The genetic corrections are not inherited, right?
Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
51–60 of 231 posts
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do both things at the same time.
That's true if we assume unlimited resources and equal awareness/perceived social value of the two applications. But I think the former doesn't hold, and the latter is greatly influenced by sites like HN, where I'm disappointed to consistently (if not exclusively) see breathless proposals for ways to design shinier hubcaps whenever some promising new technology appears. Yes, they can and likely will both happen to so…
Cosmetic surgery for vanity has helped improve the techniques and procedures and even the number of skilled practitioners that can then help those with disfigurements and deformities.
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#53This stuff seems miraculous. > "Through minimally invasive surgery, Shu injected adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineered to carry and deliver functioning copies of the human OTOF transgene, into the children’s inner ears. " Can't read that and not get curious, excited, for the future. Congratulations to all those involved in the research and thanks to all who contributed to it - including all taxpayers if public fund…
I can’t wait for a geneCAD where we for example, design wings for a human body and then it works out the rest and generates a CRISPR based AAV that you can inject yourself with. True race and sex changes too. Hopefully in the next 50 years but that’s wishful thinking.
Synthetic biology CAD software does exist, and works better than most people would expect, but of course are not at the level you are imagining yet.
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's try to fix the world's vast number of actual, boring health problems before trying to add the equivalent of spoilers and chrome-plated hubcaps to perfectly healthy human bodies.
You can do both things at the same time.
Moreover, they are at this stage the exact same problem- requiring not competing but identical research: we need to understand generally how biology works enough to predictably engineer it.
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#55How likely to cure tinnitus ?
Zero chance, unfortunately. The cause of tinnitus is not with the OTOF gene. The best case scenario is that this wouldn't do anything.
There is also active development for tinnitus/noise induced hearing loss. Dr Chen from Harvard is working on it. He was also involved in the research linked in the article. They are getting closer to a cure. Here is an interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJr86MUYJ8M
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#56This is the sort of stuff I conceptualize as a true tech(nical/nology)startup. I realize that’s in some ways at odds with the meaning in practice. But this is amazing technology.
Discoveries like this should be shared with the world - not gatekept by rent-seeking venture capitalists. Wouldn’t you rather be Jonas Salk than Scrooge McDuck?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
> Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker" when the vaccine's success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#57The genetic corrections are not inherited, right?
It's considered taboo/forbidden for genetic corrections to target the germline. I think that's an unfortunate misapplication of ethics, presumably due to fears about eugenics.
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do both things at the same time.
Moreover, they are at this stage the exact same problem- requiring not competing but identical research: we need to understand generally how biology works enough to predictably engineer it.
> they are at this stage the exact same problem- requiring not competing but identical research
I'd go one step further in arguing they're complementary. The personalities that will work on e.g. wings or longevity are not the types drawn to curing diseases, much less the boring ones.
Broadening the field from solving mundane problems to solving daring ones is net positive. You gain personalities that would have otherwise stayed away. (You see something similar in space programmes.)
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true if we assume unlimited resources and equal awareness/perceived social value of the two applications. But I think the former doesn't hold, and the latter is greatly influenced by sites like HN, where I'm disappointed to consistently (if not exclusively) see breathless proposals for ways to design shinier hubcaps whenever some promising new technology appears. Yes, they can and likely will both happen to so…
Cosmetic surgery for vanity has helped improve the techniques and procedures and even the number of skilled practitioners that can then help those with disfigurements and deformities.
Hell, cancer treatment for pets has advanced human oncology [1]. Scientific discovery is rarely zero sum.
[1] https://www.upstate.edu/whatsup/2019/0220-treatment-for-cani...
Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t wait for a geneCAD where we for example, design wings for a human body and then it works out the rest and generates a CRISPR based AAV that you can inject yourself with. True race and sex changes too. Hopefully in the next 50 years but that’s wishful thinking.
Taking it seriously for a moment, that still seems outlandish even in a sci-fi scenario. The amount of changes that would be necessary to the body for a human to achieve autonomous powered flight would be substantial. Given our overall density, we would need enormous wings and musculature. Consider that the heaviest flying birds alive today weigh maybe 40lbs and have a wingspan of 8ft or so. If we naively extrapolate…
> it would have to completely transform you into a completely different creature, simply due to the physics of flight
In OP's defence, they never mentioned flight. Maybe they just want a peacock train.