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Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

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Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#91

Post by jamesrcole »

wgjordan wrote: post #89
jamesrcole wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about a program enforced on people?? Also, you're assuming it would necessarily be something people resist. Remember that this could be quite a fair way into the future. By that time our understanding of things like the human brain and how it works (and of all its limitations), and of how to change details of our bodies and brains, may be very good and well-accepted, such that it's not a big deal. A…

Forcing all humans to think one specific 'rational' way, eliminating all 'cognitive biases' to the contrary is definitely something people resist. Not everyone shares your world-view, value system, etc. And "eugenics" is 'a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population' [1], which is exactly what you're talking about here. There's a reason the term has fallen out of fav…

Who said anything about forcing people!?! I literally said "Who said anything about a program enforced on people??" in my previous comment, and yet you seemingly are going out of your way to misrepresent what I'm saying.

Who said anything about "Forcing all humans to think one specific 'rational' way, eliminating all 'cognitive biases'", either! Show me anything I wrote that even suggests this.

> And "eugenics" is 'a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population' [1], which is exactly what you're talking about here.

Show me where I said it wasn't "eugenics". (but there's a big difference between forcing people into it and it being voluntary. There's also a big difference between various alternatives for what the genetic changes are, and I've been very clear about what sorts of things I'm talking about).

I'm amazed at the disconnect in this subthread between what I have actually said and what people are claiming I said!

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#92

Post by klmr »

refurb wrote: post #83
klmr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for most genetic engineering applications but not all. Somatic gene therapy has been successfully performed in a few cases. There will almost certainly be more applications in the future, and it’s reasonable to expect that they will be able to handle some prevalent diseases (such as all types of diabetes).

The only approved genetic therapies (Luxturna, Strimvelis, Glybera, others) are all for children or adults. To say you can only use it for germ line modification is just plain wrong.

True but that’s purely for legal/ethical reasons, not (directly) scientific ones. Most scientific uses of CRISPR (and other gene editing techniques) by far happen in the germ line. Germ line research (and, thus, applications) are lacking in humans not because it would be scientifically hard, nor because it won’t eventually happen, but because of hard ethical problems with such research.

And the comment that I replied to implies that it is talking about certain applications of genetic engineering which have to happen in the germ line. So I disagree that what it says is “plain wrong”, it’s just incomplete.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#93

Post by abundant »

jamesrcole wrote: post #79
wgjordan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to consolidate the consensus needed to genetically alter specific 'cognitive biases' that are 'harmful' to 'humans' in 'today's world', you'll probably first need to establish a global totalitarian dictatorship ('take over the world'). That adds an extra technical challenge beyond CRISPR itself, but you can always shoot for the moon and land among the stars.

Why do you think it'd require a global totalitarian dictatorship?? (Also, why do you put 'cognitive biases' in quotes, as if it's a notion of suspect legitimacy?)

One reason to maintain skepticism about the “cognitive biases” concept is that the phrase implies a value judgment— “cognitive heuristics” would be a more value-neutral framing.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#94

Post by jamesrcole »

abundant wrote: post #93
jamesrcole wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it'd require a global totalitarian dictatorship?? (Also, why do you put 'cognitive biases' in quotes, as if it's a notion of suspect legitimacy?)

One reason to maintain skepticism about the “cognitive biases” concept is that the phrase implies a value judgment— “cognitive heuristics” would be a more value-neutral framing.

It's a well-established, respectable area of research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

You think simply because it implies a value judgement that you can be skeptical of it?

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#95

Post by EpicEng »

wiz21c wrote: post #90
dotancohen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet. By the way, "cancer" is a class of diseases, not a single disease to treat, and many of them currently have CRISPR-derived treatments being actively developed.

I'm no expert. Do you believe it's just a question of time ?

Well, the experts do at least.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#96

Post by meko »

patates wrote: post #73
dotancohen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet. By the way, "cancer" is a class of diseases, not a single disease to treat, and many of them currently have CRISPR-derived treatments being actively developed.

Looking forward to the days that even the worst kinds of cancerous tissues would be a drug or two away from complete destruction. I hope that at one point, when someone asks about what would happen if a single maintainer of a project gets cancer tomorrow or gets hit by a bus, the answer would be, "well she/he can take a pill, and, what is this 'bus' thing you oldies keep joking about anyway?" :)

Cancer is my worst fear and has also killed so many of my family and loved ones. It's a slow painful death where you get progressively weaker. I really do hope there is some light at the end of the tunnel there.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#97

Post by justfor1comment »

kitd wrote: post #80
naravara wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it’s actually just time travelers coming back to code the immunity into us to protect us from the unintended consequences of gene hacking? (This is a joke, in case that needs clarifying)

There's got to be a great scifi story in there somewhere.

This is the plot of the Trunks storyline in Dragon Ball Z.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#98

Post by justfor1comment »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #14

So to the non-geneticist noobs (like me), is it correct to interpret this finding as suggesting that the promises of CRISPR may be dead in the water? Does this mean all the hype was nothing more than hype? Should anyone with investments in CRISPR be seriously looking at dumping their stock? Should anyone who was holding out on CRISPR to give us super powers / cure disease / etc start drinking copious amounts of alcoh…

Do you think humans would stop at the first hurdle they encounter in their endeavours? How about the 99th hurdle? CRISPR is a naturally occurring gene editing tool. We have only recently started engineering solutions using it. Once this tool meets the full might of human ingenuity and our constant resolve to improve things, it can overcome great biological challenges. Eliminating disease carrying pests, curing genetic defects in children, shortened crop cycles, tastier strawberries these are some amazing possibilities that CRISPR holds. It might take some time but we will get there. So no the game is not over. It won't be over as long as we have a few humans on the case.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#99

Post by refurb »

klmr wrote: post #92
refurb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only approved genetic therapies (Luxturna, Strimvelis, Glybera, others) are all for children or adults. To say you can only use it for germ line modification is just plain wrong.

True but that’s purely for legal/ethical reasons, not (directly) scientific ones. Most scientific uses of CRISPR (and other gene editing techniques) by far happen in the germ line. Germ line research (and, thus, applications) are lacking in humans not because it would be scientifically hard, nor because it won’t eventually happen, but because of hard ethical problems with such research. And the comment that I replied…

I’d say it’s less for ethical reasons (though that’s true) and more because the technology for modifying germ lines is nowhere near as advanced as inserting DNA into non-germ line cells.

We have no idea what the impact would be for modifying germ line cells in a developing human being.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#100

Post by pazimzadeh »

amelius wrote: post #24
virusduck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, sure. A major roll of the immune system (especially T cells) is to monitor for unusual cells. Some pre-cancerous cells display unusual markers that are recognized and killed by T cells. Those that evade T cell recognition go on to be a problem. The major problem is still how do you target cancer cells? If you can find something that makes them unique, say a cell surface receptor, or an unusual metabolic pro…

> It's just hard to uniquely identify cancer cells. How about performing whole-genome sequencing on a tumor, and then targeting the differences with the patient's natural genome?

Tumor cells encode the same genes as non-tumor cells.

The difference is more likely to be in the expression level or epigenetic (de)repression of a particular gene than the presence or absence of that gene. Organisms don't tend to keep around genes that only serve to form tumors.

A slightly better approach would be to use RNA-sequencing to look for mRNA signatures in tumor vs normal cells.

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