Imagine guys like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg or Thiel cloning themselves. That's 100% dystopian. We would never be able to get rid of madmen! Power corrupts and makes the powerful just weird and unable to make rational decisions. That's why people in power need to be replaced regularly to have a stable society.
Would they be the same person? I'd risk sounding ignorant and say they wouldn't. They could be fed the same food and knowledge, but what shapes them is every random factor encountered in the real world. How would they react when reading or hearing about all the hate they are guilty of without ever participating in it? It's not their lived experience.
I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc. The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation,…
Natural reproduction already has a lot of randomness and failure built into it. It's not like egg/sperm selection is a perfect quality-control system. IVF has also been around for decades, and while it definitely needs monitoring, we haven't seen some obvious collapse in health from it
I'd be very curious how they even define "safe enough" for this. With most therapies, the risk is mostly to the patient. Here the risk could be passed on to a future person who never consented to the experiment.
I get where you're coming from, but this seems no different from the risks associated with having a baby. Pushed further, babies never consent to any of the traits they inherit from their parents.
It's not so much a mitochondrial transplant, as it is fertilized egg nucleus transplant. Not just mitochondria are used from the third donor but their whole egg (sans nucleus). So unless a human might develop from a bat egg just from swapping out nucleus, which I'm sure it's not the case, super-powered batman must remain a fantasy.
Oh, so that's what you were aiming for, LOL there are many reasons for this chimera not to be viable, mitochondria co-evolves with the nuclear DNA, you can't just take a mitochondria from a totally different species
Bats are kinda close though. Maybe it would require just a handfuls specific adjustments to nuclear DNA, at most. Worth a shot if it could give us for example 2x multiplier for a healthy lifespan. Even getting 10 year old mice would be very cool.
Can you point me to anything about mitochondrial transplants? I'd love to see bat mitochondria transplanted into other mammals. They must have really superior ones given the energy expenditures needed to support flight and their long lifespans.
I don't, isn't this the recipe to get IRL Morbius?
I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc. The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation,…
Having gone through IVF multiple times, there’s usually a pretty rigorous process and it is highly regulated in many countries. In some places you need genetic screenings when using donors. I was unaware that I was carrying a mutation for a difficult to diagnose, fatal but relatively easy to treat disease if caught early, which explained at least two cases in my family history. If the donor happened to carry the same mutation, the chances of having an offspring with the disease was around 25%. So in my view, IVF if done right, could actually make healthier humans. And yes, this genetic screenings are available to anyone not only IVF patients, but it is extremely unlikely that people will use them when conceiving naturally, because first, they aren’t cheap and secondly there’s some sort of tabu about asking your partner for genetic testing, and even if the test comes back positive for some type of disease, what would people do anyway?
> We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc." Haven't we?
Objectively we’ve only become smarter (IQs have increased), stronger (fitness records continue to be broken), etc. since infant mortality shrank. If you believe otherwise please provide evidence.
I think this is decisively the wrong way to think about it. Yes, layering hypotheticals like that means that any one scenario is extremely unlikely to be the thing that gets you, but that doesn't mean the shape of the problem is wrong. It's like arguing with someone who doesn't believe in using seat belts when driving. "Why should I put them on?" they say, and when you try to explain what might go wrong they won't li…
The history of humanity, I say of hominids even, was defined by humans playing it unsafe - migrating, sailing, inventing bombs, you name it. We played god before even we invented gods, and reached this point in time. Should we say "this is best we can do, let's stop everything"? Nah, not likely.
I don't know man, people basically aren't having sex already. The fertility rate is way below replacement in all modernized countries, half of gen Z has never had sex at all, contraception is free, people struggle to get pregnant the more chronically ill the population gets, and the people who actively do want to get pregnant are going to want to use whatever technology there is to improve things.
But outside the bible, who says we must be more and above replacement rates? Is such a tragedy for humanity if there are only 4 billion humans in 100 years? 4 happier billions? It doesn't HAVE to go up all the time, and between extinction (zero humans) and overcrowding (X billions) there are many unknown ways to go.
Unfortunately most of society and the economy is built on the foundational assumption of a growing (or at least stable) population. There will be some extremely tough challenges to solve with an actively declining population.
This is a good tech to have, with applications both in IVF and in research.
Currently, egg retrieval is a significant part of the IVF process - one that's notoriously taxing on the women. Once this gets refined enough for clinical uses, it can become as simple as "take a blood sample once, produce as many eggs as you need". With an added benefit of being able to get eggs when traditional retrieval fails.