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César Palacios-González’s Posts

ChatGPT Has a Sexual Harassment Problem

written by César Palacios-González

@CPalaciosG

If I were to post online that you have been accused of sexually harassing someone, you could rightly maintain that this is libellous. This is a false statement that damages your reputation. You could demand that I correct it and that I do so as soon as possible. The legal system could punish me for what I have done, and, depending on where I was in the world, it could send me to prison, fine me, and ask me to delete and retract my statements. Falsely accusing someone of sexual harassment is considered to be very serious.

In addition to the legal aspect there is also an ethical one. I have done something morally wrong, and more specifically, I have harmed you. We know this because, everything else being equal, if I had not falsely claimed that you have been accused of sexual harassment, you would be better off. This way of putting it might sound odd but it is not really so if we compare it to, for example, bodily harms. If I wantonly break your arm I harm you, and I do so because if I hadn’t done so you would be better off.Read More »ChatGPT Has a Sexual Harassment Problem

Heritable Human Genome Editing Can Cure or Prevent Diseases

By César Palacios-González

@CPalaciosG 

More than a year after the fallout from He Jiankui’s announcement to the world that he had edited human embryos in order to made them resistant to HIV, the debate on whether we should move ahead with heritable human genome editing has given no signs of slowing down. For example, just a couple of days ago the UK House of Lords was debating this issue, and the WHO’s advisory committee on genome editing is running a consultation on the governance framework that should rule over human genome editing. While there are many ethical questions surrounding human genome editing, there is a question that recently has gained prominence: is heritable human genome editing therapeutic?Read More »Heritable Human Genome Editing Can Cure or Prevent Diseases

A third MRT-baby is on its way

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Written by César Palacios-González

It has been recently reported (link in Spanish) that a 32 year old Greek woman is 27 weeks pregnant with a child who was conceived after a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT) – in this case Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST). If true this is really big news in terms of reproductive medicine and biotechnology, we are still waiting for data to be published. If successful, this would be just the third birth following a reproductive technique that mixes the DNA of three people (you will probably remember the big media buzz a couple of years ago about ‘three parent babies’). This newest feat was achieved by a group of Spanish and Greek scientists; the clinical trial was carried out in Greece due to the fact that in Spain MRTs are not on the list of authorised reproductive techniques.

Before discussing what I consider to be the main ethical issue with this case, let us talk a bit about mitochondria and MRTs. Every human egg contains thousands upon thousands of mitochondrion. These tiny organelles have the really important task of producing the energy (in the form of ATP) that first the egg, then the developing embryo, and finally the human adult need to adequately function. It is thus not strange that when mitochondria do not work as they should the human body ‘malfunctions’. And it is also not strange that mitochondrial dysfunction more significantly affects the organs that require the most energy, for example the brain and the muscles.

To understand, broadly, what can go wrong with mitochondria, we need to bear in mind two of their characteristics: a) that they have their own DNA, and b) that they are mostly solely maternally transmitted. Regarding the former, inside every nucleated human cell there is nuclear DNA (nDNA) and there is mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).

 

Read More »A third MRT-baby is on its way