- The piece discusses gene editing and its potential impact on society.
- It mentions that gene editing is now a popular topic in movies and TV shows.
- The technology has the potential to cure hereditary conditions but also raises concerns about creating designer babies.
- Gene editing is not a new concept, but the recent development of CRISPR has increased interest and coverage.
- CRISPR allows for precise changes to DNA and has the potential to treat various diseases.
- Gene editing has been successful in experiments on plants and animals, but human trials are rare.
- The piece mentions a successful case of gene editing in a baby with leukemia.
- The potential of gene editing is vast, but there are still many challenges and limitations.
- The availability of CRISPR technology has led to biohackers conducting experiments outside of traditional scientific settings.
- The behavior of biohackers and the rush to use gene editing in humans without proper research is a concern for scientists.
- The distinction between somatic cells and germline cells is explained, with germline edits having the potential to affect future generations.

- Somatic cells die with you, germline cells get passed down through generations
- Germline editing has potential for incredible things like stopping the spread of malaria through gene drives
- However, germline editing can have unintended consequences on ecosystems, as seen with the introduction of cane toads in Australia
- Germline editing is also being considered to fight Lyme disease by introducing genetically edited mice
- There are practical and moral considerations with germline editing, especially when it comes to humans and the possibility of enhancement
- Ethical reservations and concerns about eugenics arise when discussing germline editing
- Germline-edited designer CRISPR babies are still hypothetical, but China has fewer restrictions on gene editing
- Balancing the risks and potential rewards of gene editing is necessary, as we need to draw lines to avoid unintended consequences.

Scientists are developing new ways to alter the genetic code of living organisms. John Oliver explores the risks, rewards, and wolf-related hazards of gene editing.

Connect with Last Week Tonight online...

Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: http://Facebook.com/LastWeekTonight

Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: http://Twitter.com/LastWeekTonight

Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: http://www.hbo.com/lastweektonight

Essentially math disguised as dinosaurs and outer space to try and seem interesting.

Now, specifically, the story concerns gene editing.

It's a topic you may have heard about, given that it's now a plot point in action movies like Rampage.

Changes will be incredibly unpredictable.

0, you didn't know about the 30-foot wolf?

This is a movie about aerial military equipment being harnessed to fight a 30-foot wolf, and it is not called Wolf Blitzer.

But look, gene editing isn't only showing up in movies starring Rock the Dwayne Johnson.

No, it's also now constantly brought up on TV with varying degrees of excitement or extreme alarm.

A stunning and controversial breakthrough in science has arrived, gene editing.

This is a milestone that could 1 day erase hereditary conditions.

Some fear the technology could be used to create designer babies.

This technology has the potential to change our DNA and the DNA of all organisms alive and extinct.

Could that lead to new divides in humanity?

It seems gene editing is either going to cure all disease or kill every last 1 of us.

And the truth is, any time there is a bold new technology, people do tend to go nuts.

I'm guessing after the invention of the refrigerator, there were a rash of headlines like, -"Can meat be too cold?" --LAUGHTER And, what about the milkman?

So tonight, we thought we'd take some time to talk about gene editing, what it is, what its potential could be, and what the chances are that we're all gonna be killed by a 30-foot wolf.

And let's start with the fact that gene editing actually isn't new.

There have been technologies like these around for years.

What is new, and what is driving a lot of recent coverage is something called CRISPR, which stands for Crunchy Rectums in Sassy Pink Ray Bans.

It stands for this, but you won't remember that and you actually don't need to, so let's go back to the crunchy rectum thing.

CRISPR is very complicated, but 1 of the key scientists who unlocked its potential, Jennifer Doudna, has a simple way of explaining how it works.

I like to use the analogy of word processing, because it's very analogous to that.

You think of the DNA code like the text of a document.

This is the scissors that allows you to cut out text, change it.

The cell takes over after the DNA is broken and makes a precise change at the site of the repair.

It's like Cut and paste in Microsoft Word.

If there's something that you want to fix on a strand of DNA with CRISPR, you could theoretically find it, cut it out, and paste in a fix, at which point, presumably, Clippy shows up and says, hi, it looks like you're trying to play God and alter the basic building blocks of life.

There are hopes that it might eventually be applied to more than 10,000 conditions, from sickle cell anemia to cystic fibrosis to some cases of early onset Alzheimer's.

Diseases typically have multiple genes that contribute to them, and human trials have been extremely rare.

Although, there have been some promising results.

Just months ago, baby Leila was dying of acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

So doctors agreed to try out an experimental immunocell therapy which had never been used outside the lab.

I took the gamble and this is her today, standing, laughing, giggling, and I'm just thankful it's a miracle.

Except when you think about it, it's actually not.

Which I'd argue is actually better and more convenient than a miracle, because you don't have to spend the next 2,000 years worshipping the scientists, you can just be like, -"Thanks." And...

While that is a truly amazing story, For the most part, applications of gene editing have been confined to experiments on plants and animals, where the results have been striking, if often a little weird.

Researchers at this lab used CRISPR to isolate and manipulate the beagle's muscle, or myostatin gene, making these the most muscular beagles in the world.

So you might think it's strange that scientists made jacked, sexy beagles, but did you ever even consider that the scientists were lady beagles?

Change your preconceptions about what a scientist can be.

Hashtag Beagle Feminism, hashtag Science Bitches.

And look, it's not just beefcake beagles.

Scientists are researching ways to fight human diseases using mice.

And while scientists know how painstakingly slow this kind of research is, it is tempting for the rest of us to start racing ahead and wildly speculating about where this is all going.

So there are examples of, animals that have single horns in the middle, so like the rhinoceros has 1 at its nose, but there are other ancient rhinoceros that have it in the middle of

think that you could get a single horn on a horse by looking at horns in other species.

So I've got to say, judging by all the hedging he just did in that answer, even if we do 1 day create a unicorn, it's clearly not gonna be this majestic creature who wants you to follow it into a magic waterfall.

In fact, for a good sense of the mismatch between expectation and current capabilities, just look at a project that that scientist is working on right now, bringing back the woolly mammoth.

It has been hyped in headlines all over the world, but they are nowhere close to creating a living animal yet.

And even computer simulations are underwhelming.

In the lab, they've edited about 35 functioning woolly mammoth genes into the Asian elephant genome.

This is a good start for making a semi-woolly mammoth.

It's not so much Jurassic Park as an off-brand $3 petting zoo called Pet the whatever.

But if you watch the news, you may have noticed that you're not just seeing professional scientists, and that's because the underlying technology of CRISPR is so cheap and widely available, almost anyone can use it.

So, gene editing stories almost always feature a detour to meet biohackers like Josiah Zayner.

Here in the Bay Area, we're visiting a biohacker in his garage.

He's selling CRISPR kits, DIY CRISPR kits for a couple of hundred dollars.

You can buy this cutting-edge kit that allows you to use this technology, and you don't need anything else.

You don't need a PhD, and you could do experiments with CRISPR, like...

Okay, well, that sounds revolutionary, but to be fair, selling strangers things covered in unfamiliar DNA out of your garage already has a name, and it's every single garage sale in human history.

Oh, I would like to buy your lamp, please, and then I'm going to take it home and wash it.

And look, look, he's basically selling chemistry sets.

And to the extent that they get people excited about science, that's a good thing.

But, you can see why scientists get frustrated when biohackers like Zayner hog all the media attention.

Especially because he makes some pretty wild statements like, I want to live in a world where people get drunk, and instead of giving themselves tattoos, they're like, I'm drunk, I'm going to CRISPR myself.

Honestly, you shouldn't even get drunk and tattoo yourself, however cool Robert Duvall's face covering your midriff seems at the time.

Now, last October, Zaina even publicly injected himself with DNA that had been modified using CRISPR to try and give himself bigger muscles, which did not work, but in that same video, he argued that using CRISPR should ideally be like downloading an app.

You don't have to know what the app does, how to program it, how it works, anything like that.

And I think that's the way it should be with genetic engineering and synthetic biology.

Why can't people use this technology without necessarily completely knowing how it works?

Because it could be dangerous and someone could get hurt.

Also, I refuse to take scientific insight from someone shooting vertical footage on an iPhone.

And though Zainer now says he regrets that experiment, that kind of behavior is a real worry for serious scientists.

Not just that a biohacker will hurt themselves, but that doctors or scientists might rush a human application before it's ready, things go wrong, and the whole field is then set back years.

That is exactly what happened to the field of gene therapy when a patient named Jesse Gelsinger died during a poorly designed trial.

And that's not the only thing that scientists worry about, because the benefits and the drawbacks of gene editing can extend well beyond 1 person.

And to understand why, it helps to be familiar with a key distinction.

Somatic cells are most of the cells in the body, blood, brain, skin cells, where the DNA doesn't get passed down to offspring.

Germline edits involve sperm, eggs, or embryos, basically changing the DNA of future generations.

Somatic cells die with you, germline cells get passed down through generations.

So, much of what you've seen so far tonight, like Baby Layla or Zaina's muscle experiment, involved somatic cells, while germline cells are how my great-grandfather passed this nose down to me when he fucked this bird, Great-Grandma Feathers.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Germline editing could potentially do incredible things.

Nearly half a million people each year die from it, and it's spread by mosquitoes.

But gene editing could help stop that through something called a gene drive.

Scientists do this by inserting an artificial gene into the DNA of mosquito embryos that will make an increasing proportion of female offspring sterile.

The gene drive is embedded in the DNA to ensure the changes are inherited, unlike natural evolution, where chance is involved.

And it's honestly much simpler than my idea to fight malaria by just fitting millions of mosquitoes with tiny condoms.

But the moment you cross into germline editing, the ramifications can seriously increase, because messing with any ecosystem can have unintended consequences.

This has always been true even before gene editing, And my favorite example of this comes from Australia, where about a hundred cane toads were introduced in the 1930s to control the cane beetle.

What they did do was multiply to hundreds of millions of cane toads and wreak absolute havoc.

There was even a documentary made about them, featuring a guy who made it his life's work to run over as many as he could.

Well, I line them up with the driver's side front wheel, but I seem to be able to get Most of the ones I line up on the right-hand side of the road.

Well, I really go out of my way to run over cane toads, basically because I have a very profound love of the wildlife that occurs here naturally.

If it was possible to remove them and totally eradicate them from Australia, and I was capable of doing it, I would spend a lifetime doing exactly that.

That guy is in for an unpleasant surprise when he gets to the pearly gates and finds out that God is an Australian Canto.

Ah, So you'd like to get into heaven, huh?

Why don't we go ahead and take a look at the types?

The point is, ecosystems are very delicate, which is why you need to be extremely careful.

And a good example of someone taking that sort of care with gene editing can be seen in a project being considered on Nantucket Island as a way to fight Lyme disease.

You see, Lyme disease is passed from ticks to humans.

But before that can happen, it goes from mice to ticks.

Now, typically, the way that works is like this.

It was a relationship the mouse didn't want to end and leaves it seriously questioning its self-worth.

The mouse goes on a series of rebound dates that only deepen the disillusionment.

Despondent, the mouse turns to alcohol to numb the pain.

While drunk, it comes across a Tinder profile of a tick.

At first, the mouse is disgusted, but then it's actually intrigued.

Oh, God, it thinks, am I really going to fuck a tick?

The mouse goes on the date, thinking it's just a date, we're just talking, but the mouse is lying to itself, because as soon as the tick says, maybe we should go someplace quiet where we can talk, bam, they're banging in the shower.

Afterwards, the mouse feels strangely satisfied.

As for the tick, it can't wait to brag to its friends that it just fucked a mouse.

And they both forget all about the encounter until 8 months later when the tick gets a call, bad news, you got Lyme disease.

And that is how Lyme disease spreads from mice to ticks.

Anyway, the point is, to prevent the spread of Lyme disease, a biologist named Kevin Esbelt is considering introducing genetically edited mice that cannot pass the disease to ticks.

And he would do this with a ton of caution, testing it on an uninhabited island where the experiment will be contained, and it would only go forward on Nantucket if he got the buy-in of the local community.

And even with all those safeguards, he's aware of the uncertainty.

Although Kevin Esvelt is confident his engineered mice will only reduce Lyme disease and not bring harm to Nantucket's ecosystem, he also knows that absolute certainty and genetic engineering do not go together.

I worry every day that I might be missing something profound about the consequences of what we're developing.

I'm glad you do, Because that is the kind of caution that you want from someone in his position.

He clearly doesn't want to end up in a limerick that goes, there once was a man from Nantucket who gathered some mice in a bucket.

He altered those mice, engineered with a splice, and now all of the seagulls are dead.

-$TIME OUT $ -$TIME OUT $ And look, there are just practical considerations to germline editing.

There are huge moral questions, too, particularly when it comes to humans.

Because it raises the possibility that gene editing could 1 day be used not just to fight disease, but for so-called enhancement, which sells you into some pretty dicey territory.

Even Jennifer Doudna, 1 of the pioneers of CRISPR, sees the danger of this.

Here she is, telling the story of a dream that she once had that was pretty on the nose.

I walked into a room and a colleague of mine said to me, Jennifer, I'd like you to explain the CRISPR technology to a friend.

And he brought me into a room and a person was sitting with their back to me and as they turned around I realized with sort of a horror that it was Hitler, and it was actually Hitler with a, sort of a pig nose, and it almost looked like a chimeric pig human, sort of creature.

She had a dream about pig Hitler wanting to learn more about CRISPR.

And ethical reservations aside, she might also want to examine why her subconscious thinks that 1 of her colleagues is just casually friends with Hitler.

And look, look, clearly, the more control people have over the ability to design their children, the bigger the moral questions that raises, up to and including who decides what constitutes a genetic problem that needs to be fixed.

Many in the deaf community would say it is not.

The idea that we're all sick, that we're suffering, that I suffer from dwarfism, no, I live with dwarfism.

I'm proud to be second generation, raising a third generation of people living with dwarfism.

I don't suffer, I suffer from how society treats me.

And there are many groups who could justifiably worry that the thing that makes them unique or different could come to be seen as flaws to be corrected.

And eugenics is a word that rightly terrifies people.

It's why it was such a mistake for Eugene Levy to make that the title of his autobiography.

It has some great Catherine O'Hara anecdotes, but that title really dusted you off.

Germline-edited designer CRISPR babies are still a distant hypothetical.

No human has been born that has had its germline edited yet.

And many countries have bans or restrictions on that.

But, 1 place with very few restrictions is China, which in general seems eager to push the limits of gene editing, and 1 of the scientists working at that Jacked Beagle Lab seems to brush off certain ethical issues.

It allows us to shape our world in ways never before imagined.

And there are many people in the US who think, well, that's...

So the idea that we could be playing the role of God makes a lot of people nervous.

That guy seems a little bit blasé about gene editing technology, which is kind of surprising in a country whose president, as you may remember from our show about China, is a honey-eating talking bear.

And look, and look, my point here in showing you all of this isn't to frighten you.

There is a lot to be legitimately excited about here.

Gene editing has the potential to alleviate a great deal of human suffering.

But reaching that potential will require careful, time-consuming research.

The science involved is much more complicated than we've had time to get into tonight, mainly because we needed to make space for that long story about a tick fucking a mouse.

And I emphatically stand by that decision.

But while that research is progressing, we need to figure out how to balance the risks and potential rewards of gene editing, which is going to be tricky, because everything that's being done tends to get mixed together.

A meticulous professional scientist with freewheeling biohackers like this guy.

Practical applications with wild theories.

Best case scenarios, like ending malaria with catastrophic prophecies of 30-foot wolves.

But we are going to need to sort out at some point where lines should be drawn, Because while gene editing could do incredible things for our health, let's at the very least in future, try and avoid a future where we end up swerving all over the road, trying to run over all of the pig Hitlers that we accidentally created.

See all LastWeekTonight transcripts on Youtube

Gene Editing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)