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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#261

Post by gwern »

barry-cotter wrote: post #173
nradov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't addressed my point. No one disputes that intelligence is partly genetic. However if it was possible to raise intelligence through genetic engineering with no ill effects then why hasn't evolution increased the incidence of that phenotype already?

Gwern has written an essay on why. https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics Here’s a brief snippet > the intervention may be simple, give major enhancements, but result in a net loss of reproductive fitness The famous Ashkenazi theory of intelligence comes to mind. According to this theory, the Ashkenazi were forced into occupations demanding intelligence, and micro-selected for high intelligence. Except the high IQ gen…

It's worth noting that the Ashkenazi theory remains unproven. No one has actually found any variants which would increase intelligence markedly. At some point that starts to look suspicious - maybe they don't exist after all.

Based on all the GWASes and additional studies which have been done since 2007 and a continued absence of confirmed examples of IQ-boosting variants with negative pleiotropic effects, I now would explain the lack of optimization of intelligence as being an example of 'too complex for evolution because too many little changes to do simultaneously', that is, mutation load: essentially, there are too many little effects (which sum up to make us far stupider than we have to be), which have been created & maintained by too many demographic bottlenecks and genetic drift and other effects, too much background selection, and too much selection on other traits (plus some level of dysgenics), for the various harmful variants to have been meaningfully selected against over the past 50kya. And that's why we could boost intelligence a lot with few harmful and many beneficial side effects.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#262

Post by gwern »

ramraj07 wrote: post #70
nopinsight wrote: post #33

Here is a controversial article published in 2013 by an evolutionary psychologist that everyone should give some thoughts on: Disclaimers: I do not have the expertise to evaluate its veracity but if true it will affect everyone in the world in some important ways within a few decades (the effects might already start to appear as we see how fast China has developed technologically. Yes, technology transfer is clearly…

Thanks for that super weird article. The author's motivations for supporting China's eugenics efforts are puzzling for sure. Thankfully we might be safe for the time being. IIRC the BGI IQ sequencing initiative did not lead to any meaningful discoveries since it's not yet obvious or fully proven yet that IQ is that heritable. My 50c is that we as a population have currently stopped evolving regions of our genome that…

> IIRC the BGI IQ sequencing initiative did not lead to any meaningful discoveries

The BGI initiative led to no meaningful discoveries because of internal disarray & politics & strategic missteps meant that it was never completed; if it had, it probably wouldn't've reported much because they made a failed bet that common variation would be unimportant and it would be more efficient to look for rarer variants which boosted IQ a lot in a few thousand high-IQ participants rather than the 100,000+ that would be necessary using normal people.

We now know that there appear to be no such variants. Common variants with n>100k yielded the first successful IQ GWAS with Rietveld et al 2013 (0.3% variance). GWASes kept getting bigger and better, and the latest one, Allegrini et al 2018 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/17/418210), can now predict 11% of variance in IQ/16% EDU.

> since it's not yet obvious or fully proven yet that IQ is that heritable.

It is, and it says a lot that so many people have such a mistaken impression.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#264

Post by parasar1983 »

carbocation wrote: post #8

> It's "unconscionable ... an experiment on human beings that is not morally or ethically defensible," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert and editor of a genetics journal. This is 100% correct. (COI: Kiran was my postdoc while I was a student in the lab a decade ago.)

The ruling class of China likely operates on different principles, e.g.:

"Policies that lead to enormous suffering of individuals are quite acceptable if such policies sufficiently advance the capabilities of the collective."

So I expect the demand for "unethical" research will be met there, and perhaps the results of such research will be "laundered" for public consumption (maybe with a process akin to parallel construction).

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#265

Post by barry-cotter »

ramraj07 wrote: post #237
barry-cotter wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re asking about the degree of difference Ashkrnazim have ~25% of science Nobel prizes having never been more than 1% of global population. That’s one group that’s highly over represented in intellectual achievement. For a more prosaic example look at the list of US spelling bee finalists or national science foundation merit scholarship finalists. There will be a great deal more Asian names than their share of…

I hope that's not all you had in mind when you wrote your comment. All of that shows no proof that it's the genetics that propels the disproportionate level of intellectual achievement. Both of those cases can easily be explained by sociocultural influences within families of various races propelling more intellectual endeavors, and if you don't have peer reviewed references showing otherwise it's probably a good ide…

Quite, and sociocultural influences are why long distance running is dominated by East Africans and to an even more absurd degree by the Kalenjin, an ethnic group of less than five million people who take more than a third of top three places in competitive marathon running worldwide. Sociocultural influences are also obviously why there have been at most two men not primarily of West African ancestry who ran 100m in under 10s, and almost 70 men of that ancestry who did. Sociocultural influences must also be why the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. They really, really want to be tall and that explains their height.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#266

Post by barry-cotter »

carbocation wrote: post #241
barry-cotter wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are an expert in your field of medicine. You are much better at making predictions from data in it than lay people and you are vastly better at effecting changes in your domain of expertise than laymen. That’s real expertise, like engineers, meteorologists, astronomers, microeconomists, or engineers have. Then there are people who are experts on talking about something but have no expertise in doing. Art historia…

What I often observe on HN is that SlateStarCodex didn't understand how IRBs work, wrote about it, and therefore many people think that IRBs are bad. So, I am wary of IRB arguments here. Not implying that your information on IRBs comes from that one person, just saying that I don't love arguing about IRBs on HN because of a repeated pattern here. If your point is that "IRBs could be improved in various ways", I'd be…

I feel ok with supporting Scott Alexander’s position when it is both (a) obviously correct, (b) IRBs regulate sociologists and psychologists doing surveys which is farcical, and (c) Carl E. Schneider, professor of medicine and law at the University of Michigan wrote an entire book on how IRBs fail to work.

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=7193

https://kiej.georgetown.edu/carl-e-schneider-the-censors-han...

IRBs do not have a problem. They are a problem. If we must have IRBs they should be deprofessionalised to the fullest extent possible rather than staffed by people whose job and motivation is to find problems where none exist and add more bureaucracy to prove they are actually doing some work. IRB as jury service seems like it could be acceptable. Twelve people, a three hour course on the Nuremberg code and the scientist presenting their application. And absolutely no bioethicists.

If you’re interested in the book put it on an Amazon wish list and email me the link at barrypcotter at iCloud. I’ll buy it because more doctors and scientists should know IRBs are a cancer on society and science.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#267

Post by landryraccoon »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #259
landryraccoon wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works it won’t be unethical within a couple of generations. If it’s highly effective our descendants will think we were barbarians for ever questioning its use.

I agree it will change - actually if this becomes medically responsible nothing needs to change. we just need to stop experimenting on humans . once the science is sound it becomes healing humans with gene therapy

Drug testing is always experimentation on humans. Drugs have to have human trials for safety before we are certain they are safe. Testing on animals reduces the risk but does not eliminate it.

And if the treatment is only effective on infants or children then there's no way to get informed consent. Your options are to experiment the best you can and accept the risk or forgo the opportunity (or more likely let China do it and accept both the risks and the rewards, as they seem willing to do).

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#268

Post by thomasfedb »

carbocation wrote: post #57
thomasfedb wrote: post #45

Moral frontiers aside, current gene tech is still not where we'd like it to be in order to pull of these sorts of things and know we haven't done harm. Side edits are a big problem with CRISPR-Cas9.

To be fair, that's part of the moral argument.

It's a technical problem in it's own right, it also has significant in the moral argument.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#270

Post by zeroname »

danenania wrote: post #255
zeroname wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being pro-choice doesn’t require nullification of an unborn child’s rights. It’s the recognition that the mother’s right to agency over her own body takes precedence. > That does not imply that a doctor or researcher has the right to risk causing debilitating life-long symptoms to another human being at any stage of development without a clear medical justification. It's not the doctor making the decision to go ahe…

Again, you are effectively arguing that it would be ethical for a doctor to try to experimentally create a glow-in-the-dark baby if asked to by the mother. Good or bad science has nothing to do with the outcomes--that's good or bad medicine . There's plenty of 'good science' practiced on lab rats that would immediately become horrifyingly unethical if practiced on humans, but that has nothing to do with how well the…

> Again, you are effectively arguing that it would be ethical for a doctor to try to experimentally create a glow-in-the-dark baby if asked to by the mother.

No, I am not arguing that. That's an embarrassingly absurd conclusion to draw.

These babies have a risk of life-long HIV impairment. This intervention may prevent this. With any medical intervention, you need to trade off risk and reward. Obviously, for an unborn child, there can not be any consent here.

It would be unethical to not give the babies the treatment if there wasn't any risk associated. What makes it unethical is that the risk profile isn't even known. The scientific foundation is poor.

> Anyway, this discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere productive, so I will bid you good day.

I agree and let me say this: You're by far the worst discussion partner I have ever had on HN.

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