Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells

cambridgeindependent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 147 posts

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

#131

Post by tsimionescu »

nomel wrote: post #128
tsimionescu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Primates are not humans Those specific primates weren't human, but humans are primates [1]. Here's a quote from the Boyalife CEO, before the ban in China [2]: > The technology is already there," Xu said. "If this is allowed, I don't think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology." > The firm does not currently engage in human cloning activities, Xu said, adding that it has to be "s…

We shall see, but illegal research is not the same as other types of crimes - it requires vastly more resources and people, and it may not pay for a long time.

Now, if animal cloning becomes commonplace, I do believe it will be way easier for someone to sneak in human cloning alongside it.

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

#132

Post by Thorrez »

implements wrote: post #68
Thorrez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the abortion debate. I'm against abortion. The way I see it is a person has rights no matter the person's age. Earlier in development just means younger.

Everyone agrees people have rights, it’s that they disagree on what constitutes a person. Some religious people currently believe a person exists at the point of fertilisation, but they used to believe ‘ensoulment’ happened some weeks after. One question to ponder - “Why would God give personhood to a fertilised egg that (via omniscience) he knew was fated not to be carried to term?”. If earthly life is essentially a…

Yeah I agree it's about personhood.

That same argument applies to all the babies who die between being born and turning 1. It's more an argument against God than an argument against rights starting from the first moment of life. If we assume God doesn't exist, then the argument doesn't really work.

If we assume God does exist, one possible rebuttal is that the purpose of life isn't to test moral virtue. For example the purpose of life could be to provide an opportunity to know, love, and glorify God. But it's just an opportunity, not the only opportunity. After death there continue to be opportunities for that, so people who die immediately after ensoulment still have an opportunity for that.

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

#133

Post by Thorrez »

alexvoda wrote: post #50
Thorrez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the abortion debate. I'm against abortion. The way I see it is a person has rights no matter the person's age. Earlier in development just means younger.

In that case you should very much be in support of this research. According to you, those dead embryos that resulted from failed pregnancies have just as much a claim to healthcare as anyone else. This researchers that problem.

I agree we should be doing research to promote healthy life, but I don't agree that we should be creating people for the purposes of killing them and deriving scientific info from their deaths. The research in this article is fine, it's on mice. If it were to be done on humans it wouldn't be.

It's not ok to kill an innocent person, regardless of how much scientific data that provides and how many lives that data might save.

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

#134

Post by Thorrez »

colanderman wrote: post #110
Thorrez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the abortion debate. I'm against abortion. The way I see it is a person has rights no matter the person's age. Earlier in development just means younger.

Not an abortion debate -- a human exceptionalism debate. That is -- what makes a human embryo special compared to a mouse embryo? (Beside what it eventually grows into -- since that is not allowed to happen in these experiments.)

Ok, is there a difference between killing an adult human and killing an adult chicken?

I argue humans have inherent dignity and rights, and animals don't.

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

#135

Post by ben_w »

sacrosancty wrote: post #129
ben_w wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with a defacto slave enjoying their life doing what makes them most satisfied? Creating such a being in the first place when one could've been a better small-g god. Now this may just be naturalism bias on my part, a large number of people are a lot more comfortable with a thing if it's natural rather than the same thing artificial. > You seem to be forgetting that people will get things banned if they'…

Nonsense. Farm animals are unnaturally bred and essentially slaves. We somehow have them. Are you opposed to their existence too? Yes, people have disagreed about slavery and farm/working animals and all those grey areas of animal and human rights. But it's arrogant of you to take your personal opinion and try to impose it on an entirely different society with creatures that you know nothing about "just in case" the…

> Farm animals are unnaturally bred and essentially slaves. We somehow have them. Are you opposed to their existence too?

Yes, absolutely.

As virtually every situation where a human is treated as an animal is seen as abhorrent, so by symmetry I expect most animals in contact with humans to be miserable most of the time.

The only reason I am not going to go as far as to claim the meat industry is multiplicatively worse than literal Auschwitz by the degree to which literal Auschwitz is worse than a single homicide is that I am uncertain how much to value the life and suffering of non-humans.

> But it's arrogant of you to take your personal opinion and try to impose it on an entirely different society with creatures that you know nothing about "just in case" the members of that society happen to be morally wrong by your standard.

Good thing you're putting words in my mouth then.

From my POV, this thread, from root, can be summarised thusly:

"Amazing, but there is a dark side" "Don't they die really fast?" "Give it 25-50 years, and think of Blade Runner."

Then you: "Why would we abuse them", me: "", you: "What's wrong with a defacto slave enjoying their life doing what makes them most satisfied?"

(As an aside: that's already abuse, so you apparently defending it, even if that wasn't your intent, should demonstrate why we may end up being awful to such life).

Me: "because we've had wars about this kind of thing where both sides thought they were right", you: "nonsense!" followed by projecting that I have (or think I have) any capacity for imposing my personal opinion as a future moral code — I clearly can't even do that imposition today with regard to meat.

In fact, it's even worse than that, because while I would support the outlawing of meat, leather, and even dairy (as they exist today, but I expect all to be vat grown by 2030 and that's fine), I don't have the strength of will to avoid cheese, and that's a failure to impose my own morality on the inside of my own head.

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

#136

Post by graderjs »

colanderman wrote: post #120
graderjs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ho ho courting controversy. The difference is you don't know if there's a difference: when does the soul come in? Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist? is the personality only some sort of construct that's formed as a child is raised? Or is there something eternal spiritual inside? It doesn't have to trip your anti-religious ADS, maybe it's a fact about the universe we haven't found a…

> Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist? Can you disprove that mouse souls exist?

Exactly...you can't; I don't think. You misunderstand me, I'm not saying it's OK! :P :) xx ;p

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

#137

Post by b112 »

hidroto wrote: post #117
b112 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the parent thinks so, but my only concern is with new lifeforms. We constantly mess up the ecosystem, merely by introducing existing species into environments which cannot handle them. Soon we will be able to engineer exotic forms of life, yet we cannot currently control, reign in, or manage current, naturly evolved forms of life. For example, we have to spray deadly chemicals on crops, to kill fungus, b…

aside from bad actors, i think that safe guards could prove effective. synthetic organisms would have no natural predators, but the would also have no natural defenses. we could make them without an immune system or make it depend on a molecule that does not exist in the wild. so they would quickly die out.

Yet if wrong, what then? What if it is a mold or fungus which eats crops, yet was designed to be resilient? And cannot be killed without killing the plant?

Now you have a year or two, as it spreads, until starvarion causes total societal collapes, wars, dead, destruction.

And meanwhile all grasses around the world die, photosynthesis drops, animals, insects, and plants are dying off.

The problem is, any solution which hopes to contain, can mutate out. Cross-species genetic transfer is a thing. Mutation is a thing.

Expecting what you make, as a biological organism, to work as you wish is... not sensible.

Compared to programming languages, biological processes allow for change. Yet we can barely make secure code, and are endlessly surprised at our own lack fo security, and bugs, and issues in code due to unforeseen circumstances.

If you came to me and said you can make perfect code, make it secure, and bug free, I'd laugh and laugh until I wondered if I should fire you for incompetence.

And working with genetics, and with entirely new orgamisims, is more complex that the largest of codebases.

And at release, into the wild, there aee no issue trackers, no patches, no fixes.

It's shipped and gone.

To me, your comment highlights how unready we are.

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

#138

Post by nadavision »

Sounds really cool. Can someone smarter than I explain what are the main differences between this and the recent study carried out at the Weizmann Institute of Science? Is it mostly the successful development of the brain? - https://www.jpost.com/science/article-713690

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

#139

Post by kcartlidge »

b112 wrote: post #137
hidroto wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aside from bad actors, i think that safe guards could prove effective. synthetic organisms would have no natural predators, but the would also have no natural defenses. we could make them without an immune system or make it depend on a molecule that does not exist in the wild. so they would quickly die out.

Yet if wrong, what then? What if it is a mold or fungus which eats crops, yet was designed to be resilient? And cannot be killed without killing the plant? Now you have a year or two, as it spreads, until starvarion causes total societal collapes, wars, dead, destruction. And meanwhile all grasses around the world die, photosynthesis drops, animals, insects, and plants are dying off. The problem is, any solution whic…

> And at release, into the wild, there are no issue trackers, no patches, no fixes. It's shipped and gone.

Very much this.

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

#140

Post by nomel »

tsimionescu wrote: post #131
nomel wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Primates are not humans Those specific primates weren't human, but humans are primates [1]. Here's a quote from the Boyalife CEO, before the ban in China [2]: > The technology is already there," Xu said. "If this is allowed, I don't think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology." > The firm does not currently engage in human cloning activities, Xu said, adding that it has to be "s…

We shall see, but illegal research is not the same as other types of crimes - it requires vastly more resources and people, and it may not pay for a long time. Now, if animal cloning becomes commonplace, I do believe it will be way easier for someone to sneak in human cloning alongside it.

> illegal research is not the same as other types of crimes - it requires vastly more resources and people, and it may not pay for a long time.

This is my point, and exactly why I don’t think we would know if it were happening right now.

Post reply on HN