[flagged]
Not only a hurtful question, but a stupid one as well. Well done.
Care to explain why it is stupid? And what's hurtful about it, too? Deciding on a child, you KNOW it's going to day at some point
Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
211–220 of 570 posts
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#212Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#213When my second son was born and was just so very tiny some genetic test came out questionable. We were very strongly encouraged to go to Childrens hospital ASAP to get more tests. He handled it well, being just a few weeks old. The tests came with "he's a carrier of something obscure but nothing to worry about", so it's all forgotten.
Three interesting thing come out of it from me. First, I was on Microsoft insurance which was quite gold plated at a time, a blessing only obvious in rear-view mirror, because Childrens was quite excited to continue any number of tests. Second, the technology of all this is absolutely amazing and I am so happy that it was available to me, and it has likely gotten better. Three, I want that tech to continue to expand and current destruction up there is going to hand this torch to someone else, which makes me sad.
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#214> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be c…
How does it know how to gps around? From what I know everything down there is a chemical reaction with some minimal physical motion, but how do you program it to know where to change and what and how.
Add gene has a great guide as to what goes on at the molecular level: https://www.addgene.org/guides/crispr/
Essentially you can design an rna molecular that contains a 20 nucleotide long sequence that can target your region of interest, with the caveat that there is a standard recognition sequence proximal to your sequence of interest (PAM sequence)
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#215I think it was here a few years ago that I read a comment saying that sick children will be the Trojan horse for normalizing gene editing of humans, because who could say no to sick children, right? Well, guess it's here now, so how long utill the eugenics wars start?
For a nice thoughtful imagination of said future, Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain suggests one possible outcome. It has both gene editing to make better humans and unproductive masses. A short yet powerful read.
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#216> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be c…
I know someone well who works in this space, personalized gene therapy as cancer treatment. > until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be changed. This pine is disingenuous (at best). There is no way of guaranteeing where the DNA is inserted. It is designed to only slot into a very specific portion of the DNA but they don't have a way to control that precisely, the accuracy is high but "exact DNA letter" is…
The approach they used which is base editing doesn’t actually insert or remove DNA, it actually uses an enzyme to convert one base to another, which is much safer as this doesn’t require a double strand break in DNA: https://blog.addgene.org/single-base-editing-with-crispr
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#217[flagged]
What an insanely callous and shallow take. I don’t even know where to start. You’re trying to claim the moral high ground by complaining that a privileged child didn’t suffer and die? Do you even understand the point of reducing poverty?
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going to make the comparison with vaccines, and if history is any indication, the more realistic worry would be the other way around (since that's where the money is): that genetic modifications will be mandated, and that those who object will be discriminated against. [And no, I am not anti-vax, nor anti-gene-editing.]
“What do you mean you haven’t modified your chromosome 7 CFTR gene? And you’re planning to have children??? ”
It wouldn’t be crazy if I teleported 50 years in the future and heard someone tell me that not doing this is akin to child abuse. Obviously all suffering is relative, etc. etc., but it’s just interesting to imagine a world where the societal pressure to make a perfect child is high.
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#219When my second son was born and was just so very tiny some genetic test came out questionable. We were very strongly encouraged to go to Childrens hospital ASAP to get more tests. He handled it well, being just a few weeks old. The tests came with "he's a carrier of something obscure but nothing to worry about", so it's all forgotten. Three interesting thing come out of it from me. First, I was on Microsoft insurance…
> I was on Microsoft insurance which was quite gold plated at a time
One of the biggest perks of working for Microsoft for a long time was their health coverage. I can't tell you the number of times I'd be doing initial paperwork for a doctor's appointment and the receptionist would be like, "Oh you have THAT insurance, we're going to do all of the tests." I've heard they since cut back on it a little, but it truly was gold plated.
Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, I feel like autism is a terrible example here, it's not just some quirky personality trait, it's a reality people live with that runs the gamut from difficult to completely debilitating. Even the more mild forms of autism cause extreme difficulty in many aspects of life. If that was curable or preventable, that'd be great. If it turns out some pathogen or chemical made me autistic, regardless of whether or no…
I think a better reason autism is a bad example is that part of its definition is that it is a consequence of fundamental brain structure and development (differentiating it from other psychological disorders which are acquired and more malleable). These aren't things you will "undo" with some gene edits. The whole brain has developed in a different way. Short of re-growing them a new brain you aren't going to change…
I think scientists have believed for a while that any type of “autism cure” would need to be extremely early intervention for maximum effectiveness for exactly this reason. I remember speaking with a team that was studying detection of autism in the womb for this exact reason.