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Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

nytimes.com

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Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#221

Post by kulahan »

Balgair wrote: post #152
alecco wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] then the body's immune system doesn't nearly alarm as much, as it doesn't really see that mRNA as quite so dangerous Please tell me there are measures to prevent this going into the wild. Please tell me this won't be used in large-scale industrial farming.

Yeah, it's not a drama. The reason that the body doesn't alarm as much to Pseudouridine, is that it's not a 'natural' RNA base. Meaning that, for the most part, nature really never uses it and so we haven't evolved to look out for it. Nature uses Uridine and so immune systems have evolved to look out for random bits of RNA in the body that use it and then clean that all up. It's like if you're looking to clean up leg…

I thought the analogy was good. They’re meant to be simple and easy to understand, not perfect representations.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#222

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

khazhoux wrote: post #202
LawrenceKerr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to make the comparison with vaccines, and if history is any indication, the more realistic worry would be the other way around (since that's where the money is): that genetic modifications will be mandated, and that those who object will be discriminated against. [And no, I am not anti-vax, nor anti-gene-editing.]

“What do you mean you haven’t modified your chromosome 7 CFTR gene? And you’re planning to have children??? ”

I don't know anything about gene editing, but my grandmother was a carrier of the BRCA mutation. It would have saved a lot of heartbreak in my family if that could have been detected and repaired. My aunt, mom, and brother (age 4) all died of cancer. I'm just glad that my mom didn't know she had the mutation and passed it on to her child.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#223

Post by kulahan »

Muromec wrote: post #177
imcritic wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming? This will be used in warfare.

That would be less effective than bio and chemical weapons are. Which are not used because they just suck

I’m not sure of by “they just suck” you meant to imply that they’re ineffective. If that’s the case, I strongly disagree. They are not used because somehow all countries pretty much agreed they’re way TOO effective and horrific. Nobody wants it used on them, so nobody uses it on anyone else.

I cannot imagine a more effective weapon than an invisible gas that melts you alive, and there are MANY chemical and bio examples of these types of weapons.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#224

Post by tuna-piano »

If someone in the year 2050 was to pick out the most important news article from 2025, I won't be surprised if they choose this one.

For those who don't understand this stuff - we are now capable of editing some of a body's DNA in ways that predictably change their attributes. The baby's liver now has different (and better) DNA than the rest of its body.

We still are struggling in most cases with how to deliver the DNA update instructions into the body. But given the pace of change in this space, I expect massive improvements with this update process over time.

Combined with AI to better understand the genome, this is going to be a crazy century.

Further reading on related topics:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JEhW3HDMKzekDShva/significan...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-mak...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-hav...

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#225

Post by [deleted] »

MrZander wrote: post #11

> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be c…

[deleted]

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#227

Post by gr_norm »

silver_silver wrote: post #217
alexashka wrote: post #209

[flagged]

What an insanely callous and shallow take. I don’t even know where to start. You’re trying to claim the moral high ground by complaining that a privileged child didn’t suffer and die? Do you even understand the point of reducing poverty?

An absolutely terrible and tone-deaf way to phrase that thought, but the fact of the matter is that most of the world (you and I included, in all likelihood) will not get access to this sort of thing in our lifetimes. Not because modern medicine won't have been there yet, but because our lives (and those of our children) are simply seen as being worth significantly less than a rich person's desire to become richer.

How many people can even afford to get multiple opinions for a weird lump on their back? Or go to the dentist for a strange toothache? How many people can afford to get consistent exercise and eat healthy? How many lives would be saved or at least massively bettered? We already have the means to extend the life expectancy of the average person, and it's not being used. Obviously this is a wonderful medical advance, but it's depressing to wonder who it's for.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#228

Post by viewtransform »

efilife wrote: post #210
cluse wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a child predecease you is one of the worst things that can happen to a person in general. This is a common sentiment in humans. The strange thing is that you mentioned you're trying to follow "logic." This is not logic. These are emotions.

I understand this. My question arose from the fact that it seems like he only cares about the child dying before him, not the child's death overall. It was > the idea of being told my 1 week old baby is going to die not > the idea of my child dying

"I am simply a machine. I do not experience death as humans do. It is just a cessation of function." - Data in Star Trek The Next Generation,

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#229

Post by beeflet »

jjcob wrote: post #88
morkalork wrote: post #43

I think it was here a few years ago that I read a comment saying that sick children will be the Trojan horse for normalizing gene editing of humans, because who could say no to sick children, right? Well, guess it's here now, so how long utill the eugenics wars start?

It's not a slippery slope. Fixing defects is rather straightforward, since it's usually a single gene that needs to be edited. If you want make your baby smarter, taller, or more handsome, it's not so easy because these traits involve 1000s of genes. For this reason I do not think that curying diseases will lead to designer babies.

>For this reason I do not think that curying diseases will lead to designer babies.

Well, you're wrong. Where is the line drawn for what constitutes a disease? Retardation? Autism? Eventually every child below, say, 130 IQ will be considered disabled and unable to find work.

Apply this to every other trait: cardiovascular health, strength, height, vision, etc. All forms of weakness can be considered a disease. The end product of eugenics is that mankind will be made into a docile and fragile monoculture.

>If you want make your baby smarter, taller, or more handsome, it's not so easy because these traits involve 1000s of genes.

And? it's obvious that the technology will eventually be capable of this, just not all at once. It starts with single-gene mutations, then it will be 10's of genes, and then hundreds and thousands.

That is the slippery slope: there is absolutely nothing about your reasoning that prevents one step from leading to another.

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