Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by pcrh » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #85

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…

You are making some serious mistakes in your citation of that: 1. a polygenic score is not 'the impact of common variants'; that's the SNP heritability, such as the GCTA or LDSC. It's not 1.6%, it's closer to 30%. You edited out the part of the abstract which correctly specifies this: "the single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability for the extreme IQ trait was 0.33 (0.02)" 2. that is not the best predictor of intell…

Even if you are right 11% is a pretty meagre contribution, when compared to most other biological traits..

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

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #83

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but incarcerated persons are not allowed to participate.

I guess I'm reading the sentence I partially quoted as referring to two different groups both with negative circumstances -- immigrants in detention on one hand, and on the other poor people selling blood.

If their response was replying to the previous comment (medical experiments on unacceptable citizens), then I just assumed the two sentences were meant to be connected.

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

#93

Post by Huycfhct » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

danmg wrote: post #82

lxe wrote: post #76

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 Eur…

People really like sino bashing for some reason.

Complete mystery. No human rights abuses in China...

Quick reply with a false equivalency!!

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

#94

Post by mlyle » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

ZhuanXia wrote: post #37

stanfordkid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polygenic scores for IQ are correlated with other traits that are less desirable (schizophrenia for example). I think the lift in IQ you get from embryo selection is counteracted by a lot of other (negative) factors. It is also unclear to what degree epigenetic inheritance plays in IQ. My opinion is the 8-10 IQ point boost is less than variance from unknown factors relating to doing IVF versus natural birth. In other…

>Polygenic scores for IQ are correlated with other traits that are less desirable (schizophrenia for example). Nope. IQ is negatively correlated with most mental illness. It is certainly not positively correlated with schizophrenia: https://www.gwern.net/iq

This has positively nothing to do with what he said.

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

#95

Post by ZhuanXia » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #94

ZhuanXia wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Polygenic scores for IQ are correlated with other traits that are less desirable (schizophrenia for example). Nope. IQ is negatively correlated with most mental illness. It is certainly not positively correlated with schizophrenia: https://www.gwern.net/iq

This has positively nothing to do with what he said.

Read it again. It clearly does.

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

#96

Post by mlyle » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

ZhuanXia wrote: post #95

mlyle wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has positively nothing to do with what he said.

Read it again. It clearly does.

I read it again, it clearly doesn't. ;)

As it turns out, we have multiple contradictory findings about whether high IQ is positively or negatively correlated with mental illness.

But even if you believe there's a negative correlation, it doesn't mean that many predictive SNPs can't predict both.

E.g. cloud cover is predictive both for rainfall and heavy snow. However, heavy snow is negatively correlated with rainfall. The latter doesn't negate the former.

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

#97

Post by hutzlibu » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #77

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…

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.

And ... suicide and self-destructive behavior etc. I know. I did not say, we eliminated selectors already, but working towards it.

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

#98

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

quotz wrote: post #81

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could say that for any invention ever. Even the internet, our greatest invention so far. However, the net benefit is a non-negative value.

You can also say that for any fraudulent enterprise ever. He added no benefit whatsoever, having done wrong what his betters could have done right.

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

#99

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #97

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And ... suicide and self-destructive behavior etc. I know. I did not say, we eliminated selectors already, but working towards it.

The range of selectors we can actually affect is extremely limited. There's a vast range of selectors we can't affect. In the grand scheme of things, we've hardly made a dent. That's my point.

To back this up, at least this paper claims that the idea that natural selection is being referred inoperative in modern human populations is widely rejected by evolutionary biologists.[1] Changes in human society have actually accelerated selection for certain types of traits that we know of. For example, genes that help people deal with our increasingly unhealthy diet may be strongly selected for.

1. https://www.pnas.org/content/107/suppl_1/1787

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

#100

Post by gwern » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #91

gwern wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making some serious mistakes in your citation of that: 1. a polygenic score is not 'the impact of common variants'; that's the SNP heritability, such as the GCTA or LDSC. It's not 1.6%, it's closer to 30%. You edited out the part of the abstract which correctly specifies this: "the single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability for the extreme IQ trait was 0.33 (0.02)" 2. that is not the best predictor of intell…

Even if you are right 11% is a pretty meagre contribution, when compared to most other biological traits..

No, it's not. You are still confusing heritability with PGS, and that's a much better PGS than is available for most 'biological' traits. Look through something like LD Hub to get an idea of average GWAS PGSes currently: <11% is very common.