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Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

cambridgeindependent.co.uk

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Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#81

Post by highwaylights »

fsckboy wrote: post #15
gardenfelder wrote: post #2

This really is pretty amazing work. But, to the uninitiated, there's a dark side; I overheard someone commenting about an earlier post about this experiment, thinking it's possible to get out a chemistry set and just make a living thing. To be clear, they started with stem cells, and teased them into doing the right thing - they did not create a new living artifact from scratch; > Instead, they used stem cells - the…

> to the uninitiated, there's a dark side to the initiated I wish there was a dark side! > they did not create a new living artifact from scratch that is where this is headed, that is where they want to go, that is not what they've done... till they do it. That is the dark side. Humans in a competition with one another are not capable in a broad sense of reining in every worst impulse, as we saw with recent "gain of…

Or, you know, the bomb.

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#82

Post by tsimionescu »

haimez wrote: post #73
tsimionescu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of banning research is exactly to prevent this eventuality. Technology doesn't advance by itself: someone has to be actively advancing it.

Technology does advance regardless of your ability to ban it, because bans only form a system that locally restricts research- but globally, research will march forward somewhere. Banning research on a topic is fundamentally like burning books- but enforcing some consistent concept of ethics within a field of research is critical.

Again, you claim that, but evidence shows that banning research on human cloning has indeed stopped it from happening, even though a sheep was successfully cloned almost 30 years ago (and the technology is not significantly different).

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#83

Post by tsimionescu »

nomel wrote: post #54
tsimionescu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somebody, somewhere, is going to give it a good try. People always say this, and yet the universal ban on human cloning has, at least so far, held strong and prevented further research more or less entirely.

Primates have been cloned [1], human embryos have been cloned (supposedly) [2], and there are confirmed gene edited babies [3]. But, I doubt the existence of a ban means humans haven't been cloned, because I have trouble believing that a group that would successfully clone a human would be dumb enough to tell the world, state sponsored or not. 1. https://www.science.org/content/article/these-monkey-twins-a... 2. http…

Primates are not humans, cloning embryos for stem cell research is different from creating human clones, and the scientist who produced the two CRISPR-edited children went to jail, and he and his associates are banned for life from working in this type of research or even providing care in this area.

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#84

Post by Hedepig »

ben_w wrote: post #80
sacrosancty wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we abuse them? We treat disabled people OK, don't we? What exactly is your fear? Some kind of prejudice against people who were born through different procedures? We already have test tube babies walking among us and nobody mistreats them.

That's the best case, even though "not abusing them" is a low hurdle. Such life would not be limited to human forms. Even with just human forms, if you're going to all the trouble to engineer custom life, why make that life anything other than your idea of perfect? I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a predisposition to obedience to authority figures may be engineered; some would want that in their own children…

I think most people don't truly grasp how much this will change the world. IMO the advances in Synbio will be vastly more influential than the advances in AI (though AI is utilized heavily for the former)

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#85

Post by tgv »

alexvoda wrote: post #47
bpodgursky wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP posted an entirely mainstream hypothesis. Let's not gatekeep and rely on credentialism.

First of all, it is a hypothesis even if mainstream. What if pregnancy failure has nothing to do with fitness? At this point we do not yet know. Now explain why we should remain unknowing instead of spending effort to find out.

What good is finding it out anyway? First, we don't know how to define fitness, and certainly not how to measure it in an embryo. All we have is a bunch of genes that correlate with known diseases.

Suppose they find that 24.7% of miscarriages arise because of some other reason than fitness. Fixing that before pregnancy will probably require substantial intervention, where that is not needed at all: in most cases, subsequent pregnancies are successful.

Knowing what causes miscarriage in other cases is only there to satisfy curiosity. It has no practical application whatsoever.

However, the dark side is clearly there, and is what sponsors this kind of research: creating artificial life.

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#86

Post by ben_w »

Hedepig wrote: post #84
ben_w wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the best case, even though "not abusing them" is a low hurdle. Such life would not be limited to human forms. Even with just human forms, if you're going to all the trouble to engineer custom life, why make that life anything other than your idea of perfect? I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a predisposition to obedience to authority figures may be engineered; some would want that in their own children…

I think most people don't truly grasp how much this will change the world. IMO the advances in Synbio will be vastly more influential than the advances in AI (though AI is utilized heavily for the former)

Both are too large in scope to really grasp. One has the power to make us all permanently redundant and unable to tell fact from fantasy[0] by being too good a story teller, the other can make them indistinguishable by making the fantasies[0] real.

[0] In the broadest sense that also includes nightmares

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#87

Post by bambax »

ben_w wrote: post #80
sacrosancty wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we abuse them? We treat disabled people OK, don't we? What exactly is your fear? Some kind of prejudice against people who were born through different procedures? We already have test tube babies walking among us and nobody mistreats them.

That's the best case, even though "not abusing them" is a low hurdle. Such life would not be limited to human forms. Even with just human forms, if you're going to all the trouble to engineer custom life, why make that life anything other than your idea of perfect? I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a predisposition to obedience to authority figures may be engineered; some would want that in their own children…

> I suspect that a predisposition to obedience to authority figures may be engineered; some would want that in their own children, others in what may be de jure servants and de facto slaves

I'm working on a novel about this (but with a twist). I think this is exactly what's going to happen.

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#88

Post by inglor_cz »

winkeyless wrote: post #29
Apocryphon wrote: post #28

No name for this research project was mentioned- may I suggest the Nexus-0?

Replicant number zero. This research is terrifying to me because life is never within our control. What kind of life is it if a mouse or human is reproduced without parents.

"What kind of life is it if a mouse or human is reproduced without parents."

What kind of wagon is it if it is not pulled by horses?

What kind of country is it if it is not ruled by a king?

What kind of food is it if it was neither hunted down nor gathered?

Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

#90

Post by konart »

sacrosancty wrote: post #63
Tozen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we will find out at some point in the next 25 to 50 years. Somebody, somewhere, is going to give it a good try. As in not stop at just the embryo stage, but make fully functional living beings, regardless of whatever laws exist. The ramifications of "synthetic life", will sure to be staggering. This was covered a bit in the Blade Runner Sci-Fi, but what real Replicants would be like and what they will do wi…

Why would we abuse them? We treat disabled people OK, don't we? What exactly is your fear? Some kind of prejudice against people who were born through different procedures? We already have test tube babies walking among us and nobody mistreats them.

>We treat disabled people OK, don't we?

Who are we? Disabled people treated differently in different places. In many places you'd prefer death most likely.

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