Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#2The Chinese realize what others refuse to, it's a race and whoever wins sets the rules. And what would they gain by waiting and losing the first-mover advantage?
The article talks about risks, they are certainly not that concerned about risks, not as long as they get the upper hand in biotech and genome manipulation.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#3How often did Chinese researchers claim to have done something incredible, without proper proof and lack of data, and it turned out to be a total scam? This really feels like another one of these, we'll see what happens, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#4Meanwhile China is actually doing it and soaking up the investor money, interested researchers, and gaining the lead.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#5>We should not proceed down this road until we know far more about the consequences of what we are doing.
In the present climate of pessimism it's worth reminding ourselves that we never know all the consequences of what we're doing. The 'Precautionary Principle' kills people too; it merely does so in a less obvious way.
Personally I think we should be going hell for leather in identifying and eliminating genetic diseases that arise from known mutations. And we should of course expect new problems to arise down the road from these treatments.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#6The Chinese realize what others refuse to, it's a race and whoever wins sets the rules. And what would they gain by waiting and losing the first-mover advantage? The article talks about risks, they are certainly not that concerned about risks, not as long as they get the upper hand in biotech and genome manipulation.
> Dr. He’s university has disavowed knowledge or support of the research and said an inquiry is underway.
Sounds more like an individual rogue action than coordinated effort backed by vision of "the Chinese".
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#7How often did Chinese researchers claim to have done something incredible, without proper proof and lack of data, and it turned out to be a total scam? This really feels like another one of these, we'll see what happens, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
But the difference here is that, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing particularly difficult about CRISPR in humans. It's routine in other mammals and had previously been done on human embryos. The thing holding everyone back was ethical concerns and the possibilities of off-target effects, side-effects of the mutation, etc. So I'd err on the side of assuming they did do it.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#8First one to get the (nuclear|genetic|quantum decryptor| ...) superweapon wins. That's been always true. Any government who's currently protesting and proclaiming they never will partake in it are either (1) idiots or (2) lying.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#9First one to get the (nuclear|genetic|quantum decryptor| ...) superweapon wins. That's been always true. Any government who's currently protesting and proclaiming they never will partake in it are either (1) idiots or (2) lying.
Really apart from nukes which had a brief preproliferation period when have superweapons been worth it? Most of the time they have been holes to put money in and get ego out from the Paris railway gun to the megatanks of Nazi Germany.
Re: Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First
#10Kinda unrelated but I was amazed at the speed with which the webpage loaded. In the age of bloated websites, being able to start reading the content within a second of clicking was refreshing. Kudos to the NYT developers!