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CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

nature.com

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Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#71

Post by idrios »

chosenbreed37 wrote: post #66
idrios wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good rule of thumb is that people should have the freedom to do anything as long as it doesn't violate other people's right. On the micro-economics scale, I would not only agree with you, but argue that a successful society depends on it. Just as you should be allowed to participate in whatever harmless recreational activities you like at your own home, so should you be able to keep for yourself anything you've mad…

> Just as we break up monopolies to give competition a chance, we should be working hard to break feedback loops that enforce hierarchy of classes so we can give everyone a chance to be successful or fail on their own. Mmm...with respect to enforced/entrenched class hierarchies you argue that we should break them up. That looks good on paper but when it comes down to it many parents/families who are smart do their ut…

Just to clarify, I said to break feedback loops that enforce class hierarchy. I agree that parents/families should do their utmost to give their children a leg up, but the game also needs to be fair for all players.

Take universities for example. They're not-for-profit institutions that are dedicated to the pure advancement of knowledge. They're a purely good thing. But as the job market required workers of higher skill and knowledge, and as colleges became a necessity for anyone pursuing a sustainable career, tuition prices rose massively. Wealthy families can still afford university tuition and still have all the opportunities that come with, whereas poor families who don't earn scholarships are left with fewer options.

So universities--which still are a purely good thing--have now enabled a feedback loop for furthering the gap between rich and poor. The solution would never be to break up universities, but to break their role in this feedback loop (by, for example, making them not a prerequisite for employment, or by enabling more universal access).

Likewise, I fear for a future where genetically engineered super humans exist, where they are only born of families who can afford it, where employers will hire with exceeding prejudice in favor of people born this way, where universities will likewise favor people like this, and where the rest of humanity gets left out.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#72

Post by idrios »

dallashoxton wrote: post #59
rmellow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please rethink that it's a good world where positive genetic traits can be added to babies - in a world where this is common, you or your kids would be in unfair competition with genetically superior people simply because their parents are rich. And the poor would be, for the first time in history, objectively inferior. Yes, kids with rich parents are already at advantage - just wait to see what genetic superiority d…

Thing is that any society that hesitates on adopting genetic engineering out of some fear of exacerbating income inequality or whatever is going to lose out in the long run to any civilization that has no such ethical hangups about genetic engineering. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

This rides on the assumption that the benefits of genetic engineering will outweigh the detriments of income inequality

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#73

Post by misnome »

imtringued wrote: post #69
duxup wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a new version, new advancement would be a terror for everyone else. They'd drop a social step, can't do things, less needed, etc. The movie Gattaca explored this a bit. People in the film are heavily defined by their engineering. They might not BE just engineered, but being superior, or inferior is all encompassing. It becomes all they are. In the film it is a bit of a curse even for the best. Jerome fail…

Gattaca didn't explore actual superiority of genetically engineered humans. It was mostly about a guy cheating his way through through a surveillance state that openly discriminates against humans with inferior genes. The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist). Whether the scanner was based on genetics, machine learning or your eye color didn…

Perhaps I’m misremembering the film, but I don’t think anything was proven wrong in the film? ISTR it was always understood that the genetic evaluation gave a measured “chance” of this or that, but that society had decided that people with bad chances weren’t even worth the risk of being a bad investment.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#74

Post by macos_finder »

imtringued wrote: post #69
duxup wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a new version, new advancement would be a terror for everyone else. They'd drop a social step, can't do things, less needed, etc. The movie Gattaca explored this a bit. People in the film are heavily defined by their engineering. They might not BE just engineered, but being superior, or inferior is all encompassing. It becomes all they are. In the film it is a bit of a curse even for the best. Jerome fail…

Gattaca didn't explore actual superiority of genetically engineered humans. It was mostly about a guy cheating his way through through a surveillance state that openly discriminates against humans with inferior genes. The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist). Whether the scanner was based on genetics, machine learning or your eye color didn…

> The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist).

It's been a while since I've seen the movie but the protagonist didn't prove that the gene scanner could fail. He just cheated his way through it by using a health person's DNA evidence.

In fact, the final(?) scene of the movie proved the exact opposite of your claim. Again, it's been a while, but I believe the protagonist was just about to board the rocket when he was surprised by one final DNA scan and as he didn't expect it to be there he knew he couldn't cheat through it. It was heavily implied, if not told to us, that the person who operated the scanner saw the scan report and should have turned him away if he followed protocol, but he let the protagonist through anyway. I wanna say the scanner person quipped about how the protagonist must have been qualified if he could go through the training program with his non-GMO'd genes.

The movie isn't about a surveillance state. It was about a hypothetical future where nobody was conceived naturally anymore. Everybody was conceived with pre-selected genes which I imagine improved physical and mental prowess while also eliminating deadly diseases and defects. The protagonist was naturally conceived and as a consequence he had eyesight problems and I want to say asthma as well. I had the impression that they didn't want to accept astronauts with say asthma because they would rather just not have to deal with that problem to begin with.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#75

Post by mcv »

meowface wrote: post #46
jcranmer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let's get this silly sci-fi trope out the way. Genetics doesn't work like that. We don't have a clue how to edit DNA to make people smarter or taller or stronger. And there's no sign that we're going to get to that knowledge sometime this century. Furthermore, what we do know about our genome and our proteome strongly suggests that lots of stuff are doing double-duty. The gene that causes sickle cell anemia als…

You could be right, but I think you're being a bit pessimistic. We're nowhere near fine-tuning complex traits like intelligence and strength, but I could see it happening within all of our lifetimes.

I wouldn't call that pessimistic. Fine-tuning traits like intelligence, strength, height, etc are in my opinion the thing that's going to lead to designer babies. The longer we stay away from that, the better.

I can certainly see the case for fixing genetic defects, though as the sickly cell/malaria example shows, that's not always clear cut either. And even if you just fight genetic defects, if it's only available to the rich, it's going to create a genetic class system where the rich literally have better genes than the poor. I shudder to think what that might do to a society.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#76

Post by duxup »

imtringued wrote: post #69
duxup wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a new version, new advancement would be a terror for everyone else. They'd drop a social step, can't do things, less needed, etc. The movie Gattaca explored this a bit. People in the film are heavily defined by their engineering. They might not BE just engineered, but being superior, or inferior is all encompassing. It becomes all they are. In the film it is a bit of a curse even for the best. Jerome fail…

Gattaca didn't explore actual superiority of genetically engineered humans. It was mostly about a guy cheating his way through through a surveillance state that openly discriminates against humans with inferior genes. The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist). Whether the scanner was based on genetics, machine learning or your eye color didn…

What about Jerome?

He wasn't a bit character.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#77

Post by bilbo0s »

nyolfen wrote: post #51
jcranmer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let's get this silly sci-fi trope out the way. Genetics doesn't work like that. We don't have a clue how to edit DNA to make people smarter or taller or stronger. And there's no sign that we're going to get to that knowledge sometime this century. Furthermore, what we do know about our genome and our proteome strongly suggests that lots of stuff are doing double-duty. The gene that causes sickle cell anemia als…

>We don't have a clue how to edit DNA to make people smarter or taller or stronger. And there's no sign that we're going to get to that knowledge sometime this century. iterated embryo selection for those traits is at most 10-15 years away, though i suspect much closer

You suspect wrong. The time it takes to ascertain the, say, intelligence of an iteration is just too long. The OP is right, this sort of thing is, best case, a century long study.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#78

Post by ddnb »

rmellow wrote: post #33
songco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok and good thing if the results is only positive like "Bigger, faster, stronger, and MUCH smarter". (Maybe not include Bigger?) The worst part of this is that it may not safe. If this introduced some flaws in the babies gene, how to control this, don't allow them have babies?

Please rethink that it's a good world where positive genetic traits can be added to babies - in a world where this is common, you or your kids would be in unfair competition with genetically superior people simply because their parents are rich. And the poor would be, for the first time in history, objectively inferior. Yes, kids with rich parents are already at advantage - just wait to see what genetic superiority d…

I'd suppose governments with a socialised healthcare system would push and invest heavily if it means to lower the cost. Just like most (?) push for affordable medicine in one form or another.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#79

Post by api »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #27
kingkawn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it will most likely lead to inhumane atrocities that would turn the general public against the technology for a generation

We'd never have developed vaccines with that attitude, though. The Precautionary Principle sounds great in theory, but it's a recipe for permanent stasis.

This isn't the precautionary principle, which is much more extreme. This is recognizing that "move fast and break things" is not a good idea in medicine.

One major foul up with human gene editing and the technology will be banned for at least a generation. Think about that.

Re: CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university

#80

Post by meowface »

mcv wrote: post #75
meowface wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right, but I think you're being a bit pessimistic. We're nowhere near fine-tuning complex traits like intelligence and strength, but I could see it happening within all of our lifetimes.

I wouldn't call that pessimistic. Fine-tuning traits like intelligence, strength, height, etc are in my opinion the thing that's going to lead to designer babies. The longer we stay away from that, the better. I can certainly see the case for fixing genetic defects, though as the sickly cell/malaria example shows, that's not always clear cut either. And even if you just fight genetic defects, if it's only available t…

Well, I was referring to what might happen, not what should happen. Regardless of how you or I feel about the subject, designer babies are pretty much inevitable.
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