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How transparent should gene drive research be?
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Experts have debated the ethics of using gene drive technology to alter populations of insects in the wild. But what about the ethics of studying these methods behind closed doors? Infectious Disease News asked Kevin M. Esvelt, PhD, assistant professor and leader of the Sculpting Evolution Group at the MIT Media Lab, if it is ethical for scientists to conduct gene drive research according to the traditional research model. Esvelt was one of the first researchers to publicly describe CRISPR-based gene drive technology, calling for open research and broadly inclusive discussions in 2014.
Before addressing the ethics of gene drives, consider the question of whether medical and clinical research should be conducted transparently. There are many reasons that openness might accelerate discoveries and save lives. Early transparency can identify problems in advance, forge better collaborations and ensure that the results of failed experiments are shared, thereby preventing others from wasting resources and participants’ time.
On the other hand, closeted medical research is harmless in two important ways. It does not damage autonomy because patients can always decline a new treatment, and no one will ever deny patients a life-saving advance just because the technology was developed behind closed doors.
Neither is true of gene drive research. If released, a gene drive is intended to alter an entire wild population and associated ecosystems, inevitably affecting everyone in the area. Because early-stage decisions will influence the resulting product, and individuals cannot opt out from its application, closeted gene drive research denies people a voice in decisions that will affect them.
Worse, closeted research risks popular rejection by forgoing the advantages of early-stage openness and community guidance. Consider Mice Against Ticks, a project aiming to block tick-borne disease transmission by heritably immunizing the mice that infect most ticks. The project does not involve a gene drive or non-mouse DNA but similarly proposes to alter wild mouse populations on islands. The effort has been open and community governed from inception, with tangible benefits: town meetings inviting residents to share concerns led to several changes in the design to better match revealed community preferences.
However, most gene drive scientists are understandably reluctant to share their experimental plans and risk having their best ideas “scooped” by competitors — even though closeted gene drive research denies people a voice, risks a socially devastating accident and jeopardizes public support. Suppose that using a gene drive against malarial mosquitoes could prevent half of all cases. If closeted research has even a 1% chance of delaying approval by a decade, then our collective failure to preregister our experiments is expected to result in 10 million otherwise preventable cases of malaria, 25,000 of which will be fatal.
Why, then, is preregistration routine for clinical trials in the United States but a rarity for gene drive research? Because we have not yet managed to similarly change the incentives. It is up to scientific journals, funders, policymakers, intellectual property holders and especially universities to help gene drive researchers invite collective scrutiny of their work.
Disclosure: Esvelt reports being the author of several patents concerning CRISPR-based genome editing and gene drives filed by MIT and Harvard University. His laboratory has received grants to support gene drive research from the NIH, the DARPA Safe Genes program, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.