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Review 600: Brainless Clones, Designer Babies, Mutational Meltdown and More

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Welcome to our latest Review, which is largely focused on human genetics, with sections on GMO HUMANS, CLONING, and GENETIC DETERMINISM, not to mention Trump and Epstein’s EUGENIC OBSESSIONS.

We know that for many of our readers primarily interested in food, farming and environmental issues, this may appear unappealing territory, but we think its relevance shouldn’t be underestimated. 

In our first section, on GENETIC DETERMINISM, for instance, we look at recent studies and articles that make it increasingly clear that a simple correspondence between genes and disease is no longer tenable. And this same tendency to oversimplification has equally bedevilled plant and animal genetics, helping to explain many of the failures of genetic engineering. 

Simplistic genetic explanations of disease can also be highly politically and commercially convenient because they direct attention away from environmental impacts on our health – impacts we might otherwise be keen to do something about (see the first item below for more on this).

And when it comes to the major ethical and welfare concerns with CLONING, arising principally from the way it generates significant genetic and epigenetic abnormalities, it’s worth remembering that the creation of gene-edited livestock (such as, cows, pigs and sheep) and other large animals frequently also involves cloning.

It’s also important that the growing push from biotech startups with mega-wealthy backers for GMO HUMANS – and even, it now seems, for brainless human clones (see CLONING) – is not allowed to normalise other concerning biotech developments, by shifting the ethical goalposts so that engineering other parts of nature (plants, trees, animals and microorganisms) appears relatively mundane or socially acceptable by comparison.

For all these reasons, we think it’s vitally important to stay abreast of these issues and ally ourselves with others fighting against genetic reductionism and dangerous and irresponsible uses of genetics.

GENETIC DETERMINISM
Why disease isn’t written in our DNA
If genes explain so much, why did heart disease, diabetes, dementia and cancer surge over the past century – while our genes barely changed at all? Toxic exposures expert and physician Professor Bruce Lanphear explains what’s really going on. Clue: it’s about environmental exposures – air pollution, toxic metals, smoking, diet, occupational hazards, and social conditions. So why does the genetic framing persist so stubbornly? Partly, Lanphear says, because it is intellectually tidy. Partly because it aligns with biomedical training. And partly because it is politically convenient – and profitable. Genetic explanations rarely trigger regulation, lawsuits, or liability. Environmental causes do.
These genes were thought to lead to blindness 100% of the time. They don't
About 1% to 2% of the population are thought to suffer from diseases resulting from a mutation in a single gene. But the genetics of even these diseases may be a lot more complex than previously thought. A new study challenges the whole concept of disorders being attributed to a single genetic mutation passed down in predictable ways in families. The research shows genetic variants believed to cause blindness in nearly everyone who carries them actually lead to vision loss less than 30% of the time. And this complexity doesn’t only apply to inherited blindness. Similar results have been found for other genes once thought to be strongly linked to health conditions. “We’re in an era of discovering a lot more about the complexity of our genomes,” says Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Exeter, Anna Murray, who led ovarian insufficiency research that showed 99.9% of supposedly disease-causing genetic variants were actually present in healthy women. The senior author of the blindness study, Dr Eric Pierce, an ophthalmologist at Harvard Medical School, predicts that the majority of the disorders thought to have a one-to-one correspondence with specific genetic variants “are going to share this new complexity”.
CLONING
Long-term study into cloning highlights its fundamental flaw: abnormalities
Cloning mammals threw up serious ethical and welfare concerns from the start because it so often fails or leads to deformities and early death. For example, Dolly the sheep took 276 attempts to create, and many clones don’t survive or have serious health problems. So it’s hardly surprising that studies of serial animal cloning – where clones continue to be produced from previous clones – showed a failure in all species after just a few generations because of the accumulation of lethal abnormalities. But in 2013, researchers published a paper in which they claimed they had made the cloning process more efficient so that it “may be possible to re-clone animals indefinitely”. They also claimed that after cloning mice for 25 generations, there was “No evidence for the accumulation of reprogramming or genomic errors”. But 13 years on, the same researchers have now published a new paper saying their previous conclusions were wrong. They hadn’t fully analysed the DNA and so hadn’t spotted that with each generation, more and more genetic errors were accumulating and being passed on. And when the researchers carried on with their long-term serial cloning, they discovered “large structural and lethal mutations accumulated” to a point where, among other problems, the clones became completely infertile. The researchers say, “At this point, we have no ideas for overcoming this limitation”. This problem mainly affects repeated (serial) cloning. Most commercial cloning only creates one generation and then uses normal breeding, so it’s less directly impacted. Even so, cloning overall remains highly inefficient and risky, with much higher rates of genetic errors than natural reproduction, while repeated cloning over many generations appears completely unworkable.
Stealthy startup pitching brainless human clones
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According to MIT Technology Review, the founder of a stealth startup called R3 Bio, based in Richmond, California, has been secretly pitching what he’s called “brainless clones” to serve as back-up human bodies. Imagine it like this, says Tech Review: producing a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need to harvest organs from it, like a new kidney or liver. Or, alternatively, company founder John Schloendorn has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant. Schloendorn says that as artificial wombs don’t yet exist, the first batch of brainless clones will have to be carried by women paid to do the job. In the future though, he says, one brainless clone could give birth to another. This, of course, ignores the grave risks involved in cloning, such as defects, deformities, and stillbirths, which remain extremely common. But Tech Review says that’s not stopping interest – and investment – from Silicon Valley longevity enthusiasts.
Rich egomaniacs and dictators most likely customers for brainless clones
Last September, a hot mic picked up a conversation between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in which Putin said, “Biotechnology is continuously developing. Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality”. Where could he have got such an idea? According to the recent Tech Review article on brainless clones, “scenarios involving dictators are a constant topic among body replacement enthusiasts”. It also says, “The first customers for this costly technology (if it ever proves feasible) would likely be the ultra-rich or the ultra-powerful”. There are certainly immensely wealthy and powerful people in search of immortality. And among these, narcissistic dictators would be particularly well placed to disregard the defects, deformities, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths that are part and parcel of cloning.
GMO HUMANS
Bride of “China's Frankenstein” starts ANOTHER new firm touting GMO humans
In Review 589, we reported on how the biotech entrepreneur Cathy Tie, following a brief apparent marriage to the scientific pariah He Jiankui – dubbed “China's Frankenstein” after illegally creating the world’s first “CRISPR babies”, had formed her own company to gene edit human embryos. That startup, initially called Manhattan Project (an unabashed reference to the US atomic bomb project), was co-founded with Eriona Hysolli – a George Church protégé who formerly headed biological sciences at the “de-extinction” firm Colossal Biosciences. But now, following “co-founder conflict”, Tie has shuttered Manhattan and launched a new company, Origin Genomics. Her new venture, Pete Shanks reports, is aiming to do mitochondrial replacement therapy (see Review 589 for its dangers) as well as gene editing human embryos. Shanks warns his readers that, though Tie is clearly better at starting businesses than maintaining them, they should not make the mistake of underestimating her intentions. The pursuit of GMO humans for profit poses profound risks and should remain taboo – and not be trivialised or normalised.
Engineering baby geniuses to thwart the AI threat? (Yes, really)
An article in the latest issue of Mother Jones reports that some tech bros are investing in creating super-smart babies via gene editing to save the world from dangerously capable AI. It reports that often it is the same tech bro investors that are backing both what they consider “genetic optimization” and AI, and it suggests that this is because “both are central to transhumanism. This futurist philosophy, popular among the tech elite, aims to marry advancements in biology and technology to accomplish things today’s humans cannot – like extending our lives (perhaps forever!) or circumventing climate change (by colonizing other planets)… Sure, there are less extreme ways to extend life expectancy and clean up the planet. But those solutions – like expanding health care access and slashing carbon emissions – would force the AI moguls to acknowledge their culpability and perhaps commit some of their vast financial resources to the cause. And putting the brakes on AI would leave too many trillions on the table, so instead they fantasize about a future in which they are celebrated for building the ark that saves humanity from the next great flood. Never mind that they opened the floodgates.”
EUGENIC OBSESSIONS
Trump deploys the language of eugenics
President Donald Trump seems fixated on the explanatory power of genetics, praising some groups for their “good genes” and demonising others and their “bad genes”. A recent NBC News article notes, for instance, how he has blamed “the genetics” of assailants for a string of attacks across the country. “The genetics are not exactly, they’re not exactly your genetic (sic),” Trump told a Fox News Radio host. The article gives multiple examples of the president using “language around genetics to praise or criticize others”, noting that “Experts have long associated similar language with racial pseudoscience, or eugenics, a theory regarding superior hereditary traits of racial groups that [although widely accepted among scientists at one time] modern scientists have debunked and found to be unethical”. Trump has also said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” – a claim made in almost identical terms by Hitler in Mein Kampf. Fears about polluting the gene pool with “inferior races” previously drove US state laws against inter-ethnic marriages, some of which were not struck down until the 1960s. Nazi policymakers, particularly in the early 1930s, studied and modelled key aspects of their race laws, most notably the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, on such US precedents. More on Trump’s sinister decades-long obsession with eugenics, and how it spills over into policy, here.
Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t stop emailing people about eugenics
Newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein confirm the extent of his obsession with eugenics – something he had in common with his former friend Donald Trump (see item above). The emails also show how the public intellectuals and scientists he contacted tolerated or endorsed his pseudoscientific ideas. As we’ve noted previously, Epstein was also a strong supporter of transhumanism, which many regard as a modern rebranding of eugenics. Transhumanists want to use genetic engineering and other extreme technologies to “enhance” humanity (into the posthuman, or “humanity 2.0”), and much of Epstein’s “philanthropy” was directed to its financing and promotion.
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