Question

1) What are some of the ethical issues that could arise with the development and use of CRISPR?

2) How much responsibility (if any) should the designer of CRISPR take with regard to anticipating and addressing these ethical issues.

Answer 1

1.

• CRISPR is one of the crucial tool used for the purpose of genetic manipulation in biomedical and biotechnology field.
• Like other emerging technologies in biomedical research, human genome editing opens some serious questions regarding equality and justice, for example who will have access to potential treatment and for whom those treatments will be developed.
• One of the biggest risks of germline editing therapy is the introduction of alleles with unforeseen side-effects that would be recognized generations after initial gene editing.
• There might be some bias in the use of this technique between patients.
• The technique should address those disease mainly which do not have any alternative treatment option.
• The technical improvement for non-Mendelian disorders.

2.

• In order to avoid fear-mongering, it's users will have to find a way to responsibly explain this technology to the general public.
• The designer must justified the editing in a particular patient and practicing the same editing in another patient.
• Any immoral use of such editing should be anticipated by the designer in advance.
• The designer should be able to understand the best use or misuse of such editing.
• There should be tracking of each and every editing.