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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

#501

Post by Lichtso »

Not to downplay what a huge achievement this is and how far the field of medicine has come, but ...

this still leaves a slight bitter taste in my mouth: If they edit specific genes one way they can also do the opposite direction. And if I understand correctly, they did with a bunch of lab rats?

Now, this and similar stuff have obviously been discussed before, essentially "12 Monkeys": Somebody releasing some runaway gene-editing mechanism, be it a virus or what not, and using it as means to mass destruction. However, that is not even what I worry about because that is nothing new, viruses have existed longer than most other kinds of life on this planet.

Instead, what just popped into my mind is more like ransomware but on your body cells. Attacker edits victims genes to some condition that is lethal within a week or so and then blackmails them in order to edit it back. Kinda like the "Carrying the Antidote"-trope, only that there is no other cure in time.

Maybe worth a Black Mirror episode ... anyway you heard / read it here first ;)

edit: To the people downvoting, why not engage in the conversation instead? I am not saying we shouldn't be doing this, just that this is a fun crime scenario in a movie. What is wrong with that?

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

#502

Post by namuol »

codeulike wrote: post #465
namuol wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of at least one YouTuber who took a homemade treatment that alerted his GI system DNA to produce lactase so he could eat pizza again: https://youtu.be/J3FcbFqSoQY

That's not gene editing, but you could call it a gene therapy - he's introducing new fragments of DNA/RNA into his cells which then just float around and cause the right enzyme get made. Sometimes called upregulation. This is different to actually editing the existing DNA in the cell.

Good point - to be honest I didn’t realize the difference which is very significant from a treatment perspective.

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

#503

Post by [deleted] »

squigz wrote: post #437
palisade wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

[deleted]

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

#504

Post by kulahan »

wffurr wrote: post #273
kulahan wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exampl…

>> They are not used because somehow all countries pretty much agreed they’re way TOO effective and horrific That’s the story but it doesn’t hold up. Chemical weapons were used as recently as the Syrian civil war. I also think if they were really effective in modern warfare, Russia would have long ago deployed them in Ukraine. More here: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

What do you mean “if they were really effective”? We still hand out CBRN gear and train in how to put necessary parts on in seconds, because that’s often how little time you get before you’re permanently incapacitated. Mustard gas alone should prove this, and that’s an OLD chemical weapon.

Nowadays we have riot control agents that can be tailored to demographics, react more violently in the presence of sweat, or contain psychoactive ingredients. Nanoparticle dispersion bypasses common gas masks and clothing protection. Even if you’re completely geared up, they can be engineered to last on surfaces for a long time, or react only in the presence of certain triggers. Imagine thinking you’re safe until someone turns on a certain light bulb and you cook inside your protective gear because you were actually exposed 12 hours earlier in an undetectable manner.

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

#506

Post by ajkjk »

ziofill wrote: post #329
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…

A chemist friend of mine did his thesis on lipid vesicles, and I remember my mind being blown when he told me these are modelled as a liquid on the 2D plane of the membrane, but as a solid on the 1D orthogonal direction because the energy to swap two lipid molecules side by side is incredibly low (because it makes barely any difference), while the energy to swap them orthogonally to the membrane is much larger (becau…

Oh that's neat

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

#507

Post by boroboro4 »

_bin_ wrote: post #476
boroboro4 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We "invest" more than almost anyone. 38% higher than the OECD average. I don't find discussions about throwing more money at the problem to be constructive so much as a way to ignore other issues at play. I don't really see how this affects e.g. what I do for my children. I will absolutely be turning them into the closest to superhuman the current state of treatments lets me, traveling internationally if I need to. I…

I don't mean to invest as to spend more money, rather to spend money better and in a more equal way. While USA spends a lot of money on education I don't think it translates in better education on average. Even if this was beneficial for the society in general.

I am, afraid, that this kind of genome modification will further increase divide in a society and turn social lifts off even more. I.e. it's not gonna be your kid to get "improve" brain genes first, and later your kid wouldn't get a chance to get it ever again for their children.

Just to be clear I'm not against of the progress, this thing is fascinating and really shows how awesome humans are. And I get why you'll get it if possible for your kid. I'm just not sure its benefits for the society mean it's gonna be anyhow affordable for regular people.

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

#508

Post by nextaccountic »

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…

> 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.

How to avoid having only parts of the liver with the new DNA, and some other parts with the old DNA? Like a chimeric liver - isn't this something bad?

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

#509

Post by DoctorOetker »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #325
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…

Easiest way to do this stuff is before fertilization when you have one egg and one sperm to work with. Delivering change through a multicellular organism is very challenging. All this stuff like transgenic mice are set up in mutant crosses before this stage, before mating really. Eventually this will be the outcome of our species to edit the gametes themselves. The issue to overcome for this again won’t be technologi…

>The issue to overcome for this again won’t be technological as that is pretty much solved but getting people over their own “ick” factor.

Probably requires getting investors over their profit incentive first, why treat a heritable disease for the offspring if you can charge them on a per person basis?

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

#510

Post by aucisson_masque »

raldi wrote: post #451
aucisson_masque wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bold claim. The baby is 9 month old, there are many things that can still go wrong with this experimental treatment. Hopefully not, but even then no one can say what progress will make science in the next 25 years. Back in the 50's people thought we would be driving in flying car in 2000.

Four years ago highly-upvoted /r/SanFrancisco comments said self-driving taxis were decades away: https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/nbjsij/real_r...

12 upvotes...

You can't compare that to gene-editing treatments, that's two completely different level.

Self driving car were always almost feasible, 20 years ago top gear made cars you could drive with controller like kids do with toy cars. We already had camera and computer, it was just a matter of raw CPU performance and software development..

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