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CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

npr.org

101–110 of 243 posts

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#101
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the line of reasoning that leads to banning abortions*. People have a right to alter their bodies. EDIT: and preventing young women from choosing sterilization.

Precisely. Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of "well even though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say it's bad for you there for you cannot do it" will inevitably lead to the logic of dictating abortion rights as well. This is exactly the logic conservatives use with the Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good for everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the "my body my choice" when it…

"Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of "well even though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say it's bad for you there for you cannot do it" will inevitably lead to the logic of dictating abortion rights as well."

The first problem is that you are claiming that the child's body is the woman's body. It isn't and you know that. You know that is it an entirely distinct human being with it's own DNA, etc, etc. In order to justify abortion, you would need to argue that murder (which is the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human being) is justifiable. The logical consequences are devastating. For example, if murder of the most innocent, powerless, dependent, and vulnerable, by those with power over them no less, becomes justifable, then it becomes impossible to argue for the legitimacy any human rights whatsoever. You can't just make up moral principles out of thin air or assign arbitrary boundaries to them according to taste.

The second problem is that this logic seems to put the cart before the horse. In other words, you've decided that abortion is a right axiomatically and you've decided to dismiss anything that would undermine that belief. But the moral acceptability of abortion is not axiomatic and must be judged according to prior moral principles.

"This is exactly the logic conservatives use with the Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good for everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the "my body my choice" when it comes to a vaccine."

See my first point above. Here conservatives are indeed speaking of just their own bodies, so this is a false equivalence.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#102

Crazy genetics ideas I would like explored A modified tree that drops nuts of (nearly) pure graphite or some other form of nondecomposable carbon which we can easily harvest and sequester. Photosynthesis in humans to supplement our energy consumption. Shoutout to Knights of Sidonia. I understand the ethical issues surrounding the second one.

I believe the graphite nut proposal is too inefficient to work. A single large tree absorbs around 30 kg of CO2 per year. If it was able to put 10% of that into graphite nuts (which would be a very good efficiency), you end up with 0.8 kg of graphite nuts per tree per year. To match the IEAs projections for carbon capture (7.5 gigatonnes CO2 captured per year in 2050) you would need around 3*10^12 trees. That's about…

Thats a pretty solid breakdown, but that 3x10^12 was a little more hope-inspiring than I was expecting. Seems like a workable part of a larger multi-pronged solution if you streamlined the plants metabolism (?). Then again I dont know what in the h*ll Im talking about so theres that...

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#103
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want something that replicates in the environment and removes carbon? We have those. They're called "plants."

Even if we reforested every possible area, the current rate of carbon outlay exceeds capacity to absorb. Well explained in the Economist video: https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ

If we could convert Sahara back into a savannah or farms, the amount of carbon required for the new soil and plants would exceed the amount of extra carbon we have added to the atmosphere so far. And there are many viable routes to do that. E.g. building large number of ocean thermal energy conversion plants [1] to reduce temperature of the north hemisphere, recreating conditions that have caused green Sahara in the past. There are numerous possibilities to use engineering to revert adverse effects of climate change, and to actually improve the climate. The only scenario when we are doomed, is if population declines significantly so that we get runaway effect from carbon we have already produced melting permafrost, and not have large enough economy to use geoengineering on a large enough scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversio...

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of a future, even with all this cool tech.

Stop with the doom trolling and get busy inventing solutions.

[deleted]

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#105

So this is editing liver cells, which I read somewhere is the easiest to do, since the liver absorbs foreign elements from the bloodstream. The success of this should mean that many genetic liver conditions can soon be treated this way. For other organs, I expect a longer wait.

The lung epithelium has also recently been transfected in humans (see Translate Bio cf drug; this and similar vehicles can deliver editing tools)

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#106
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of a future, even with all this cool tech.

It’s not impossible to speculate the possibility that in 50-100 years, climate change could be reversed through a CRISPR-like technology (e.g. something that can be released and replicate in the environment, thereby changing it). Or at the very least, I can see a future where gene editing could relieve your suffering from heat by raising the threshold your body can tolerate :)

Too bad for the millions of people who will die because of the changes during these 50 years...

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#107
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At current rates of carbon outlay, there won’t be much of a world left to save in 100 years.

Not unless we all work our asses off! Engineers can do anything :^)

... except politics, engineers are usually not very good at politics, and climate change is, in large part, a political problem.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently watched the two videos on this (that I'm aware of) and it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people who will say "yes" to all kinds of crazy stuff out of desperation. Cystic fibrosis significantly impacts gut function and many people with it do poorly with dairy products. I could see this and/or some variation of this being valuable therapy f…

> it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people That's because it has barely begun to become viable IRL while science fiction writers have been using it as a convenient punching bag for decades -- without ever stopping to ask if they should.

No, that's because I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I know what I and others like me have been willing to do in the face of that and because I'm aware of real world experiments done on people who were seen as less than human for some reason, such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments done on Black Americans and horrifying experiments done on people in concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medic...

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of a future, even with all this cool tech.

Stop with the doom trolling and get busy inventing solutions.

Without doom trolling nobody will vote for the people who want to implement the costly solutions.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#110
post #43

>Doctors infused billions of microscopic structures known as nanoparticles carrying genetic instructions for the CRISPR gene-editor into four patients in London and two in New Zealand. The nanoparticles were absorbed by their livers, where they unleashed armies of CRISPR gene-editors. The CRISPR editor honed in on the target gene in the liver and sliced it, disabling production of the destructive protein. this is one…

The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of a future, even with all this cool tech.

Everyone will move to Canada and similar places. Only the poor will be left behind to die in the heat and most of the world won't care and will feel like "good riddance."

Edit:

In case anyone thinks this is just snark, no. I'm in the PNW and I grew up in Georgia and lived in California for a lot of years, including the High Desert where I was south of Death Valley and 115 in July was not unusual. I'm dirt poor and have been for years. I spent years homeless.

The heat wave per se is not a big deal to me. But it's late in the month and I'm nearly broke.

If the heat kills me, it will be because I'm out of funds, not because 107 is a big damn deal per se. The world has spent a lot of years making it clear to me that it doesn't care about my welfare at all and no amount of virtue, hard work, yadda is ever enough to adequately remedy my problems.

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