（057）2015/3/7：人类基因技术突飞猛进令人担忧
Leaves译 2015/3/7 原文来源：纽约时报
BERKELEY, Calif. — AN advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration is set to begin two days of meetings tomorrow to consider radical biological procedures that, if successful, would produce genetically modified human beings. This is a dangerous step. These techniques would change every cell in the bodies of children born as a result of their use, and these alterations would be passed down to future generations.
加州伯克利——食品和药物管理局一个顾问委员会将于明日开始召开为其两天的会议，探讨一项激进的生物学技术。如果成功，该技术将会制造出转基因人类。这是危险的一步。这些技术将会改变它们产生出的婴儿体内的每一个细胞，这种改变也将遗传给下一代。
The F.D.A. calls them mitochondrial manipulation technologies. The procedures involve removing the nuclear material either from the egg or embryo of a woman with inheritable mitochondrial disease and inserting it into a healthy egg or embryo of a donor whose own nuclear material has been discarded. Any offspring would carry genetic material from three people — the nuclear DNA of the mother and father, and the mitochondrial DNA of the donor.
食品和药物管理局将这些技术称为线粒体操控技术。操作过程为：将细胞核质从患有遗传性线粒体疾病妇女的卵子或者胚胎中摘除，并放入一个由捐献者提供的、已经去除细胞核的健康卵子或胚胎中。这样培育出来的后代将会携带三个人基因物质——父母的细胞核DNA，以及捐献者的线粒体DNA。
Roughly 1,000 to 4,000 children born in the United States each year will develop a mitochondrial disease, most by age 10, with symptoms that can range from mild to devastating. These diseases typically prevent mitochondria from converting food into energy and are the result of genetic abnormalities, although some cases can be caused by exposures to toxins. Disorders caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA are passed down from the mother.
在美国，每年大约有1000到4000名婴儿出生后会得线粒体疾病，多数发病于10岁前，症状各异，有的轻微，有的致命。通常是基因变异导致了这些病，使线粒体无法将食物转化为能量，但也有些病例由中毒引起。线粒体DNA引发的紊乱遗传自母亲。
Developers of these modification techniques say they are a way for women with mitochondrial disease to give birth to healthy children to whom they are related genetically. Some are also promoting their use for age-related infertility. These are worthy goals. But these procedures are deeply problematic in terms of their medical risks and societal implications. Will the child be born healthy, or will the cellular disruptions created by this eggs-as-Lego-pieces approach lead to problems later on? What about subsequent generations? And how far will we go in our efforts to engineer humans？
这些基因改造技术的开发者称，它们可以让患有线粒体疾病的妇女生出和自身基因存在关系的健康婴儿。还有些开发者正在宣传这些技术可以用于治疗因年龄引起的不孕。这些目标颇具价值。但在医疗风险和社会影响方面，这些手术存在很大的问题。生出来的孩子健康吗？这种像搭乐高积木一样改造卵子的方法会不会造成细胞混乱，继而在今后导致问题？随后的一代人将会如何？我们在改造人类方面会走多远？
These sorts of concerns were first voiced decades ago, well before the human genome had even been “mapped.” Those were the days when our accelerating knowledge about genetics led to over-optimistic hopes for quick fixes to an array of afflictions and grandiose visions of designing genetically enhanced babies to be more intelligent, athletic, musically talented and the like.
第一次出现这种担忧的声音是在几十年前，甚至比人类基因首次被“比对”的时间都要早得多。彼时，我们在遗传学方面的知识突飞猛进，导致人们心怀过分乐观的希望，认为很多疾病可以找到快速的治疗方法，还夸张地设计出了强化版婴儿，比过去的孩子更聪明、更强壮、音乐天赋更高，凡此种种不一而足。
More recently, many scholars, scientists and policy makers have urged a different approach: We should carefully and thoughtfully apply the tools of human genetic engineering to treat medical conditions in people, but we should not use them to manipulate the genetic traits of future children. Genetic modifications of sperm, eggs and early embryos should be strictly off limits. Otherwise, we risk venturing into human experimentation and high-tech eugenics.
而最近几年，很多学者、科学家和决策者敦促采取另外一种态度：在治疗人体疾病方面我们应该仔细、细致地运用人类基因工程，但不应该用它来操纵下一代孩子的遗传特征。应当严格禁止对精子、卵子和早期胚胎实施转基因。否则的话，我们就等于冒险进入了人体试验和高技术优生学领域。
Unfortunately, there are now worrisome signs that opposition to inheritable genetic modifications, written into law by dozens of countries, according to our count, may be weakening. British regulators are also considering mitochondrial manipulations, and proponents there, like their counterparts in the United States, want to move quickly to clinical trials.
遗憾的是，目前出现了一些令人担忧的迹象：虽然根据我们的计算，已有数十个国家立法禁止可遗传基因改造，但对其反对的声音可能正在变弱。英国的管理者同样正在考虑线粒体操纵。那里支持基因改造的人和他们在美国的志同道合者一样希望尽快开展临床试验。
Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University have produced five macaque monkeys using one of these techniques. Four are now adults and all five appear healthy. But we won’t know for years how subsequent generations may be affected.
俄勒冈健康和科学大学的研究人员已经利用其中一项技术培育出了5只恒河猴。现在，4只已经成年，而且所有5只都很健康。但它们的后代可能会受到怎样的影响，未来很多年我们都无从知晓。
And the O.H.S.U. researchers themselves report a difference between their experience with the macaques and their work so far on fertilized human eggs. More than half of the human zygotes — single cells formed by the merging of an egg and sperm — had abnormalities not observed in the fertilized eggs of the monkeys. “It looks like human oocytes are more sensitive,” the lead researcher, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive biologist, told Nature.
俄勒冈健康和科学大学的研究人员自己也宣布，培育恒河猴与目前为止他们在人类受精卵方面的工作存在差异。受精卵是卵子和精子结合而成的单个细胞，超过一半的人类受精卵存在异常，但这种异常在猴子的受精卵上并没有观测到。该研究的首席研究人员、繁殖生物学家舒克拉特·米塔利波夫告诉《自然》杂志：“看上去人类的受精卵更为敏感。”
Some media accounts about these techniques have misleadingly referred to “saving lives,” as if they were aimed at people who are sick and suffering. Others have failed to note how very few women would be candidates for even considering them. And they could turn to safer and simpler alternatives. An affected woman could adopt or use in vitro fertilization with another woman’s eggs. Of course, the resulting child would not be genetically related to her, but neither would the child be put at grave risk by an extreme procedure.
有些媒体误导性地将这些技术称为“拯救生命”，就好像它们的目标是生病遭殃的人似的。其它一些媒体则没有意识到愿意接受试验，甚至愿意去考虑一下的妇女有多么少。她们会转向那些更安全、更简单的替代方法。患病的妇女可以领养孩子，或者用其她女性的卵子进行试管受孕。当然，从基因角度而言孩子和她就没有关系了，但同时这样也不会因为极端的手术而将孩子置于重大风险之中。
The F.D.A. advisory panel says that its meeting will consider only scientific aspects of mitochondrial manipulation and that any “ethical and social policy issues” are outside its scope. But those are precisely the issues that we must address. Simply being able to do something doesn’t mean we should do it.
食品和药物管理局顾问委员会称自己的会议只会从科学的角度探讨线粒体操纵，而任何“伦理和社会政策问题”均不在讨论范围内。但这些恰恰正是我们应当解决的问题。我们可以很轻松地做到某些事情，并不意味着我们应该去做。
BERKELEY, Calif. — AN advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration is set to begin two days of meetings tomorrow to consider radical biological procedures that, if successful, would produce genetically modified human beings. This is a dangerous step. These techniques would change every cell in the bodies of children born as a result of their use, and these alterations would be passed down to future generations.
加州伯克利——食品和药物管理局一个顾问委员会将于明日开始召开为其两天的会议，探讨一项激进的生物学技术。如果成功，该技术将会制造出转基因人类。这是危险的一步。这些技术将会改变它们产生出的婴儿体内的每一个细胞，这种改变也将遗传给下一代。
The F.D.A. calls them mitochondrial manipulation technologies. The procedures involve removing the nuclear material either from the egg or embryo of a woman with inheritable mitochondrial disease and inserting it into a healthy egg or embryo of a donor whose own nuclear material has been discarded. Any offspring would carry genetic material from three people — the nuclear DNA of the mother and father, and the mitochondrial DNA of the donor.
食品和药物管理局将这些技术称为线粒体操控技术。操作过程为：将细胞核质从患有遗传性线粒体疾病妇女的卵子或者胚胎中摘除，并放入一个由捐献者提供的、已经去除细胞核的健康卵子或胚胎中。这样培育出来的后代将会携带三个人基因物质——父母的细胞核DNA，以及捐献者的线粒体DNA。
Roughly 1,000 to 4,000 children born in the United States each year will develop a mitochondrial disease, most by age 10, with symptoms that can range from mild to devastating. These diseases typically prevent mitochondria from converting food into energy and are the result of genetic abnormalities, although some cases can be caused by exposures to toxins. Disorders caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA are passed down from the mother.
在美国，每年大约有1000到4000名婴儿出生后会得线粒体疾病，多数发病于10岁前，症状各异，有的轻微，有的致命。通常是基因变异导致了这些病，使线粒体无法将食物转化为能量，但也有些病例由中毒引起。线粒体DNA引发的紊乱遗传自母亲。
Developers of these modification techniques say they are a way for women with mitochondrial disease to give birth to healthy children to whom they are related genetically. Some are also promoting their use for age-related infertility. These are worthy goals. But these procedures are deeply problematic in terms of their medical risks and societal implications. Will the child be born healthy, or will the cellular disruptions created by this eggs-as-Lego-pieces approach lead to problems later on? What about subsequent generations? And how far will we go in our efforts to engineer humans？
这些基因改造技术的开发者称，它们可以让患有线粒体疾病的妇女生出和自身基因存在关系的健康婴儿。还有些开发者正在宣传这些技术可以用于治疗因年龄引起的不孕。这些目标颇具价值。但在医疗风险和社会影响方面，这些手术存在很大的问题。生出来的孩子健康吗？这种像搭乐高积木一样改造卵子的方法会不会造成细胞混乱，继而在今后导致问题？随后的一代人将会如何？我们在改造人类方面会走多远？
These sorts of concerns were first voiced decades ago, well before the human genome had even been “mapped.” Those were the days when our accelerating knowledge about genetics led to over-optimistic hopes for quick fixes to an array of afflictions and grandiose visions of designing genetically enhanced babies to be more intelligent, athletic, musically talented and the like.
第一次出现这种担忧的声音是在几十年前，甚至比人类基因首次被“比对”的时间都要早得多。彼时，我们在遗传学方面的知识突飞猛进，导致人们心怀过分乐观的希望，认为很多疾病可以找到快速的治疗方法，还夸张地设计出了强化版婴儿，比过去的孩子更聪明、更强壮、音乐天赋更高，凡此种种不一而足。
More recently, many scholars, scientists and policy makers have urged a different approach: We should carefully and thoughtfully apply the tools of human genetic engineering to treat medical conditions in people, but we should not use them to manipulate the genetic traits of future children. Genetic modifications of sperm, eggs and early embryos should be strictly off limits. Otherwise, we risk venturing into human experimentation and high-tech eugenics.
而最近几年，很多学者、科学家和决策者敦促采取另外一种态度：在治疗人体疾病方面我们应该仔细、细致地运用人类基因工程，但不应该用它来操纵下一代孩子的遗传特征。应当严格禁止对精子、卵子和早期胚胎实施转基因。否则的话，我们就等于冒险进入了人体试验和高技术优生学领域。
Unfortunately, there are now worrisome signs that opposition to inheritable genetic modifications, written into law by dozens of countries, according to our count, may be weakening. British regulators are also considering mitochondrial manipulations, and proponents there, like their counterparts in the United States, want to move quickly to clinical trials.
遗憾的是，目前出现了一些令人担忧的迹象：虽然根据我们的计算，已有数十个国家立法禁止可遗传基因改造，但对其反对的声音可能正在变弱。英国的管理者同样正在考虑线粒体操纵。那里支持基因改造的人和他们在美国的志同道合者一样希望尽快开展临床试验。
Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University have produced five macaque monkeys using one of these techniques. Four are now adults and all five appear healthy. But we won’t know for years how subsequent generations may be affected.
俄勒冈健康和科学大学的研究人员已经利用其中一项技术培育出了5只恒河猴。现在，4只已经成年，而且所有5只都很健康。但它们的后代可能会受到怎样的影响，未来很多年我们都无从知晓。
And the O.H.S.U. researchers themselves report a difference between their experience with the macaques and their work so far on fertilized human eggs. More than half of the human zygotes — single cells formed by the merging of an egg and sperm — had abnormalities not observed in the fertilized eggs of the monkeys. “It looks like human oocytes are more sensitive,” the lead researcher, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive biologist, told Nature.
俄勒冈健康和科学大学的研究人员自己也宣布，培育恒河猴与目前为止他们在人类受精卵方面的工作存在差异。受精卵是卵子和精子结合而成的单个细胞，超过一半的人类受精卵存在异常，但这种异常在猴子的受精卵上并没有观测到。该研究的首席研究人员、繁殖生物学家舒克拉特·米塔利波夫告诉《自然》杂志：“看上去人类的受精卵更为敏感。”
Some media accounts about these techniques have misleadingly referred to “saving lives,” as if they were aimed at people who are sick and suffering. Others have failed to note how very few women would be candidates for even considering them. And they could turn to safer and simpler alternatives. An affected woman could adopt or use in vitro fertilization with another woman’s eggs. Of course, the resulting child would not be genetically related to her, but neither would the child be put at grave risk by an extreme procedure.
有些媒体误导性地将这些技术称为“拯救生命”，就好像它们的目标是生病遭殃的人似的。其它一些媒体则没有意识到愿意接受试验，甚至愿意去考虑一下的妇女有多么少。她们会转向那些更安全、更简单的替代方法。患病的妇女可以领养孩子，或者用其她女性的卵子进行试管受孕。当然，从基因角度而言孩子和她就没有关系了，但同时这样也不会因为极端的手术而将孩子置于重大风险之中。
The F.D.A. advisory panel says that its meeting will consider only scientific aspects of mitochondrial manipulation and that any “ethical and social policy issues” are outside its scope. But those are precisely the issues that we must address. Simply being able to do something doesn’t mean we should do it.
食品和药物管理局顾问委员会称自己的会议只会从科学的角度探讨线粒体操纵，而任何“伦理和社会政策问题”均不在讨论范围内。但这些恰恰正是我们应当解决的问题。我们可以很轻松地做到某些事情，并不意味着我们应该去做。
