Gene editing: a gap filling exercise

“The next generation of advanced genetic therapies raises profound medical and ethical issues that must be thrashed out to ensure the game-changing technology benefits patients and society, a group of world-leading experts has warned.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• for profound, how about serious, weighty, far-reaching, grave, or possibly acute?
• you could replace thrashed out with resolved, discussed, settled.
• for game-changing, you could use groundbreaking, or something like advanced, cutting-edge; or even new.

“Medicines based on powerful gene editing tools will begin to transform the treatment of blood disorders, conditions affecting the heart, eyes and muscles, and potentially even neurodegenerative diseases before the end of the decade, but the cost will put them out of the reach of many patients.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• instead of transform, you could say change, alter, improve, revolutionise, modernise.
• there aren’t many other options for out of the reach of, since it’s preceded with ‘put them’; you could say will put them beyond the budget.

“Trials of gene editing in embryos will probably follow, researchers say, and while the procedure has limited clinical applications, some fear fertility clinics could embrace the technology and offer gene editing services that fuel “a new kind of techno-eugenics”.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• where the text says ‘fertility clinics could embrace the technology’, you could choose adopt, take up, take on board, or make use of.
• Instead of fuel, you could say lead to, encourage, feed, create, or trigger.

“Professor Françoise Baylis, a philosopher at Dalhousie University in Canada, said the cost of the new therapies will be prohibitively high for much of the global population, a situation that could “seriously threaten” the aspiration for all humans to be born equal.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• prohibitively could be replaced with exorbitantly, excessively, extortionately, unacceptably, unrealistically.
• aspiration is a difficult word to replace in this context. Words like principle, which express the idea rather well, don’t fit the grammar (with the preposition + infinitive for….to be born). I suppose you could say the desire for all humans…

“The experts, who range from geneticists and public health researchers to bioethicists and philosophers, expect a wave of gene editing therapies to reach clinics in the next five years or so. These will correct disease-causing mutations in patients’ tissues and organs and become more sophisticated as researchers work out how to make multiple edits at once and reach difficult areas such as parts of the brain affected by neurodegenerative disease.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• For range, vary from, run from, or go from would be grammatically correct, but I don’t any of them is superior to range from. If not for the ‘from….to’, you could simply say ‘who include geneticists etc… and….’.
• Instead of a wave, you could refer to a range of or a series or variety of therapies.

“The same technology paves the way for therapies to enhance healthy humans, to make them faster, smarter, stronger, or more resistant to disease, though enhancement is trickier than mending single faulty genes.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• How about replacing paves the way with makes it possible, opens the way, or even sets the scene for or lays the foundation for. ‘Allows’ isn’t suitable, because the ‘for’ changes the meaning (see this RyR post).
• Instead of trickier, you can say more difficult, more complex, more complicated, more delicate, more problematic.

“The previous summit, held in Hong Kong in 2018, was marred by controversy when the Chinese scientist Jiankui He revealed that he had edited DNA in three embryos that developed into babies, including twin sisters named Lulu and Nana. He intended to make the children immune to HIV, but was roundly denounced as reckless by the scientific community.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• For marred, you could use ruined, spoiled, or damaged.
• denounced could be replaced with criticised, condemned, censured, vilified, rebuked, taken to task. Roundly, depending on context, means severely, bluntly, thoroughly, sharply, fiercely, violently, intensely, outspokenly, but these adverbs don’t all go with every verb. You could definitely say severely criticised or fiercely rebuked.

“At millions of dollars a shot, gene editing today is prohibitively expensive. But if costs fall substantially in coming decades, there is a risk that IVF clinics could start offering services, whether the benefits are proven or not. Prospective parents might feel obligated to use it to give their child “the best life”, Baylis said, fuelling a “new kind of techno-eugenics”.”

SUGGESTIONS:

• substantially is relatively easy to replace with significantly.
• prospective parents could be soon-to-be parents or, perhaps, future parents. We talk about ‘expectant mothers’, but I’m not so sure about expectant parents.
• obligated: forced, compelled, duty-bound