What’s Wowing Joe Issa? : Birth of Perfectly Healthy Babies, Could Ease Sterss on Family, Friends, Public Health Services

Family and community oriented businessman and philantropist Joe Issa, who is a big contributor to the education of underprivileged Jamaican children is wowed by new discoveries which could relieve families and friends of the stress of fighting diseases in young children and put less pressure on the health services.

DNA Testing

“It’s a remarkable discovery that scientists can now remove disease genes in human embryos and allow for the birth of perfectly healthy babies.

“You can imagine the stress this will relieve for generations of parents and friends who will no longer have children born with genetic diseases, as well as the pressure it will reduce on the health services.

“Most importantly, healthier children make for a healthier, better educated and a more productive workforce, which is the most important input in the production of goods and services for economic growth,” said Issa, who founded the successful Cool brand that is being leveraged internationally.

Issa was commenting on recent news that Scientists in the United States have repaired a disease-causing mutation in the DNA of early-stage human embryos, taking a step closer to engineering babies free of inherited disorders.

While Issa hails the technical feat, at the same tme he joins experts, who are calling for more debate on the ethics of altering human DNA.

“The lab-created, edited embryos were not allowed to develop beyond a few days, when they comprised a handful of cells,” said the Observer-carried AFP report.

“Just over 72 per cent of the embryos – 42 out of 58 – ended up being free of a heart disease-causing mutation carried in the DNA of the sperm used to create them,” a team reportedly said in the journal Nature.

According to study co-author Paula Amato, of the Oregon Health & Science University, “this was an improvement on the 50-per cent odds for embryos that result naturally from a couple in which one partner carries the coding error.”

Dr/ Paula Amato

She adds: “With further improvement, the method can potentially be used to prevent transmission of genetic disease to future generations.” noting that “the alteration itself is heritable, meaning that the children and grandchildren of a person born with edited DNA will be safe from the same genetic disease.”

Further research is said to be needed “to determine the safety of the technique and boost its accuracy to as close to 100 percent as possible, before it can be used to create embryos meant to develop into healthy babies.”