Babies who are designed through a genetic modification process are called designer babies or genetic engineered babies. The seminar is all about the advantage and disadvantage of genetic engineered babies. The types of designing babies are germline engineering and preimplantation genetic engineering. A scientist, Jiankui He of Southern University of Science and Technology of China, recently claimed at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong on 29 November that he has created the world's first genetically altered babies using CRISPR. This announcement sparked controversy and criticism. The newly developed CRISPR/Cas9 technique has been applied to genetic modification of many kinds of animals. However, the technique is still in its infancy and many questions remain to be answered before it can be used for clinical purposes, especially for reproductive purposes. Here we discuss about CRISPR-CAS9 use in development of genetic engineered babies.

1. Genetic Engineered Babies
PRESENTED BY:
SHUBHAM P. KOLGE
M. PHARM FIRST YEAR
PHARMACOLOGY
UNDER GUIDANCE OF:
SWATI R. DHANDE
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR.
PHARMACOLOGY DEPARTMENT
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2. Introduction
 Babies who are “designed” through a genetic
modification process are called designer babies or
genetic engineered babies
 Genes play a major role in our life, If the genes of
an embryo are altered using technology, adding in
desired characteristics and taking away the
undesired ones, then the resulting embryo will
have a genetic makeup that has been engineered
through gene therapy
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3. What is a Designer Baby?
A baby whose genetic makeup has been
artificially selected by genetic engineering to
ensure the presence or absence of particular genes
or characteristics
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4. Real-Life Situation
 In October of 2000, Adam Nash was the world’s first designer
baby born by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)
 PGD refers to screening procedures performed on embryos to
check for genetic disorders prior to implantation and
pregnancy
 Combined with in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a process by which
egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the womb
 Embryos grown to the eight-cell stage and are checked for
genetic disorders
 It’s a major treatment in infertility, but is now being used for
other reasons
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5. Designer Babies Today
 To date, genetic technology has only been used to treat serious
disease in children
 Discoveries about the influence of genes on human traits
opens the possibility of transferring these techniques to human
beings
 Developing technology makes it possible to alter anything
from gender to disease, and eventually appearance,
personality, and IQ
 Some believe that parents will inevitably want to choose their
children’s genes, thus creating designer babies
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7. Types of Designing babies
Germline engineering
 Germline genetic modification is a form of genetic
engineering which involves changing genes in
eggs, sperm, or very early embryos.
 This of engineering is inheritable, meaning that
the modified genes would appear not only in any
children that resulted from the procedure, but in
all succeeding generations.
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8. Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis
 Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD or
PIGD) is the genetic profiling of embryos prior to
implantation (as a form of embryo profiling), and
sometimes even of oocytes prior to fertilization.
 PGD is considered in a similar fashion to prenatal
diagnosis
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9. Creation of Designer babies
 Since 2004, we know the whole human DNA by
the Human Genome Project.
 With increasing computer power it was possible to
read all the base pairs (about 3.2 billion for one
DNA copy), which are the basic modules in the
blueprint of life.
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10. 10

11. CRISPR-CAS9 (Clustered
Regularly Interspaced Short
Pallindromic Repeats)
 A map is used to find the exact place where it’s
supposed to cut.
 After having localized the region on the DNA, the
defective part is replaced by cutting it out.
 That’s where Cas9 comes into play.
 Cas9 is a pair of DNA-scissors that cuts
(dissolves) the connection between the elements
of the DNA backbone.
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13.  After Cas9 has successfully found
and cut the target region, the
defective part of the DNA needs to
be changed.
 For this step, scientists take
advantage of the body’s repair
mechanism called HDR
(homology directed repair).
 Each cell uses the HDR
mechanism to repair breaks in its
DNA.
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14.  HDR uses a protein
complex similar to Cas9.
 This protein complex is
kind of a DNA glue.
However, it not only glues
together the free ends of
the DNA strands but also
replaces the adjacent area
in the DNA based on an
intact template of the
whole region.
 The reason for this is that
the area around the
breakage could also be
damaged and thus it’s safer
to replace it at the same
time.
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15.  Scientists produce a lot of DNA strand fragments
that exactly match the area around the breakage.
But some parts are different containing new or
altered information.
 They sneak a lot of these manipulated DNA
fragments into the cell.
 when HDR looks for a template to fix the cut in
the DNA strand, it will most certainly take one of
these matching but modified fragments the
scientists snuck in because the area around the
breakage is surrounded by them.
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16. Advantages
 Allows couples who can’t conceive normally to
have children
 Allows couples to balance gender in their families
 Genetic screening reduces the baby’s chances of
being born with a serious genetic disease
 Increases the likelihood of a healthy baby
 Reduces chances of miscarriage
 Reduces chances of termination due to disorder
 Can be used to save lives
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17. Disadvantages
 Moral and ethical concerns:
 Too much like playing God
 Social concerns:
 High cost leads to gap in society
 Genetically enhanced people may start to feel superior
to those who haven’t been enhanced
 Such groups of people may become prejudiced against
one another due to a feeling of lost common humanity
with non-enhanced people
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18. Disadvantages
 Safety concerns:
 Can lead to ovarian hyper-stimulation
syndrome (OHSS)
 Unskilled lab technology could damage
embryo during biopsy
 The removal of cells from eight-cell embryos
has implications for the well-being of people
created by PGD
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20.  What are the Fertility Institutes?
 They provide a variety of fertility and
infertility services, including PGD
 They have nothing against the designer baby
and have the world’s leading, highly
successful, and most respected gender
selection program (99.9% accuracy)
 Can be found in Los Angeles, New York, and
Mexico
 Couples will be able to select both the gender and
physical traits of their children
 Growth of PGD is unfettered by any state or
federal regulations in the United States
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21.  Survey results:
 56% supported using genetic tests to counter
blindness
 75% supported using genetic tests for mental
retardation
 10% of respondents said they would want genetic
testing for athletic ability
 10% voted for improved height
 13% backed the approach to select for superior
intelligence
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22. How is a designer baby
created?
 An embryo is created by in-vitro fertilization
(IVF)
 A single cell is removed from that embryo within
the first 5 days of its creation
 The cell is genetically tested
 The parents decide whether to discard the embryo
or implant it in the mother's womb
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23. Genetic Disorders
 Single gene disorder is a genetic conditions caused by the
alteration or mutation of a specific gene in the affected
person’s DNA.
 Single gene disorders are heritable and often run in families.
 Chromosome Abnormalities usually happens as a result of an
error in cell division.
 Multifactorial disorder is caused by the interaction of genetic
and sometimes also non genetic, environmental factors.
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24. Genetic Counselling
 Genetic counseling can help perspective parents
who have a genetic disorder regarding to their
future children because genetic counseling is the
counseling of individuals, and of prospective
parents regarding their offspring, on the
probabilities, dangers, diagnosis, and treatment of
inherited diseases.
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25. Cons
 If allowed, designer babies will have a bad impact in our world.
 It will end many people thinking that foreigners and anyone else
who seems are disgusting and people are scared of them.
 People who have genetic defects would be socially excluded from
other kids.
 They will be separated from the society.
 Designer babies, will lead to injustice on the basis of certain
qualities or traits.
 Kids of rich families will get genetic enhancement, which will
lead to genetic upper class people.
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26. Cons
 Parents who love sports would have the athletic ability
engineered into the child, however, the child may not want
the same.
 If a child is born with the outstanding ability to play athletics
and they choose not to, an engineered gene is wasted, or the
child is forced to do something they don’t want to do.
 Another reason for making a designer baby is risky are the
several mutations virus and diseases that altering genes.
 Now a days its difficult to know when altering genes can
cause birth defects and illnesses that will affect a child’s life
forever.
 Even though, most parts of the world are still male
dominated, the gender of the baby can lead to gender
discrimination across the globe.
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27. Pros
 In some cases designer babies can be a good
thing.
 For instance, The Hashmi family have a child who
has a rare blood disorder, who urgently needs a
blood marrow transplant. Now the Hashmi’s may
be able to have a child that will be free from the
disorder that the other child has.
 The child that is going to be born could also
donate tissue to cure its sibling.
 This is a positive side to designer babies.
 In many cases when a child is suffering from
diseases such a leukemia a parent might have
another child but alter their genes to make them a
perfect match to their sick child in order to save
them.
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28. Case study
 Recently, Jian-kui HE, a Chinese scientist, claimed to have
“created” the first gene-edited babies, designed to be naturally
immune to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
 The news immediately triggered widespread criticism,
denouncement, and debate over the scientific and ethical legitimacy
of HE’s genetic experiments.
 China’s guidelines and regulations have banned germline genome
editing on human embryos for clinical use because of scientific and
ethical concerns, in accordance with the international agreement.
 HE’s human experimentation has not only violated these Chinese
regulations, but also breached other ethical and regulatory norms.
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33.  These include questionable scientific value, unreasonable risk-
benefit ratio, illegitimate ethics review, invalid informed consent,
and regulatory misconduct.
 This series of ethical failings of HE and his team reveal the
institutional failure of the current ethics governance system which
largely depends on scientist’s self-regulation.
 The incident highlights the need for urgent improvement of ethics
governance at all levels, the enforcement of technical and ethical
guidelines, and the establishment of laws relating to such bioethical
issues.
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34.  He announced that he had used the gene editing technique
known as CRISPR to change the DNA of human embryos
created via in vitro fertilization
 And that these two embryos had been successfully
implanted in their mom and developed into twin baby girls
(Lulu and Nana)
 The experiment has been universally condemned by
scientists.
 In this latest experiment, He Jiankui, used CRISPR to
disable a gene called CCR5 in human embryos
 CCR5 involved in the immune system, and the HIV virus
exploits it in order to infect human cells so by disabling this
gene, he aimed to make the babies resistant to HIV
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36. Conclusion
 It seems unmoral and unethical to test embryos for
certain genes and to tamper with them
 Technology is still developing so safety concerns are
high
 Many children’s lives could be saved
 Fewer children would be born with genetic disorders
 The idea is still new, so it’s hard to say who is right
and who is wrong
 There are many advantages and disadvantages of the
designer baby, and we should keep an open mind and
unbiased attitude towards them
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37. References
 1. Martinson JJ, Chapman NH, Rees DC, Luis Y-T, Clegg JB. Global
distribution of the CCR5 gene 32-basepair deletion. Nat Genet
1997;16:100–3.
 2. Yong E. The CRISPR baby scandal gets worse by the day. The Atlantic
December 3, 2018.
 3. Cohen IG, Adashi EY. The FDA is prohibited from going germline.
Science 2016;353:545–6.
 4. Doudna J, Sternberg SH. A crack in creation: gene editing and the
unthinkable power to control evolution. New York (NY): Houghton
Mifflin; 2017.
 5. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Human
genome editing: science, ethics, and governance. Washington,DC: The
National Academies Press; 2017.
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