Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 142 posts

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#101

Post by rewqfdsa »

adrianN wrote: post #100
rewqfdsa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a certain strain of environmentalist that sees deindustrialization, technological regression, and human population decline as the solution to the world's problem. This perspective misses the mark, I think.

Human population decline would solve a lot of our environmental problems and is not necessarily tied to technological regression. In many developed countries it happens by itself and it could rather easily be helped along with some financial incentives, say, a tax on children.

The last thing we need is a tax on children in societies with sub-replacement fertility. A world without growth is a terrible place. (Before you object: yes, economic growth isn't the same as population growth. But to get economic growth with a declining population, you need productivity to grow faster than the population declines, and we're already having trouble keeping productivity growth up.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/economy/imagining...

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#102

Post by tiatia »

danieltillett wrote: post #98
tiatia wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be the “long tail risk”? All the CRISPR-Cas9 > systems would die out with the mosquitos. May I assume you have zero background in biology/biochemistry/chemistry?

No you may not (you can look at my profile here). Once again what is the long tail risk? Up thread there is lots of discussion about all of this.

A few points

http://www.nature.com/news/caution-urged-over-editing-dna-in...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/new-dna-construct-can...

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf

You release not only a gene but a technology into the wild. This is something that can not be undone. You may easily underestimate the scale, rapidness and evolutionary pressure of a fast replicating species. Throw a few atomic bombs on Brazil. The effects are

a) temporary

b) geographically limited.

If something screws up with the CRISPR/Cas9 system, the effects are

a) not temporary

b) geographically unlimited.

Proceed with caution.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#103

Post by rewqfdsa »

danieltillett wrote: post #9

The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not? Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene…

What prevents gene drive techniques from working on humans? The implications are disturbing, considering that humans have numerous ancestry-specific markers.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#104

Post by psykovsky »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #101
adrianN wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human population decline would solve a lot of our environmental problems and is not necessarily tied to technological regression. In many developed countries it happens by itself and it could rather easily be helped along with some financial incentives, say, a tax on children.

The last thing we need is a tax on children in societies with sub-replacement fertility. A world without growth is a terrible place. (Before you object: yes, economic growth isn't the same as population growth. But to get economic growth with a declining population, you need productivity to grow faster than the population declines, and we're already having trouble keeping productivity growth up.) http://www.nytimes.c…

why does productivity need to go up if the population is declining? what about the unemployed?

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#105

Post by rewqfdsa »

psykovsky wrote: post #104
rewqfdsa wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last thing we need is a tax on children in societies with sub-replacement fertility. A world without growth is a terrible place. (Before you object: yes, economic growth isn't the same as population growth. But to get economic growth with a declining population, you need productivity to grow faster than the population declines, and we're already having trouble keeping productivity growth up.) http://www.nytimes.c…

why does productivity need to go up if the population is declining? what about the unemployed?

Unemployment is on a long-term upward trend because as technology advances, it becomes economical to replace an increasing number of jobs with machines, starting with the lowest-skilled jobs first. Without eugenics, population decline will not increase the smart fraction in society, so to achieve economic growth, you constantly need fewer people to do more work.

That is, the more technology we have, the larger the portion of the population that is "zero marginal product" --- that is, the portion of the population that isn't profitable to employ at any wage.

Improved education is no help, since most people do not have the intrinsic mental capacity to take full advantage of it. Intelligence is largely genetic and immutable.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#106

Post by danieltillett »

tiatia wrote: post #102
danieltillett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you may not (you can look at my profile here). Once again what is the long tail risk? Up thread there is lots of discussion about all of this.

A few points http://www.nature.com/news/caution-urged-over-editing-dna-in... http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/new-dna-construct-can... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf You release not only a gene but a technology into the wild. This is something that can not be undone. You may easily underestimate the scale, rapidness and evolutionary pressure of a fast replicating species. Throw a few atomic bombs on Brazil.…

Basically a warmed up version of the "precautionary principle” - or as it should be named "don’t do anything new because something bad might happen” principle. This is not an argument for any long tail, just an argument for inaction because we don’t know what might happen and can never know unless we try. If our ancestors had taken the same approach we would still be living in trees being eaten by wild animals.

What those propounding the precautionary principle forget is the do nothing approach is not cost free. 700 million people are made ill every year by mosquitoes and more than a million killed. Unless the risk adjusted consequences are greater than this then doing nothing is far worse. No one has been able to suggest any possible bad consequences of wiping out all human disease carrying mosquitos so there is nothing to be precautionary about [1].

As for the technology it is already in the wild - it was originally isolated from bacteria. One final point is yes it can be undone - see George Church’s paper [2]. George is on your side, but he does explain how any trial can be controlled.

1. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

2. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2014/07/17/007203.f...

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#107

Post by robbiep »

danieltillett wrote: post #30
personlurking wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be Brazil first (southern) summer having to deal with a triple epidemic (zika virus, dengue and chikungunya fever), all due to the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Translating from a December 11th BBC Brasil article [1]: "Two promising biotech projects have been tested in Brazil over the past few years, however, the results still aren't being felt on a large scale. The first one, betting on an insect inoculation sch…

Yes these approaches have potential - the problem with them is the cost is much higher than using a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system. From the BBC article "As the mosquito only lasts a generation, it is necessary that the environment is continuously fed by new GMOs until it reaches the extermination.” This costs a lot of money and would not be able to implemented in most countries. If a country can’t afford to spray the…

I haven't heard much about CRISPR-Cas9 in population studies/experiments like this - my understanding was that you need to insert the RNA. Since RNA is so unstable it is usually a 'one shot' process transfecting cells with plasmids through infusion.

Is the proposed mechanism to release a virus with the appropriate RNA scaffolds in the wild?

This strikes me as extremely dangerous

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#108

Post by tiatia »

danieltillett wrote: post #106
tiatia wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points http://www.nature.com/news/caution-urged-over-editing-dna-in... http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/new-dna-construct-can... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf You release not only a gene but a technology into the wild. This is something that can not be undone. You may easily underestimate the scale, rapidness and evolutionary pressure of a fast replicating species. Throw a few atomic bombs on Brazil.…

Basically a warmed up version of the "precautionary principle” - or as it should be named "don’t do anything new because something bad might happen” principle. This is not an argument for any long tail, just an argument for inaction because we don’t know what might happen and can never know unless we try. If our ancestors had taken the same approach we would still be living in trees being eaten by wild animals. What…

"No one has been able to suggest any possible bad consequences of wiping out all human disease carrying mosquitos"

This was not the question.

But I see that "unlimited" risk is no problem for you. The problem I have is that I am sharing this risk for your actions. How about to try to get this insured? I am curious about the price quote for an "unlimited" risk that an insurance company would quote.

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#109

Post by danieltillett »

tiatia wrote: post #108
danieltillett wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically a warmed up version of the "precautionary principle” - or as it should be named "don’t do anything new because something bad might happen” principle. This is not an argument for any long tail, just an argument for inaction because we don’t know what might happen and can never know unless we try. If our ancestors had taken the same approach we would still be living in trees being eaten by wild animals. What…

"No one has been able to suggest any possible bad consequences of wiping out all human disease carrying mosquitos" This was not the question. But I see that "unlimited" risk is no problem for you. The problem I have is that I am sharing this risk for your actions. How about to try to get this insured? I am curious about the price quote for an "unlimited" risk that an insurance company would quote.

I think one of the major reasons for our disagreement is you perceive that there is an unlimited risk with GMO organisms - the paper you linked to explicitly states this [1]. Quoting from it:

Ecologically, in addition to intentional cultivation, GMOs have the propensity to spread uncontrollably, and thus their risks cannot be localized. The cross-breeding of wild-type plants with genetically modified ones prevents their disentangling, leading to irreversible system-wide effects with unknown downsides. The ecological implications of releasing modified organisms into the wild are not tested empirically before release.

The problem with this analysis is their assumption that GMOs have a propensity to spread uncontrollably. This is totally false. The problem with GMOs is they don’t spread very effectively unless under human selective pressure. The reason why is really simple - all organisms have a fixed metabolic budget which they can allocate to different functions (grow, reproduction, protection against predation, repair, etc). When you introduce new genes into an organism you have to take away some of this fixed budget to allocate to the new function. This means that when the GMO competes with other organisms in the wild they are at a disadvantage. If you make an argument based on a false assumption then you will get a faulty conclusion.

It is a real shame with this paper as the rest is quite good and an excellent argument for not doing things where ...the consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet. GMOs just don’t happen to be one of these things (I am leaving out of GMOs things like creating new pathogens, but you don’t need genetic engineering to create these as the USA and Russia showed in the 1950 and 1960s).

The bottom line is GMOs are not that scary. In fact I know of no serious harm that has come from any other than to make people fearful for no reason and their absence to drive up the price of food.

1. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf

Re: Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage

#110

Post by vilhelm_s »

themartorana wrote: post #37
danieltillett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes these approaches have potential - the problem with them is the cost is much higher than using a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system. From the BBC article "As the mosquito only lasts a generation, it is necessary that the environment is continuously fed by new GMOs until it reaches the extermination.” This costs a lot of money and would not be able to implemented in most countries. If a country can’t afford to spray the…

Have we ever on-purpose driven another species to extinction in order to save ourselves?

Also, the Guinea worm eradication program is getting quite close to succeeding. (http://www.healthmap.org/site/diseasedaily/article/guinea-wo...)
Post reply on HN