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Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

nytimes.com

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Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#311

Post by _bin_ »

jhickok wrote: post #303
_bin_ wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why this is a bad thing, or is it just “”the rich” bad”?

Not OP, but presumably it's because it could cement a permanent divide between classes. We still have quite a bit of upward mobility in the US, but health is a tremendous predictor of future outcomes, so gating that to the rich is dangerous to the stability of society in that way.

This seems like more of an issue with accessibility of the treatment than the treatment itself

If we could make most children smart, productive, ambitious, courteous, civil, conscientious, honorable, strong... the value to society is probably high enough to justify covering it for almost anyone.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#313

Post by j45 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #108
MrZander wrote: post #11

> 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…

Gene therapies are pretty incredible. Some of them are still making a button-hole with a machete, but that's relative to the previous medical intervention of a button-hole with a tank's main gun. One of the treatments for sickle-cell involves switching off the gene that makes the malfunctioning red blood cells, but of course that's not sufficient; you'd stop making red blood cells completely and you'd die. So it's co…

Appreciate the explanations and the analogies.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#315

Post by Panzer04 »

fendy3002 wrote: post #259
tuna-piano wrote: post #224

If someone in the year 2050 was to pick out the most important news article from 2025, I won't be surprised if they choose this one. For those who don't understand this stuff - we are now capable of editing some of a body's DNA in ways that predictably change their attributes. The baby's liver now has different (and better) DNA than the rest of its body. We still are struggling in most cases with how to deliver the D…

the usual next questions will be: - how further can we push this to make the best, most optimized human? - what are moral implication of this? - what are the side effects / downsides?

Can it be applied to adults? Useless for this particular disorder, but what about others?

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#316

Post by j16sdiz »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #204
MrZander wrote: post #11

> 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 literally said the same thing out loud. I had heard about CRISPR a while back but most reporting on it kind of hand waved over the mechanisms of how it actually accomplishes its work. What these researchers have figured out to make this work absolutely blows my mind.

AFAICT, CRISPR still make many bad edits. We relies on the fact that most of those bad edit won't survive.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#317

Post by morsecodist »

gr_norm wrote: post #243
Kuinox wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does EA means here ?

"Effective Altruism", something I find myself aligned with but not to the extremes taken by others.

Effective Altruism is such an interesting title. Almost no one views their Altruism as ineffective. The differentiator is what makes their flavor of Altruism effective, but that's not in the title. It would be like calling the movement "real Altruism" or "good Altruism".

A good name might be rational Altruism because in practice these people are from the rationalist movement and doing Altruism, or what they feel is Altruism. But the "rationalist" title suffers from similar problems.

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#318

Post by Brystephor »

This is incredible work. Its jaw dropping to learn that something like this is possible at all. Sometimes I wish I could work for a company whose products make a meaningful positive contribution to the work.

Do companies like this have a need for SWEs? Are there opportunities for a backend SWE without any background in hardware or biology?

Re: Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

#319

Post by [deleted] »

Teever wrote: post #99
Balgair wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other fun part of gene editing in vivo is that we don't actually use GACU (T in DNA). It turns out that if you use Pseudouridine (Ψ) instead of uridine (U) then the body's immune system doesn't nearly alarm as much, as it doesn't really see that mRNA as quite so dangerous. But , the RNA -> Protein equipment will just make protiens it without any problems. Which, yeah, that's a miraculous discovery. And it was wel…

I suppose a downside (depending on your perspective) of this is that it will make people who are genetically modified in this fashion trivial to detect. That's good if your goals are to detect genetic modification which may be considered cheating in competitive sports. That's bad if your goals are to detect genetically modified people and discriminate against them. I see a near future where the kind of people who loa…

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