Not too long from now, we’ll be gene-editing our CRISPR kids | Opinion
I didn’t notice earlier this year when, for the second time, a pig kidney was transplanted into a guy in New Hampshire who was getting too sick to wait for a spare human kidney to come his way. It wasn’t from just any old porker.
The pig it came from was genetically modified to remove lots of its piggyness. You had to modify the surface of the pig’s cells to make a human immune system less likely to attack them. Then you had to remove the viruses that live inside the genome of standard pigs and could theoretically infect a human who was using their organs.
I mean ick. And the ick doesn’t end there. Soon enough, such modifications might not just be for the dying, but for everyone.
As part of the “easy” gene-editing process called CRISPR, human genes were implanted into the pig, too. Now I understand why hotdogs are called “Franks.”
The Food and Drug Administration approved all this. And what came before the FDA signing off on three genetically modified pig-human transplants as a prelude to 50 more didn’t have a lot less ick.
Close your eyes and imagine hundreds of baboons having their kidneys taken out and replaced with the genetically modified pig organs. When the monkey mayhem was over, imagine scientists moving on to brain-dead humans. Once those kidneys would produce urine in the still-breathing cadavers, scientists moved their experiments on to people who were so sick it didn’t much matter if the pig parts cut their lives short. A half-dozen people in China had kidneys, hearts, a liver and a thymus sewed into them. Some lived a couple months. That’s all in the past.
If you’re not thinking this is right out of “Frankenstein,” then you are colder than I am. But what if you were the guy lying in a Boston hospital room waiting to expire in a slow and awful way. Wouldn’t you look past the years of butchery that is way, way beyond ick?
I would.
I’d line up even faster if it were my kid. I’d jump at the chance to stop the suffering not just now, but into the future. Call it sci-fi “Gattaca” in the suburbs.
Manhattan Project to cure disease, edit organs
Enter the Manhattan Project, a new company that intends to cure diseases, not just by genetically editing organs, but by using the very same technology to edit sperm, eggs or very early embryos that will edit the whole human and every human descended from them.
Right now that is illegal in the United States, because, well, ick. But it isn’t any more far-fetched than the hundreds of blind people in China who can now see thanks to the CRISPRed pig eyeball parts in their heads. In fact, a Chinese guy already went to prison for doing this to two embryos that were later born and are now living just fine, and totally safe from AIDS, to which they are now immune.
If you think it is not coming — and along with it genetically modifying kids to be smarter, taller, more athletic and prettier, too — you are kidding yourself. Science and technology are moving fast, maybe faster than we can think through the consequences.
Two political arguments are preparing the way for this technology to break through all the ick factor and the ethical and health concerns that stand in the way — silly things like whether it will work right for generations that we simply can’t know.
From the left, one of the sacrosanct holiest of holies is the idea that women should have reproductive choice. From the right, we hear more and more about parental control. To their backers, they are absolutes that can’t be compromised.
What could be more a parental reproductive choice than to have their baby and even grandkids born free of disease or even free from worries about passing calc, making a pass or catching a pass, too.
Our genetically modified future isn’t just on the table in our corn and milk anymore. Soon. Sooner than you think. It will be just another part of techno-shaped world, like smartphones, electric cars and trips to Mars. For a decade, scientists have been having conferences about how we might ethically get to this point. Maybe we should start to pay attention so they don’t decide without us.
David Mastio is a national columnist for McClatchy and the Kansas City Star.
This story was originally published August 9, 2025 at 8:07 AM with the headline "Not too long from now, we’ll be gene-editing our CRISPR kids | Opinion."
