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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#231

Post by akfanta »

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…

Search result is now flooded with this news. Nothing on Wiki either. What exactly are you talking about? Any keywords?

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#232

Post by wagutina »

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…

Are you trying to justify innocent human experiments by saying nature is doing it anyway ? Nature is a mad scientist, unfair and horrible so let's be like it ?

Maybe if you were seriously ill because of a genetic experiment we did on you (and that you did not need) as you were an embryo, then you would not hold the same view.

I don't think you get where the morality problem is... It's not about being Amish that say "we shouldn't temper with God's perfect creation".

It's about a country doing human experimentation on innocent people that do not need it, it's not to cure them from an heridetary problem but to breed a stronger race. China will only show the success of their experiments and will hide from the eyes of the world all the failures, handicapped babies, secondary effects of their human experiments. They'll make experiments on babies with lots of failure (it's science, you never get it right at the first experiment) and once in a while they'll put a video on YouTube like they just did saying "Aw look how healthy they are". But behind there going to be a lot of guinea pig children with serious secondary effects. And the worth part is how they'll make sure the rest of the world never see those "failed" children. This might be Nazi-level stuff that's going to happen and this is what people with a glimpse of ethics left are concerned about, it's not about "not tempering with God's perfect creation"

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#233

Post by throwa789 »

carbocation wrote: post #196
chr1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In what ethical framework is experimenting on humans the first step? (The answer is none.)

Ethical frameworks are optional, humans sacrifice other humans to acquire power and knowledge regularly, that's the nature of the world

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#234

Post by wagutina »

SCAQTony wrote: post #74
citilife wrote: post #64

This sounds super sketchy: > He said the parents involved declined to be identified or interviewed, and he would not say where they live or where the work was done. > There is no independent confirmation of He's claim, and it has not been published in a journal, where it would be vetted by other experts. He revealed it Monday in Hong Kong to one of the organizers of an international conference on gene editing that is…

Exactly. What happens when these babies become toddlers or young children and they start contracting all sorts of weird cancers. See article: Potential DNA damage from CRISPR has been ‘seriously underestimated,’ study finds https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/16/crispr-potential-dna-dam... The results come hard on the heels of two studies that identified a related issue: Some CRISPR’d cells might be missing a key anti-c…

China will make sure the world doesn't see the failures of their experiments, this is the very scary part of the story

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#235

Post by nradov »

choot wrote: post #167
nradov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've IQ of 90 (taken it multiple times) which is considered below average on Standford Binnet test. I didn't do good at school but i had many friends! I never felt i was less intelligent than my friends which make me question the IQ score thing. My Dad has high IQ (135) and he's a mathematician. So how did i inhert low IQ? My mom's score is average at best, 102. I've sold 3 companies, i am married and I've managed to…

Right so you're getting into deeper questions of what intelligence really means, and whether our measurements are meaningful in practical terms. Even if it was possible to genetically engineer humans with much higher IQs (and that is yet to be proven), there's still no evidence that those hypothetical supermen would end up ruling over us or having more children or whatever.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#236

Post by cultus »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #229
cultus wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with HIV just have to pop a couple pills a day now to take their viral loads to literally undetectable levels. With treatment, people with HIV can expect to live normal lives, and be healthy and active. It's also almost impossible to transmit HIV with such low viral loads.

And how expensive is that treatment?

Let's just say you want to have insurance. ARVs are something that needs to be free, even moreso that many other health treatments. There is a huge negative externality involved in having untreated HIV since it can be transmitted. If we got everyone tested consistently, and got anyone with HIV on immediate treatment, infection rates would plummet.

HIV tests are still not included in routine bloodwork, even though other diseases like hepatitis are.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#237

Post by ramraj07 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #223
ramraj07 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We know evolution in intelligence has not stopped because human populations differ in intellectual productivity to absurd degrees of that wasn’t true. Evolution requires heritability, variation and selection and all those clearly exist. Do you have any references to it? I'd like to learn more...

If you’re asking about the degree of difference Ashkrnazim have ~25% of science Nobel prizes having never been more than 1% of global population. That’s one group that’s highly over represented in intellectual achievement. For a more prosaic example look at the list of US spelling bee finalists or national science foundation merit scholarship finalists. There will be a great deal more Asian names than their share of…

I hope that's not all you had in mind when you wrote your comment. All of that shows no proof that it's the genetics that propels the disproportionate level of intellectual achievement. Both of those cases can easily be explained by sociocultural influences within families of various races propelling more intellectual endeavors, and if you don't have peer reviewed references showing otherwise it's probably a good idea to stop thinking that way.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#238

Post by carbocation »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #228
carbocation wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an inaccurate understanding of CRISPR, which is not yet at the point where zero off-target effects can be expected. That is an important aspect of this discussion.

But if the off-target effect is random, then its not really any worse off than an unmodified embryo, with around 30 random mutations naturally. Of course, the actual numbers matter but in principle this isn't a worse situation.

> But if the off-target effect is random, then its not really any worse off than an unmodified embryo, with around 30 random mutations naturally. Of course, the actual numbers matter but in principle this isn't a worse situation.

There is strong evidence that high mutation rates are selected against, to the point that some have speculated that driving down mutation rate is one of the key functions of selection[1].

Point being that increasing the number of germline variants is an extremely important consideration. The fact that the underlying biological replication mechanisms are not 100% perfect does not alter this point, and certainly doesn't mean that when you artificially increase the number of mutations that "this isn't a worse situation".

1 = https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2016.104

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#239

Post by nscalf »

booleandilemma wrote: post #213

This is how China is going to take the lead. They will start breeding disease-resistant, stronger and smarter humans, and the west will take the moral high ground, tweet about how evil China is on their new phones, and fall behind. Our ethics will be our downfall.

That's probably not going to happen. What's probably going to happen is they'll take a slight lead for a few years, then we'll take notice and replicate that.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#240

Post by nathan_f77 »

wagutina wrote: post #232
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…

Are you trying to justify innocent human experiments by saying nature is doing it anyway ? Nature is a mad scientist, unfair and horrible so let's be like it ? Maybe if you were seriously ill because of a genetic experiment we did on you (and that you did not need) as you were an embryo, then you would not hold the same view. I don't think you get where the morality problem is... It's not about being Amish that say "…

I think you're mainly talking about the worst case situation, which is obviously terrible: Unethical scientists performing unethical experiments for an unethical government.

I'm not arguing for that, and I don't think it's the only possible situation.

> "it's science, you never get it right at the first experiment"

> "there is going to be a lot of guinea pig children with serious secondary effects"

I don't think so. If this does happen then it would be extremely sad, but I don't think it's very likely. Scientists are far more careful than that. A new drug has to go through many stages before it is ever tested in clinical trials, and these human trials are generally very safe. So I'm just trying to say that if this is done properly and with a lot of safeguards, then gene-editing is not inherently unethical.

But you're probably right about China. They have a horrible history of human-rights abuses, and I think they are much more likely to get this wrong. Even if it's not a government program, Chinese companies don't have a great track record [1]. I wouldn't be surprised if they were already performing some reckless experiments, and all of these people should locked up.

[1] https://qz.com/1323471/ten-years-after-chinas-melamine-laced...

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