or not, I feel as though I'm being rather conservative with my expectations of CRISPR, or gene editing in general. At the same time, speculating in any capacity is by nature optimistic, so I will definitely give you that.
Only time will tell!