CRISPR in context: towards a socially responsible debate on embryo editing
CRISPR in context: towards a socially responsible debate on embryo editing
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CRISPR 背景：关于胚胎编辑的社会责任辩论
DOI：
10.1057/s41599-019-0319-5
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发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Stevienna de Saille
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Morrison;Stevienna de Saille
2018 年，两个使用 CRISPR-Cas9 改造的胚胎诞生的婴儿诞生后，人类种系基因编辑 (GGE) 从抽象的关注变成了现实。对此负责的科学家贺建奎遭到了大多数科学、法律和伦理评论家的严厉谴责。然而，对于 GGE 未来是否可以被接受、如何使用或是否应该完全禁止，人们的意见仍然存在分歧。伴随 CRISPR 技术出现的许多评论、峰会、立场声明和高层会议都承认这一点，呼吁更多的公众参与，以帮助就如何推进达成共识。这些呼吁值得称赞，但也并非没有问题。达成共识不仅极具挑战性，而且难以衡量和知道何时可以达成。参与显然是可取的，但参与策略需要避免公众与生物技术之间先前接触的局限性。在这里，我们将 CRISPR 置于生物技术和生育行业的背景下，以说明需要吸取的教训。我们特别证明了避免“赤字模式”的重要性，在这种模式中，阻力归因于公众对科学缺乏了解，解决技术安全标准与伦理和社会问题的分离问题，并确保辩论的范围包括开展科学研究以及将新产品和服务推向市场的政治经济背景。通过这段历史，我们利用玛丽·道格拉斯（Mary Douglas）的经典人类学概念“物质错位”来解释为什么生物技术会引起不安和焦虑的感觉，并推荐将此作为恢复外行对新型生物技术的理解的模型，并将其视为未来 GGE 参与练习中值得关注的合法问题。
Following the birth in 2018 of two babies from embryos altered using CRISPR-Cas9, human germline gene editing (GGE) moved from abstract concern to reality. He Jiankui, the scientist responsible, has been roundly condemned by most scientific, legal and ethical commentators. However, opinions remain divided on whether GGE could be acceptably used in the future, and how, or if it should be prohibited entirely. The many reviews, summits, positions statements and high-level meetings that have accompanied the emergence of CRISPR technology acknowledge this, calling for greater public engagement to help reach a consensus on how to proceed. These calls are laudable but far from unproblematic. Consensus is not only hugely challenging to reach, but difficult to measure and to know when it might be achieved. Engagement is clearly desirable, but engagement strategies need to avoid the limitations of previous encounters between publics and biotechnology. Here we set CRISPR in the context of the biotechnology and fertility industries to illustrate the lessons to be learned. In particular we demonstrate the importance of avoiding a ‘deficit mode’ in which resistance is attributed to a lack of public understanding of science, addressing the separation of technical safety criteria from ethical and social matters, and ensuring the scope of the debate includes the political-economic context in which science is conducted and new products and services are brought to market. Through this history, we draw on Mary Douglas’ classic anthropological notion of ‘matter out of place’ to explain why biotechnologies evoke feelings of unease and anxiety, and recommend this as a model for rehabilitating lay apprehension about novel biological technologies as legitimate matters of concern in future engagement exercises about GGE.