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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#81

Post by carbocation »

skosuri wrote: post #76
wycs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though thousands of alleles contribute to intelligence, we would only need to edit a few hundred to get extremely large increases in IQ, especially if you perform a round of embryo selection (or even iterated embryo selection) before editing. Editing hundreds of alleles may sound incredible to you now, but I don’t think it will sound so incredible for long. Even ignoring GM, embryo selection can get us pretty far wit…

What you are saying is just not supported by evidence. For example, polygenic analysis of the latest meta-analysis from >250K individuals seems to say that the top several hundred variants explain in aggregrate only 5.2% of the variation in intelligence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0152-6 (Supplement section 2.3.3 if you don't have access).

In addition, even with that much or more explanatory power, we generally do not think we have necessarily identified causal variants in most cases. We identify groups of associated variants that signify an interesting locus. There isn’t currently a generic framework that lets us decide which ones are causal.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#82

Post by wycs »

skosuri wrote: post #76
wycs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though thousands of alleles contribute to intelligence, we would only need to edit a few hundred to get extremely large increases in IQ, especially if you perform a round of embryo selection (or even iterated embryo selection) before editing. Editing hundreds of alleles may sound incredible to you now, but I don’t think it will sound so incredible for long. Even ignoring GM, embryo selection can get us pretty far wit…

What you are saying is just not supported by evidence. For example, polygenic analysis of the latest meta-analysis from >250K individuals seems to say that the top several hundred variants explain in aggregrate only 5.2% of the variation in intelligence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0152-6 (Supplement section 2.3.3 if you don't have access).

There is no human with all the positive variants; it is the the distribution of these variants that explains 5.2%. GM would allow you to create such a human.

That paper does not imply what you think it implies: that editing all these variants in an individual embryo would have a small effect.

An individual with the top 200 IQ-enhancing variants edited in (and an otherwise normal genome) would be far, far smarter than than than you seem to think, even though the variants edited only explain 5.2% of the differences within the population.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#83

Post by carbocation »

fooker wrote: post #44
carbocation wrote: post #8

> It's "unconscionable ... an experiment on human beings that is not morally or ethically defensible," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert and editor of a genetics journal. This is 100% correct. (COI: Kiran was my postdoc while I was a student in the lab a decade ago.)

> not morally or ethically defensible Sure, that won't stop progress by people who do not follow your flavor of morality or ethics, though.

What is your evidence that the post-WWII flavor of bioethics inhibits real progress? If that were true, why do we not see other systems leading?

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#84

Post by skosuri »

wycs wrote: post #82
skosuri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is just not supported by evidence. For example, polygenic analysis of the latest meta-analysis from >250K individuals seems to say that the top several hundred variants explain in aggregrate only 5.2% of the variation in intelligence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0152-6 (Supplement section 2.3.3 if you don't have access).

There is no human with all the positive variants; it is the the distribution of these variants that explains 5.2%. GM would allow you to create such a human. That paper does not imply what you think it implies: that editing all these variants in an individual embryo would have a small effect. An individual with the top 200 IQ-enhancing variants edited in (and an otherwise normal genome) would be far, far smarter than…

Ahh I see, you are just making stuff up.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#85

Post by carbocation »

logicchains wrote: post #75
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"an experiment on human beings [is] not morally or ethically defensible" is not an opinion but an assertion of how genetic editing fits into our current moral and ethical frameworks.

>our current moral and ethical frameworks. Clearly those moral and ethical frameworks are not shared by at least one Chinese scientist.

And we can find people who disagree with the broad consensus on climate change, too. Is there a broader point you are getting at?

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#86

Post by ethbro »

dqpb wrote: post #25
carbocation wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps this is true. I do not know. But human enhancement through genetic engineering is coming. Changes in traits, such as IQ, by 5+ standard deviations looks possible. We would be fools to outlaw it here, for we would become as children compared to future citizens of Asian nations. What is the relevance of "Asian nations?" to this conversation? Also, we're talking about a specific experiment that was allegedly c…

"good but error prone" describes all of medical care right now. Hell, pharmaceuticals aren't even good in many cases.

"Good but error prone" seems to aptly describe our current method of producing offspring.

Gene editing is mandatory, if only because we've managed to turn many previously lethal mutations into livable, and reproducible, ones.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#87

Post by nostrademons »

nradov wrote: post #61
BurningFrog wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human intelligence has not increased because it has not been strongly selected for. If it was maximized, at the expense of other traits, a lot could definitely happen. > The average human genome appears to be close to a local maximum. Absolutely, but it's maximized for the environment we lived in 10-100 generations ago.

"Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-...

Not saying the conclusion is wrong, but that experimental methodology seems sketchy as hell. Why? Their sample consisted entirely of Mensa members. Mensa != the general population of high-IQ individuals.

You join Mensa if your IQ is a large part of your identity. Individuals who have a high IQ but also have a lot of other things going on in their lives (like career success or fulfilling personal relationships) tend to concentrate on those things rather than join Mensa. Therefore, membership in Mensa tends to overselect for individuals whose self-conception is both narrow and focused on their intelligence. There's a lot of other evidence in psychology that a narrow self-conception correlates highly with mood & anxiety disorders. You can also get correlations with physical ailments like environmental allergies and asthma as well, because someone who doesn't have these physical ailments is more able to get outside or pick up sports rather than go to meetings of a high-IQ society.

So the way they designed their experiment, they introduced tons of conflating factors that may or may not actually have anything to do with IQ. It's certainly possible that high IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders - but what the experiment shows is that membership in Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#88

Post by DennisAleynikov »

buboard wrote: post #67
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unethical" would probably have worked better. sorry for the confusion

which part is unethical though? it was voluntary

well, its just unethical based on USA rules against human experimentation. obviously moral and ethical codes can evolve to accommodate advances in science eventually.

this is not a medical procedure, which is what makes it unethical to perform. its an experiment with unknown outcome which is why current ethics dictates it is not okay to do this.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#89

Post by sanxiyn »

hanniabu wrote: post #23
rm2889 wrote: post #6

This is quite interesting. There is a certain very small percentage of the world's population that is immune to the HIV virus. These people's T-cells have the CD4 receptor, but not the CCR5 receptor. The HIV virus needs both these receptors to successfully affect the host's cells. The absence of the CCR5 receptor still allows the person's T cells to function normally, so if this works, it can pave the way to creating…

Does CCR5 have no other purpose? Hard to believe that it'd exist if it wasn't needed.

There are literally millions of healthy people without CCR5 receptors. (Millions is approximately 0.01% of world population and this mutation's frequency is certainly greater than that.)

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#90

Post by carbocation »

wycs wrote: post #82
skosuri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is just not supported by evidence. For example, polygenic analysis of the latest meta-analysis from >250K individuals seems to say that the top several hundred variants explain in aggregrate only 5.2% of the variation in intelligence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0152-6 (Supplement section 2.3.3 if you don't have access).

There is no human with all the positive variants; it is the the distribution of these variants that explains 5.2%. GM would allow you to create such a human. That paper does not imply what you think it implies: that editing all these variants in an individual embryo would have a small effect. An individual with the top 200 IQ-enhancing variants edited in (and an otherwise normal genome) would be far, far smarter than…

There is a lot to unpack here. But this is basically science fiction, given how far out we are from understanding how to cosmetically modify complex traits in this way.
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