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First gene-edited babies claimed in China

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Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#91

Post by jpgvm »

carbocation wrote: post #83
fooker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not morally or ethically defensible Sure, that won't stop progress by people who do not follow your flavor of morality or ethics, though.

What is your evidence that the post-WWII flavor of bioethics inhibits real progress? If that were true, why do we not see other systems leading?

We do. In China. Not just in biology but also AI/ML. They are willing (and able) to do the things others find reprehensible. It's already apparent just how far ahead they are in the AI/ML field, I suspect biology/medicine will follow.

It's a very real threat and believing that The West has a head start and is more intelligent/better funded/other excuse is not going to end well for us.

China achieves goals though brute force with very little regard for ethics or norms.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#92

Post by skosuri »

citilife wrote: post #64

This sounds super sketchy: > He said the parents involved declined to be identified or interviewed, and he would not say where they live or where the work was done. > There is no independent confirmation of He's claim, and it has not been published in a journal, where it would be vetted by other experts. He revealed it Monday in Hong Kong to one of the organizers of an international conference on gene editing that is…

The AP article does state that Michael Deem (Rice) was there for the consent.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#93

Post by skosuri »

xtrapolate wrote: post #41
skosuri wrote: post #5

The edited gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function, but is the entry point for HIV. So editing for prophylaxis. This was probably done because if there aren’t a ton of loss of function beneficial traits, and probably with the main desire to be first. Except, if the reports are true, this is not just an experiment but a person (or people). I guess the main desire is to normalize editing. Brave ne…

> "gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function" It's in the article: > "Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and it's very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern, Musunuru said."

Yeah, sorry; I was mostly going off my own past knowledge when less was known; There's a nice summary here as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5#Potential_costs

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#94

Post by ajmurmann »

danenania wrote: post #69
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Seriously why? We do so many unnatural things to us through technology. The article discusses editing genes to try and prevent viruses.

Because it requires medical experimentation on human beings who can’t consent to it. Is it really so difficult to understand why that’s wrong?

If a few dozen or even thousand suffer to prevent the suffering of many millions or even billions in the long run, is that not a trade off one would have to make? It all comes down to the old debate of deontology vs utilitarianism

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#95

Post by jpgvm »

carbocation wrote: post #85
logicchains wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>our current moral and ethical frameworks. Clearly those moral and ethical frameworks are not shared by at least one Chinese scientist.

And we can find people who disagree with the broad consensus on climate change, too. Is there a broader point you are getting at?

Facts are not opinion. Morals and ethics however definitely are.

You can show with empirical evidence that climate change is true.

However no matter how hard you try you can't show with evidence that your moral framework or ethics are somehow the "one true moral/ethical truth".

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#96

Post by wycs »

skosuri wrote: post #84
wycs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no human with all the positive variants; it is the the distribution of these variants that explains 5.2%. GM would allow you to create such a human. That paper does not imply what you think it implies: that editing all these variants in an individual embryo would have a small effect. An individual with the top 200 IQ-enhancing variants edited in (and an otherwise normal genome) would be far, far smarter than…

Ahh I see, you are just making stuff up.

No. I think the claim "one can raise IQ several standard deviations by editing https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3421.pdf

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#97

Post by sanxiyn »

carbocation wrote: post #81
skosuri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is just not supported by evidence. For example, polygenic analysis of the latest meta-analysis from >250K individuals seems to say that the top several hundred variants explain in aggregrate only 5.2% of the variation in intelligence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0152-6 (Supplement section 2.3.3 if you don't have access).

In addition, even with that much or more explanatory power, we generally do not think we have necessarily identified causal variants in most cases. We identify groups of associated variants that signify an interesting locus. There isn’t currently a generic framework that lets us decide which ones are causal.

You need causal variants to do editing, but tagging variants are sufficient for selecting.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#98

Post by baybal2 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #77

Hear it from He Jiankui himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc

Oooh, so it is that He, the man used to have a very peculiar reputation on Chinese university BBSes back when China just got internet connectivity. That was what possibly lead to him being ousted from Chinese academia a decade ago.

I myself think it was certainly no coincidence that Stanford picked him up.

I'm afraid calling up some of his opinions, and in particularly on the topic of race, as they will be a ten megaton flamewar bomb. Google him yourself if you know Chinese.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#99

Post by BurningFrog »

nradov wrote: post #61
BurningFrog wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human intelligence has not increased because it has not been strongly selected for. If it was maximized, at the expense of other traits, a lot could definitely happen. > The average human genome appears to be close to a local maximum. Absolutely, but it's maximized for the environment we lived in 10-100 generations ago.

"Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-...

In the random high IQ population, this is probably true.

In a population that got carefully selected traits for high IQ, these tradeoffs could over time be understood and the effects minimized.

Re: First gene-edited babies claimed in China

#100

Post by jlebar »

buboard wrote: post #67
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unethical" would probably have worked better. sorry for the confusion

which part is unethical though? it was voluntary

> it was voluntary

Do you think parents can consent to this sort of experiment on behalf of an unborn child?

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