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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

#431

Post by palisade »

squigz wrote: post #429
palisade wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> Edit Edit: I can't reply to your comment below I think we've hit the leaf end of this post. But, to reply to your question are c-sections replacing natural births or are they just becoming more common? The research I've cited has indicated this is a genetic transfer among female-to-female births of a need for more cesareans. To reply after a certain number of child comments, you have to open the comment by clicking…

Thanks, I replied to your other comment.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #310
gr_norm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Effective Altruism", something I find myself aligned with but not to the extremes taken by others.

Technically lesswrong is about rationalists not effective altruists, but you're right in a sense that it's the same breed. They think that the key to scientific thinking is to forego the moral limitations, not to study and learn. As soon as you're free from the shackles of tradition you become 100% rational and therefore 100% correct.

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by philsnow »

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

It’s less of

> my baby is going to die, woe is me

and more of

> have I failed my baby so much as a parent that he won’t even grow to adulthood (much less have a wonderful, happy life)

It’s not exactly a rational feeling; it’s not like this baby was going to die through lack of parental effort or care or anything else that the parents have any real control over, so it’s not like they could have done anything differently.

Nonetheless, it can make you feel like an utter failure of a parent. To some people (I admit, not everybody), that is absolutely crushing.

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

#435

Post by agos »

kmmlng wrote: post #339
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…

I suppose in the beginning, it was about finding ways to measure how effective different altruistic approaches actually are and focusing your efforts on the most effective ones. Effective then essentially means how much impact you are achieving per dollar spent. One of the more convincing ways of doing this is looking at different charitable foundations and determining how much of each dollar you donate to them actua…

“Measurable altruism” would have been a better name

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

#436

Post by boroboro4 »

_bin_ wrote: post #311
jhickok wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but presumably it's because it could cement a permanent divide between classes. We still have quite a bit of upward mobility in the US, but health is a tremendous predictor of future outcomes, so gating that to the rich is dangerous to the stability of society in that way.

This seems like more of an issue with accessibility of the treatment than the treatment itself If we could make most children smart, productive, ambitious, courteous, civil, conscientious, honorable, strong... the value to society is probably high enough to justify covering it for almost anyone.

The society already can invest a lot (through public education) to “make most children smart, productive, ambitious …”.

Somehow society (or indeed parts of it) decided to use it as a tool of further segregation rather than overall prosperity. I’m afraid same might apply to this.

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

#437

Post by squigz »

palisade wrote: post #430
squigz wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are c-sections replacing 'natural' births, or are they simply becoming more common because we have the expertise? There is a difference

The research I've cited has indicated this is a genetic transfer among female-to-female births of a need for more cesareans. "A female-to-female familial predisposition to caesarean section was observed. It could be caused by biologic inheritance, primarily working through maternal alleles and/or environmental factors. The results imply that both mechanisms could be important." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1854002…

> "Large-scale epidemiological studies indeed evidence that women born by C-section are more likely to deliver by Caesarean than women born vaginally, owing primarily to genetic rather than social factors."

Interesting. That makes sense. I wonder if the type of research being pursued in TFA might be helpful.

In any case, I also have to wonder whether it's necessarily a bad thing. I quoted 'natural' births earlier because... what is natural? The amount of medical knowledge and technology that go into births doesn't seem very "natural" to me, and this has advanced through the ages to where we are now - where we, rightfully so, look sadly on areas where lack of such technology and knowledge result in more preventable deaths of babies, even if their methods are more "natural"

Of course, to be honest, I'm not very familiar with the pros and cons of c-sections vs natural births - particularly when the question is whether to have a child. I suppose that, given the choice between a c-section and the alternatives, most women will opt for a c-section, and as you point out, that means their daughters likely will have to as well

So what might the solution even look like, apart from exploring the aforementioned gene-editing technology - or other technology - to prevent the genetic factor of c-sections? I would hope that "don't offer c-sections" is not a serious option. "Stop having kids" is one I'd personally suggest, but that's obviously not a sane global solution either.

It's an interesting problem I'd be curious to hear more about - as I said, I'm not very familiar with this.

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

#438

Post by waiquoo »

rubidium wrote: post #373
Brystephor wrote: post #318

This is incredible work. Its jaw dropping to learn that something like this is possible at all. Sometimes I wish I could work for a company whose products make a meaningful positive contribution to the work. Do companies like this have a need for SWEs? Are there opportunities for a backend SWE without any background in hardware or biology?

Yes. Aldevron and IDT are two companies (owned by danaher) that collaborated to make this happen. They have multiple authors listed in the NEJM article. https://jobs.danaher.com/global/en/search-results?keywords=S...

Mark Behlke's group at IDT is the force behind a LOT of the development of CRISPR, but they are relatively unknown

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

#439

Post by kubb »

GenshoTikamura wrote: post #368
kubb wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fiction pattern matching is a problem nobody talks about. People see something that vaguely resembles a movie that they saw and act like that movie is reality now.

Another problem nobody talks about is the cognitive dissonance of living in the world today but dismissing all matching patterns as science fiction or conspiracy theories. Maybe narrow focus and short attention span are to blame

When someone tells you they know how the future plays out because they saw it in fiction, oh boy you better be skeptical.
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