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Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

nytimes.com

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Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#91

Post by jimbokun »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #29
komali2 wrote: post #6

>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…

+1. There are unlimited possibilities. This may even allow us to survive on Mars or any other places if we actually know how to edit the gene. Like anything, technology can also be used in the wrong way and we must guard against.

"This may even allow us to survive on Mars or any other places if we actually know how to edit the gene."

How in the world did you make that leap? What's the one gene we can edit that reconfigures human physiology to run off of CO2?

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#92

Post by seanp2k2 »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #82
laydn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you portray the US to have a higher moral standard for this subject matter. I wonder if there's a Chinese guy who read the article and said: If China doesn't do it, USA will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the Chinese standing toe-to-toe laughable. If USA doesn't, Russia will. Maybe it is time to start thinking about an international agreem…

It's not moral standards we have, it is ridiculously parochial notions of purity and natural-is-better attitudes. If we fail to free our children from stupidity and ill health, we are the moral imbeciles. If Asian nations increase health, IQ, and happiness through genetic selection and engineering, this will speak of higher moral sophistication. We have right-wing religious conservatives on one side and on the left a…

If you outlaw genetic engineering, only outlaws will be genetically engineered. Then they'll take over the world.

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#93

Post by wnevets »

komali2 wrote: post #6

>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…

>If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will.

or rich americans will even if the general public doesn't

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#94

Post by tantanel »

quotemstr wrote: post #53
dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. I think GRRM very carefully made by both the positive and negative parts key to the framing of Qyburn; he's quite clearly both a brilliant scientist who rebelled against obsole…

There are multiple ways to interpret fiction. I'm reminded of that Russian fanfic that cast Sauron as a heroic industrialist doing his best to drag Middle Earth into an industrial revolution, all the while being hampered by superstitious people from the steppes constantly raiding his cities.

The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov in case anyone's interested.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#95

Post by RangerScience »

jimbokun wrote: post #83
komali2 wrote: post #6

>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…

Or maybe those countries will fuck up their population's genetic makeups in unforeseen ways, and we can be fortunate for having dodged that bullet. Do you honestly believe there is a single "intelligence" gene we can edit to turn up intelligence like a knob, without impacting anything else about the person? Do you want your baby to be the first one its tried out on?

> Or maybe those countries will fuck up their population's genetic makeups in unforeseen ways

This is why diversity is important.

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#96

Post by PrimalDual »

thriftwy wrote: post #22
aaronmck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to wait for the genetics to catch up -- we know nearly nothing about the effects of variation on complex traits like intelligence or athletic performance. Even in known 'cancer genes' like BRCA1, we know what only a few of the thousands of single-base changes do. Without this information, things are going to be limited to known disease variants (a good thing)

I'm pretty sure that if we threw a lot of genomes, healthy and defective, to a neural network, and then showed it a genome and told "make it healthy", it would. So it happens that genetics doesn't have to catch up - we can have this knowledge without knowing it. And also. People will question genetists' judgement. Some of the changes they're proposing have never passed statistically significant testing. But nobody ev…

I don't think you are wrong in principle but in practice this simply wouldn't work. We don't have enough sequenced genomes in the world to train such a network and even if we did there is no guarantee that a network-produced genome would stay in the manifold of healthy humans when trying to change an existing defective genome to a healthy one. Either way it would be to expensive to find out if a new genome actually works. Finally with a sequenced genome going for a couple gigabytes I don't see us having a large enough usable data set of these any time soon.

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#97

Post by brandonmenc »

komali2 wrote: post #6

>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…

> If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will.

External tools will still provide orders of magnitude more advantage than any gene-edited maximum human body.

Your soldiers can bench press a hundred more pounds than us? Big deal, ours can just press a button and launch a nuke.

An entire population with 10 extra IQ points on average? That's just background noise against a cloud of supercomputers grinding calculations 24/7.

The Soviets and others have tried this with things like steroids and regimented schooling, and it didn't make much of a difference.

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#98

Post by seanp2k2 »

civilian wrote: post #60
Zigurd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you like to be born a mistake in such experimentation. That's why the ethical issues are serious. If it's not safe, the mistakes will be paid for by utterly innocent and unwilling participants.

How would you like to be born with Huntington's disease, knowing that your parents could have taken an unknown risk to save you from it? We are all utterly innocent and unwilling participants in being born. You can either take the random cards that nature deals you, or we can try to act to have better outcomes. Just because you refuse to take action doesn't absolve you from taking a suboptimal action.

This could also easily turn into a larger discussion about the ethical considerations of procreation when one is not in a favorable position (e.g. poor, homeless, addicted to drugs, mentally ill). What's OK and what's not? Who decides for everyone? Is that the best way? Should people be allowed to decide for their future children?

Re: Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos

#99

Post by chrischen »

komali2 wrote: post #6

>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…

> If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will.

China already spent a generation letting people shoot themselves in the foot with specifying genetic preferences in children. Don’t know what I mean? I’m talking about the gender trait. This is something determined by genetics and something that genetic engineering can allow people to specify, albeit China’s previous method of discarding female newborns is a bit of a low tech way of accomplishing it,

The great thing is we have a clear example of the dangers of unchecked genetic manupulation. Mobs are stupid, and also tend to reduce diversity as everyone wants to pick the obvious good traits. They thought being male was a better trait, and giving people the power to choose the trait let them shoot themselves in the foot as a society. You end up with the massive gender imbalance and that’s the least worrisome of repercussions if we get rid of diversity in the gene pool.

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