Kashmiri hand rocks designer baby cradle

For the first time, genetically-modified human embryos have been developed in the US and Kashmir-born doctor Sanjeev Kaul has played a lead role in this medical breakthrough.

Scientists have now demonstrated an effective way of using a gene-editing tool to correct a disease-causing gene mutation in human embryos and stop it from passing to future generations. Though this is not a full-fledged start of a revolution of having ‘designer babies’, the first steps, however, have been taken. China attempted this earlier.

A team of scientists has altered human embryos using a new technique called CRISPR CAS9 that edits genes, and in this case, it helped remove a fatal mutation that leads to heart attacks. This now opens up an ethical Pandora’s Box if germline repairs and enhancements may become a thing in vogue.

As of now, the human embryos were not implanted in humans. But this now opens up exciting prospects of the world having designer babies soon. The research published in British journal ‘Nature’ shows the first genetically-modified human embryos made in America.

A team of South Korean, Chinese and American scientists has identified how they could edit out a faulty gene that causes heart attacks in later life due to the thickening of heart walls. One of the team members is Dr Kaul, who was born in Kashmir, studied in New Delhi and later immigrated to America. “Although the rare heart mutation affects men and women of all ages, it is a common cause of sudden cardiac arrest in young people, and it could be eliminated in one generation in a particular family,” said co-author Kaul, a professor of medicine (cardiovascular medicine) in the OHSU School of Medicine and director of the OHSU Knight Cardiovascular Institute.