481–490 of 570 posts
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> 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?
You have successfully read between the lines, yes.
the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In our lifetimes we will see a brave new world controlled through eugenics.
The wealthy are already engaged in eugenics via IVF embryo selection. There are several American startups whose clientele are mainly rich SV types that want to optimize the genetics of their children.
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So we should not even try to help the sick because 'death' has too many other ways to kill them?
I mean the opposite. We should continue seeking cures to every fatal condition, from the common to the rare.
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> That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read. This is even more great reading behind the above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna
Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier
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Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier
They shared the Nobel prize for CRISPR. Yet you chose to lead with the American one. :/
After edits were disabled, I thought perhaps there's a page for Charpentier too, which there was, but later than i could edit.
They're both amazing scientists.
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This really has nothing to do with the inevitability of death. Death is inevitable, however there is a difference between a child dying and an elderly person dying. A child has potential, they have not lived their lives. A child has not actually lived the full basic human experience, they havent had a crush, or fallen in love or married or had children or had any great successes or failures or close friends or anything, these things everyone does. An older person has, they are not a pure soul who hasnt experienced life. After 70 years you can be sad for the individual passing but happy that they have experienced life. This is why when a parent has a child they arent sad that their child will die in 80 years, but are devasted if they die at a week. The child never even had a chance. When you actually have a child, its an emotional and fulfilling experience, and to have that torn out so early is damaging.
From an empathy and emotional pov these things are so extemely basic and foundational aspects of being a human, a 10 year old from any culture on earth can undersrand this with no difficulty. And any person with even a passing familiarty with logic, ethics or philosophy will dismiss you as being earnest. Which is why people are assuming you are a troll.
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"Effective Altruism", something I find myself aligned with but not to the extremes taken by others.
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…
As someone who has occasionally given money to charities for homelessness and the like I don't really expect it to fix much. More the thought that counts.
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If you can affect germline cells, then I don't see how it's not a slippery slope. (I'm not arguing against doing it, just that it is a slope and the slope is slippery.) No designer babies necessary. I'll steelman "fixing defects" by sticking to serious hereditary diseases (and yes, only those that correspond to one or a few known genes). As more and more conditions become treatable, the population with access to reso…
I'm a fan of saying there's always a slippery slope, it's just a matter of the parameters. But, I think that it's misguided to apply the human problem of othering to a given technology. Regardless of technology X, humans are gonna human. So, if X helps some people, we should consider it on that basis. Because without X, we will still have an endless stream of other reasons to draw red lines, as you allude to. Except…
> This will require all the trappings of human coordination we've always had.
It is also true to say that we've never had it as quickly as it has been needed, and neither is it done as well as it needs to be. We will blunder into things that are easy to predict in advance if we are willing to look and accept what we see, but we won't.
I absolutely agree that this advance is a great thing and should be pursued further. But I also think that simply categorizing it as good or bad is a way to willfully ignore the unintended consequences. We should at least try to do better.
> Society needs to learn how to "yes, and..." more when it comes to this stuff.
Absolutely. I just think that requires nuance, wide open eyes, and acceptance of uncomfortable truths. Part of the nuance is not boiling it down to a yes/no question of "should this proceed?" (For example, how about: "How can we utilize these new capabilities to maximize benefit and minimize harm, when the only real lever we seem to have to work with is the profit motive? Everything else is getting undermined in its service.")
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Careful with qualifiers there. I genuinely believe that vaccines can spread illness to the non-vaccinated, since it has happened many times and is well-documented. For example, it's why only the inactivated (aka "dead" virus) polio vaccine has been used in the US since 2000. I'm not arguing about whether the risks of the attenuated virus outweigh the benefits. I think the data are very clear there. (Heh -- and I'm su…
At one time organ transplants were considered an ethical grey area (perhaps they still are by some), but I think most people now would consider it better to save lives in such a manner when it only brings help to those who need it and it's possible to, compared to the alternative. Having the capability may mean that things like organ theft now exist, but the benefits around the world outweigh the nastiness that has a…
I also think that gene repair is a net positive. I would just like us to, for once, look ahead and foresee some of the foreseeable consequences and act to mitigate them before the bulk of the damage is done.
I don't think it's necessary to slow the development; gene therapy is too desperately needed, and slowing it down so that we can prepare is not going to cause us to prepare.
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That's all very cool, but there are also articles like this one: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/20/trump-nih-cu... - I'm not able to read the Times article because it's paywalled, but as other commenters have mentioned, this research was funded by the NIH, which the Trump administration is currently in the process of defunding. So, if further progress along this road will be made, it'll probably be much…
Or, it means that funding will be secured in the private sector. Basically by investors that focus on revenue streams (read: extremely expensive private healthcare).