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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

#71

Post by imtringued »

peteretep wrote: post #53
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shall they try your children first? Oh so sorry - they died young and in agony, from unintended side effects. But Science!

I likely have a heritable genetic disease, so if I want kids, they’ll take a bunch of embryos, and do genetic selection on them to decide which to implant. So, I guess they’re already trying on my future children?

You're confusing selection with gene editing. You can't do crazy things like add corn genes to your future son with just selection.

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

#72

Post by vorpalhex »

imtringued wrote: post #67
vorpalhex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing an immigration detention facility to a concentration camp shows a distinct lack of understanding of what either one is.

Actually you're the one who isn't understanding that there is no meaningful difference. Concentration camps are just worse than usual prisons. The biggest difference isn't the institution, it's who is selected to be sent to the camp and that they can never leave. People in prisons or concentration camps often have to work against their will. This is an accepted form of slavery in our society. The imprisoned often hav…

> Concentration camps are just worse than usual prisons

A concentration camp is a detention facility for holding people without pressing charges or the intent to immediately press charges.

> it's who is selected to be sent to the camp and that they can never leave

You can't leave a prison until your sentence is done. You typically don't get to leave concentration camps unless it's a time limited internment camp.

> People in prisons or concentration camps often have to work against their will

That's true but penal labor is not the same as forced labor in concentration camps. Penal labor is regulated and is specifically as a punishment to an indicted crime. There are certainly issues with penal labor, but it's not the same as working Concentration camp detainees literally to death.

Concentration camps use labor typically as a means to kill the people in the Concentration camp - who are not there because they've been charged (rather, they usually are detained on ethnic origin).

An immigration holding facility is not a concentration camp because the detainees are being charged and released (either via deportation or local release). Further, labor is not used in an immigration holding facility (but if you're charged and transferred to a prison, then you might have penal labor).

There are plenty of gripes to have with the prison system (especially the for profit prison system). There are gripes to have with immigration holding facilities. To call either one a concentration camp is to devalue and horrendously understate the horror of concentration camps.

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

#73

Post by ZhuanXia »

pcrh wrote: post #68
ZhuanXia wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They conclude that high IQ (>170) is mostly not caused by genetic variants. The abstract does not mention that; they claim: "This study shows the utility of extreme trait selection for genetic study of intelligence and suggests that extremely high intelligence is continuous genetically with normal-range intelligence in the population." I don't think anyone would seriously claim that high IQ is mostly not caused by g…

The full text is available here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5987166/ In the conclusions section they state: >Focusing on the core 4-test g measure, we think that accounting for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence is exciting for several reasons. First, this effect size is greater than the effect sizes from previous GWA studies of the normal range of intelligence.45 The effect size of 1.6% represent…

>That they are "excited" to account for at best 2.5% of high IQ through genetics suggests that genetics is not a large contributor to high intelligence.

Bit of a stretch there mate; that doesn't follow at all.

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

#74

Post by dang »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #11
corporate_shi11 wrote: post #8

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks this sort of research is necessary. The sooner we are able to genetically engineer improved humans - first eliminating the incidence of genetic disease and second making overall healthier, happier and smarter people - the better the world will become.

Shall they try your children first? Oh so sorry - they died young and in agony, from unintended side effects. But Science!

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, and please don't snark, regardless of how wrong another comment is or how strongly you feel about it.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#75

Post by thoughtstheseus »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #32
thoughtstheseus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, do to their large population and slightly higher average quantitative abilities (at least if you trust their PISA scores), they have roughly 20x more 4 sigma people than America. Chinese technological dominance seems likely even ignoring embryo selection. This will likely be amplified by better agglomeration in cities. Were western institutions capable of thinking long-term, this would add to their desire for hu…

I don’t agree with this. Population size has not been the driving factor for technology development historically.

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

#76

Post by lxe »

What is up with these comments? State sponsored behavior modifications? Eugenics? Public propaganda while hiding some sinister truth? China isn't some kind of dystopian conspiracy-laden techno-thriller enemy state. The team simply wanted to sneak this experiment past medical practice laws and scientific ethics -- they probably would have been fined and punished in a similar fashion have they done it in the U.S or Europe.

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

#77

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

hutzlibu wrote: post #23
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…

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…

Any evidence that we are successfully eliminating natural selection? A huge amount of selection is for things that aren't immediately obvious, or more subtle: the immune system, beauty, personality traits the other sex finds attractive, etc.

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

#78

Post by pcrh »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #73
pcrh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full text is available here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5987166/ In the conclusions section they state: >Focusing on the core 4-test g measure, we think that accounting for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence is exciting for several reasons. First, this effect size is greater than the effect sizes from previous GWA studies of the normal range of intelligence.45 The effect size of 1.6% represent…

>That they are "excited" to account for at best 2.5% of high IQ through genetics suggests that genetics is not a large contributor to high intelligence. Bit of a stretch there mate; that doesn't follow at all.

Well...

Accounting for 2.5% of the intelligence variation through genetics does lead to the conclusion that 97.5% of high IQ is not accounted for by (known) genetic variation.

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

#79

Post by sdinsn »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15
quotz wrote: post #13

We are gonna look back on this just how we look back on Giordano Bruno. Future generations would find it ridiculous that he was jailed for technological progress and science.

He was completely irresponsible, did no do what he advertised he would do, and endangered the health of many people. Don't get seduced by the dream he was selling. He was in fact a fraud, not a researcher.

> endangered the health of many people

Endangered the health of two people

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

#80

Post by ericd »

pcrh wrote: post #78
ZhuanXia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That they are "excited" to account for at best 2.5% of high IQ through genetics suggests that genetics is not a large contributor to high intelligence. Bit of a stretch there mate; that doesn't follow at all.

Well... Accounting for 2.5% of the intelligence variation through genetics does lead to the conclusion that 97.5% of high IQ is not accounted for by (known) genetic variation.

Doesn’t that just mean we don’t definitively know the vast majority of the causal factors? Which is not at all the same as saying we know it’s not genetically determined?
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