81–90 of 150 posts
Even if the technique were perfect, there are unintended consequences to letting people pick things. You can think of the one child policy as a precursor experiment to letting people select genetic attributes (gender in that case). People selected the trait that they thought was “better” (male). The unintended consequence wasn’t that it turned out men are not good, but that too many men instead of woman was bad for t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe that germline gene editing is so risky and potentially costly as to be absolutely unwarranted, then you shouldn't support somatic gene therapy as there remains a very real and non-negligible risk of germline integration. Some vectors might be safer than others, but proving the impossibility of gene integration into the germline seems extremely costly and possibly unprovable. I mean, heck, there's at le…
The original point of yours that I find issue with was about "perhaps why most scientists are less concerned", which is really bullshit because most scientists in the field are concerned about premature germline editing. And the arguments you've arrived to in support of it rest on a bunch of false equivalences.
I know of their concerns. A friend of mine just got his Ph.D and has a very interesting story about how he answered a query by one of the CRISPR patent holders (then a student in his program) regarding techniques for delivering an intact sequence to the mammalian nucleus.[1] Prior to graduate school my friend spent several years working at the Craig Venter institute studying rhinovirus (while his wife completed her post-graduate work at NIH), and the technique he utilized at the institute and recommended "coincidentally" ended up being the one used. Which gives credence to the whole argument that the CRISPR "discovery" was basically combining together two already well-established methods for gene editing in an obvious way.
Also, he was the safety directory in his lab, both at school and at the institute. Because of the nature of the work, he would obviously be well aware of the risks involved with any sort of gene therapy. I don't know whether he would approve of germline therapy, but I'm pretty sure he'd agree that any blanket ban with the pretense of saving humanity would be naive as it's quite likely already happening to some extent under the radar, both deliberately and unintentionally. But that's a different sort of argument and doesn't contradict what yours, as far as I understand it.
I just took your argument as being excessively alarmist, and my point boils down to that scientists tend to be less alarmist because they're already inured to these things. They know how the sausage is made, and it's never pretty. They see the enormous holes in knowledge that you can drive fleets of buses through. But they also understand that nature is far more forgiving than popular science journalism would have you believe. "Holy sh+t, I didn't expect that'd work as well as it did" is, I think, not an uncommon experience; likewise for "holy sh+t, that didn't go as I expected", for that matter.
[1] Or something to that effect. Don't quote me because (a) I'm recalling from memory, (b) he gave me the dumbed down version, and (c) a Harvard e-mail system migration meant that he lost all his previous correspondence so he's likewise recalling his discussion from memory.
The shocking and disturbing thing about it is the ignorance the general public showed toward it. "Super baby", "supermen army", people just assume that this much touted CRISPR is precise, that human actually know more than a tiny bit of the human genome. All in this current wave of technological optimism.
1) They have a massive population. ~1.386 Billion people. Large enough to conceal large populations (100's of thousands of people) without drawing attention to cities, supply chain movements, etc.
2) There are no problems with using unethical or illegal actions to advance the CCP's agenda. See: parting out fully conscious and unanesthatized prisoners for organ transplants, etc.
I have no doubt that they will (if they aren't already doing it) devising experimental gene-edits and applying it to batches of hundreds or thousands of babies, and seeing what happens as they grow up. They wouldn't even need to hide them from the general population, with the whole pervasive surveillance / facial recognition / etc. thing they've got going on they could release the children into the general population and track them across their entire lives covertly.
I'm not saying that we'll end up with a supersoldier scenario or anything like that, but this could lead to a medical advantage over the west that could have tremendous implications economically and to security (the possibility of blackmailing someone into spying in exchange for medical treatement).
It seems like a dead certainty that gene editing creates unintended mutations, since to do otherwise would require the technique to be 100% controllable and verifiable, and it is neither. So the only question is whether those unintended mutations are harmful or not, either to the immediate generation or subsequent ones. Because there is so much uncertainty around that question, these kinds of experiments are ethicall…
Random harmful mutations have happened all day every day as long as life has existed. We are basically designed for dealing with it. But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening. I wouldn't worry about the long term problems of that, it's fairly easy to solve. What I would worry about is: a) Short term suffering from failed experiments. b) Reduced…
Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Random harmful mutations have happened all day every day as long as life has existed. We are basically designed for dealing with it. But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening. I wouldn't worry about the long term problems of that, it's fairly easy to solve. What I would worry about is: a) Short term suffering from failed experiments. b) Reduced…
> But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?
I wouldn't be surprised if more advanced methods exist either; as a carrier for a rare genetic disease maybe I should figure this out.
ie continued gene level surveillance for all progeny
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Random harmful mutations have happened all day every day as long as life has existed. We are basically designed for dealing with it. But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening. I wouldn't worry about the long term problems of that, it's fairly easy to solve. What I would worry about is: a) Short term suffering from failed experiments. b) Reduced…
> But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?
Adults only pass on half of their genes during reproduction. I imagine at least in the case of in vitro fertilization there's a fair amount you can do to make sure the harmful genes aren't the ones passed along, so long as the parent doesn't have two copies of an autosomal dominant harmful mutation. I wouldn't be surprised if more advanced methods exist either; as a carrier for a rare genetic disease maybe I should f…
We can only have a scientifically constructive discussion within the context of a concrete, particularized therapy--disease, editing vector, gene, etc. Even then it's difficult, but at least you can reach a point at which you can agree to disagree on an actual, concrete scientific question. Everything else is philosophy and politics.
I think what people are trying to justify is an a priori assumption that gene editing (or germline editing if they're a little less cautious) is special and distinct. But I don't think you can scientifically justify that distinction from a harm avoidance perspective. Just because the technique is medically and scientifically distinguishable doesn't mean it's analytically distinguishable. And of course one of the principal drivers of these therapies, at least initially, is stopping the types of mutations that are feared but which already exist in nature.
So it's simply a belief that you hold; full stop. It's a legitimate belief, and may even be strongly informed by science, but it's like believing in God or aliens or the utility of Mars colonization--we might as well just put labels on our foreheads so we know where the argument will end up without actually having to argue. Knowing the other person's starting point, and assuming the best versions of their likely arguments, most of us here can arrive at the other person's conclusions independently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?
I think that would make for a good book, exploring the society and problems which result from a genetically modified caste of people who are prevented from breeding with non-modified people. A modern-day Romeo and Juliet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Random harmful mutations have happened all day every day as long as life has existed. We are basically designed for dealing with it. But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening. I wouldn't worry about the long term problems of that, it's fairly easy to solve. What I would worry about is: a) Short term suffering from failed experiments. b) Reduced…
> But worst case, we can eliminate harmful mutations from being passed on to subsequent generations through screening Are you suggesting that we should prohibit these babies from reproducing when they reach adulthood? If not, how do you suggest we prevent harmful mutations from being passed on with "screening"?