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First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

technologyreview.com

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Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#21

Post by cbhl »

sethbannon wrote: post #12

I am so insanely excited for the potential of this technology. There are many ethical questions here, but the potential benefits far outweigh the downsides. In the near future, we can detect and eliminate genetic disorders, ensuring no child has to suffer from these defects any longer. Long term, this gives us a tool to take control of our own evolution in a way never before possible. Couldn't be more excited for wha…

Have you read some dystopian fiction? For example, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake?

I'm excited to see what we can do with CRISPR, but we should do it fully aware of the ways things could go wrong (so that we can prevent those things from happening).

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#22

Post by sillysaurus3 »

evolve2017 wrote: post #16
roceasta wrote: post #6

The talk is of 'genetic enhancement' but the potential benefit seems more boring and necessary to me: removal of many new and as-yet-unidentified mutations. It is thought that these have been accumulating generation by generation since about 1800 when child mortality started to fall.

I would be very interested to read an academic paper that made this point. 200 years is a blink of an eye in almost any vertebrate's evolutionary time. Also, to support your claim, one would need evidence that the child mortality of the past reflected genetic unfitness (as opposed to poverty or the unavailability of antibiotics).

200 years is a decent chunk of time from an evolutionary standpoint. We feel it's short because of how long our history has been. But within 200 years you can manufacture N new breeds of dogs, for example. We just underestimate how much change takes place in the world.

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#23

Post by cwkoss »

WalterBright wrote: post #20

Gene editing is probably the only way humans can colonize space. By adapting people to different gravities, air chemistry and pressure, radiation, etc., the need for life support equipment can be significantly reduced, and the quality of life of the colonists can be improved.

Iain Banks' Culture series (sci-fi novels) explores this subject in a way I enjoyed greatly.

"Biologically, the Culture's citizens have been genetically enhanced to live for centuries, and have modified mental control over their physiology, including the ability to introduce a variety of psychoactive drugs into their systems, change biological sex, or switch off pain at will. Culture technology is able to transform individuals into vastly different body forms but, for unclear reasons, the Culture standard form remains fairly close to human."

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#24

Post by smallnamespace »

WalterBright wrote: post #20

Gene editing is probably the only way humans can colonize space. By adapting people to different gravities, air chemistry and pressure, radiation, etc., the need for life support equipment can be significantly reduced, and the quality of life of the colonists can be improved.

On the flip side, if we have a problem with racism now just on the basis of skin color/ethnicity/(culture), just imagine what sort of conflicts would arise once there are actual different human races. Even more so if they cannot reproduce with one another.

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#25

Post by [deleted] »

mbreese wrote: post #13
corndoge wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I would call MIT technology review lay press

Good point... but how would you describe it? It's not exactly lay-press, but it's still a secondary source. It's written for an educated audience, but not necessarily in this field. What would you call them in this case? Science press? Still - not enough room in an article like this for too many details.

[deleted]

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#26

Post by adventured »

cellis wrote: post #15

CRISPR is coming. I seriously think with CRISPR we could see several trillion dollar companies. From cancer and aids cures to fundamentally altering what it means to be human, this is all within the near grasp of CRISPR ( if what i've been reading is to be believed ).

Gilead managed to demonstrate how curing a major disease does not result in such a spectacular outcome (of the trillion dollar scale). They did very well by curing HepC, briefly, and now they're eroding back down after just a few boom years. The same would occur with curing HIV/AIDS. There would be a brief boom derived from sales in some developed nations (most nations would receive the cure extremely inexpensively, as with HepC). It might get a company to a couple hundred billion market cap short-term, nowhere near a trillion dollar outcome however. Further, attempting to charge a lot for the HIV/AIDS cure (such that you could get to a trillion dollar market cap), would result in a far worse PR outcome than what Gilead & Co. saw with HepC drugs; calls for nationalization would be overwhelming. Nations such as India and China would simply ignore all patents and proceed to copying the cure - few would support any economic counter/consequence against that move.

It is often said that companies would intentionally prefer not to cure major diseases. Then Gilead (Pharmasset), goes ahead and does so, while charging less for the cure than the cost of healthcare for living with HepC (much less all that is lost from HepC, including quality of life and economic contribution) - and for doing so, they were treated as a villain due to what they charged. For such reasons, I doubt we'll ever see drug prices high enough to deliver trillion dollar outcomes. Throw on top of this, that the last bastion of crazy drug prices - the US - is nearing an end on its tolerance for such.

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#27

Post by rxhernandez »

WalterBright wrote: post #20

Gene editing is probably the only way humans can colonize space. By adapting people to different gravities, air chemistry and pressure, radiation, etc., the need for life support equipment can be significantly reduced, and the quality of life of the colonists can be improved.

Let me start by saying I'm not a biologist. However, it would seem prudent to think we are much much farther from doing most of what you said than doing terraforming at small levels when we just started editing embryos. Ostensibly the science doesn't even yet exist to do what you are describing whereas funding is the majority of the problem for terraforming at small levels.

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#28

Post by alextheparrot »

eggie wrote: post #11

We would need a very particular set of conditions for embryonic editing to be justifiable under a medical dogma that aims to "do no harm." Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, as this would make embryonic selection of non-carriers very difficult. Then we would need the editing system to be so reliable as to not introduce off-target mutations. In a preimplantation setti…

I'm not certain where the premise that our medicine must "Do no harm" comes from. Chemotherapy, for example, is known for being extremely toxic and harmful, yet the justification is that it often yields better outcomes than no treatment. Why can we not use the same justification for editing DNA? Honestly some therapies cause mutations by design, as some cancers are less capable of DNA repair.

I do see one argument, hinging on the difference between an embryo and an adult aged many years. If your argument is that better techniques may exist at the embryonic stage, then I submit to the medical community to ascertain the appropriate course. However, I don't think offsite mutations pose a significant enough risk that one can say that, on aggregate, gene editing won't "do some good".

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#29

Post by JeffreyKaine »

alextheparrot wrote: post #28
eggie wrote: post #11

We would need a very particular set of conditions for embryonic editing to be justifiable under a medical dogma that aims to "do no harm." Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, as this would make embryonic selection of non-carriers very difficult. Then we would need the editing system to be so reliable as to not introduce off-target mutations. In a preimplantation setti…

I'm not certain where the premise that our medicine must "Do no harm" comes from. Chemotherapy, for example, is known for being extremely toxic and harmful, yet the justification is that it often yields better outcomes than no treatment. Why can we not use the same justification for editing DNA? Honestly some therapies cause mutations by design, as some cancers are less capable of DNA repair. I do see one argument, h…

Where it comes from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

Re: First Human Embryos Edited in U.S

#30

Post by kazinator »

eggie wrote: post #11

We would need a very particular set of conditions for embryonic editing to be justifiable under a medical dogma that aims to "do no harm." Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, as this would make embryonic selection of non-carriers very difficult. Then we would need the editing system to be so reliable as to not introduce off-target mutations. In a preimplantation setti…

> Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, ...

And, for the time being, bags and bags of money! Which currently makes this a vanishingly hypothetical problem of ethics.

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