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Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

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Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#41

Post by stoopidmurcan »

nkkollaw wrote: post #16
ZhuanXia wrote: post #10

Interesting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation increases in polygenic traits are on the table, including the most important economic trait, intellectual ability: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term, history of eugenic policies in sport, an i…

Doesn't it seem a little insensitive to experiment on human beings..? Given China's complete disregard for human life, I don't find it odd that they're the ones doing it, but we should not praise the effort.

Yes and it's so telling to me that you are downvoted for pointing this out. HN is full of CCP apologists.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#42

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #10

Interesting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation increases in polygenic traits are on the table, including the most important economic trait, intellectual ability: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term, history of eugenic policies in sport, an i…

> Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term

Beijing is presently a dictatorship. It is making the classic short-term decisions associated with placing personal political survival over national imperatives. (It made terrific capital investments between Xiaoping and Jintao. But the incentives changed with Xi for life.)

What makes China uniquely positioned with respect to human genetic engineering is its willingness to treat its population as test subjects. That’s a huge advantage, albeit one with the predictable downsides.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#43

Post by zozbot234 »

thoughtstheseus wrote: post #30
ZhuanXia wrote: post #10

Interesting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation increases in polygenic traits are on the table, including the most important economic trait, intellectual ability: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term, history of eugenic policies in sport, an i…

China already has many highly “intellectual” people and is not a small population.

> China already has many highly “intellectual” people

Let a hundred flowers bloom, as they say.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#44

Post by mlyle »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #29
pcrh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have done IQ vs genetic variation in GWAS. They find that there is almost no impact of common variants on IQ. Example: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample size…

Yes. For polygenic traits like IQ we need millions of samples tagged with IQ. 3000 is a really small sample.

The linked study uses ~1200 very high IQ individuals (4 sigma out), so it has the same population of very high IQ individuals as you'd have in a random sample of tens of millions.

There's also been large studies that have used years of educational attainment as a moderately-correlated proxy for IQ.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#45

Post by pcrh »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #29
pcrh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have done IQ vs genetic variation in GWAS. They find that there is almost no impact of common variants on IQ. Example: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample size…

Yes. For polygenic traits like IQ we need millions of samples tagged with IQ. 3000 is a really small sample.

If you need millions, it means that there are no common enough variants with a large effect size.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#46

Post by 420basteit »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #27
hutzlibu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if human gene editing really would work, than china (and others) would not only select for intellect, but also for obedience. Which is scary. Apart from that I do believe, that in the future human gene editing makes sense. Once it is actually understood. (until then volunteers are allright with me, but experimenting with babys ... is a bit off) Because we are successfully eliminating natural selection in variou…

Yes. I am a little worried about genetic engineering in the very very long term, as it seems to make eusocial organization possible, which I find pretty abhorrent. In the short term though, it seems like a good idea. Regardless, in a multipolar world we don’t have much choice in the matter.

Why do you find eusociality abhorrent?

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#47

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thiagoharry wrote: post #31
loceng wrote: post #9

Is this punishment because he was caught or because it was on "acceptable citizens"? Yes, I'm referencing the stories coming out of the concentration camps in China and ethics related to organ harvesting, etc.

Well, in America imigrants are put in concentration camps and desperated poor people are allowed to sell their blood 2 times a week. But it doesn't mean that if a scientist does that kind of unethical experiment, he wouldn't be put in jail.

I don’t think immigrants in detainment camps are allowed to sell their blood at all, let alone 2 times a week.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#48

Post by seanmcdirmid »

420basteit wrote: post #46
ZhuanXia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am a little worried about genetic engineering in the very very long term, as it seems to make eusocial organization possible, which I find pretty abhorrent. In the short term though, it seems like a good idea. Regardless, in a multipolar world we don’t have much choice in the matter.

Why do you find eusociality abhorrent?

I think most of us find it uncomfortable, if not abhorrent. Do we really want to become the Borg and give up our individuality?

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#49

Post by ZhuanXia »

mlyle wrote: post #44
ZhuanXia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. For polygenic traits like IQ we need millions of samples tagged with IQ. 3000 is a really small sample.

The linked study uses ~1200 very high IQ individuals (4 sigma out), so it has the same population of very high IQ individuals as you'd have in a random sample of tens of millions. There's also been large studies that have used years of educational attainment as a moderately-correlated proxy for IQ.

the enriched population does not help as high IQ is not caused by rare variants. Rather it is the proportion of common variants that increase IQ to common variants that decrease it. This is why we need millions of samples.

Re: Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years

#50

Post by ZhuanXia »

pcrh wrote: post #45
ZhuanXia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. For polygenic traits like IQ we need millions of samples tagged with IQ. 3000 is a really small sample.

If you need millions, it means that there are no common enough variants with a large effect size.

Yes. That is true. It will take hundreds of edits to increase IQ several standard deviations.

This is not a problem for embryo selection.

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