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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#181

Post by coldtea »

anvandare wrote: post #154
coldtea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, the purists will be spared untold suffering that those others will have to go through because of "magician's apprentice" style editing...

Of course the first period of experimentation and discovery will lead to unexpected and unpleasant results. All new technology takes time to mature, for the users to get an understanding of its tricky implementation bits and long-term impact. It's not wise to immediately put all your eggs in a brand new basket. But the ones who experiment and adapt will always eventually outperform those who refuse to change and stic…

>That's the very nature of evolution.

Evolution is blind to such concerns. Those who "experiment" might be wiped out because of their experiments gone wrong, and evolution wont care at all.

A creature inventing tools might have an evolutionary advantage over others. A creature inventing e.g. biological warfare and nuclear weapons might have less an advantage, it can easily wipe most of its own kind and even collapse its civilization (losing even more advantages).

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#182

Post by zeroname »

danenania wrote: post #145
nathan_f77 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I sure hope you are pro-life, otherwise making "consent" and "individual rights" a foundation of your view would be pretty hypocritical.

In my view, if you aren't even a fetus yet, you can't possibly have any rights. You're not a human being. During IVF, you select the embryo with the best health prospects - the rest may be destroyed.

Keep in mind I only disagree with the foundation, I still think the procedure is unethical because the scientific basis is poor.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#185

Post by yesenadam »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #20
feelix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calling an opinion "100% correct" seems 100% indefensible

"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.

Who is the "us" in "our"?

(Straight question, that really isn't obvious to me at all.)

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#186

Post by [deleted] »

d0100 wrote: post #153
logicchains wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Considering the Chinese morality begins with sucking the emperor's balls... It's not surprising if we see the Chinese doing whatever, like they do.

[deleted]

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#187

Post by AznHisoka »

coldtea wrote: post #135
wonderwonder wrote: post #12

There have been a good deal of medical and technological breakthroughs over the last couple decades. Reusable rockets, VR, machine learning, etc. This is the first article I have read that has made me realize that the future is right here, right now and there is a very high probability that things are now going to change rapidly. One thing to consider is that via crispr and stem cell treatments, genetic changes can b…

> This is the first article I have read that has made me realize that the future is right here, right now and there is a very high probability that things are now going to change rapidly. The future? Compared to 1900 we already live in a widely different world, more diff today - 1900 than diff 1900 - 1000 B.C.

If I was transported to my city in 1900 and walk around, I would probably be uncomfortable for a few hours but be adjusted soon afterwards.

If I was a 1900’s citizen transported to 1000 BC? holy.. are you kidding me? I would be shell shocked.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#188

Post by danenania »

zeroname wrote: post #182
danenania wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I sure hope you are pro-life, otherwise making "consent" and "individual rights" a foundation of your view would be pretty hypocritical. In my view, if you aren't even a fetus yet,…

Being pro-choice doesn’t require nullification of an unborn child’s rights. It’s the recognition that the mother’s right to agency over her own body takes precedence.

That does not imply that a doctor or researcher has the right to risk causing debilitating life-long symptoms to another human being at any stage of development without a clear medical justification.

By your reasoning, because an embryo has no rights whatsoever, it would be fine to experiment wantonly for the sake of producing circus attractions. I presume you wouldn’t actually support this?

I also fail to see how the scientific basis is relevant to the ethical question. Whether the science is good or not, we’re talking about unnecessary procedures with inherent failure rates that can have brutal life-long consequences. I can’t see how someone can support this unless they are fundamentally lacking in empathy. As I asked another poster elsewhere in the thread, do you really think you would feel the same if something like this had been done to you and caused you to live with a painful deformity? Would you care then whether the science was good?

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#189

Post by yters »

wycs wrote: post #15
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.)

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 nations that do not share our taboos.

"It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come!" - Jesus

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#190

Post by carbocation »

buboard wrote: post #141
carbocation wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The unfamiliarity of random HN commenters with genetics is overwhelmingly clear, but that does not mean that geneticists in the US are not thinking about this.
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