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Human genetic engineering is coming

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Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#51

Post by Nasrudith »

karaterobot wrote: post #45
ravi-delia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere! Why draw the line right beneath yourself, we could all be better and it sucks that we aren't

For too long, the children of the rich have been denied their rightful genetic advantages. We need a ruling class we can really worship with a straight face.

It is called education and has been around for millenia. If somebody suggested limiting education due to offering "unfair advantages" and contributing to inequality they would be considered absolutely bonkers. Yet with genetic engineering it is somehow completely different.

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#52

Post by Nasrudith »

michaelt wrote: post #43
qgin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love to hate on tech bros as much as the next tech bro, but I've watched so many people suffer with terrible diseases that I'm totally fine if it we end up with 1000 hairloss biotech startups if that also means we get one that prevents Alzheimer's.

Hair loss cures aren't the problem. But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?

Why would it remain affordable to them only? Economies of scale apply even if just the productivity learning curve. Doing the cost/benefit analysis it may make sense for a government to subsidize or outright provide it for free.

It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#53

Post by benreesman »

Nasrudith wrote: post #52
michaelt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hair loss cures aren't the problem. But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?

Why would it remain affordable to them only? Economies of scale apply even if just the productivity learning curve. Doing the cost/benefit analysis it may make sense for a government to subsidize or outright provide it for free. It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?

Far better writers than me have done all manner of speculative fiction on this, but the main thrust of it all is that as bad as our racism problem is now, and that’s very bad, it’s an appetizer for the main course that will come from speciating the human race on the basis of both meaningful and measurable genetic “superiority”.

That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model?

Yeah that fucking terrifying.

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#55

Post by lossolo »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #27
istinetz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on that? If it's "trivial to achieve for anyone right now", what does that mean? Is there any commercially available service?

An epigenetic alteration is a multiplier on the expression of a gene. it can either inhibit its expression or increase its expression, in a continuum like manner, and remarkably, in a tissue/cell specific manner. A complete inhibition is akin to a gene removal, behaviourally speaking and indeed there can be many synergies between multiples altered genes expressions. The effects of an epigenetic alteration usually las…

> just so you know thymalin rejuvenate the thymus and increase lymphocite T naive cells production by up to 680% which totally fix immunodepression in the edlerdly and e.g. fix covid since day 1 (would have avoided 15 million deaths were people litterate) or reduce all cause mortality in humans by 410% when coadministarted with epitalon

So where is the catch? Why more people are not talking about it and money is not puring into that if that's such a game changer? If it's that kind of miracle cure why for example Gates foundation or any other foundations doesn't invest in it ?

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#57

Post by 8note »

acadapter wrote: post #4

This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies. We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.

Most people lose the genetic lottery by being born to poor parents.

You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth.

Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#58

Post by throw0101a »

acadapter wrote: post #4

This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies. We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.

> This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development.

Gattaca here we come:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

After that, axlotl tanks.

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#59

Post by rapjr9 »

This seems very similar to computer security and privacy concerns. Everyone says "someone should do something about this!" yet very few people, businesses, or governments do anything. After decades of lax security the US gets involved in a war with Russia and now tells business that they better be prepared for being hacked. Right, close all those unknown zero day holes right away! Be prepared to dump your 3rd party software when your vendors get hacked! The author says she suspects there are business and government groups already working on implementations and that this is a worldwide issue, not to be solved by any one country. The chances of getting world agreement on anything seem close to zero. I think she's right and it's going to be a free-for-all scenario. Historically people in China during One-Child sometimes aborted females because everyone wanted their one child to be male. Being able to choose genetic features seems likely to be extremely popular (and will make things like skin color a choice.)

On the other hand, do we even really know how genes work? I thought I read that what we thought were transcription boundaries are not actually boundaries at all, so that greatly increases the number of possible interactions with the genome. And the "junk" dna actually does something. Also, a great many traits and diseases seem to be associated with many more than one gene, which implies interactions between genes which also makes figuring out what happens when you alter specific genes much more complex. The case where one gene is tied to one trait seems to be the exception rather than the rule. And then there is the question of the influence of mitochondrial DNA from the mother, and the recent research showing that certain chemicals can determine which organ stem cells will turn into (which genes control those chemicals? What happens if they get altered?) I'm not convinced scientists really know what they are doing here, which likely means some rather bad experimental outcomes. We can't predict what small evolutionary changes in the coronavirus do, and we're going to precisely control the process that makes a human? I don't think so.

Re: Human genetic engineering is coming

#60

Post by jjj123 »

emteycz wrote: post #50
jjj123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about gay vs straight? Being gay used to be classified as a disorder. That has changed in time, many (most?) now understand it as something different but not better or worse than being straight. When it comes to differences between people, there are a lot of traits that we should be careful about categorizing as better or worse. Especially if it leads to us essentially eradicating the trait via eugenics.

Can you reference a credible study that links sexual orientation to genes? I've never thought of that as something inherited. I don't think we're anywhere near genetic manipulation of human mind, if that's even a real thing. Perhaps we could manipulate behavior driven by hormones, but I don't think we could do too much there without breaking the whole system.

I wasn’t saying that there is a gay gene, just explaining there are cases where differences in human traits are deemed “better” by some governing body but aren’t actually better.
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