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UK to allow babies from three people

bbc.com

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Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#51

Post by nsxwolf »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #4
JacobAldridge wrote: post #2

We (my beautiful wife and I) are currently going through the baby-making limbo, and it looks as though IVF will be the necessary next step. When you start actively trying to have children, there's loads of literature preparing you for the pregnancy swelling and the sleepless life of parenthood etc - less so preparing you for the anxiety, uncertainty, and just general feeling of not being in control of your life which…

I have some friends who struggled with infertility, went through the whole IVF thing (big medical bills, without success) but ultimately had repeat success with the help of modern NFP methods such as NaPro and Billings: http://www.thebillingsovulationmethod.org/ http://www.naprotechnology.com/

Uh oh - stealth religious content on HN! Downvote! Downvote! Downvote! Even if it's backed up by legitimate science... The Catholic Church is behind it! Abort! Abort!

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#52

Post by jqm »

barking wrote: post #10
BadCookie wrote: post #7

I wonder how people will feel about two men being genetic parents to one baby (with the help of a surrogate mother) once it becomes technologically possible. In that case, no disease is being avoided, but I don't think it falls under the realm of a "designer" baby either. My guess is that many of us will live to see it happen.

Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic doesn't seem like quite the right metaphor but at a time when the world's population is exploding this doesn't seem like our most pressing problem.

I would argue that having offspring with the best chance of surviving and prospering is the most pressing problem and always has been.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#53

Post by _almosnow »

stenl wrote: post #47
geographomics wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem - if such a technique worked (it's been attempted in mice [1,2]), two males could produce XX or XY offspring, as you get X sperms and Y sperms. The restriction would be on two females, they could only combine to make XX. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6722870 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4123998/

Men would get on average 1/3 daughters (XX) and 2/3 sons (XY and YX). The YY offspring would not be viable. Women would only get daughters.

We don't know what happens with YY, but yeah, at least a terrible syndrome.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#54

Post by 3d8995163 »

brianpgordon wrote: post #48

> Other groups, including Human Genetics Alert, say the move would open the door to further genetic modification of children in the future - so-called designer babies, genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease. There are people who don't think this is a good thing?! If we could eliminate congenital disease, and make everyone smarter, it would be like fast-forwarding human evolution.

And the kids whose parents couldn't afford to have them genetically improved? They just exist as some sort of permanent underclass?

If you think the inequality and the way poor people get treated is a problem now, wait until rich people are actually genetically superior to the poor.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#55

Post by trhway »

brianpgordon wrote: post #48

> Other groups, including Human Genetics Alert, say the move would open the door to further genetic modification of children in the future - so-called designer babies, genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease. There are people who don't think this is a good thing?! If we could eliminate congenital disease, and make everyone smarter, it would be like fast-forwarding human evolution.

i'm completely agree with you about it being in general a great progressive thing, a dream come true.

The devil is always in implementation details. I can't avoid amazement about extrapolating Monsanto DNA-modified seeds tight licensing control unto human "designer" genes.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#56

Post by _almosnow »

tn13 wrote: post #41
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? There are limits to growth. We are just not anywhere near them, and don't seem to be approaching them. World birth rates are coming down fast enough that world population will probably never again double. > No limits to available fresh water supplies? Fresh water is a local problem. The world fresh water supply is renewable and renews at a rate several orders of mag…

Honestly, a cheap and infinite source of energy is all we need. Nuclear and Solar engergy is sooner or later going to be both cheap and near infinite. That is likely to solve most problems for humanity.

I also believe that nuclear/solar will provide us with our holy grial energy source; but we've been expecting this for the last 50 years so I don't hold my hopes too high.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#57

Post by _almosnow »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #34
manicdee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? No limits to available fresh water supplies? No limits to energy production? Once you run you of fresh water and have to rely on nuclear power to run the desalination plants to keep people watered, you have three major problems.

> Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? There are limits to growth. We are just not anywhere near them, and don't seem to be approaching them. World birth rates are coming down fast enough that world population will probably never again double. > No limits to available fresh water supplies? Fresh water is a local problem. The world fresh water supply is renewable and renews at a rate several orders of mag…

>The world fresh water supply is renewable and renews at a rate several orders of magnitude greater than human consumption.

I'm gonna need source on that one, please.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #34
manicdee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? No limits to available fresh water supplies? No limits to energy production? Once you run you of fresh water and have to rely on nuclear power to run the desalination plants to keep people watered, you have three major problems.

> Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? There are limits to growth. We are just not anywhere near them, and don't seem to be approaching them. World birth rates are coming down fast enough that world population will probably never again double. > No limits to available fresh water supplies? Fresh water is a local problem. The world fresh water supply is renewable and renews at a rate several orders of mag…

[deleted]

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#59

Post by rpedroso »

adamnemecek wrote: post #39
gameshot911 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those who think this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans, or so called "designer babies" Well...this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans.

> invasive genetic modification of humans Besides safety, are there any issues with that?

There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. The film imagined a future in which genetic superiority could be measured by percentile and that job eligibility was based almost exclusively on your genetic score.

The implication is that the widespread but costly availability of genetic modification in tandem with free market capitalism would necessarily form such an enormous social wedge.

I haven't thought about the issue enough to agree or disagree with the theory, but I am stating it here as a potential answer to your question.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#60

Post by kareemm »

I can just hear the guy who wrote the software for creating UK birth certificates: "I know for sure that I need to display two parents max on these."

And I feel for the poor programmer whose job it is to deal with the brand-new edge case of putting three parents' names on one.

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