Is It Ethical? 1: The CRISPR Pokémon

This is my first time doing an Is It Ethical, and your first time reading and responding to one. If this is your first time doing one of these, let me do a rundown on the rules.

1. Read the paragraph provided.
2. Use what you know about bioethics to determine weather or not the procedures in the story are ethical.
3. Respond in the comments with weather or not you think it's ethical and why you think that way.
4. Keep comments appropriate.

Now that you know the rules, let's begin!

## Article: The CRISPR Pokémon

It seems that the gender ratio in Eevee, 87.5% male to 12.5% female has caught the attention of a group of scientists. After years of research prior on the topic of Pokémon gender ratios, it has been discovered that this was caused by a genetic mutation a long time ago in the males that causes them to develop more sperm caring the y chromosome. Note that in this universe, Eevee give live birth at child bearing age. The scientists want to use CRISPR-Cas9 to solve this. There are a few things that they can do. Firstly, they know about Hyurle's Gerudo race which bears way more girls than boys. They also know that this is genetic, and can be edited into other creatures. One of the things that they can do is edit the gene that cases Gerudo to bear more girls into the female Eevee, but leave her egg cells the way they are. The edit would not be passed on to her offspring. While this is a possibility, they decided to try to edit the germline of the Eevee that they were using in this study.

Firstly, the scientists headed to Kanto with a steady supply of specimen tags, DNA tests, and Poke balls. They tested each Eevee that they came across, tagged them so they could be found after the DNA tests had been processed. Then, they caught the Eevee that they found to not be related. After they had caught a good amount of Eevee, they returned to their lab.

They started by testing the males for the mutation, and found that 9 out of 10 of the males that they had caught had the mutation. They knew that they couldn't just simply use the Cas9 to cut the mutation from the affected males because the DNA would repair itself with the sister chromatids that had the mutation on them. They were able to retrieve the gene without the mutation by taking that strand from the non-affected male. Then, they inserted it into the affected males and cut the mutated gene out with CRISPR. Because that gene was passed down when it was mutated, they figured that the male Eevee would now produce an equal amount of x and y chromosome caring sperm that contained the CRISPR gene.

They also added some of the genetic information to one of the female Eevee from a Gerudo. They figured that it would cause her to bear more female offspring, but it didn't affect future generations much as the scientists expected. It did cause just her in general to give birth to more girls.

After a few years of working on this experiment, they found that the CRISPR that had been done on the male Eevee had proven successful, and when breed with the females, the gender ratio had come out 50/50. Their attempts to flatten the curve of Eevee's uneven gender ratio had proven successful.

But, these scientists took it a step further. They returned to Kanto with the materials required to set up a lab, along with the CRISPR Eevees. When they got there, they set up a mini lab in the area that Eevee tend to live in. Every day, they would capture a few of them, and if that Eevee happened to be an affected male, they would use CRISPR to edit his genes, tag him, and release him. It wasn't long before the scientists found out that a shiny Pokémon was shiny because of a rare gene.

Now, the scientists changed their tracks from fixing a mutation to creating shiny Eevee. They found that they had to edit the male and the female's germline, and it wasn't long before the scientists had gotten around to doing all sorts of genomic editing on wild Pokémon. Anything from fixing a mutation to making them grow organs that could be donated to humans, these scientists had it covered.

**Now it's your turn!**

Was what these scientists did ethical? How would their actions affect the Eevee population in the future? Post your opinion in the comments on if you think that this experiment was ethical or unethical, along with an explanation on why you answered the way you did. Be sure to keep it appropriate!