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The Current Transcript for August 16, 2017

Host: Megan Williams

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

What's happening here which is a culture that really is dominated by men and where lack of diversity is really hurting the companies which are supposed to be about inclusion and tolerance and innovation. And so it's going to be a long debate.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: That's Kara Swisher, a tech writer and Silicon Valley insider reacting to the now infamous Google manifesto. The internal memo from a Google employee has indeed sparked a long, long debate, but not necessarily the one its author intended. We're starting today by asking why the presence of women in tech, in business, in politics—anywhere—still gets questioned through a biological lens. And then a new scientific tool that promises some amazing breakthroughs.

SOUNDCLIP

Now we have a technology that allows precise changes to be made at only the desired DNA sequences. Also it's a technology that is remarkably simple and inexpensive to use.

MW: And that's what makes CRISPR a disrupter. An interview with one of its developers in half an hour from now. I'm Megan Williams and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Why the anti-diversity Google 'manifesto' misses the point

Guests: Brianna Wu, Nicole Sanchez, Megan Molteni

SOUNDCLIP

A story all over the headlines this morning—offensive and harmful—that is how the CEO of Google is describing an anti-diversity memo written by one of Google's male employees. Now the engineer behind the manifesto which claims women are less suited for tech jobs than men. Why? Because they're women. Biologically, they can't do it. Well, that engineer tells the Wall Street Journal he has been fired.

MW: Well, it's been more than a week now since that so-called Google manifesto first surfaced online and went viral around the world. Google did fire James Damore, the employee who wrote it, for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” But the debates and conversations it started continue. Prominent Canadian lawyer Marie Henein weighed in this week with an op-ed for the Globe and Mail on the subject. Here she is reading part of it for us.

SOUNDCLIP

Once again, we are being dissected and discussed as though we barely exist. Yet another round of public debate began about how our under-representation in various fields and in leadership roles has nothing to do with hundreds of years of inequality, but rather is attributable to insurmountable biological limitation. And the most unbelievable thing happened. Writer after writer in article after article actually went out of their way to justify Mr. Damore’s view of my gender. Is this seriously still happening?

MW: Of course she is not alone in asking why a debate centered on biological differences between men and women are still happening in 2017. And so we're turning to three women who have come up against that question personally to get their take. Brianna Wu is an American software engineer and video game developer who is now running for Congress in Massachusetts. She joins us from Boston. Megan Molteni is a staff writer for Wired who recently explored this topic in an article. She joins us from San Francisco. And Nicole Sanchez is the founder and CEO of Vaya Consulting. She's been working to improve diversity in the tech industry for many years. She's in Berkeley, California. Hello to you all.

NICOLE SANCHEZ: Hello. Thank you for having us.

MEGAN MOLTENI: Good morning.

MW: Good morning. Brianna, I'll start with you quickly. What was your reaction when you read James Damore’s manifesto?

BRIANNA WU: Well, I think a lot of people outside the tech industry might think it's unusual. I can tell you there are many, many, many men in our field that hold these exact same views. So honestly it didn't shock me. It’s sort of, every woman that works in tech faces this.

MW: Megan, in terms of the contents of the manifesto, what struck you the most?

MEGAN MOLTENI: I mean I think what struck me the most is that these aren't a lot of new ideas, right? These are old ideas kind of repackaged in a new memo. These are conversations that are floating around, particularly in men rights activist groups for a long time. And so to me, it was an example of someone kind of stumbling upon this and using it as a justification for the behaviours and the practices that they saw at Google and experienced themselves, and said oh look, here's some science that can explain that.

MW: And Nicole, what did you think?

NICOLE SANCHEZ: No, I thought here we go again. Every six to 12 months, somebody trots out something similar, something that is supposedly steeped in science and biology. And we’re supposed to rehash all the same old arguments, re-defend ourselves when we should be somewhere completely different with this conversation at this point.

MW: Brianna, there has been a debate about this in the past 10 days or so, also about whether or not James Damore should have been fired. I mean what was your reaction to the fact that biological differences are still being publicly debated at all?

BRIANNA WU: Well, you know I run an engineering team of mostly women, so I can tell you I think it's like utterly ridiculous. Engineering is a field that requires you to work so closely with other people to solve problems. We have techniques like pair programming which require you to work very, very closely with others. So it's just, it's not true. And I think it really shows motivated reasoning on behalf of the author.

MW: Now you were the vicious target of online trolls and still are, I think, that started in 2014. Do you see any connection between the attacks against you personally and what the content of James Damore’s manifesto?

BRIANNA WU: Oh, I think that's so insightful. I think it's dead on. You know what happened with Gamergate where I received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of extremely specific and credible death threats, it really ignited and really made people that have these views feel safe expressing them. And because law enforcement never went through and prosecuted any of these cases, it just really made it very mainstream. So you know what's happening with James Damore is just a continuation of Gamergate. It's just pushing back on women in tech and it’s making anyone that’s not a straight white man in these spaces, kind of making us not feel welcome.

MW: Mhm. Nicole, when we talk about women in tech, the default assumption for a lot of people is that we're talking about white women. How are these issues magnified, I suppose, for women of colour?

NICOLE SANCHEZ: Well, Dr. Joan Williams here in the Bay Area, UCSF, did an amazing study called Double Jeopardy. And what she found out by interviewing women of colour in STEM fields, is that 100 per cent of us, 100 per cent—it wasn’t 99, it wasn’t 99.9—100 per cent of us faced bias in our workplace, either by gender, either by race or by both.And when you take into consideration the many axes on which we can be made to feel welcome like Brianna said, for women of colour, the opportunities for people to mistreat us end up increasing because your biases about gender, your biases by race or ethnicity, well, you can get us from all sides and that becomes a very, very difficult landscape for women of color to navigate. Although we do and many of them are thriving, it sure would be nice to work in a sector that had a lot more women of colour feeling welcome and feeling like they can do the best work of our lives.

MW: And of course James Damore’s manifesto questioned programs that help women of colour, women and women of colour feel more comfortable in the tech industry. Megan, you recently wrote a piece about “the actual science of James Moore's manifesto.” Tell us what your scientific research, how it compared to his.

MEGAN MOLTENI: Sure. I mean for one thing, the first thing we went in and you know, I don't have a higher degree in evolutionary psychology. First thing we did was go in and read absolutely everything that he cited in his original memo, contacted those researchers and then tried to read everything else that was out there. And looking at the same body of evidence, we could find researchers who 100 per cent agreed with him. We could find researchers who said there's some truth into what he is saying, but he's extrapolating it. He is making claims that go beyond the scope of inference for this particular body of evidence. And some people said this actually has no relevance at all, to talk about distributions in the average population when we're talking about Google, which is clearly kind of on one far end of that bell curve. But I think one sticking point that has come down to is the gender differences in ability and performance versus differences in interest. So he keeps coming back to this idea of women have more interest in people and men have more interest in things and so we spent a lot of time looking at that research. And from the social science psychology side, there is a fair amount of consensus that women and men do experience some difference of behaviours. But the important thing that I think where we differ is how much we attribute that to biology because a number of the researchers I spoke to bring up the point that from the moment a baby is born, they're being socialized in one gender or another based on the genitalia they’re born with. So there's really not a good way to pull those things apart and unpack exactly how much is related to socialization and how much to biology and the evidence that it's directly related to biology is much, much shakier ground than that those differences exist in the first place.

MW: I mean you point out for instance women, he writes that women are more neurotic than men. And you point out in your piece that the difference actually is negligible.

MEGAN MOLTENI: Right, exactly. And I think he tries to caveat what he's saying by saying well, of course men and women experience bias and that that's not the whole story. And maybe there's some biology going on here as well. But I think the reason that you see people making this argument keep coming back to that is because it allows companies like Google to be absolved of having to try to confront the discrimination that they make either in hiring practices. And it absolves male workers in the tech industry from having to say why are there fewer females here? Because if you agree with the scientific conclusion that it's biologically determined, then you as a male in the tech industry don't have to change your behaviour at all to accommodate for more diversity in the workplace.

MW: I want to play a clip from Debra Soh. She writes about the science of human sexuality and holds a Ph.D. in sexual neuroscience from York University. She recently defended Mr. Damore in the Globe and Mail and spoke to CBC Montreal's Radio Noon last week. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

I didn't see anything wrong with what he was saying. I felt from a scientific perspective, what he was saying was very much indicative of what the research shows. I don't feel that he was being sexist. And so that's what led me to write my most recent column about it because I feel that this is something that’s been missing from the public discussion on this topic. The scientific research does actually say that there are differences between men and women when it comes to inherent interests and also how that affects what we choose in life when it comes to occupation.

MW: Megan, how should we be approaching the science when it comes to biological differences?

MEGAN MOLTENI: Sure. I mean she's correct that there are biological differences. If there weren't, there wouldn't be any point in saying let's hire women as much as men because if we were all exactly the same, we'd all have exactly the same opinions about things. But I think what is important to be looking at is where we get into this conversation about kind of predeterminism from birth. So the thing that James Damore comes back to you again and again and says that there is scientific consensus on, is the role that prenatal hormones play in not only shaping the interests that men and women have, but then the choices that they make about their careers. And the science on that is far from settled. Like whether or not—to the extent to which hormones create a change in brain organization that then for the rest of your life impacts the choices that you make and the interests that you pursue is far beyond kind of the scope of the current research. You know as many neuroscientists have pointed out, the brain is incredibly plastic and is responding to hormones all the time and of course, men and women have very different hormonal cycles and profiles. But that means that there is room for environment and education and social influences to either reinforce certain kind of whatever natural differences there might be or direct people in different ways. And the brain architecture is going to change in response to that. So I think it is a mistake to look only at the body of evidence that says hormones that make your brain look this way when you come out of the womb and that means that you're going to be that way for the rest of your life. That really doesn't leave room for environmental influence.

MW: Right and I want to talk about environmental influences in a minute. But first Nicole, can you tell me how you've been affected by discrimination in your career? You work in the area of diversity.

NICOLE SANCHEZ: Well, sure. It’s one of the things I rarely talk about but in this instance, I will share a story. My first job in tech was in 1999, specifically working on diversity and inclusion at a small startup. And I got pregnant and had a baby and when I came back from maternity leave, was summarily fired and told that it was because I could not give my job the attention I needed to now that I had a baby. And try as I might to find an attorney to take my case, what I was told in 1999 was well, these Internet companies don’t have a lot of money. What are you going to sue them for? And it took me many years to understand that I specifically lost my job due to the fact that I had a baby which is a protected status and definitely correlates to gender. And not only missed out on career opportunities but potentially a wealth creation engine which Silicon Valley is so good at doing. I lost all my equity and it took me many years to reconcile that oh wow, what happened to me was actually a gender discrimination situation. And when you're in the middle of it, especially as a 26-year-old new mom, you’re sort of looking around going, what just happened? It took me a while to figure that out and then start to look at the system that crop these narratives up and that have actually hurt so many people for so many years.

MW: Which speaks to the environmental factors. I mean when we focus so much on so-called biological factors, what are we missing from the debate and from the discussion about women in the workplace?

NICOLE SANCHEZ: Well, I think we're missing everything that we were just talking about around socialization. The reams of research that say an infant that you’re told is a girl by biology gets called Little Princess. Look at her, she's so tiny. Look at her. And the way that society will reinforce this gender binary and infant boys—look at him, he’s a little slugger. He’s a bruiser. Look at him, he’s going to be a linebacker. Little man. Those kinds of things that start from the moment we’re born that only correlate to sex assigned at birth. We have not even talked about a gender spectrum here outside of the binary and all it does is reinforce the notion that we are supposed to, as women, do X, Y and Z and we are not supposed to do A, B and C. And a lot of A, B and C has to do with math, science, physical labour, those kinds of things. And so we get trapped from the moment we are born into expectations that we either fulfill or buck. But no matter what, there is pain involved if you feel like you fall outside of those expectations. And a lot of women, especially in Silicon Valley, have felt this way for a long time and it has been well documented. The number of times someone will say oh, you work at a tech company. What do you do? Marketing? There are so many men who can't possibly fathom that you might be an engineer.

MW: Right. Now Brianna, all of the online hate that you dealt with aside, what about your experience working in tech as an employee, as a games developer? What have you come up against?

BRIANNA WU: Well, it's very similar experiences. For me, I run my own company so I face all the challenges that women in tech do as well as the networking issues. You know venture capital is infamously a very difficult culture for women to crack. So I've hit that head on. It's hard for me personally. Every time I watch an Apple keynote, I have never seen them bring out a woman for the games part of their keynote when they're announcing a new iPhone. So it's part of this culture. We're unconsciously—we're not even looking at women. So it’s this imaginary rock that you're having to push uphill along with all the other difficulties of running a company. And something I think that doesn't get talked about enough is there are different sets of challenges at every single age for women. You know we talk a lot in the press about sexual harassment and that's a very, very real threat. You know I've had friends in Silicon Valley call me at four o'clock in the morning because their boss has done things inappropriate to them. But then as you get older, you have children and then like networking events in tech are very generally at a bar at nine o'clock at night with alcohol. How many moms do you know can go out to a situation like that on a weeknight when their kids have school? So it's like as you move through life, like it's stacked against you in a different way every single time. And it's very hard for anyone to face that.

MW: So how do we get past these tired debates involving gender stereotypes and focus on issues like unconscious bias and other structural sociological problems in the workplace, Brianna?

BRIANNA WU: I think that's such an insightful question because that's the real damage of this manifesto, it’s reframed the conversation from wow, women in tech are not hired, can't get funding, are not treated well. Now the discussion is well, what if a guy has some sexist views? Is it fair to fire him or not? Like it's really reframed the debate in a way that's really harmful for the women that work in tech. Something I think is really key to note is the major tech companies like Google and Apple have started to release their numbers on hires and how much better they're getting at the problem and the mathematical fact of the situation is these companies are not improving substantively. So for me as someone that's running for Congress, I believe that changing the law has to be a component of that. So if I win my race this year, I hope to serve on the Science and Technology Subcommittee and I fully intend to hold hearings, congressional hearings and have these companies come before Congress and talk about their hiring biases because it very clearly seems to be a violation of civil rights to me. And I think that taking these companies at their word, that they're going to get better, is not getting us anywhere.

MW: Okay. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much, all of you. Brianna Wu is an American software engineer and video game developer who's now running for Congress in Massachusetts. She joined me from Boston. Megan Molteni is a staff writer for Wired who recently co-wrote a piece titled The Actual Science of James Damore’s Google Memo. She was in San Francisco. And Nicole Sanchez is the founder and CEO of Vaya Consulting. She was in Berkeley, California. The CBC News is next. Then a disruptor of the highest order. We'll hear from one of the creators of CRISPR technology—the gene editing process with the potential to change the world for good or for ill. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

ENCORE | How gene editing technology could change the course of evolution

Guest: Jennifer Doudna

MW: Hello. I’m Megan Williams and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MW: Up next, use with caution—the gene editing science of CRISPR.

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

MW: All this season on The Current, we’ve been looking at disruptors—people, things and ideas that fundamentally change our world. And one of the biggest disruptors in the world today is a new scientific tool—one that could change the nature of life on Earth.

SOUNDCLIP

Your body contains 37.2 trillion cells and within each is a copy of a code consisting of more than 20,000 genes and billions of strands of DNA. This code is your genome and it determines everything that makes you, you. What if you could modify that code, bring back extinct species, eliminate hereditary diseases? That is precisely what molecular engineers and geneticists around the world are working on.

MW: The prospect of editing genes—the building blocks of life—have gotten a big boost lately from a technology referred to as CRISPR. There’s already a lot of excitement building around the endless possibilities it can create—from curing genetic diseases, to creating crops better adapted to climate change or even developing more humanoid pigs whose organs could be transplanted into humans. For some, the excitement is personal and potentially lifesaving. Kitchener, Ontario's Jacqueline Skinner has a genetic mutation for Huntington's disease—a devastating illness for which CRISPR gene editing could potentially provide treatment for, or even a cure.

SOUNDCLIP

Things like CRISPR, like, that just means giving me my future back. I mean having all these trials and stuff, you get super hopeful and super excited and I celebrate every minor milestone with my family. And so to hear technology and things like CRISPR come forward, it's such a relief because all of these people don't deserve what this disease does to you. And to be able to like look at something like this and see like the light at the end of the tunnel, I don't know. It's like there's somebody handing you like a golden ticket to giving your life back.

MW: That was Jacqueline Skinner, head of the Canadian group, Young People Affected by Huntington's Disease. But along with its promise, CRISPR is also causing concern. The technology could allow us to change human DNA not just in individuals, but in all their future children and grandchildren. That's raised the question of whether we as a species are prepared for this awesome responsibility. Among those voicing concerns for CRISPR’s implications is one of the scientists who worked on its discovery. Jennifer Doudna is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California Berkeley and the co-author of A Crack in Creation: Gene editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. She spoke to Anna Maria from Berkley, California in June.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Hello, good morning.

AMT: As one of the people involved in discovering CRISPR. How do you feel when you hear the excitement in the voice of someone like Jacqueline Skinner?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Wow. I mean I just feel so honoured to be part of that revolution in technology and the opportunity to help people is really why we do the science we do.

AMT: Well we heard a bit of an explanation from CNN there in that clip at the top but how would you explain to a lay person what CRISPR technology is?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: You can think about DNA in our bodies being the code that the code of life that really controls who we are and what we do, and our health and disease states. And having a technology that allows changes to be made to that code, and not randomly but very precisely at desired places in the DNA, that could in principle correct mutations that cause disease. I think that's really what CRISPR is all about.

AMT: So it allows you to edit little bits of the DNA?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: That's right. It literally is a programmable tool. It allows scientists to tell this tool where to go in the DNA, where to make changes and then introduce either disruptions to the DNA or in some cases actually replacing DNA sequences with sequences that are desired for example to correct a disease causing mutation.

AMT: Were you looking for a gene adopting technology when you discovered CRISPR?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Absolutely not. This is the thing about CRISPR, or of the many aspects of this that I think is very interesting and sort of illustrates the way that scientific research is often done is that you know, this is a technology that came from a very different sort of unexpected direction. It was a project that was aimed at understanding how bacteria fight viral infection. So it was a fundamental research project asking a question about how things work in nature. And in the course of that research it became clear that this tool this molecule that is used in bacteria to protect from viral infection could be deployed in a very different way in human and other cells to induce changes to the DNA.

AMT: And what did you think? What did you do when you realized what you'd found?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well, first I have to say I kind of laughed out loud because it was one of those moments that we all as scientists live for that comes along very rarely where you have an insight that you realize you know has really important implications for the scientific community. And I just thought it was very interesting that bacteria had come up with, this had evolved this mechanism for defending against viruses. But I also very quickly felt a sense of awe because it was clear that this technology would be very powerful and would enable scientists to use it in many ways for both research and clinical applications, that would you know in the end is going to really change our world.

AMT: Humans have been creating animals and crops more suited to our needs for thousands of years. How is CRISPR different?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well it's different for a few reasons I would say. It's really a very precise technology so rather than relying on random changes that humans have been introducing by you know, exposing seeds to chemicals or to radiation for example. Now we have a technology that allows precise changes to be made at only the desired DNA sequences. So that's one thing. Also it's a technology that is remarkably simple and inexpensive to use and that's one of the reasons we've seen it take off as quickly as it has over the last few years is that you know it's just there's very low barrier to entry in a way. You know you just need a sort of a minimal understanding of molecular biology to be able to use it.

AMT: So you've discovered not only this awesome thing but an awesome thing that Democratic.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Exactly.

AMT: How has CRISPR been used already to make changes to crops and livestock?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well, you know in amazing ways I mean we're already seeing uses in crops like wheat, rice, sorghum. These are you know staples that can benefit from the introduction of genes that help them to deal with drought conditions or fight off various kinds of fungal infections that could otherwise affect crop yields. Also more recently there's been work in plants like tomatoes. So using the CRISPR technology to make changes that avoid fruits that are too heavy for the stems that hold them you know things like that. So very practical kinds of uses. So that's in agriculture. We're also seeing uses not only moving towards clinical treatments but also to do things like to humanize animals that would be good for organ donation for example pigs.

AMT: And it can also be used to make certain livestock more muscular, can it not?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: It can. You've probably seen the pictures of muscly, pigs muscly cows. That's something that hasn't been widely deployed at this stage but is really a very visual example of how gene editing can be used.

AMT: How do you see the ethics of making a so-called designer livestock or crops that passed down genetic changes to the offspring?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: This is an area where we're at the very early stages of using this technology. I think that on the one hand, having a precise way to make genetic changes like this is in my opinion safer in a way than introducing random changes and then just hoping that you get the trait that you desire. On the other hand, I think there has to be research to understand the stability of those kinds of genetic changes. And like with anything else that we might introduce into the food supply, we need to ensure that those animals or plants are safe for consumption.

AMT: I have a clip here of Pat Mooney who is the executive director of the ETC group, a technology watchdog organization. He has concerns about commercial uses of CRISPR in the food industry. Let's listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

There is always the concern that because there's an opportunity here to make profit quickly, that someone will push it into the marketplace to quickly try to get control of it to make it impossible to be retrieved. There's a lot of enthusiasm for using this technology to develop resistances to different patient disease, and that's interesting areas for them to explore to see if that could be of benefit to us and that might be. But in the same way that it could move quickly to defend us against a disease that could affect the nature of food crop it could be the disease that affects your major food crops that could cause the problem. It's such a new technology is so powerful we understand it so little that to jeopardize your food supply by introducing this technology too quickly is simply dangerous.

AMT: Jennifer Doudna, what do you think of commercial uses of CRISPR technology? Do they pose potential risks?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: I think like any technology, honestly this one you know needs to be carefully vetted and appropriately regulated.

AMT: You tell a story about an entrepreneur you call Christina who met with one of your colleagues. What happened?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Yeah, so this was an interesting meeting with someone who was interested in using the CRISPR technology in humans, and in fact she had the idea of having herself the first what she called CRISPR baby. You know the idea that you could actually use gene editing in human embryos to create human beings that would have desired genetic traits.

AMT: And what happened?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well it was a very, very strange conversation as you could imagine for me, because it was clear in that conversation that she was serious about this. And even though I knew that you know this would not be possible today for many reasons both regulatory but also technical. It was a bit alarming to know that she might think this way, and that that might be the way that others would think too about opportunities to perhaps make money or garner attention by doing something very radical like that.

AMT: Some people have talked about bringing back the woolly mammoth. We heard that clip off the top. Even creating a winged dragon with CRISPR. Is that possible?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well there's possible and possible. Possible or probable, maybe is the way to put it. I think you know the thing about gene editing is that it opens the door to doing things that have never been done before. So people have talked about for example the idea of creating a unicorn, you know putting genes to make a single centered horn into a horse. Is that possible? I think in principle the answer now is yes. And you know could it happen immediately? No, for various technical reasons. But I think this is one of the reasons people are so captivated by it, is that it just really does open the door to things that we've never been able to even really contemplate before.

AMT: Well let's talk about using CRISPR on humans. What does the promise of CRISPR when it comes to disease?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well I think you know it's fantastically exciting to think about a technology that allows correction you know of DNA sequences that would otherwise cause terrible disease. And I hear from people that have genetic disease in their family virtually every day who are you know very excited about the potential for this to really have an impact on their health in the future. I think that's you know clearly is tremendously exciting.

AMT: And how close are we to actually treatments or cures through that way?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well I think it's important to appreciate a couple of things. First of all the technology is clearly very powerful as we've heard. However, it does require introduction into cells to work. And so I think one of the big challenges ahead for using this in people, is being able to deliver the gene editing molecules into cells or tissues in a in a person. And this is why I think and I think many people would agree that you know one of the most likely first targets clinical targets for gene editing is going to be blood diseases, for example sickle cell disease. These are diseases where we understand that genetics. There is a single gene that needs to be fixed or repaired, and we can get access to blood cells by taking them out of a patient doing the editing and then putting them back into the body. And so you can imagine a path, a clinical path forward faster than for something like Huntington's where you know you would actually have to think about how to introduce gene editing molecules into the brain.

AMT: It's quite extraordinary now, as I listen to you.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: It is.

AMT: Yes. And so I just want to ask if there's different kinds of gene editing, there's a germline and somatic. What's the difference?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Yes, very important to know to understand that. So somatic means editing in cells that are already fully developed. They're there already a liver cell or a skin cell or a blood cell. And there's no possibility of transmitting the changes that are made to those cells to future generations. The difference between that and germ line editing is that in the germ line we're talking about making changes to sperm or eggs or early embryos. These would be genetic changes that could be transmitted to future generations. And so when we talk in the book about the power to change human evolution, that's really ultimately what could happen if there was widespread editing of the human germline.

AMT: Do you think we should be doing germline or heritable gene editing on humans right now?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: I would say no. You know I think that this is a technology that you know is still in its infancy in many ways we're learning about it. I think the opportunity to use the gene editing tool to understand better human development. I think that's exciting but I would caution against using it clinically if anytime in the near future because we need to understand it better and maybe even more importantly we need to have time to discuss it as a society, what are the implications of that kind of use.

AMT: In many parts of the world including Canada, it is currently illegal to do any human germline editing, including on embryos that will not be grown into babies. But some ethicists think that's a mistake. And that includes Chris Gyngell. He's a research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

Well, look, we miss out on an important resource, a resource that we can use to do a lot of good. If we stop now because of irrational fears about what might happen in the future of technology, we really miss out on a good opportunity to learn more about human development and the opportunity to develop a way to treat genetic disease. We also have the human germline all the time. Every time we have children the natural way, we introduce random genetic mutations into our germ line. So it's not a question of whether we should change the germ line. We are doing this all the time already. The question is how do we change the germ line for good? How do we do the most good with this technology? And I think this technology could be key to reducing suffering and to increasing human flourishing.

AMT: So Jennifer Doudna, how do you respond to that idea that we have a moral imperative to go ahead with germ line editing research?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well, I remember the very first meeting that I convened in the Napa Valley—this was already a couple of years ago—to discuss the question of human germ line editing with a small group of scientists. And at one point somebody leaned across the table and said you know there may come a time when we would consider it unethical not to edit the human germ line. And that sort of made everybody take a breath and say well yeah that's a different way to you know think about it. In my own view, I think that clearly, you know I mean I think I agree with what was just said. You know I clearly this is a really exciting technology and we have an opportunity right now to use it to really help people and also to really understand better our own biology. But you know hand in hand with that goes a huge responsibility to use this in a fashion that you know in the end does lead to benefits to human beings, and also brings the community of people around the world along with the scientists you know, that scientists are not rushing ahead but that we're actually engaging with our neighbors, our parents, our kids, our friends and so that people understand what's happening. And we avoid sort of the feeling of being you know railroaded or just you know sort of not included in technology this important I think that would be a mistake.

AMT:I think just talking to you is one of the people who was instrumental in it in existence and it's discovery and you wanting to engage in that helps us understand more the sort of the gray areas.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: That's certainly my hope.

AMT: So what do you think of the idea that with CRISPR we could make humans better than their parents, beyond curing a genetic disease?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well it's sort of one of these amazing things to think about. I mean I'll give you an example. So you know there's a gene that has been discovered in liver cells that when it is present in a certain form, a certain DNA sequence of that gene that occurs rarely in the human population, it turns out that those people have virtually no risk of cardiovascular disease. Meaning that they you know don't have to worry about high cholesterol they don't have to worry about heart attacks as they get older. And yet there seems to be no deleterious effect on their health. So you could imagine you know what if you could actually just introduce that gene variant if you will into the human population very broadly using gene editing. Would that be a good idea? Some people might say yes, you know. And same thing with something like Alzheimer's disease. What if you could ensure that anybody that is born in the future doesn't have certain gene types that might predispose them to Alzheimer's disease? As someone whose mother is currently in the final stages of Alzheimer's. You know it's a terrible, terrible thing. I know many people that have gone through this and their families and you know I feel that you know this might really be something to consider in the future.

AMT: There's been so much hype around the promise and potential of CRISPR. What are the chances that it won't pan out on a major scale?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well I think you know with any new technology there's always going to be bumps in the road. And I think what we often see with new technologies is that you know people get very excited and there's tends to be a lot of hyperbole, and then you know reality sets in when you realize that you know there's still a lot of steps to be taken before there's a real, in this case say a clinical impact. I think the thing that's different with CRISPR though is that the technology is only you know, it's barely five years old, right? And so you know it's really been adopted incredibly quickly and globally, and we're already seeing you know, at least in the agricultural world we're already seeing products you know coming to market that are using this technology. So, it's just already moving so quickly and I think that you know for me when I think about clinical uses it really is going to come down to more of the insuring that there aren't unintended consequences of gene editing for particular diseases. You know things like that right. I think the technology itself is really robust.

AAMT: Well, I want to ask about what you just said there, because there has been a new study now showing that CRISPR editing could cause hundreds of mutations that weren't the ones that a scientist was intending to make. And the authors of the study are cautioning that scientists should be aware of that. Is there a possibility that it could be too risky or too imprecise to use on a larger scale?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well, I need to look at the data in that study I just saw the headline for it. But in our own experience in my lab and with our collaborators and with other scientists that I know that are that are using this, when the CRISPR system is used in a way that limits the time that DNA is exposed to the CRISPR molecules, the editing molecules. I think that that has really gone a long way to limit the kinds of off target editing that might occur. So I think that. Sure. Can you show that there are off target events that occur with this technology? Absolutely. But I think as the technology matures over time, it's becoming more clear all the time how to use it in ways that are safe. And I myself don't really see that as a bottleneck going forward. I think that's a very solvable problem.

AMT: We are talking about a technology that is awesome. How difficult is it to gain public trust in science in today's political climate?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: It's hard. I've now been running a professional research lab for almost 25 years. And you know I've seen over my time in science that there's been a, you know sort of the decay in the public trust of science and scientists. I think that scientists bear some of the responsibility for that. I think we need to be much better at communicating about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and explaining about the scientific method, how does it work, explaining that science is an imprecise operation, right? None of us are infallible. But we you know we try to do work that will uncover in the end the truth. We try to work in ways that lead us closer to the truth about nature. And we have to explain that process to people and frankly to include them in it. We have to help taxpayers understand what is the value of investing in scientific research? How does it benefit them? How does it benefit our economy? How does it make life better for people in the future? And I think scientists really need to get much more engaged in that conversation.

AMT: Do you stand at profit financially from CRISPR?

JENNIFER DOUDNA: Well I'm a co-founder of three start-up companies that are trying to commercialize the CRISPR technology in various ways. Two of those companies are focused on human therapeutics. And one of them is building the technology for use in other areas of biology including in agriculture. I think commercialization is an important aspect of new technologies. You know I think academic researchers can only go so far in their work. We simply don't have the resources to take technologies to the next level. And likewise, companies need to have scientists engaged to help them understand the basis of these technologies and use them in an effective and responsible ways.

AMT: Thank you for talking to me today.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: It's been a real pleasure.

MW: Jennifer Doudna is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California Berkeley and the author of A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. She joined us from Berkeley, California. That’s our program for today. I’m Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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August 16, 2017 full episode transcript

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