Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if AIDS is defeated, there's always other medical maladies that affect people. MRSA, for one.
That's not really the attitude towards curing disease.
It's not towards anything in life.
CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
201–210 of 267 posts
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#202Gene therapy (and CRISPR) is ultimately going to eliminate most if not every ailment/issue/genetic problem that we have, including aging and eye problems. Very thankful we are reaching the point where we can go into our cells and fix ourselves.
I do agree, but that is just the good news. In other news although we can harbor optimistic thoughts for scientists, medical professionals, lawmakers and maybe even politicians all around the globe to do the "right" thing to preserve human life in a currently recognizable form, but there is not a force on heaven or earth that is going to stop parents from trying to give their children every advantage.
> we can harbor optimistic thoughts for scientists, medical professionals, lawmakers and maybe even politicians all around the globe to do the "right" thing to preserve human life in a currently recognizable form
Why do you think that preserving human life in currently recignoziable form is something all of us are optimistic for?
For me personally, this option seems like a nightmare - and I truly hope for a transhumanist future made of humans who have very advantage. Being smart, fit and (relatively) healthy is awesome, which I'm lucky to know from experience. I wish other people would be able to experience it, and then some.
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to do the "right" thing "right" according to whom? nature itself doesn't believe that
Despite academic/political/military/banking/corporate alignment against fundamental morals, "right" appears to be in agreement with nature/natural selection. The States had a more "right" society founded om constitutional and civil rights that was a big part of its climb from an English colony to the world power in less than 150 years after the constitution was written. The reason people probably have strong convicti…
> academic/political/military/banking/corporate alignment against fundamental morals
"fundamental morals"? What are those and where the hell do you get them from?
> The reason people probably have strong convictions about right or wrong is most likely because of nature, not despite it. Groups that had this genetic trait built tribes, societies that had greater success in the long term.
Actually, couldn't agree more. But people do have _different_ convictions about right or wrong.
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we crispr resistant bacteria to be susceptible to penicillin/antibiotics again?
Interesting idea. So you would first infect voluntarily with a custom virus that targets the bacteria by using CRISPR to remove the DNA strand of the resistance, then simply use the usual antibiotics to kill it.
At that point couldn't you just make a custom virus which kills the bacteria, so it happens in one step?
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite academic/political/military/banking/corporate alignment against fundamental morals, "right" appears to be in agreement with nature/natural selection. The States had a more "right" society founded om constitutional and civil rights that was a big part of its climb from an English colony to the world power in less than 150 years after the constitution was written. The reason people probably have strong convicti…
> academic/political/military/banking/corporate alignment against fundamental morals "fundamental morals"? What are those and where the hell do you get them from? > The reason people probably have strong convictions about right or wrong is most likely because of nature, not despite it. Groups that had this genetic trait built tribes, societies that had greater success in the long term. Actually, couldn't agree more.…
Re fundamental morals:
I would wager >95% of people agree on these. I've never met someone who didn't have an understanding of fundamental morals, except for a few people whom I consider to be a psychopaths.
I really would bet that most of us dont need an education to know that killing children for pleasure is wrong and disgusting. However, we might be split on whether spanking your children as punoshment is wrong. I think people understand the difference.
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully support basic science pursuing crazy ideas. I think this is a very interesting piece of basic science, it's just at an incredibly speculative stage that's unsuitable for clinical investment. Efficient delivery of novel proteins into a cell by genetic methods, nanoparticles, or direct transduction is -the- challenge for a lot of novel ideas. Massive effort is ongoing to find breakthroughs here. The proteins in…
This is fascinating. How in the world does the body "raise antibodies" that are effective against arbitrary proteins it hasn't seen before? How does this get "remembered" and how does the memory get communicated through the body? If there's an ELI5 (or, ELI-college-101) I'd be interested to read it.
[deleted]
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully support basic science pursuing crazy ideas. I think this is a very interesting piece of basic science, it's just at an incredibly speculative stage that's unsuitable for clinical investment. Efficient delivery of novel proteins into a cell by genetic methods, nanoparticles, or direct transduction is -the- challenge for a lot of novel ideas. Massive effort is ongoing to find breakthroughs here. The proteins in…
This is fascinating. How in the world does the body "raise antibodies" that are effective against arbitrary proteins it hasn't seen before? How does this get "remembered" and how does the memory get communicated through the body? If there's an ELI5 (or, ELI-college-101) I'd be interested to read it.
Very over-simplified: You have a random library of many billions of cells each making a single unique antibody that was created via random combinatorial genetic shuffling early on. The ones that accidentally bind to your own natural proteins are filtered out by killing them before they leave the bone marrow, so the circulating cells remaining form a library that could only bind -foreign- proteins. When one of these foreign-binding-cells in the library actually binds a foreign protein this cell multiplies like crazy and eventually the clones secrete free floating versions of the antibodies that neutralize the protein it detected, some of these clones stick around in the bone marrow to form a long-term memory-library of previously activated antibodies.
There are actually two separate systems: the T cells and B cells. I recommend the very readable Lauren Sompayrac's "How the Immune System Works". Or google/wiki "clonal selection" and "VDJ recombination".
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#208Wow, I had not connected the idea of using CRISPR genome editing with targeting virus dna segments. If I understand the technique correctly (and I am not a biologist for sure!) they used an adeno virus modified with a specific Cas9 setup to elide HIV DNA from cells it infected (normally I associate viruses with adding DNA rather than removing it :-) Is that even close to a correct interpretation? It sounds like the t…
It could be used for any DNA at all. The step from "medical breakthrough" to "germline altering bioterrorism" is particularly shallow for this technology.
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
That theory would work except that if that were the case they would've bought him out and shut it down. Everyone wants to make money, as it stands someone will and they can be from any sort of background. Why hasn't a silicon valley head given this guy a few million though is beyond me.
In the 1970s the conspiracy theorists were all convinced that oil companies bought the patents to 100 mpg carburetors in order to keep them off the market. My father (ex military) laughed at the idea, as a huge problem for the military is fuel consumption, and they would not let a little old thing like patent rights stand in the way of using it.
It wasn't just the 70s, my father's picked up on it from all the conspiracy theory YouTube channels and rants on about it today. That, and the Zero Point Energy system that was developed and bought, then hidden away by the oil companies. No physicist can convince him that this is wrong, because "The designer found a way to do it."
Like making a spoken word version of a rap song...
Re: CRISPR eliminates HIV-1 infection in live animals
#210Just a reminder that MPEG LA has a CRISPR patent pool[1] and is willing to enforce it. It almost feels like satire.