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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#141

Post by buboard »

carbocation wrote: post #83
fooker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The west has spent far more brainpower in making up bioethics regulations than actually talking about the procedures themselves. Cue the threads over here.

Also note the differences in culture: the chinese parents consented to it. I m not sure how easy it would be to find this in the west.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#142

Post by throwaway8879 »

coldtea wrote: post #131
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the edit was also confirmed and voluntarily implanted in-vitro in willing participants. It's ethically black as far as I am concerned but it has already happened so we must see where this takes us. IVF born edited zygotes might have serious complications but ideally its a healthy human being. (for everyone's sake)

> the edit was also confirmed and voluntarily implanted in-vitro in willing participants. Did the future kids consent?

Did the future kids even consent to being born in the first place? Birth itself is a violation if we're going to be really technical and strict here.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#143

Post by buboard »

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.)

maybe we should be screening couples before we allow them to copulate, then. taking gambles with randomization experiments is 100% ethically indefensible.

please, spare us the "100% correct" and certified ethical positions

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#144

Post by onetimemanytime »

valtism wrote: post #29
noobermin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess time will tell if it leads to any adverse effects. I'm not a biologist which is probably why I'm more wary of this, but if there is some unforeseen circumstances then we'll find out I suppose.

I've worked with enough legacy code to know that playing around with seemingly unused areas can have unexpected consequences. The trouble here is that we can't see those consequences until they end up hurting someone.

>> I've worked with enough legacy code to know that playing around with seemingly unused areas can have unexpected consequences.

Imagine trying with million or tens of million year code.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#145

Post by danenania »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #119
freeone3000 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mutat…

The problem is that we don’t know whether this would prevent diseases with any reasonable certainty, and using non-consenting human beings to try to find out implies a profoundly dangerous devaluation of human life and individual rights.

If you can reach a high certainty level through other kinds of tests, then that would be another story.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#146

Post by buboard »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #134
buboard wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> the parents ARE preventing an inherited genetic issue The parents THINK they ARE preventing an inherited genetic issue. I would not dare mess with "god's creation" /evolution. Too many unknowns once you start mix and matching and there's no going back. We know very little...

then you should not have children, but you should clone yourself. because your children are certainly going to be a messed up version of god's creation

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#147

Post by buboard »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #117

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 consequence…

Nah we are not in brave new world yet. We are in a world where china is willing to brute force its way into it through very risky experiments, while the west is not willing to own up to the reality that our future is no longer natural, and we are not even going to be a single species.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#148

Post by a_imho »

xtrapolate wrote: post #41
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…

> "gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function" It's in the article: > "Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and it's very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern, Musunuru said."

it's very treatable if it occurs

Surely it is a bit of a stretch.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#150

Post by dillonisacunt »

a_imho wrote: post #148
xtrapolate wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function" It's in the article: > "Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and it's very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern, Musunuru said."

it's very treatable if it occurs Surely it is a bit of a stretch.

What? HIV has been considered very treatable for a few years now
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