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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

#411

Post by stereolambda »

beeflet wrote: post #229
jjcob wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

Honestly to me inequality has been always the main reasonable angle of attacking gene editing. But if vaccines are an analogy, many countries were eventually able to mass vaccinate for dangerous diseases. So this could be only the question of cost, after some period of only elite availability.

There's no inherent metaphysical worth in being on any particular level of strength, height etc., so we can spread whatever is the most convenient. I think arguments against (that I see being made) ultimately devolve into some magical thinking and a priori thing bad. (I am glad to be shown otherwise.) In fact we are already messing with human fertility in possibly unsustainable ways, so maybe more tools are needed as a part of the way out.

Of course there is political execution, corruption etc., but I don't see it any different from other technological challenges that civilization has dealt with. I.e. we need better politics but the tech is not at fault. Gene editing is isolated interventions, so it's in that detail more manageable than for example mass surveillance which is hidden and continuous.

One more esoteric argument is that we cannot socially agree on what traits are desirable. The ‘The Twenty-first Voyage of Ijon Tichy’ scenario. So opposite to "monoculture" in a way. But I don't see people expanding on that.

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

#412

Post by squigz »

palisade wrote: post #397
rkangel wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> know this is an issue with caesarean section. It is becoming more prevalent because those who require it are surviving You state this as a fact and I've heard it as a strong hypothesis, but I wasn't aware of much evidence to confirm it?

"The cesarean delivery rate increased from 5% in 1970 to 31.9% in 2016. This sharp increase can be attributed to various factors, including changes in maternal age, medical advancements allowing more complicated pregnancies to proceed, and evolving obstetric practices. In 2022, the United States recorded more than 3.66 million births, most of which resulted from spontaneous or induced labor. Labor dystocia remains th…

> Another Note: Also, ironically WHO's article I've linked is lamenting that Sub-saharan Africa only had 5% cesarean due to less availability of the procedure. It is their perspective that the increase in percentages is a good thing and indicates progress, instead of being concerning. And, they find Sub-saharan Africa's low numbers concerning, instead.

Pretty sure their perspective is that "saving the lives of mothers and babies" indicates progress.

> While a caesarean section can be an essential and lifesaving surgery, it can put women and babies at unnecessary risk of short- and long-term health problems if performed when there is not medical need.

> Rather than recommending specific target rates, WHO underscores the importance of focusing on each woman’s unique needs in pregnancy and childbirth.

> WHO recommends some non-clinical actions that can reduce medically unnecessary use of caesarean sections, within the overall context of high quality and respectful care:

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

#413

Post by inglor_cz »

jonhohle wrote: post #84
inglor_cz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument could be used to stop absolutely any research that isn't dirt cheap. Maybe even the dirt cheap one, because even 100 dollars could go longer way somewhere in the Sahel. It is good that the humanity does not have a one-track mind.

I’ve thought about this recently as well and I don’t know if I have a fully developed view. What is the moral responsibility of all people to pay for medical research or operations that would affect a small number of people. Is it ethical to compel others to pay for the research deemed valuable by some, but not by others. Who is the arbiter of that research’s value? I could say I believe the government should fund re…

I think that taxpayers should be advised that science is not a straightforward process like building a house from blueprints, and that a lot of important discoveries happen serendipitously.

The cilantro taste stuff does not sound absurd to me at all. In biology, there is no hard wall between banal stuff and critical stuff; they interact and fundamentally operate in the same environment under the same genetic and epigenetic rules. Sure, the research necessary for correcting cilantro-as-soap may be marginal, but there is a chance of discovering something significant along the way.

We should be more careful and also honest when communicating about science to taxpayers.

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

#414

Post by tuna-piano »

bglazer wrote: post #231
tuna-piano wrote: post #224

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 D…

The “How to make superbabies” article demonstrates a couple of fundamental misunderstandings about genetics that make me think the authors don’t know what they’re talking about at a basic level. Zero mention of linkage disequilibrium. Zero mention of epistasis. Unquestioned assumptions of linear genotype-phenotype relationships for IQ. Seriously, the projections in their graphs into “danger zone” made me laugh out lo…

Thanks for the healthy skepticism.

I still think there's a lot to learn from those articles for most folks uninvolved in this area, even if some of their immediate optimism has additional complications.

I think what I mostly took away is a combination of technologies is likely to dramatically change how we have babies in the future.

1. We'll make sperm/egg from skin cells. This has already been done in mice[1], so it is not science fiction to do it in people.

2. When we're able to do this inexpensively, we could create virtually unlimited embryos. We can then select the embryos that have the most optimal traits. Initially, this may be simple things like not choosing embryos with certain genes that give higher risk of certain diseases.

This may involve selecting traits like intelligence and height (there are already companies that offer this embryo selection capability [2]).

3. Instead of creating a lot of embryos and selecting the best ones, we could instead create just one embryo and edit the DNA of that embryo, which has already been done in humans [3]. Alternatively, we could edit the DNA of the sperm/egg prior to creating the embryo.

The fact that none of this is science fiction is just wild. All of these steps have already been done in animals or people. Buckle up, the future is going to be wild.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/27/1177191...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-c...

[3] https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-scientist-wh...

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

#415

Post by Gareth321 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #379
monkeycantype wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember from a few few years back that the lipid coating may have caused problems for the liver, when treating people for diseases that needed to target a lot of tissue, such as muscle disorders. Is that still the case?

You remember correctly. Moderna had a lot of problems with their drug trials due to the lipid nanoparticles they were using to transport mRNA. They were toxic to the liver upon repeat dosings. Unfortunately, it appears they never found a fix for the problem. Instead they gave up and found a "business solution" by pivoting from drugs to the (at the time) less profitable vaccines, on the grounds that vaccines are somet…

> on the grounds that vaccines are something you only need to take once so the toxicity issue could be dodged

But we didn't take these vaccines once. We took many of them. Am I to understand a known side effect is liver toxicity for multiple doses?

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

#416

Post by eimrine »

flakeoil wrote: post #399
fendy3002 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the usual next questions will be: - how further can we push this to make the best, most optimized human? - what are moral implication of this? - what are the side effects / downsides?

I also wonder what happens if this kid one day has kids. In this case it was a very rare genetic disease, but if the same was applied to a less rare genetic disease (where it is also more beneficial to have a treatment as more people have use of it) wouldn't the end result be that more and more kids will be born with these diseases?

I hope we can not just heal a disease for one phenotype, but cure it for the whole breed.

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

#418

Post by morsecodist »

mushi01 wrote: post #394
morsecodist wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective Altruism is such an interesting title. Almost no one views their Altruism as ineffective. The differentiator is what makes their flavor of Altruism effective, but that's not in the title. It would be like calling the movement "real Altruism" or "good Altruism". A good name might be rational Altruism because in practice these people are from the rationalist movement and doing Altruism, or what they feel is A…

Do you really think all altruism is effective? Caring about the immediate well-being of others is not as effective as thinking in the long term. The altruism you are describing is misguided altruism, which ultimately hurts more than it helps, while effective altruism goes beyond the surface-level help in ways that don't enable self-destructing behaviours or that don't perpetuate the problem.

No I think almost all people doing altruism at least think what they are doing is effective. I totally get that they EA people believe they have found the one true way but so does do others. Even if EA is correct it just makes talking about it confusing. Imagine if Darwin has called his theory "correct biology".

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

#419

Post by palisade »

squigz wrote: post #412
palisade wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The cesarean delivery rate increased from 5% in 1970 to 31.9% in 2016. This sharp increase can be attributed to various factors, including changes in maternal age, medical advancements allowing more complicated pregnancies to proceed, and evolving obstetric practices. In 2022, the United States recorded more than 3.66 million births, most of which resulted from spontaneous or induced labor. Labor dystocia remains th…

> Another Note: Also, ironically WHO's article I've linked is lamenting that Sub-saharan Africa only had 5% cesarean due to less availability of the procedure. It is their perspective that the increase in percentages is a good thing and indicates progress, instead of being concerning. And, they find Sub-saharan Africa's low numbers concerning, instead. Pretty sure their perspective is that "saving the lives of mother…

Yes, that's what they're indicating. And, it is saving lives. I myself was cesarean section, as was my mother. I wouldn't be here without it.

That's the potential conundrum, if it turns out to be vastly increasing the need to save those lives than in the past due to a evolutionary pressure on the gene pool. If the WHO is right and we're going to start seeing 50 - 63% increases by 2030, what's in store for the human race if this rate of expansion keeps up?

Will we reach a time when no one can be naturally born and almost our entire race has to be conceived in external gestation devices or cease to exist? And, when we reach that point will we look with concern towards Africa and wonder at how sad it is they're still conceived naturally.

Edit: I don't have the answers. I'm not sure what we should do to course correct or if we need to. But, it is definitely something that should be looked into before it is too late, if it isn't already. And, that is why I brought it up in the context of this breakthrough, to ask if we've considered similar consequences. And, if we have a way to mitigate them if that turns out to be the case.

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

#420

Post by philsnow »

nomadpenguin wrote: post #163
shadowgovt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gene therapies are pretty incredible. Some of them are still making a button-hole with a machete, but that's relative to the previous medical intervention of a button-hole with a tank's main gun. One of the treatments for sickle-cell involves switching off the gene that makes the malfunctioning red blood cells, but of course that's not sufficient; you'd stop making red blood cells completely and you'd die. So it's co…

High affinity RBCs would actually be a disadvantage for athletics. You actually don't need very high affinity to pick up oxygen from the lungs -- your lungs are comparatively extremely high in oxygen. What matters more is being able to drop the oxygen off in peripheral tissues. Higher affinity means that it's harder to actually deliver the oxygen, which is why we evolutionarily developed the switch away from fetal he…

I thought the evolutionary impetus for fetal hemoglobin was because it greatly increases the efficiency of fetal oxygen uptake across the placental interface?

From shadowgovt:

> I have seen no literature on whether having fetal RBCs in adulthood has any benefits or drawbacks (besides changing the affinity ratio for their fetus if the patient gets pregnant

This was exactly the question that popped into my mind when I read about switching from normal adult RBCs to fetal RBCs: does this therapy reduce the likelihood of carrying a baby to term?

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