Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First gene-edited babies claimed in China

mainichi.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 281 posts

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#121

Post by jakobegger »

adrianN wrote: post #112
skosuri wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No, it is not. Heritability does not mean that there is a simple correlation between a trait and a small number of genes that could be exploited for targeted manipulation.

Take height: Height is extremely heritable. If your parents are both tall, you are very likely to be tall as well. But height is influenced by thousands of genes, and each individual gene has only a minuscule influence. And each of those genes is also responsible for many other unknown things.

It's not at all a reasonable assumption that genetic modification will allow us to influence a complex trait like intelligence. That's just wishful thinking.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#122

Post by nopinsight »

ramraj07 wrote: post #111
nopinsight wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 equall…

I agree that “being smarter” or above average intelligence helps with a whole host of stuff besides science and engineering, including business and social skills, all other things being equal.

My point above was regarding the difference between say 2SD above mean vs 4SD. It did not help much and perhaps hurt in a few ways, like getting bored more easily, to have a +4SD IQ in the past. Most businesses and jobs were not very complicated. So having a +2SD intelligence could be optimal in the past in most parts of the world.

Work at today’s multinationals and globe-spanning empires, in many fields, benefit a lot more from +4SD intelligence and the stimulation from complexity helps mitigate some of the drawbacks. The optimal level for career success in many regions/careers might have shifted to +3SD or even +4SD instead.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#123

Post by xenadu02 »

buboard wrote: post #59
skosuri wrote: post #5

The edited gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function, but is the entry point for HIV. So editing for prophylaxis. This was probably done because if there aren’t a ton of loss of function beneficial traits, and probably with the main desire to be first. Except, if the reports are true, this is not just an experiment but a person (or people). I guess the main desire is to normalize editing. Brave ne…

oh wow. CCR5 has been found to have a role in memory recently. Knockout mice have better learning[1] and pronounced increase in spine formation/turnover[2]. These babies are going to have super-memory: 1. https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29379017

Almost certainly not; improved memory is absolutely something evolution would select for in primates, especially humans.

Most mouse models don't replicate in other animals either.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#124

Post by roel_v »

baybal2 wrote: post #98
sanxiyn wrote: post #77

Hear it from He Jiankui himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc

Oooh, so it is that He , the man used to have a very peculiar reputation on Chinese university BBSes back when China just got internet connectivity. That was what possibly lead to him being ousted from Chinese academia a decade ago. I myself think it was certainly no coincidence that Stanford picked him up. I'm afraid calling up some of his opinions, and in particularly on the topic of race, as they will be a ten meg…

C'mon man, you can't leave those of us that don't speak Chinese hanging like that.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#125

Post by buboard »

NamTaf wrote: post #113
buboard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

of course it is not the same. but i think the argument was on the unborn baby 's rights being violated because of the genetic procedure.

Also this is not a case of arbitrary experimentation, the parents ARE preventing an inherited genetic issue, which is something that so far has been ethically acceptable so far, for embryo selection.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#126

Post by buboard »

xenadu02 wrote: post #123
buboard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh wow. CCR5 has been found to have a role in memory recently. Knockout mice have better learning[1] and pronounced increase in spine formation/turnover[2]. These babies are going to have super-memory: 1. https://elifesciences.org/articles/20985 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29379017

Almost certainly not; improved memory is absolutely something evolution would select for in primates, especially humans. Most mouse models don't replicate in other animals either.

HIV related dementia is a thing. This method might be able to alleviate it

https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/breakthrough-discovery-in...

I agree, super memory is not necessarily a good thing

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#127

Post by sanxiyn »

jakobegger wrote: post #121
adrianN wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is not. Heritability does not mean that there is a simple correlation between a trait and a small number of genes that could be exploited for targeted manipulation. Take height: Height is extremely heritable. If your parents are both tall, you are very likely to be tall as well. But height is influenced by thousands of genes, and each individual gene has only a minuscule influence. And each of those genes is a…

On the other hand, we can (today!) predict height from raw sequence with correlation 0.65: http://www.genetics.org/content/210/2/477. It does not mean we can do such prediction for designed sequence (predictor likely will fail to generalize), but it can be used to select from natural variation. I don't see any wishful thinking here.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#128

Post by ttflee »

The Shenzhen HarMoniCare Women & Children’s Hospital, the medical ethics committee of which gave a permit to this, was one of the so-called Putian-systems, a medical network established by hundreds of people from Putian, Fujian who earned their first bucket of gold by selling “home made remedies and fake medicine at high prices”.

https://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1940...

EDIT:

Shenzhen Medical Ethics Expert Committee said that the trial was not reported to before the trial.

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#129

Post by paganel »

carbocation wrote: post #52
elcomet wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is an opinion. Being an assertion doesn't prevent it from being an opinion. You and I could very well find arguments for defending it, even while fitting the current morale.

The semantic argument about how I phrased my agreement is more worthy of discussion than the ethical argument about the alleged human experimentation?

I think some people are trying to rationalize this way too much, that's why they end up going after semantics and such.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#130

Post by chr1 »

carbocation wrote: post #39
dqpb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a simple argument - if you can prevent disease, you should.

"Can prevent disease" implies that you are not doing experimentation. If you're doing experiments, it means you don't know if you can.

You can prevent disease if you make experiments and learn how to prevent it.

So in this case experimentation is a first step in preventing disease.

Post reply on HN