Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 96 posts

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#31

Post by mljoe »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #24
lawless123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ethically should.

Agreed 100%. Why assume it's going to lead to some dystopian future when technological progress has shown that advances like this come down in cost immensely over time. Even an insurance system would want in on subsidizing these procedures if it meant an upfront cost versus long term or lifelong expensive treatments. Edit: Why even assume it would be an insurance subsidy -- the government has a strong motivation to r…

Exactly. Treating chronic genetic disorders might require expensive biologics over the span of a long time to only partially treat. And since the disease is genetic, there is always the risk it comes back.

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#32

Post by [deleted] »

lawless123 wrote: post #12
baldfat wrote: post #4

We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger. Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and…

We ethically should.

[deleted]

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#33

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

antisthenes wrote: post #19
baldfat wrote: post #4

We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger. Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and…

> Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and guarantee the gender of your child. That's a straight up violation of the Hippocratic oath and blackmail/racketeering combined. We should enforce it strictly, vigilantly, and put doctors who attempt to do this in jai…

>You won't be able to prevent the wealthy from modifying their offspring anyway and the unfairness of having them do it vs 99% not being able to afford do is not enough of a reason to stop progress, not even close.

How is that not enough of a reason? The argument is the government has to step in and make it routine from the start. The alternative is to allow the wealthy to literally write superiority into their genes.

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#34

Post by itchyjunk »

zero_shift wrote: post #27

If there's one thing a species like ours needs - with our exposure to so many disease vectors and with so many ways to spread epidemics so quickly - it's definitely not less genetic diversity.

But is diseases really the type of diversity we want though? Some mutation that is generally bad does turn out to be good in some cases [1] but I am still not 100% convinced that the disease causing mutations is diversity that needs to be preserved.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499995/

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#35

Post by mason240 »

benmcnelly wrote: post #8
tombert wrote: post #2

These things fascinate me, and it makes me wonder how close we are to the Gattaca-esque ethical debate. All the same, the fact that we're close to gene editing feels like something our of a SciFi book, and I think that's pretty cool.

Yeah, its reminding me more of the ones with bad ending though.

Sci-fi with a happy, conflict free world is pretty boring though.

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#36

Post by gozur88 »

baldfat wrote: post #4

We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger. Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and…

>Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and guarantee the gender of your child.

I don't have a problem with any of that.

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#37

Post by zero_shift »

itchyjunk wrote: post #34
zero_shift wrote: post #27

If there's one thing a species like ours needs - with our exposure to so many disease vectors and with so many ways to spread epidemics so quickly - it's definitely not less genetic diversity.

But is diseases really the type of diversity we want though? Some mutation that is generally bad does turn out to be good in some cases [1] but I am still not 100% convinced that the disease causing mutations is diversity that needs to be preserved. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499995/

Sickle-cell anaemia is the ur-example. There will no doubt be others we haven't discovered yet.

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#38

Post by stanfordkid »

gozur88 wrote: post #36
baldfat wrote: post #4

We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger. Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and…

>Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and guarantee the gender of your child. I don't have a problem with any of that.

ditto

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#39

Post by mrfusion »

baldfat wrote: post #4

We ethically shouldn't do this. We should not edit human embryos. I can't write 5 pages of why we shouldn't but the fact that we could make the difference between the have and have nots will only get bigger and bigger. Doctor: So do you want the $500 edit to ensure your child won't have diabetes. How about the $2,000 Autism edit? Then the gender change edit is to late to perform. We could do artificial semination and…

It's sad the first comments are always stuff like this. So you want millions of people to suffer genetic diseases because income inequality?

Re: CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time

#40

Post by sfeng »

itchyjunk wrote: post #28
sfeng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know what you mean. Genes encode to proteins, if a disorder is genetic it generally means one or more genes are incorrect, encoding to the wrong proteins. If genetic expression was significantly random, how would we identify genetic disorders to begin with? How would they be hereditary?

Well, it's not all one:one though [1]. If you're messing with transcription factor, who knows what the domino effects will be. Tiny changes might end up triggering phenotypes [2] already present that wouldn't have been expressed without those edits. The idea that there is only about 2% difference between a chimp and man highlights this point.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_factor [2] https://en.wi…

Of all the things to modify though, why a transcription factor? Of course there are things in the genome which modifications of would have problematic results. The question is if we should modify those parts we do think would lead to a better outcome, not the ones we know won't.
Post reply on HN