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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#111

Post by ramraj07 »

nopinsight wrote: post #107
ramraj07 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that super weird article. The author's motivations for supporting China's eugenics efforts are puzzling for sure. Thankfully we might be safe for the time being. IIRC the BGI IQ sequencing initiative did not lead to any meaningful discoveries since it's not yet obvious or fully proven yet that IQ is that heritable. My 50c is that we as a population have currently stopped evolving regions of our genome that…

Thank you for the interesting hypotheses regarding the evolution of intelligence. I have a somewhat different take and would like to share: Some of the most intelligent people in history including renowned philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians did not seem to focus on using their intelligence to acquire as much power or wealth as possible. They seemed to enjoy contemplating more universal and deeper questions…

While I used IQ as a proxy for intelligence, intelligence is obviously still poorly (or conveniently restrictively) defined. But surely some form of "being smarter" would have been advantageous at any point in time in a society? It's not just science and engineering that needs intelligence right?

Oddly enough this reminds me of a clip from the show Young Sheldon where the twins display extremely different, yet equally admoyable manifestations of intelligence: https://youtu.be/nvQkKS75M2o

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#112

Post by adrianN »

skosuri wrote: post #49
wycs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term I think the risks are overstated. Vastly increased health and intelligence looks like it will be possible to select and/or edit for, as well as the elimination of Mendelian disease. The scale of this good is so large it overwhelms most scruples.

"Vastly increased health and intelligence"... again, you keep making assertions without any reference.

What kind of references do you want for a procedure that was just done for the first time? We already know that some diseases are affected by genes. It is also clear that intelligence is at least in part inheritable. It's a reasonable assumption that we can improve both if we get good at editing genes.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#113

Post by NamTaf »

buboard wrote: post #101
jlebar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was voluntary Do you think parents can consent to this sort of experiment on behalf of an unborn child?

should parents be liable for any kind of genetic defect they pass to their children?

Intent and premeditation are strong in western law, hence differences between murder and manslaughter. Consenting to a genetic experiment which then has ramifications on offspring therefore stands apart from the natural inheritance of uncontrolled genetic issues, as well as from the obverse situation where a parent does not undertake medical treatment that could possibly result in preventing inherited genetic issues.

In other words, taking action to make changes is a crucial difference when compared to inaction, even if the outcomes are similar.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#114

Post by freeone3000 »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #110
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.)

I don't know if I agree with that. Some theists believe that we shouldn't tamper with God's perfect creation, because everything happens for a reason (including miscarriages, birth defects, and genetic diseases.) Atheists might believe that natural selection has got us this far, so it must be a pretty good process. A scientist shouldn't change anything, because they will be adding unnecessary risk to the natural proc…

It's an accurate way of looking at it, but it assumes humans have a lesser value because lots of them already die, so what's a few more? The difference is a few humans, and that's too big a risk, in my opinion, to take lightly.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#115

Post by aaron695 »

cyphar wrote: post #22
Svexav wrote: post #11

It’s no surprise this comes from China, the same country that grinds dead babies into pills.

When I first read this comment I thought it was hyperbole (I've heard about the vaccine and melamine scares -- which harmed and killed many thousands of children -- but not about dead babies being put into pills). But no, it's real fucking thing[1,2,3,4]. What the actual fuck. How is a Hacker News comment the first time I've heard of this? [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/ho... [2]: http…

Basically it's hyperbole, here's an ok summary -

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9272/did-pills-...

What hell it has to do with "First gene-edited babies claimed in China" other than racism is hard to see anyway.

In the west it's not unheard of to eat to placenta which is basically the same thing anyway.

If it's real it's impossible to know, we only have one source, some doco in Korean which means it must be pretty rare even if it's true, for a country of over a billion that's rare.

PS And it was the Koreans in this tale buying them.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#116

Post by bencollier49 »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #110
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.)

I don't know if I agree with that. Some theists believe that we shouldn't tamper with God's perfect creation, because everything happens for a reason (including miscarriages, birth defects, and genetic diseases.) Atheists might believe that natural selection has got us this far, so it must be a pretty good process. A scientist shouldn't change anything, because they will be adding unnecessary risk to the natural proc…

"Theists believe that we shouldn't tamper with God's perfect creation"

Steady with the generalisations there. Your polarised US and various other places might be home to fewer liberal religionists, but that is not necessarily an accurate statement.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#117

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

And we are here, a brave new world. For years I heard and read that we would never need to worry about scientists editing the DNA of a human embryo that would be brought to term. The argument emphasized the fact that professional ethics would prevent it. Well, ethics change and not all professionals will follow them.

As a programmer, I know how hard it is to modify a ball of code without having unexpected consequences. We barely know how the human genome functions. I hope we don't do too much damage.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#118

Post by anvandare »

nostrademons wrote: post #65
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…

"What is the relevance of "Asian nations?" to this conversation?" I would assume it's because the article describes genetically-engineered babies in China, so obviously it's not outlawed there (or if it is, the law is not enforced). Grandparent poster is pointing out that if genetic engineering gives survival or competitive benefits to those who do it, it doesn't matter what your personal ethical, moral, and legal st…

The purists need not be worried. There's always the hope the descendants of those humans who do take the path of editing their own genetic code will, a few centuries from now, give those purists' descendants a nice small patch of land as a reservation.

Or maybe a cozy cage in a zoo, with a little sign next to the bars which reads: "homo sapiens inferior".

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#119

Post by nathan_f77 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #114
nathan_f77 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree with that. Some theists believe that we shouldn't tamper with God's perfect creation, because everything happens for a reason (including miscarriages, birth defects, and genetic diseases.) Atheists might believe that natural selection has got us this far, so it must be a pretty good process. A scientist shouldn't change anything, because they will be adding unnecessary risk to the natural proc…

It's an accurate way of looking at it, but it assumes humans have a lesser value because lots of them already die, so what's a few more? The difference is a few humans, and that's too big a risk, in my opinion, to take lightly.

Sure, but the scientist is trying to reduce the risk of death and suffering. (They're not just flipping a coin to see what happens.)

We already know a lot about certain genes and what they do. For example, mutations in the HBB gene cause sickle cell anemia. Removing the mutation in that HBB gene is a good idea 100% of the time. You can just look at the 99% (?) of healthy people who have an HBB gene without that mutation.

Maybe the CRISPR process is risky and can cause lots of unexpected mutations. In that case it's not so black-and-white. But if you can edit a gene to prevent a disease, and it can be done in a safe way, then I don't think it's inherently unethical. (Although you could argue that it might be more ethical for parents to adopt a baby and donate money to charity, instead of spending a lot of money on gene-editing and IVF.)

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#120

Post by cygx »

nradov wrote: post #47
wycs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Intelligence is polygenic. The average human is no Von Neumann. At the very least genetic engineering could raise average IQ to Von Neumann’s level. We know that phenotype is possible with no ill effects. It will likely take us much further.

You haven't addressed my point. No one disputes that intelligence is partly genetic. However if it was possible to raise intelligence through genetic engineering with no ill effects then why hasn't evolution increased the incidence of that phenotype already?

Why aren't all birds as smart as crows? Because the Blind Idiot God of Evolution doesn't care that you think increased intelligence is an obvious 'win'.
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