A Majority Of Americans Are In Favor Of Editing The DNA Of Unborn Children, Poll Says

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A Pew Research Center poll found that 76 percent of Americans say that editing a baby’s genes in order to prevent a serious disease at birth is acceptable. The poll was conducted to better understand public opinion about gene editing technology.

The survey found that 60 percent of Americans are in favor of the use of gene-editing technology in unborn babies to lower the likelihood that the child will develop a serious disease over his or her lifetime.

 

Gene editing in babies is inching closer to becoming a reality as a new technology, known as CRISPR, which can effectively cut the DNA, becomes more widely understood and used.

Read more at NEWSWEEK.

{Matzav.com}


13 COMMENTS

  1. The only what that can alter your DNA us Hashem.
    So if He wanted it altered, I guess you’d be the child of other parents.
    What else do they want to do? Illness comes from G-d and nobody can change what He wants to give us., DNA notwithstanding .

    • Huh?
      We go to doctors when we get a disease, we don’t accept it fatallistically.

      BTW I don’t think I ever heard “ethical” objections, simply scientific debates on how much this works and on possible long-term health issues. Perhaps it is so obvious that just about everyone agrees.

      Anonymous you realize the editing means (attempting to) modify a part of a single gene? We are remotely far from changing DNA to the point “we’d be the child of other parents” even where there are no ethical issues, and I don’t mean mice, but rather, single cell living beings.

  2. The Torah Hokodosha commands us “Tamim Thei Im…” Rashi explains that one should not delve into the future. Also, Brocha is bestowed upon things that are hidden from the eye. If Borei olam chooses to alter something he doesn’t need our assistance. One should daven when having relations for the physical and spiritual health of the child as advised by chazel.

  3. Anonymous-crooked teeth are also from Hashem. I guess that means you shouldn’t get braces. Strep throat is from Hashem too, and people used to die from it. I guess you shouldn’t take penicillin when you get strep. If Hashem gives human beings the wisdom to be able to heal themselves and prevent disease it’s idiocy not to take advantage of that wisdom. Rapo yerapei- this possuk teaches that a doctor has permission to heal. The rest of us, but extension, have permission to seek out medical services.

  4. People forget DNA is a chain, if you change one piece of it the rest get altered, so you may get what you want out of the piece you changed, but what do you do to the other pieces of the chain, they also get altered. The change may not be evident for years but it will finally immerge the one you did not one changed. So beware you may get what you want but you may also not get another thing that you don’t want.

    • Indeed, see my other comment, side effects in the long term are possible, and are not easy to study because lab animals have a shorter lifespan than humans; but this option is being considered for diseases such that the people affected would have zero chance of living decades.

  5. We’ve known children who were niftar from Cystic Fibrosis. If horrible diseases like this can be avoided by a new type of treatment that would be wonderful.
    Of course the treatment itself must be well-tested and genetic manipulation is a very serious and potentially controversial science and it’s understandable if people are uncomfortable with it.

  6. To mom from monsey: Please recognize there is a huge difference between addressing a presumption of illness r’l which is subject to change should Borei olam determine and a recognized visual ailment or illness r’l where a doctor has been granted permission by Borei olam to intercede.

  7. I’d like to know the wording of the question. Sometimes a poll is skewed simply because special interests word the questions a certain way.

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