Dr. He, or Dr. Mengele?

Genetic Experiments on Live Human Embryos

Today in The East African, one can read that a researcher, Mr. He, at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, has announced his work on removing the CCR5 receptor in a foetus of a twin pair, in an attempt to block the twin's susceptibility of contracting HIV. 

Uproar

It appears that the entire Science World is in uproar. I tend to ask, why? There are indeed many ethical questions in this approach, however, let us face it, hundreds of thousands of children are born every year with severe birth defects, none of them caused by a good-hearted intent of curing a worldwide epidemic. 

Holy Monkey - or - Human?

Why do we, the humans, hold our own genome so high as if it is so much more valuable or untouchable than that of monkeys? We do share 98.7% (or something in that high rank) of our entire genome with Chimpanzees. And we see no problem in genetic experimenting with Monkeys! 

There are international corporate's who are experimenting deeply into the very food we eat, with devastating effects on our health, and we are discussing genetic manipulation of staple food such as Wheat, Maize, etc. - they are even experimenting so much so that some of these species are now contaminated with as foreign substances such as Soya, etc. 

Clean, Cleaner, Monsanto

Well. Where am I aiming at? While these Syngenta's and Monsanto's have worked for the profit of their businesses, at the cost of the health of millions of human beings, the extermination and torment of billions if not trillions of insects (while there are alternatives), and while it was recently proven in California (in court), that these chemicals were the direct cause of cancer, and while these corporate's production has been labeled carcinogenic in their own home state, the doctor He has worked for the father of his two twin daughters, with the aim of healing / curing a problem. Dr. He has used the most modern technology - the CRISP technology - to achieve his result, which was, a partial removal of the CCR5 genome from the girls's genomes.

TRULY, there are not only one, but maybe tens or hundreds of arguments both scientifical, ethical and even religious, which must give rise to conversations about what shall be of this technology, used by Dr. He, to save the lives of these two girls.

Do we kill 100,000 or 1 million?

In the article, several scientists are decrying his work, saying it is surreal. In as much as this is likely very very unorthodox, please put another view to this: During 2nd world war, Truman was in a dilemma. He could continue the land war against Japan, and estimates told him that both sides together would be losing some 1 million soldiers in total. He could drop the atomic bomb (over Hiroshima), and hope that the Kamikaze style (suicide style) war, where Japan's brave soldiers went "all in, and sacrified their lives to kill the enemy", would stop. If not, then the atomic bomb would only add disaster.

Truman was faced with a similar scenario as scientists today. Scientists today are faced with so many rules and regulations - the majority of them imposed on them via lobbyists and corrupt medical corporations, who would indeed want, NOT to put an end to any chronic disease which can be "maintained" by medication (which they can produce, tsk tsk) - and others imposed by scientists lobbies who have established bordering to corrupt practices for having papers accepted.

The entire scene is very interesting. Let us still maintain a non-judgmental attitude, and let us leave ethics, religion and lobby-associations out for a moment, due to their all too well established nature.

Bad, Ugly and Disaster

Here comes now Dr. He, who has had 50% success in eliminating one genome, the CCR5 genome, from one of the daughters' genome, and, this imposes a problem for 85% of the HIV's in circulation, as they will then not be able to penetrate this daughter's cells. The remaining 15% of the HIV genotypes would be able to, due to that they according to the article, can penetrate the cells, using the CXCR4 receptor. Well. Back to the Truman story. Truman was faced with option 1, being, 1 million lives taken in a land war. Option 2 being, an unknown, hopefully smaller, number of lives taken in atomic blasts. There is simply nothing beautiful, nothing workable in any of these options. I will for the sake of this conversation leave out the possibility that Truman could have sat down with Hirohito (was that the boss in Japan in those days), and said to him: Dear Emperor, with all due respect, the war is over. Please, respectfully, let us have peace. It may have been the right solution - and knowing Japanese culture, it could have worked with some humble humility from Truman's side - but let us leave that hypothetical argument and conclude that in life, often we are confronted with two bad options as the only ones.

The current bad ones are the following:

1. We leave all HIV research to the huge, mastodont medical firms, and trust, that even though they have no interest in this, what so ever, they will naturally come up with a one-time medication which will cure HIV. Instead of ARV, that would be called: SRV - for Stop Retroviral... I bet, that plenty of those corporates who already have mastered to keep the HIV at bay, even have a solution which would actually kill off the HIV.
2. Doctors like Dr. He, is now experimenting with the human genome, on live species of the human race. While we find that barbaric, I invite you to, no, I actually WISH that you see the other side of the same. Lenny Bernstein wrote in Washington Post, that 40,000 human beings were newly diagnosed with HIV, in USA, in 2016.

Is it inhumane to count humans, or is it actually the most human one can do?

Now, we hate to make human life up in numbers. However. Each individual with a possibility of a cure, does not mind, being a number, if this gives him or her a pretty good chance of being cured for a deadly disease. The same article by Lenny Bernstein wrote, that "The development of effective therapies and better prevention have changed HIV from a death sentence to a manageable disease that people can live with for decades.". Well. It is even better than what Lenny writes..: According to specialist in HIV medicine, Dr. Tesfaledet, Aga Khan hospital, Nairobi, Kenya, told me and one of my HIV positive staff, that the therapy is now so efficient (he referred back then to the then existing 1st, 2nd and 3rd line therapies - of successively stronger drugs - (with more side effects)) - so that 2/3 of the HIV positive, especially those infected with HIV 1, subclasses A to K, live the same length or even longer (!) than other, normal living beings. Life on ARV is NOT a dance on roses. Don't get me wrong. Short term, immediate side effects are rampant for 1/3 of the patients, they can surely be felt by another 1/3, and the last 1/3 don't feel anything. Long term side effects after 10 and 20 years or more of use include certain neurological disorders, dislocation of fat depots etc. (as described by Dr. Tesfaledet).

HIV patients seem to live LONGER than HIV negative...

However, the longevity of HIV positives on ARV is not due to the ARV, or the HIV, but a side effect of the necessary change of lifestyle: Reason being that those who take their ARV's and are committed to this, also tend to change their diet to be much better than the general (poor, Westernized, milk, bread, fat..) diet, and thereby they are not as susceptible to for instance heart disease and other Westernized diseases. (This is also the reason why SOME patients with Diabetes, reduces or eliminates the need of treatment by changing their lifestyle, and they end up living healthy top quality lives way beyond the average life expectancy of their demography)

The critiques of Dr. He are telling the truth, however there is an "aber dabei"

So, true it is, what Ewan Birney (director of Bioinformatics Institute) and Eric Topol, writes, that yes, there are effective ways (which does not include Dr. He's - according to them - terrible - experimentations on humans). However, if you read from Reuters, you will see the author, Nqobile Dludla, writing a story which in my humble opinion is by factors of hundreds or thousands more terrible than Dr. He's experiments. This story tells the tale of how drug corporates under the protective umbrella of marketing "Inexpensive, Generic drugs", are allowed to re-introduce almost phased out medications with active ingredients posing the risk of causing neural tube defects in babies born to mothers who became pregnant while taking the drug. These same - older - ARV's - are also under suspicion for having many more side effects than the newer, more advanced, inhibitor-based function.

Education - or lack of - is key!

As one can learn from Lenny Bernsteins article in Washington Post, the new HIV Diagnoses are disproportionately concentrated among injection drug users and black and Latino men who have sex with other men. In other words, while one can discuss drug users's capability and interest in keeping their bodies clear of HIV, one cannot discuss that a normal, sane person would want his body to be clear of HIV, it is likely obvious that nobody would want to be infected with any potentially deadly disease.

Therefore it is likely to assume that for instance lack of education plays a major role here, in this category of spread of the [HIV] infection.

If now the same lack of education will play a role too for these women who cannot afford the branded versions of ARV, and therefore are being sold to, the Aspen generics - then we will see hundreds or thousands of birth defects as a result of this initiative.

The only difference between Dr. He's and Aspen's approach is that Dr. He's approach was not sanctioned, while Aspen's approach likely was sanctioned, while one can ask, how that was allowed, when all those severe side effects have been detected on Aspen's Endolten drug? Is it sufficient if Aspen excuse themselves saying that IF these women takes an anti contraceptive (of which many of these are suspected carcinogenic!), then they can "safely" prescribe this 15-year old drug? Are we not applying double standard, when we actually condemn a risky attempt by a Dr. He, to use CRISP technology to completely STOP the HIV infection risk in two twin-girl fetuses, while we in full public, with everybody's singing hallelujah, without a blink of an eye allow prospect thousands of birth defects to happen, of which a large part of these unfortunately will survive, living terrible lives, and depleting the already poor families resources to the level of starvation? I beg that we all start opening up our eyes, stop being so naively listening and obeying to the authorities within medicine, as it has been proven time and time again (including above) that these self-declared authorities cannot be trusted with these matters. I beg that we start looking into the net risk, both evaluated in comparison with the prospect achieved quality of life, and also the prospect loss of quality of life, both in the Aspen scenario (which is just an irrelevant example in the pool of such examples), and in the Dr. He scenario.

Prerequisites for use of certain drugs must be ignored. They are unrealistic

In all honesty, we can ignore the prerequisites for using the Endolten drug - because everyone who have lived sufficiently long in Africa knows, that the dissemination of necessary information - and subsequently - the systematic use of and training in use of drugs in proper ways - leaves much to desire. Make no mistakes. The authorities are willing. So are the patients. But the general educational level, country wide, in the vast majority of African states is not sufficiently high for the patients to make qualified decisions in regards to how to comply with the prerequisites or if to comply!

Comparing apples and oranges

Therefore a drug which does not self-contained cater for all necessary precautions - built into the drug - is not better than a serious and prospect devastating and deadly experiment with prospect thousands of lives of Africans sick from HIV, while Dr. He's experiment on the two twins, must be said to be of much lesser severity.

Bringing back Ethics and Religion

Let us now come back to the aforesaid leaving out the ethics and religious aspects from this conversation. I am not a proponent of arguing that a more evil solution justifies a less evil solution. Therefore one cannot say that due to that the Emdolten drug is likely to cause the malformation of thousands of babies, then we should opt for the less invasive experiments of Dr. He!

What I am a proponent of, though, is that we need to get out of the claws of the truth-telling witnesses of more or less corrupt medical corporations, more or less corrupt Food and Drug authorities worldwide, and we need to begin to evaluate from a much more realistic point of view, whether we should consider opening much more up for human experimentation? See, THIS is what I call Ethics.

Personal comparison

If I fell sick from HIV or another such disease, I would indeed desire to participate in well calculated experiments on "Full Cure's", even knowing that an experiment could - worst case - under certain rare scenarios - cause my early death. I would in such a case take very seriously calculated risks, and I would take active part in the even very technical and biochemical discussions leading to each experiment. I am here referring to the otherwise also known method, called the "Zinc Finger", which has had its try in the HIV scene.

Who are we to judge Dr. He's experiment compared with ie. Rockets, which also kills people?

Well, the above is neither an endorsement or critique of Dr. He, but an attempt to enlighten about that what Dr. He did, may not at all be bad. History is full of necessary experiments, and a lot of these involves human beings. How about the experiments with early aircrafts? Hundreds of pilots died, hundreds of technicians died. It was not intended. It was a calculated risk. Putting the physical human body into the machine was a risk of its own.

I can simply not see, why the Scientific Society is so much up in arms - if it was not due to that they are either envious that they did not themselves have the guts to do what Dr. He found necessary to save lives of not only the twins, but maybe further human beings suffering from diseases which could - prospect - be cured - or due to that the same scientists are thoroughly worried that their career paths would be distorted - hitherto a career going straight into the advanced labs of medical corporations is a sure winner - imagine if Dr. He and others disrupt this path by providing possibilities that any Tom, Dick and Adelaide can setup a lab, experiment with some CRISP technology, and then alter their own genome after having secured that the human lab-rat has understood in full and acknowledged the risk - in line with the early pilots? Imagine if this self-established authority is suddenly gone?

We are indeed discussing ethics here, but again - who is to discuss ethics of other human beings, if these with their full consciousness enter into risky experiments which they consider more preferable than their (destiny) diagnosis of cancer, HIV, HCV, MS, or other such serious conditions?

Thanks to Dr. He

I think my personal stand is to applaud Dr. He for his works, and to encourage the self-declared pietists and clean-handers to try something new - for instance - acceptance of people's right to self-determination, and accept that the medical industry - has failed to provide proper solutions to the HIV-, HCV, MS, Herpes, Varicella, etc. etc. problems. Unlike such gespenst figures such as Dr. Mengele, Dr. He had a humanitarian/scientific motive and consent from the father of the unborn fetuses.

Sincerely

David Svarrer