I don't know anything about gene editing, but is there any chance that doing this could cut loose viruses buried in the human genome?
Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
51–60 of 68 posts
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#52"I want to live in a world where people get drunk and instead of giving themselves tattoos, they’re like, ‘I’m drunk, I’m going to CRISPR myself." Ok, scary thought already. But, casting aside all the safety concerns, how many attributes would someone in general want to change as an adult? You can't change your height, you can't change your hair color, you can't change your eyes. Is a myostatin-inhibitor going to be…
How about genes involved in the production of dopamine, maybe to help chronic depression. Or neuron growth, wakefullness, testosterone production, etc. As adults, we're still chemical machines. There are a million knobs to tweak.
Your examples lean towards the "managed by a trained physician", which would make sense. Treat depression, reverse neurodegenerative disorders, sure, a Dr can oversee that and treat that.
I was referring specifically to the DIY crowd, which this articles discusses. Things a Dr would say "no, I'm not going to help you with that". Or as the quote discusses, things a drunk person would say "I think this is a good idea".
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#53Regardless of how well this particular case works, I'm in favor of people being able to modify their bodies as they see fit. If he wants to become more muscular, morbidly obese, or ten feet tall, that's his right. Unfortunately, I could see things like this becoming illegal solely because they help people play sports too well.
As someone who pays taxes to support socialized health care, I am not willing to pay toward the extraordinary chronic medical expenses incurred by someone who has catastrophically injured themselves in an ad-hoc gene editing experiment.
Are you willing to pay medical costs of people who currently might overdose on prescription drugs. When people modify their bodies in spite of the law, would you pay to incarcerate them and/or treat them when they lie to medical professionals to avoid criminal penalties?
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can purchase tons of things with which you can kill or severely injure yourself today, and you will still receive medical care. If you can edit your genes in a bizarre way for cheap, I imagine it wouldn't be very expensive to reverse such a modification.
As anyone can attest who has seen a $300 M building burn to the ground, very simple permanent changes can be extremely expensive to reverse.
Buildings do burn to the ground periodically, but the costs of fire men and fire property insurance aren't particularly outlandish.
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If he wants to become more muscular, morbidly obese, or ten feet tall, that's his right. Not necessarily. We as a society have come up with many activities which seem, on their surface, to only harm the individual, but are illegal. This shares many concerns with drug use, gambling, etc. Killing yourself harms others, and society has a vested interest in the population being healthy and productive. If you harm yourse…
You can purchase tons of things with which you can kill or severely injure yourself today, and you will still receive medical care. If you can edit your genes in a bizarre way for cheap, I imagine it wouldn't be very expensive to reverse such a modification.
You addressed zero of the concerns I mentioned. You seem to believe that any problem which occurs will be easily reversible and have no side effects. I can't imagine that would ever be the case. You did not address death (possible) or passing on genetics which have negative, perhaps unforseen consequences.
Alerting the human genome is not as simple as pushing a patch to a website.
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#56What is it about biology that attracts crazy people? As a profession genetic engineer (I've worked on successful engineered CAR-T cell therapy startups, etc.) the most appalling thing about this isn't the hubris or defiance of norms. It's how sloppy and technically laughable all of these preparations and experiments are from a biological point of view - both in terms of what I know about the viral/crispr vector design as well as the biological targets chosen (you're not going to do much by sparsely manipulating myostatin that way as an adult!). This is technical incompetence attempting to masquerade itself as maverick, edgy research for press attention. If you want to be a "biohacker": make a high-penetrance GFP/mCherry tattoo visible to the eye on a patch of your skin that doesn't get rejected by the immune system. i.e. Why take seriously claims about building a supercomputer from people that can't even wire up an 8-bit toy?
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
All I asked is why you believe the price of altering your genetic material is proportional to fixing any mistakes which arise as a consequence. Legaility has nothing to do with it. I don't imagine the only issues we'd face are the completely and easily reversible with no side effects kind.
I'd wager that more people would end up relieving conditions with gene editing than doing wackier shit as mentioned before. If you genetically cure a bunch of diseases and unhealthy susceptibilities across the population, the marginal cost of the handful of people who make themselves ten feet tall will be trivial.
>I'd wager that more people would end up relieving conditions with gene editing than doing wackier shit as mentioned before. If you genetically cure a bunch of diseases and unhealthy susceptibilities across the population, the marginal cost of the handful of people who make themselves ten feet tall will be trivial.
Ignoring the fact that you cannot make yourself taller, you're arguing for a completely unregulated ecosystem around gene editing. What you 'wager' is irrelevant; we protected people from themselves in numerous ways because people do dumb things. Are you now arguing that CRISPR and the like should be heavily regulated as to only be used for legitimate medical purposes?
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can purchase tons of things with which you can kill or severely injure yourself today, and you will still receive medical care. If you can edit your genes in a bizarre way for cheap, I imagine it wouldn't be very expensive to reverse such a modification.
You addressed zero of the concerns I mentioned. You seem to believe that any problem which occurs will be easily reversible and have no side effects. I can't imagine that would ever be the case. You did not address death (possible) or passing on genetics which have negative, perhaps unforseen consequences. Alerting the human genome is not as simple as pushing a patch to a website.
Currently it doesn't work at all, and AFAIK only this one guy is trying it. If he gets an infection in an area covered by my insurance, I won't be too stressed about it.
If, in the future it is as easy as a $20 modification, I'd wager two things. One is that most people would use it for mundane things like resistance to the flu, stronger bones, and other things that would ultimately lower the cost of medical insurance on average. The other is that the mechanism will be so well known that changes will be rewritable.
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd wager that more people would end up relieving conditions with gene editing than doing wackier shit as mentioned before. If you genetically cure a bunch of diseases and unhealthy susceptibilities across the population, the marginal cost of the handful of people who make themselves ten feet tall will be trivial.
>I'd wager that more people would end up relieving conditions with gene editing than doing wackier shit as mentioned before. If you genetically cure a bunch of diseases and unhealthy susceptibilities across the population, the marginal cost of the handful of people who make themselves ten feet tall will be trivial. Ignoring the fact that you cannot make yourself taller, you're arguing for a completely unregulated eco…
Re:10 foot tall human
Obviously at this point, all we can do is speculate, and I'm not a medical professional. Perhaps there's some gene modification that will cause uncontrolled gigantism, and perhaps a handful of people will want that. If they do, that's their right.
Re:Regulation
If gene editing works as imagined, you could have a regulated market like doctors and pharmacies for legitimate medical reasons (such as disease resistance) which would definitely lower overall medical costs since it would be a fantastic form of preventative medicine. As such, people not looking for experimental shit would not come across it by accident. Basically treat it like regular medicine.
But if people want to home brew their own stuff and share mechanisms on the internet, or buy and sell "supplements" as they do today with next to no FDA regulation, they should have that right.
Re: Guy Says He's the First Person to Attempt Editing His DNA with CRISPR
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about genes involved in the production of dopamine, maybe to help chronic depression. Or neuron growth, wakefullness, testosterone production, etc. As adults, we're still chemical machines. There are a million knobs to tweak.
Your examples lean towards the "managed by a trained physician", which would make sense. Treat depression, reverse neurodegenerative disorders, sure, a Dr can oversee that and treat that. I was referring specifically to the DIY crowd, which this articles discusses. Things a Dr would say "no, I'm not going to help you with that". Or as the quote discusses, things a drunk person would say "I think this is a good idea".
Definitely these are not extreme joy riding, but I don't think an ethical doctor would help with highly above normal neuron growth, wakefulness, testosterone, or get involved with experiments starting from near normal levels in a patient. They might have some serious problems with a medical board.
It's a bizarre case that doctors will help normal people (journalists) experiment with some levels of sport doping, but it comes from knowing a little about the experimental professional sport dopers (where doctors try to stay anonymous.)
To give a different example, what about an anorexic that wants their genes to ensure their desired body image, i.e. 0 retention of normal fat? (Personally, I would be more concerned about bulk experiments in the beauty salons than the tattoo parlours.)