Ah, yeah, that’s a good clarification. I definitely had in mind specifically altering future children, i.e. making a single cell with a vectored genome and then making a baby from that cell.
I haven’t thought too much about somatic gene therapy. I think it’s probably, from a technical side, mostly worse (less safe, less effective) than germline engineering. With germline engineering, you can make the genome of the future child be safe as a genome (e.g. basically indistinguishable from a natural genome); with somatic engineering you’re doing some very weird thing that’s not found in nature and that is hard to check the results of (e.g. CRISPR editor uptake would be different in different tissues). I mean it could be fine; but for germline engineering, you’ll be able to make a nearly iron-clad argument that it’s fine.
Your right that in principle somatic gene engineering is probably harder (especially once you consider the complexity of human maturation means that some things are hard to change)
I would not discount it, however
you have 15-20 years of time between germline engineering and an adult person, and in that time somatic engineering has time to catch up, and another 60-80 years after that if you are lucky before that person would die with current lifespans. In those 80-100 years, somatic engineering can catch up, and allow for revectoring
I am fairly certain that it is likely that people will be doing both. If you really bottle germline, but get a functional result with something unacceptable like 20 year fatal cancer risks at 70-90% (unlikely but possible), somatic can get a second bite at the apple.
Doing things that would cut that off might be unwise/unethical.
Ah, yeah, that’s a good clarification. I definitely had in mind specifically altering future children, i.e. making a single cell with a vectored genome and then making a baby from that cell.
I haven’t thought too much about somatic gene therapy. I think it’s probably, from a technical side, mostly worse (less safe, less effective) than germline engineering. With germline engineering, you can make the genome of the future child be safe as a genome (e.g. basically indistinguishable from a natural genome); with somatic engineering you’re doing some very weird thing that’s not found in nature and that is hard to check the results of (e.g. CRISPR editor uptake would be different in different tissues). I mean it could be fine; but for germline engineering, you’ll be able to make a nearly iron-clad argument that it’s fine.
Your right that in principle somatic gene engineering is probably harder (especially once you consider the complexity of human maturation means that some things are hard to change)
I would not discount it, however
you have 15-20 years of time between germline engineering and an adult person, and in that time somatic engineering has time to catch up, and another 60-80 years after that if you are lucky before that person would die with current lifespans. In those 80-100 years, somatic engineering can catch up, and allow for revectoring
I am fairly certain that it is likely that people will be doing both. If you really bottle germline, but get a functional result with something unacceptable like 20 year fatal cancer risks at 70-90% (unlikely but possible), somatic can get a second bite at the apple.
Doing things that would cut that off might be unwise/unethical.