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Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

cosmosmagazine.com

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181–190 of 231 posts

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#181

Post by Almondsetat »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #178
Almondsetat wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your perception doesn't match your body, would you prefer to change the perception or change the body?

It seems pretty clear to me that changing one’s body is preferable to changing who you are. The former is something you’re born with, but the latter is something you can decide for yourself.

Suppose, as you do, that your body is not who you are. Then your identity lies solely in your brain. But if that's the case why would disphoria even exist?

If you feel like a man but you don't look like a man, why could that cause any identity problems? It must mean your body is actually part of your identity, so changing it changes who you are

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#182

Post by jubalfh »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #40
jubalfh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, an eugenicist. and yet, if i stated that eugenicists should be eliminated from the gene pool, you'd be outraged.

The fear of being beholden to a company for your health is not one to dismiss so easily.

get a better healthcare system.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#184

Post by djur »

zac256 wrote: post #57
29athrowaway wrote: post #51

The genetic corrections are not inherited, right?

It's considered taboo/forbidden for genetic corrections to target the germline. I think that's an unfortunate misapplication of ethics, presumably due to fears about eugenics.

My understanding is that it's more about mitigating risk than avoiding an association with eugenics. If the gene therapy has unforeseen consequences the harm is multiplied with every generation and is harder to address once found.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#185

Post by vsuperpower2020 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #156
akoboldfrying wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try to fix the world's vast number of actual, boring health problems before trying to add the equivalent of spoilers and chrome-plated hubcaps to perfectly healthy human bodies.

We're 8000 million people. We can, and always will, work on many different things at once.

The amount of people who can actually work on anything meaningful in this field is double-digit at best. Sure, if you add up "many different things" you have plenty of people who can work on plumbing, programming, and gene editing. What are you going to do for geneCAD? Right, absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter how many of you there are; you could be 8000 million or 8000 trillion people and still accomplish nothing.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#186

Post by nkrisc »

galangalalgol wrote: post #153
nkrisc wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fair enough. I hadn’t considered that. In my mind, wings you can’t fly with are worse than no wings.

Tell that to am emu or ostrich, or don't, their claws aren't vestigial. I would opt for smaller tweaks like an extra rhodopsin folding with longer features so I could see near (like tv remotes) ir. re-enable hibernation. Things some mammals already have would be good starts.

I meant as a human.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#187

Post by sillysaurusx »

Almondsetat wrote: post #181
sillysaurusx wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty clear to me that changing one’s body is preferable to changing who you are. The former is something you’re born with, but the latter is something you can decide for yourself.

Suppose, as you do, that your body is not who you are. Then your identity lies solely in your brain. But if that's the case why would disphoria even exist? If you feel like a man but you don't look like a man, why could that cause any identity problems? It must mean your body is actually part of your identity, so changing it changes who you are

The problem with this argument is that it leads to the conclusion that all change is pointless. If your body is who you are, and you can’t control it, then it’s best just to accept whatever you’re given.

That’s contrary to most of human history, where we specifically try not to take what we’re dealt.

It’s useful to ask yourself: why should vaccines be "allowed" (or "accepted" or "they’re good") but body change shouldn’t be? They’re both as artificial as a Twinkie.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#189

Post by arnaudsm »

very_good_man wrote: post #188

All of us have to get real and demand immediate speed-up of LLMs, Gene Therapy, etc. Absolutely nothing else matters.

Millions of people already die of curable diseases. Technology isn't enough, many problems are political

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#190

Post by gibolt »

vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #185
BurningFrog wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're 8000 million people. We can, and always will, work on many different things at once.

The amount of people who can actually work on anything meaningful in this field is double-digit at best. Sure, if you add up "many different things" you have plenty of people who can work on plumbing, programming, and gene editing. What are you going to do for geneCAD? Right, absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter how many of you there are; you could be 8000 million or 8000 trillion people and still accomplish nothing…

This assumes things are static. There are millions of programmers now, but certainly weren't 100 years ago.

The tools to investigate this will get cheaper and easier, driving more people into the field hoping for the next big win, a big payout, or just to make an impact.

Anyone can make a small circuit design have have a fab print it for you. The same could happen here, all you need to do is provide the sequence

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