For today’s Sunday with Sisson I’m going to highlight the most cockamamie bit of news I’ve read in a long time.
A company has trialed a
new “super-precise” gene-editing technology that turns off a gene in the liver that controls LDL cholesterol synthesis. They trialed this technology in live humans. Ten of them, to be precise, with familial hypercholesterolemia. Their average LDL levels at the start of the trial were 195 mg/dL. After getting dosed with the gene edits, their LDL dropped 55%—and stayed that low for at least 6 months of followup.
Well, for 9 of them, at least. One of them died 5 weeks after getting the treatment. Another had a heart attack a day after getting it. Researchers claim that this is totally normal. After all, they had high cholesterol. They’d had it all their lives, and the “accumulated damage” of elevated LDL made the heart attacks all but inevitable.
Maybe they’re right. The study authors are continuing it, despite 20% of the participants suffering serious health events. They intend on following the participants for at least 14 years to make sure nothing happens. Hopefully they all make it that long.
That’s the “beauty” of a small sample size, by the way. You only have ten participants and almost nothing bad that happens is “significant” enough to warrant stopping the trial.
Anyway, as I’ve said for a long time, I think the intrusion of techies into human health is going to be disastrous. There will be some wins, I’m sure, but a lot of misses and a lot of side effects. A lot of wreckage along the way.
What do you think, folks? Would you get the gene edit to turn off LDL synthesis? Let me know in the comment section of
New and Noteworthy.
