As we reached the Fourth Industrial Revolution, various range of technologies has been developed recently, including genome editing which is in the center of attention. While humans were used to be governed by genes, now they got a position as a gene editor. However, a research team led by Rasmus Nielsen published a study in the journal Nature Medicine that people who have both CCR5 gene variations had a 21 percent higher mortality rate.

▲ What Gene Editing will change?

Last year, professor He Jiankui created a twin girl through genetic manipulation. At that time, He Jiankui said that he edited a gene called CCR5 to prevent girls from getting infected with HIV. As concerns in the life sciences, the community continued after the discovery of professor He Jiankui's experiments, professor Nielsen decided to monitor the effects of the CCR5 32 mutation using data of England bio-bank. The analysis showed that the mortality rate was about 21 percent higher when people had mutations on both sides compared to those who did not have mutations or had mutations on only one of the pairs of genes.

▲ This is a professor He Jiankui, who created a twin girl through genetic manipulation.

Experts pointed out that the incident shows how difficult genetic manipulation involved in the birth of a human being is since the gene function of a human being is not fully understood compared to the development of genome editing technology. Lovell-Gadge, a genetic expert, said that we do not know enough about genes yet. It is said that it is very dangerous to edit genes when you do not know them.

Since the incident, concerns have grown over the ethical problems of genetic editing as well as its dangers. Although the benefits of genetic editing are enormous, it may be better to concentrate on the development of technology after having enough understanding of human genes.

Currently, far from experimenting with gene therapy, it is hard to research in the field of genetic experimentation in Korea. This is because of the harsh regulation of bioethics law which was strengthened after the Hwang Woo-seok scandal. Thanks to the strict restriction, there are few controversies about bioethics in Korea. However, it is possible for Korea to be left behind in the development of biotechnology.

June 15th, 2019

by Chaehyeon Seong