What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing?

#51

Post by chr1 » Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 12:51 PM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #49

jobigoud wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO if you have the means to make your kids smarter (all other things being equal) it's unethical not to do so.

and what if gene edited children all produce children with autistic conditions? We dont know enough about it to allow it open slather in the community at large.

Then this gene edited children will again use gene editing to produce children with genes similar to theirs that are already known to not produce too many autistic conditions.

> We dont know enough about it to allow it open slather in the community at large.

Who are those "guardians of the community" that are allowed to decide what technology community at large can have access to and what can't? You can argue for regulation preventing fraud: doctors hiding possible complications, editing different genes than what was advertised, etc. but you can't disallow people to decide with what genetic code they create their own children.

Re: What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing?

#52

Post by chr1 » Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #47

chr1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you would probably oppose the right of mothers to end the lives of their children after pregnancy Unfortunately the distinction is not that clear cut. When we have technology to raise several weeks old fetus to maturity in an artificial womb (which we'll have soon), what will be the difference between 'after pregnancy' and 'during pregnancy'? In both cases it will be something that can become a human if someone…

> the point about 'affecting all descendandts' is wrong because if we have a technology to make a change we can easily reverse it too If we had perfect editing technology (even without perfect knowledge of effects) then as you say we could easily Ctrl-Z the next generation. But we don't have this yet, so I think it's not unreasonably to worry a bit about inflicting changes (including unintended off-target edits) on g…

Sure worrying a bit is reasonable, and that's the reason most people would not use gene editing now. (Unless they are trying to correct some well understood life threatening condition).

If we talk about so many people using it that it can change genetic composition of humanity, it means we already have a reliable way of making changes.

Re: What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing?

#53

Post by iguy » Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

chr1 wrote: post #50

iguy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of my thought experiment is to imagine that these are the same genes. Remember that about half of population variation is "unshared environment" meaning noise in the translation of DNA into an adult: genes will never allow perfect prediction. I guess I believe that very few parents would make this gamble, because the risks are very personal and the benefits are mostly to others. But I could be wrong. One re…

In your thought experiment, even if very few parents made the gamble, it would be enough to keep the gene around until we figured out what in the environment caused autism, after which the many more would want to have it. For the Tay-Sachs example what would be the reason to push-back against eliminating it? And who should have pushed back? people who had that gene, or people who didn't? IMO the solution is to simply…

Other thought experiments are certainly possible, but mine is about the stated gamble, in which you cannot predict. That's what's meant by "unshared environment", it's poorly named, the environment you talk of is "shared environment". As I said, I don't know that this is true in the real world, but I don't think it wildly implausible. (Maybe tortured mad artists are a better example than nerds.)

Tay-Sachs is the first example I know about, of some genetic strain of humans being deliberately bred out of existence. Phrased like that I think the idea would alarm many people. But it has not. (I should remind myself more of the details of this story.)

Thought experiments aside, note that it's not obvious we need a single new mutation to make much smarter people. We just need the shuffling of the deck to place more of the existing + variants into one body. This will obviously be the goal of embryo selection, and I think would also be the goal of explicit editing. I'd wager that many more of the Nobel-sized brains alive at the end of this century (and the next) will owe their existence to one of these kinds of engineering, than to population growth.

Re: What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing?

#54

Post by chrischen » Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #23

chrischen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the strongest argument against gene editing is the tendency for societal biases to be taken to the extreme. Gene editing is drastic and has the potential to greatly reduce genetic diversity in a population since people tend to want to become “normal”, or meme certain popular traits. If you gave minorities the ability to become a white males in America, would they? Certainly many would and it would mean losing…

I can't help but find this incredibly condescending. You would take away a technological advantage from majorities and minorities alike because their choices might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.

Yes, so it should be highly regulated. While technology also allows for plastic, surgery, one can argue that it is purely useless from a practical point of view and only wanted as a result of flawed reasoning and social pressures. It’s relatively harmless to the rest of society, but gene editing (especially if you can also permanently alter your reproductive genes), can have devastating societal effects if people are allowed to shoot themselves in the foot this way.

We have always had laws designed to manipulate society to help prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot (see qualified investor requirements, minimum drinking ages, mandatory car insurance, etc). For gene editing it’s particularly kmportant for the long-term survivability of the human race if we do not regulate our own use.

Re: What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing?

#55

Post by identity-haver » Sun, Mar 24, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #34

identity-haver wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure where to start here. There was more "excellence" in the Roman Republic and prior times than the following 2000 years of European history? This is a familiar critique that seems to conflate the modern self-esteem craze, communism, and the utopian "equality of outcome" with the traditional religiously based idea of equality, which is that every soul is made in the image of and has equal responsibili…

Nietzschean philosophy is a bit too complex for me to explain in a HN comment, but I was referring more to the Master-Slave Morality concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality

Oh I know what it is, I just think it’s completely wrong to apply to Europe pre WWI. How a culture that explored and conquered almost the entire world had a “slave morality” because of the beatitudes or something was always baffling. What would be interesting is applying it to today’s secular Europe.