Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–78 of 78 posts

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#71

Post by networked »

deepnotderp wrote: post #24
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Genetic engineering works far, far better. We've already plucked the low hanging fruit of adequate nutrition, early education, salt iodization, and lead reduction. Anyway, those reduce mental retardation, they don't improve the baseline too much. And the Flynn effect looks to be slowing or reversing. 50 IQ points is huge. It's the difference between a burger flipper and a physics professor. The change to the wo…

I think you're putting too much faith into IQ. Shockley only had an IQ of ~125 (even though he became an eugenicist...). More importantly, Feynman used his low IQ score (124 I think) to show how useless the IQ test was as a predictor of intelligence.

There is an ongoing minor controversy around Feynman's IQ score. See Steven Hsu here for some context: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einste....

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#72

Post by deepnotderp »

quotemstr wrote: post #70
kweinber wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't try, then we'll have a lot of poor, sick, and unhappy geniuses walking around. I wonder which types of crime they'll optimize?

Wow. That's amazing. You're actually arguing that we need to keep hoi polloi stupid so that it's easier to control them.

No, he's arguing that we provide the "hoi polloi" with a higher quality of life...

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#73

Post by ralfd »

Symmetry wrote: post #57

After adenoviruses proved to be dangerous [1] I wonder what sort of virus they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Are doctors allowed to use gene therapy in life or death conditions now? In the trial for fixing OTC deficiency that Jesse Gelsinger died in they only administered the trial to people who were capable of living with the disease as opposed to the babies that were going to die i…

> The idea was that a parent faced with the possibility of their child dying painfully couldn't possibly refuse the treatment and therefore couldn't give informed consent.

Well ... I get the idea, but I am not sure this is rational. If I have the choice between pizza and no pizza, and of course everyone would choose the pizza, my choice is not uninformed, just because it is too good of a deal.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#74

Post by ralfd »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #12
deepnotderp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way to increase iq would be to raise the socioeconomic level...

Nope. Genetic engineering works far, far better. We've already plucked the low hanging fruit of adequate nutrition, early education, salt iodization, and lead reduction. Anyway, those reduce mental retardation, they don't improve the baseline too much. And the Flynn effect looks to be slowing or reversing. 50 IQ points is huge. It's the difference between a burger flipper and a physics professor. The change to the wo…

> 50 IQ points is huge. It's the difference between a burger flipper and a physics professor. The change to the world when the average 5th grader is mastering chromodynamics is hard to even contemplate.

We will have super smart burger flippers?

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#75

Post by true_religion »

ralfd wrote: post #73
Symmetry wrote: post #57

After adenoviruses proved to be dangerous [1] I wonder what sort of virus they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Are doctors allowed to use gene therapy in life or death conditions now? In the trial for fixing OTC deficiency that Jesse Gelsinger died in they only administered the trial to people who were capable of living with the disease as opposed to the babies that were going to die i…

> The idea was that a parent faced with the possibility of their child dying painfully couldn't possibly refuse the treatment and therefore couldn't give informed consent. Well ... I get the idea, but I am not sure this is rational. If I have the choice between pizza and no pizza, and of course everyone would choose the pizza, my choice is not uninformed, just because it is too good of a deal.

The idea is that they would agree to anything, including things which has low likelihood of success and could be traumatic to the child simply because the known downside was too great.

People aren't very good at comparing a terrible known condition A, to a merely potentially terrible known condition B.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#76

Post by true_religion »

pedrosorio wrote: post #66
abtinf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ mean is 100 and stddev is 15. He was in the top 5.5% of human intelligence.

What Shockley and (especially) Feynman did is well beyond a 95th percentile of ability.

Ability isn't well distributed to where it can have a maximal benefit in a given field. It's often said that people as smart as Einstein (and Feynman) are currently living and dying on subsistence living farms.

What hasn't been said, but is equally true, is that people as capable in physics as Einstein as currently working as waitresses in No Where, Idahoe. Or they're slaving away as bit-actors in Hollywood because that's what they love.

Or they're sitting behind a computer, typing away on HN, never to know that they're potentially amazing theoretical physicists simply because their 7th grade teacher turned them off to the idea of physics in general so they studied computer science instead.

Until there's some kind of test that tells you your aptitudes at very subject, you'll always have people pick suboptimal paths to excellency and something other than what they absolutely theoretically could have been best at.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#77

Post by true_religion »

red75prime wrote: post #40
aptidude187 wrote: post #15

Total noob here, is this type of treatment going in the direction of something like in the movie gattaca? Would gene editing also help fully grown adults?

Real life gattaca would be quite boring. Protagonist would have failed practical aptitude tests or some such.

He cheated. He had a heart condition but faked his heart rate for the testing so he would be allowed to go into space.

Yes, he could run at the same pace as someone with a better heart, but he was predisposed to arrhythmias even at a normal level of effort.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#78

Post by Symmetry »

ralfd wrote: post #73
Symmetry wrote: post #57

After adenoviruses proved to be dangerous [1] I wonder what sort of virus they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Are doctors allowed to use gene therapy in life or death conditions now? In the trial for fixing OTC deficiency that Jesse Gelsinger died in they only administered the trial to people who were capable of living with the disease as opposed to the babies that were going to die i…

> The idea was that a parent faced with the possibility of their child dying painfully couldn't possibly refuse the treatment and therefore couldn't give informed consent. Well ... I get the idea, but I am not sure this is rational. If I have the choice between pizza and no pizza, and of course everyone would choose the pizza, my choice is not uninformed, just because it is too good of a deal.

It strikes me not so much as irrational as that it's the sort of thing an evil mustache twirling bureaucrat would say in a Hollywood movie.
Post reply on HN