How Should Genetic Engineering Shape Our Future?
An artist's rendering of genetic codes.
Terror. Error. Success. These are the three outcomes that ethicists evaluating a new technology should fear. The possibility that a breakthrough might be used maliciously. The possibility that newly empowered scientists might make a catastrophic mistake. And the possibility that a technology will be so successful that it will change how we live in ways that we can only guess—and that we may not want.
These tools will allow scientists to practice genetic engineering on a scale that is simultaneously far more precise and far more ambitious than ever before.
It was true for the scientists behind the Manhattan Project, who bequeathed a fear of nuclear terror and nuclear error, even as global security is ultimately defined by these weapons of mass destruction. It was true for the developers of the automobile, whose invention has been weaponized by terrorists and kills 3,400 people by accident each day, even as the more than 1 billion cars on the road today have utterly reshaped where we live and how we move. And it is true for the researchers behind the revolution in gene editing and writing.
Put simply, these tools will allow scientists to practice genetic engineering on a scale that is simultaneously far more precise and far more ambitious than ever before. Editing techniques like CRISPR enable exact genetic repairs through a simple cut and paste of DNA, while synthetic biologists aim to redo entire genomes through the writing and substitution of synthetic genes. The technologies are complementary, and they herald an era when the book of life will be not just readable, but rewritable. Food crops, endangered animals, even the human body itself—all will eventually be programmable.
The benefits are easy to imagine: more sustainable crops; cures for terminal genetic disorders; even an end to infertility. Also easy to picture are the ethical pitfalls as the negative images of those same benefits.
Terror is the most straightforward. States have sought to use biology as a weapon at least since invading armies flung the corpses of plague victims into besieged castles. The 1975 biological weapons convention banned—with general success—the research and production of offensive bioweapons, though a handful of lone terrorists and groups like the Oregon-based Rajneeshee cult have still carried out limited bioweapon attacks. Those incidents ultimately caused little death and damage, in part because medical science is mostly capable of defending us from those pathogens that are most easily weaponized. But gene editing and writing offers the chance to engineer germs that could be far more effective than anything nature could develop. Imagine a virus that combines the lethality of Ebola with the transmissibility of the common cold—and in the new world of biology, if you can imagine something, you will eventually be able to create it.
The benefits are easy to imagine: more sustainable crops; cures for terminal genetic disorders; even an end to infertility. Also easy to picture are the ethical pitfalls.
That's one reason why James Clapper, then the U.S. director of national intelligence, added gene editing to the list of threats posed by "weapons of mass destruction and proliferation" in 2016. But these new tools aren't merely dangerous in the wrong hands—they can also be dangerous in the right hands. The list of labs accidents involving lethal bugs is much longer than you'd want to know, at least if you're the sort of person who likes to sleep at night. The U.S. recently lifted a ban on research that works to make existing pathogens, like the H5N1 avian flu virus, more virulent and transmissible, often using new technologies like gene editing. Such work can help medicine better prepare for what nature might throw at us, but it could also make the consequences of a lab error far more catastrophic. There's also the possibility that the use of gene editing and writing in nature—say, by CRISPRing disease-carrying mosquitoes to make them sterile—could backfire in some unforeseen way. Add in the fact that the techniques behind gene editing and writing are becoming simpler and more automated with every year, and eventually millions of people will be capable—through terror or error—of unleashing something awful on the world.
The good news is that both the government and the researchers driving these technologies are increasingly aware of the risks of bioterror and error. One government program, the Functional Genomic and Computational Assessment of Threats (Fun GCAT), provides funding for scientists to scan genetic data looking for the "accidental or intentional creation of a biological threat." Those in the biotech industry know to keep an eye out for suspicious orders—say, a new customer who orders part of the sequence of the Ebola or smallpox virus. "With every invention there is a good use and a bad use," Emily Leproust, the CEO of the commercial DNA synthesis startup Twist Bioscience, said in a recent interview. "What we try hard to do is put in place as many systems as we can to maximize the good stuff, and minimize any negative impact."
But the greatest ethical challenges in gene editing and writing will arise not from malevolence or mistakes, but from success. Through a new technology called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), scientists are learning how to turn adult human cells like a piece of skin into lab-made sperm and egg cells. That would be a huge breakthrough for the infertile, or for same-sex couples who want to conceive a child biologically related to both partners. It would also open the door to using gene editing to tinker with those lab-made embryos. At first interventions would address any obvious genetic disorders, but those same tools would likely allow the engineering of a child's intelligence, height and other characteristics. We might be morally repelled today by such an ability, as many scientists and ethicists were repelled by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) when it was introduced four decades ago. Yet more than a million babies in the U.S. have been born through IVF in the years since. Ethics can evolve along with technology.
These new technologies offer control over the code of life, but only we as a society can seize control over where these tools will take us.
Fertility is just one human institution that stands to be changed utterly by gene editing and writing, and it's a change we can at least imagine. As the new biology grows more ambitious, it will alter society in ways we can't begin to picture. Harvard's George Church and New York University's Jef Boeke are leading an effort called HGP-Write to create a completely synthetic human genome. While gene editing allows scientists to make small changes to the genome, the gene synthesis that Church and his collaborators are developing allows for total genetic rewrites. "It's a difference between editing a book and writing one," Church said in an interview earlier this year.
Church is already working on synthesizing organs that would be resistant to viruses, while other researchers like Harris Wang at Columbia University are experimenting with bioengineering mammalian cells to produce nutrients like amino acids that we currently need to get from food. The horizon is endless—and so are the ethical concerns of success. What if parents feel pressure to engineer their children just so they don't fall behind their IVG peers? What if only the rich are able to access synthetic biology technologies that could make them stronger, smarter and longer lived? Could inequality become encoded in the genome?
These are questions that are different from the terror and errors fears around biosecurity, because they ask us to think hard about what kind of future we want. To their credit, Church and his collaborators have engaged bioethicists from the start of their work, as have the pioneers behind CRISPR. But the challenges coming from successful gene editing and writing are too large to be outsourced to professional ethicists. These new technologies offer control over the code of life, but only we as a society can seize control over where these tools will take us.
Chicken that is grown entirely in a laboratory, without harming a single bird, could be sold in supermarkets in the coming months. But critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat have not been appropriately explored.
Last November, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration disclosed that chicken from a California firm called UPSIDE Foods did not raise safety concerns, it drily upended how humans have obtained animal protein for thousands of generations.
“The FDA is ready to work with additional firms developing cultured animal cell food and production processes to ensure their food is safe and lawful,” the agency said in a statement at the time.
Assuming UPSIDE obtains clearances from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, its chicken – grown entirely in a laboratory without harming a single bird – could be sold in supermarkets in the coming months.
“Ultimately, we want our products to be available everywhere meat is sold, including retail and food service channels,” a company spokesperson said. The upscale French restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco will have UPSIDE chicken on its menu once it is approved, she added.
Known as lab-grown or cultured meat, a product such as UPSIDE’s is created using stem cells and other tissue obtained from a chicken, cow or other livestock. Those cells are then multiplied in a nutrient-dense environment, usually in conjunction with a “scaffold” of plant-based materials or gelatin to give them a familiar form, such as a chicken breast or a ribeye steak. A Dutch company called Mosa Meat claims it can produce 80,000 hamburgers derived from a cluster of tissue the size of a sesame seed.
Critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat and the possibility it could merge “Brave New World” with “The Jungle” and “Soylent Green” have not been appropriately explored.
That’s a far cry from when it took months of work to create the first lab-grown hamburger a decade ago. That minuscule patty – which did not contain any fat and was literally plucked from a Petri dish to go into a frying pan – cost about $325,000 to produce.
Just a decade later, an Israeli company called Future Meat said it can produce lab-grown meat for about $1.70 per pound. It plans to open a production facility in the U.S. sometime in 2023 and distribute its products under the brand name “Believer.”
Costs for production have sunk so low that researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh expect sometime in early 2024 to produce lab-grown Wagyu steak to showcase the viability of growing high-end cuts of beef cheaply. The Carnegie Mellon team is producing its Wagyu using a consumer 3-D printer bought secondhand on eBay and modified to print the highly marbled flesh using a method developed by the university. The device costs $200 – about the same as a pound of Wagyu in the U.S. The initiative’s modest five-figure budget was successfully crowdfunded last year.
“The big cost is going to be the cells (which are being extracted by a cow somewhere in Pennsylvania), but otherwise printing doesn’t add much to the process,” said Rosalyn Abbott, a Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of bioengineering who is co-leader on the project. “But it adds value, unlike doing this with ground meat.”
Lab-Grown Meat’s Promise
Proponents of lab-grown meat say it will cut down on traditional agriculture, which has been a leading contributor to deforestation, water shortages and contaminated waterways from animal waste, as well as climate change.
An Oxford University study from 2011 concludes lab-grown meat could have greenhouse emissions 96 percent lower compared to traditionally raised livestock. Moreover, proponents of lab-grown meat claim that the suffering of animals would decline dramatically, as they would no longer need to be warehoused and slaughtered. A recently opened 26-story high-rise in China dedicated to the raising and slaughtering of pigs illustrates the current plight of livestock in stark terms.
Scientists may even learn how to tweak lab-grown meat to make it more nutritious. Natural red meat is high in saturated fat and, if it’s eaten too often, can lead to chronic diseases. In lab versions, the saturated fat could be swapped for healthier, omega-3 fatty acids.
But critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat and the possibility it could merge “Brave New World” with “The Jungle” and “Soylent Green” have not been appropriately explored.
A Slippery Slope?
Some academics who have studied the moral and ethical issues surrounding lab-grown meat believe it will have a tough path ahead gaining acceptance by consumers. Should it actually succeed in gaining acceptance, many ethical questions must be answered.
“People might be interested” in lab-grown meat, perhaps as a curiosity, said Carlos Alvaro, an associate professor of philosophy at the New York City College of Technology, part of the City University of New York. But the allure of traditionally sourced meat has been baked – or perhaps grilled – into people’s minds for so long that they may not want to make the switch. Plant-based meat provides a recent example of the uphill battle involved in changing old food habits, with Beyond Meat’s stock prices dipping nearly 80 percent in 2022.
"There are many studies showing that people don’t really care about the environment (to that extent)," Alvaro said. "So I don’t know how you would convince people to do this because of the environment.”
“From my research, I understand that the taste (of lab-grown meat) is not quite there,” Alvaro said, noting that the amino acids, sugars and other nutrients required to grow cultivated meat do not mimic what livestock are fed. He also observed that the multiplication of cells as part of the process “really mimic cancer cells” in the way they grow, another off-putting thought for would-be consumers of the product.
Alvaro is also convinced the public will not buy into any argument that lab-grown meat is more environmentally friendly.
“If people care about the environment, they either try and consume considerably less meat and other animal products, or they go vegan or vegetarian,” he said. “But there are many studies showing that people don’t really care about the environment (to that extent). So I don’t know how you would convince people to do this because of the environment.”
Ben Bramble, a professor at Australian National University who previously held posts at Princeton and Trinity College in Ireland, takes a slightly different tack. He noted that “if lab-grown meat becomes cheaper, healthier, or tastier than regular meat, there will be a large market for it. If it becomes all of these things, it will dominate the market.”
However, Bramble has misgivings about that occurring. He believes a smooth transition from traditionally sourced meat to a lab-grown version would allow humans to elide over the decades of animal cruelty perpetrated by large-scale agriculture, without fully reckoning with and learning from this injustice.
“My fear is that if we all switch over to lab-grown meat because it has become cheaper, healthier, or tastier than regular meat, we might never come to realize what we have done, and the terrible things we are capable of,” he said. “This would be a catastrophe.”
Bramble’s writings about cultured meat also raise some serious moral conundrums. If, for example, animal meat may be cultivated without killing animals, why not create products from human protein?
Actually, that’s already happened.
It occurred in 2019, when Orkan Telhan, a professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, collaborated with two scientists to create an art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the future of foodstuffs.
Although the exhibit included bioengineered bread and genetically modified salmon, it was an installation called “Ouroboros Steak” that drew the most attention. That was comprised of pieces of human flesh grown in a lab from cultivated cells and expired blood products obtained from online sources.
The exhibit was presented as four tiny morsels of red meat – shaped in patterns suggesting an ouroboros, a dragon eating its own tail. They were placed in tiny individual saucers atop a larger plate and placemat with a calico pattern, suggesting an item to order in a diner. The artwork drew international headlines – as well as condemnation for Telhan’s vision.
Telhan’s artwork is intended to critique the overarching assumption that lab-grown meat will eventually replace more traditional production methods, as well as the lack of transparency surrounding many processed foodstuffs. “They think that this problem (from industrial-scale agriculture) is going be solved by this new technology,” Telhan said. “I am critical (of) that perspective.”
Unlike Bramble, Telhan is not against lab-grown meat, so long as its producers are transparent about the sourcing of materials and its cultivation. But he believes that large-scale agricultural meat production – which dates back centuries – is not going to be replaced so quickly.
“We see this again and again with different industries, like algae-based fuels. A lot of companies were excited about this, and promoted it,” Telhan said. “And years later, we know these fuels work. But to be able to displace the oil industry means building the infrastructure to scale takes billions of dollars, and nobody has the patience or money to do it.”
Alvaro concurred on this point, which he believes is already weakened because a large swath of consumers aren’t concerned about environmental degradation.
“They’re going to have to sell this big, but in order to convince people to do so, they have to convince them to eat this product instead of regular meat,” Alvaro said.
Hidden Tweaks?
Moreover, if lab-based meat does obtain a significant market share, Telhan suggested companies may do things to the product – such as to genetically modify it to become more profitable – and never notify consumers. That is a particular concern in the U.S., where regulations regarding such modifications are vastly more relaxed than in the European Union.
“I think that they have really good objectives, and they aspire to good objectives,” Telhan said. “But the system itself doesn't really allow for that much transparency.”
No matter what the future holds, sometime next year Carnegie Mellon is expected to hold a press conference announcing it has produced a cut of the world’s most expensive beef with the help of a modified piece of consumer electronics. It will likely take place at around the same time UPSIDE chicken will be available for purchase in supermarkets and restaurants, pending the USDA’s approvals.
Abbott, the Carnegie Mellon professor, suggested the future event will be both informative and celebratory.
“I think Carnegie Mellon would have someone potentially cook it for us,” she said. “Like have a really good chef in New York City do it.”
In this week's Friday Five, breathing this way may cut down on anxiety, a fasting regimen that could make you sick, this type of job makes men more virile, 3D printed hearts could save your life, and the role of metformin in preventing dementia.
The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on scientific creativity and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend.
Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five, featuring interviews with Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, and Dr. Filip Swirski, professor of medicine and cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
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Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five, featuring interviews with Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, and Dr. Filip Swirski, professor of medicine and cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Breathing this way cuts down on anxiety*
- Could your fasting regimen make you sick?
- This type of job makes men more virile
- 3D printed hearts could save your life
- Yet another potential benefit of metformin
* This video with Dr. Andrew Huberman of Stanford shows exactly how to do the breathing practice.