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Geneticists Are Concerned Transhumanists Will Use CRISPR on Themselves

53 points by sageabilly 11y ago

leishulang 11y ago
Why is this bad? Just GIT commit every time you change your super-awesome source code and revert to whatever version you like when things go wrong. Or just tell people: This is not a bug, it's a feature.
pmoriarty 11y ago
RadioLab had a great episode about CRISPR: http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/
- comrh 11y ago
  I listened to this one with a PhD in genetics. We both thought it was really well done and produced be he thought it was really overblown. His reasoning was that CRISPR requires a lot of tries to get right and isn't the magical gene editing tool the podcast suggests.
rwmj 11y ago
I'm having a hard time understanding why this is bad. If people experiment on themselves, then it seems the worst that could happen is they injure themselves to such an extent they require expensive ongoing medical treatment paid for by the rest of society (if they die, they just win a Darwin Award). There will be charlatans (as with stem cell treatments) who try and sell this to desperate people with terminal diseases, but that's already covered by fraud statutes. The upsides from human enhancement are pretty limitless and exciting in the long run.
- kragen 11y ago
  From the point of view of someone who wants to use CRISPR in more mainstream research, that's not the worst that can happen. Worse would be that someone experiments on themself and the result is so horrifying that it generates a movement to ban CRISPR or gene therapies in general, and that that movement is successful, so your research career is over — along with the possible benefits of gene therapies to humanity, condemning, for example, hundreds of thousands of children to horrible deaths each year from curable genetic illnesses.
  - pmoriarty 11y ago
    This is exactly what happened to LSD, which was a very promising research chemical when it was first introduced. Over a thousand research studies were done on it before research on it was effectively banned due to the public's fear and outrage over sensationalistic news stories of its non-medical use. It took about 40 years for psychedlic research to start up again, and even now the handful of studies that make up the "psychedelic renaissance" are almost all on compounds other than LSD, because of the stigma LSD still has attached to it.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Great quote from Doudna in the article I linked elsewhere: “We have seen it in movies before: When a new technology comes along, of any type, people tend to get very, very excited about it and it stimulates lots of thinking and ideas. But the danger is that there is a race to do something that the field isn’t really ready for, or that causes either perceived or real danger to the community in some way, or something unethical,” she said. “That creates a backlash that can really set a field back.” “Gene therapy is a great example of that,” she added. “There was a race into the clinic, with lots of excitement, and then when patients died there was a backlash that destroyed the field for more than a decade. We would really love to avoid that here.”
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  The significant change with CRISPR (compared to other ways that transhumanists might accidentally kill themselves) is that it can make heritable genetic changes. Experiment on yourself, sure, but to pass your untested experimentation along to children is a totally different ethical question. Recent news: http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-for-pause-in-editing-heritable-genes/ http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-fo... > A three-day international summit on the ethics of making permanent, hereditary changes in the human genome begins today in Washington, D.C., the fruit of an informal discussion organized in January by Jennifer Doudna, the inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology that makes such changes cheap and easy. AFIAK this should only come up if people are messing with sperm/eggs, but it's definitely something to be aware of. Can CRISPER change existing DNA that would alter future sperm production? (am not a biologist)
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - krasin 11y ago
    What can be done with m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶ CRISPR, can be undone with CRISPR. I don't see anything really permanent here.
    - pasbesoin 11y ago
      The financial 1% becomes the genetic 1%? As one scenario. (Even if CRISPR itself is not that expensive, the computational power to determine effective scenarios likely will be. Not to mention IP "rights" and lawyers as an additional bludgeon.) (Additionally, we appear to be just beginning to really understand folding and DNA/RNA 3D and 4D geometry. I'm uncertain we can really determine the full scope of such scenarios, yet. Including perhaps transmissible negative repercussions.)
      - narrator 11y ago
        Naaah. That would be ok. The problem comes when this technology gets too cheap and people decide they want to live longer than they are supposed to. Same problem with stem cells. The elite can do whatever they want with this stuff. It's the masses adopting it that is troublesome.
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  Well, The fear could be that society would come to view gene editing as a dangerous, subversive or crank activity and so impose regulations that would be so stringent even scientists couldn't use it. Whatever one thinks of LSD, it's notable that it went from an "exciting exploration" to a thing that had to be suppressed at all costs fairly quickly in the 1960s. Despite this society presenting itself as a capitalist meritocracy, numerous examples show it doesn't generally follow the paradigm of "it's your body and you can do what you want with it".
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  Same here. I don't understand how designer babies, preventing premature aging, or stimulating muscle growth are any more "sticky" than the potential eradication of diseases like HIV, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s. Usually I'm pretty good at paying devil's advocate but I really can't see the argument here. Are they worried that we're going to accidentally cure death and have an overpopulation problem? That just seems silly. Or maybe they are worried that we'll anger the gods if we look into things too closely? But then I'd think they'd be after physicists.
  - phkahler 11y ago
    >> I don't understand how designer babies, preventing premature aging, or stimulating muscle growth are any more "sticky" than the potential eradication of diseases like HIV, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s Thanks for reminding me that CRISPR should be able to cure HIV in short order. There is a gene variant that can make one immune if you've got two copies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berlin_Patient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berlin_Patient
    - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
      Thanks, but that part was literally quoted from the third paragraph of TFA.
  - thwarted 11y ago
    "Think of the undertakers" and "think of the gravediggers" are pretty far fetched appeals to compassion.
- nanofortnight 11y ago
  The issue with something like CRISPR is that it is inheritable. Not "inheritable and may eventually die out" inheritable, but "inheritable and all future generations from that point on would have it" inheritable. Usually, a genetic change in one organism takes a long time to spread through a population. But in this case, we have what is called a 'gene drive', where the trait can rapidly spread after a number of generations. http://www.genetics.org/content/201/2/425.full http://www.genetics.org/content/201/2/425.full Any mistake will persist in the population even against selection pressure.
  - undersuit 11y ago
    >Any mistake will persist in the population even against selection pressure. Unfortunate for those afflicted but then they are just waiting for another CRISPR to come along and knock out the offending change.
oldmanjay 11y ago
The internet is scary. I'm concerned that people will use computers to commit crimes.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  People using computers doesn't do inheritable damage to the human gene pool.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    No, and individual humans have no responsibility to the entire gene pool much as individual computer users aren't responsible for keeping the entire internet safe
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      If you're referring to their offspring, correct. That's an ethical question. If you're using it on unwilling/unknowing participants alive today, that's criminal assault (up to murder, depending how reckless you are).
  - adrianN 11y ago
    If gene editing techniques become mature enough to actually work reliably (with CRISPR is currently not), "damage to the gene pool" is a lot less scary.
  - RogtamBar 11y ago
    A hundred million of people around the world are doing provable, obvious damage to the human gene pool and their offspring are very likely to be disadvantaged because of their parents' choices. Yet people are concerned about possible problems due to a now experimental technique.
chrisprobert 11y ago
I would put > 50/50 odds on there being a human alive today with at least one CRISPR-edited germline variant. I think the question is now how can we regulate/control CRISPR germline editing; not how can we prevent it. Human embryo gene editing was reported in May 2015 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5). It's reasonable to assume that the editing took place significantly before the submission date, especially given reports that the paper was first rejected from several other journals on ethical grounds (http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378#/b1 http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-mo...). I'm not trying to suggest that these particular scientists have performed experiments on viable embryos also, but I'd be very surprised if someone hasn't.
- nonbel 11y ago
  Don't they need to use controls? I mean these are faulty zygotes, they could already have mutations at that site and other places as well.
grownseed 11y ago
An interesting, related article was posted on HN not long ago: "Better Babies - The long and peculiar history of the designer human" - https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-long-and-peculiar-history https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-l... I think it's probably a good idea to keep in mind that we don't know nearly as much about editing DNA as we'd generally like to think.
lemevi 11y ago
One of the quoted "transhumanists" is labeling those opposed to CRISPR as "bioconservatives", my first encounter with this word. Let's just keep labeling people and calling them names, this is going to advance the discussion in positive ways I'm sure.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Labels are how humans reason about categories of people, behavior, and things, so raging against the way the mind works is pretty futile at best. Anyways - the label fits. If I want to tinker with my own genes, it is downright regressive to suggest that I don't own my own body enough to do precisely that. Questions about passing those modifications into the gene pool are a separate from the question from the freedom of a person to do whatever they wish to themselves. I'd be willing to put up money on a bet that we will eventually have restrictive laws against self genetic modification along the same lines as the War On Drugs, and that those laws will not have exceptions for people who are unable to reproduce.
  - Retra 11y ago
    You don't own your body enough to do whatever you want with it. Everything you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body, and every law that exists is a means of restricting your ability to do just that. If I genetically engineered myself to produce an STD that selectively mutated into a deadly virus when it comes into contact with certain groups of people selected by genetic markers, well... that's not justifiable under the guise of "owning my own body" -- which is a vague concept anyway. I only own it insofar as everyone else allows me to control it. Ownership is negotiated, it is not assumed.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Why do these discussions always swing towards reductions to the absurd and otherwise analogies that are more horrible than usual? Your scenario is not a thing people are actually doing, or will actually do, and in a universe where it was, it's immune to the kind of regulation I was discussing anyways, so it's pointless to talk about. Everything you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body We both know what we're discussing here. Stop it. Who is harmed or even impacted in any way if I, say, make myself immune to malaria? Or give myself red hair or blue eyes? And don't have kids?
reasonattlm 11y ago
Already happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_name_is_liz_parrish_ceo_of_bioviva_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_n... BioViva is a small group that recently announced they have moved ahead with a human test of telomerase and myostatin-related gene therapies as a potential method to modestly slow the effects of the aging process. Their initial goals are to get things moving in this part of the field by taking this step forward, observing the results, and raising funding for further development efforts to try to lower the costs of this sort of approach. The BioViva CEO Liz Parrish, who is also the initial test subject, recently hosted an AMA (ask me anything) event at Reddit's /r/futurology community. Her comments below are lightly edited for continuity, since they are pulled from numerous distinct answers to questions posted by the community ---- I am patient zero. I will be 45 in January. I have aging as a disease. To take on this role myself was the only ethical choice. I am happy to step up. I do feel we can use these therapies in compassionate care scenarios now but we will have to work them back into healthier people as we see they work as preventive medicine. The genes targeted are human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and follistatin (FST). In animal models neither FST nor hTERT have increased the risk of cancer. We expect to see the same result on myself, and to that effect we are measuring all known cancer biomarkers. The gene therapies on my body are to measure the effects on humans. There is plenty of animal research to support these gene therapies but no one was conducting human tests. We are using both visual biomarkers, MRI and a panel of blood and tissue testing including work on telomere length and epigenetic testing. We are collecting as much data as we can, but unfortunately we currently don't have the coverage rate for this therapy, how much of the tissue of the body is affected. Depending on the tissue and vector used we ultimately expect to see similar rates of transfection as seen in mice, which is somewhere between 5 to 60%. We are working as hard as we can to bring it to the world as quickly and safely as possible. We will will evaluate monthly and within 12 months we will have more data. If the results are good we hope to have something to the general public, that is cost acceptable, in 3-5 years. Our goal is to build laboratories that will have the mission of a gene therapy product at a reduced cost. Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can afford. We need to do the same with these therapies. What you will get in 3-5 years will be vastly more predictable and effective that what we are doing today and at a cost you or your insurance can cover . We need a lab that works solely to bringing those costs down. We would need about $1 - 1.5 million to build one lab to focus on this. We can expand as needed. I would love to crowdfund this project but I do not know how to get good results at that scale - I think the price tag is high for that modality. We are raising investment to do offshore clinical trials. Many USA companies do this. If we can cut costs we will be able to bring back a treatment that people can afford. ----
cryoshon 11y ago
Uhh... I don't believe that these concerns are valid at this point in time because the technical complexity required to actually "use CRISPR on yourself" (which isn't even a coherent idea in the first place) is extremely daunting. We're talking intermittent failure with a fully kitted lab, trained people, good protocols, and a concrete goal. CRISPR being scientifically "easy" to implement relative to the other solutions on the market doesn't mean you can just slop together some new genes and go wild. Geneticists should probably know that, but whatever. The point is, you can't just "take CRISPR" and "chop up some cool new genes" then "use it on yourself". I mean, I shouldn't have to say this at all, but only with a childlike understanding is such a sequence of events remotely conceivable. Each of those items within quotation marks entail a deeply complicated series of planning actions and laboratory manipulations within different scientific paradigms, executed without mishap. Even if it WAS that simple, who cares? People unambiguously have the right to experiment on themselves and alter their bodies however they wish without unwanted external interference.
- deleted 11y ago
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- TheCraiggers 11y ago
  I love everything you said, but the last sentence gave me pause. There are a few cases were experiments on themselves using CRISPR may be at best morally "wrong". Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring, for example. Another (probably less likely but more interesting to me) example is altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.
  - curryst 11y ago
    I don't think it's any different from many things we already do that are considered "right". > Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring Is it wrong for someone who has a genetic disorder to breed? What about cases where both parents are carriers of a recessive genetic disorder, which gives the child a 25% chance of expressing the disease and a 50% chance of being a carrier themselves? > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong. Is it morally wrong to let your basement be damp and grow mold? Sure, it's stupid, but is it morally wrong? Is it morally wrong to have unprotected sex? We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. I think the more compelling argument is, what happens to people who don't want to alter their DNA if this actually works? If this is allowed in sports, much like steroids, other athletes will be compelled to undergo treatment just to remain competitive. If we can make people smarter, then people who won't undergo treatment could be relegated to doing menial tasks simply because they won't edit their own DNA. To add another interesting corollary to that, what about people that won't do it for religious reasons? I know some people who oppose any kind of genetic alterations for whatever reason because it violates "God's design". I'm sure someone will call it discrimination when they have to flip burgers because they haven't undergone treatment to have an Einstein level IQ like the rest of the workforce.
SixSigma 11y ago
Would that count as Prior Art come patent day ?
api 11y ago
War on drugs 2.0 here we come... sigh.
andrewclunn 11y ago
If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK CARES?! Like the people claiming that we're, "playing god," weren't going to be against this shit regardless. The best defense against bullshit regulations by busy bodies is to get ordinary people excited about this, not to grovel and cower in fear. Bring on the future!
- jerf 11y ago
  "If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK CARES?!" Strawman. For better or worse, far more things are on the table than that, if gene manipulation becomes practical. We have to live with the results of the genetic tinkering, and not all the things that could be done are anywhere near that neutral.
  - andrewclunn 11y ago
    Oh, so "slippery slope" then. See, I can throw out logical fallacies like they're candy too.
    - jerf 11y ago
      That's not thinking, that's an attempt to stop thinking. We already know things we can do that would be far more interesting and dangerous to live with, if we just had control over genes. If all that we could do is make "a tall person", there'd be no debate. Your brain is probably recoiling from the possibilities, because you simply can't accept them, and reaching for denial and bad humor in an attempt to cover it over, but that's going to be really, really dangerous in the near future. You'd better look reality in the face instead of trying to mock it or it'll blindside you, and the same goes for our regulators and bioethicists.
rsync 11y ago
Fantastic! We need early adopters and "early failers". Godspeed to those intrepid pioneers!
abandonliberty 11y ago
The early adopters and concerned geneticists are both living in the future. With their help someday we may be able to eliminate genetic conditions like [color] blindness, aging, deafness, homosexuality, blackness, and your less preferred gender. Where do you get uncomfortable with this list? Technology has benefits and risks. It's not too early to start the discussion. It's even relevant to what society and people today categorize as "healthy" vs "disease". Many in the deaf community argue that they are not diseased. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture

53 points by sageabilly 11y ago

Why is this bad? Just GIT commit every time you change your super-awesome source code and revert to whatever version you like when things go wrong. Or just tell people: This is not a bug, it's a feature.

pmoriarty 11y ago

RadioLab had a great episode about CRISPR: http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/

comrh 11y ago
I listened to this one with a PhD in genetics. We both thought it was really well done and produced be he thought it was really overblown. His reasoning was that CRISPR requires a lot of tries to get right and isn't the magical gene editing tool the podcast suggests.

rwmj 11y ago

I'm having a hard time understanding why this is bad. If people experiment on themselves, then it seems the worst that could happen is they injure themselves to such an extent they require expensive ongoing medical treatment paid for by the rest of society (if they die, they just win a Darwin Award). There will be charlatans (as with stem cell treatments) who try and sell this to desperate people with terminal diseases, but that's already covered by fraud statutes. The upsides from human enhancement are pretty limitless and exciting in the long run.

kragen 11y ago
From the point of view of someone who wants to use CRISPR in more mainstream research, that's not the worst that can happen. Worse would be that someone experiments on themself and the result is so horrifying that it generates a movement to ban CRISPR or gene therapies in general, and that that movement is successful, so your research career is over — along with the possible benefits of gene therapies to humanity, condemning, for example, hundreds of thousands of children to horrible deaths each year from curable genetic illnesses.
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  This is exactly what happened to LSD, which was a very promising research chemical when it was first introduced. Over a thousand research studies were done on it before research on it was effectively banned due to the public's fear and outrage over sensationalistic news stories of its non-medical use. It took about 40 years for psychedlic research to start up again, and even now the handful of studies that make up the "psychedelic renaissance" are almost all on compounds other than LSD, because of the stigma LSD still has attached to it.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Great quote from Doudna in the article I linked elsewhere: “We have seen it in movies before: When a new technology comes along, of any type, people tend to get very, very excited about it and it stimulates lots of thinking and ideas. But the danger is that there is a race to do something that the field isn’t really ready for, or that causes either perceived or real danger to the community in some way, or something unethical,” she said. “That creates a backlash that can really set a field back.” “Gene therapy is a great example of that,” she added. “There was a race into the clinic, with lots of excitement, and then when patients died there was a backlash that destroyed the field for more than a decade. We would really love to avoid that here.”
wlesieutre 11y ago
The significant change with CRISPR (compared to other ways that transhumanists might accidentally kill themselves) is that it can make heritable genetic changes. Experiment on yourself, sure, but to pass your untested experimentation along to children is a totally different ethical question. Recent news: http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-for-pause-in-editing-heritable-genes/ http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-fo... > A three-day international summit on the ethics of making permanent, hereditary changes in the human genome begins today in Washington, D.C., the fruit of an informal discussion organized in January by Jennifer Doudna, the inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology that makes such changes cheap and easy. AFIAK this should only come up if people are messing with sperm/eggs, but it's definitely something to be aware of. Can CRISPER change existing DNA that would alter future sperm production? (am not a biologist)
- deleted 11y ago
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- krasin 11y ago
  What can be done with m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶ CRISPR, can be undone with CRISPR. I don't see anything really permanent here.
  - pasbesoin 11y ago
    The financial 1% becomes the genetic 1%? As one scenario. (Even if CRISPR itself is not that expensive, the computational power to determine effective scenarios likely will be. Not to mention IP "rights" and lawyers as an additional bludgeon.) (Additionally, we appear to be just beginning to really understand folding and DNA/RNA 3D and 4D geometry. I'm uncertain we can really determine the full scope of such scenarios, yet. Including perhaps transmissible negative repercussions.)
    - narrator 11y ago
      Naaah. That would be ok. The problem comes when this technology gets too cheap and people decide they want to live longer than they are supposed to. Same problem with stem cells. The elite can do whatever they want with this stuff. It's the masses adopting it that is troublesome.
joe_the_user 11y ago
Well, The fear could be that society would come to view gene editing as a dangerous, subversive or crank activity and so impose regulations that would be so stringent even scientists couldn't use it. Whatever one thinks of LSD, it's notable that it went from an "exciting exploration" to a thing that had to be suppressed at all costs fairly quickly in the 1960s. Despite this society presenting itself as a capitalist meritocracy, numerous examples show it doesn't generally follow the paradigm of "it's your body and you can do what you want with it".
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
Same here. I don't understand how designer babies, preventing premature aging, or stimulating muscle growth are any more "sticky" than the potential eradication of diseases like HIV, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s. Usually I'm pretty good at paying devil's advocate but I really can't see the argument here. Are they worried that we're going to accidentally cure death and have an overpopulation problem? That just seems silly. Or maybe they are worried that we'll anger the gods if we look into things too closely? But then I'd think they'd be after physicists.
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> I don't understand how designer babies, preventing premature aging, or stimulating muscle growth are any more "sticky" than the potential eradication of diseases like HIV, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s Thanks for reminding me that CRISPR should be able to cure HIV in short order. There is a gene variant that can make one immune if you've got two copies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berlin_Patient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berlin_Patient
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    Thanks, but that part was literally quoted from the third paragraph of TFA.
- thwarted 11y ago
  "Think of the undertakers" and "think of the gravediggers" are pretty far fetched appeals to compassion.
nanofortnight 11y ago
The issue with something like CRISPR is that it is inheritable. Not "inheritable and may eventually die out" inheritable, but "inheritable and all future generations from that point on would have it" inheritable. Usually, a genetic change in one organism takes a long time to spread through a population. But in this case, we have what is called a 'gene drive', where the trait can rapidly spread after a number of generations. http://www.genetics.org/content/201/2/425.full http://www.genetics.org/content/201/2/425.full Any mistake will persist in the population even against selection pressure.
- undersuit 11y ago
  >Any mistake will persist in the population even against selection pressure. Unfortunate for those afflicted but then they are just waiting for another CRISPR to come along and knock out the offending change.

oldmanjay 11y ago

The internet is scary. I'm concerned that people will use computers to commit crimes.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
People using computers doesn't do inheritable damage to the human gene pool.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  No, and individual humans have no responsibility to the entire gene pool much as individual computer users aren't responsible for keeping the entire internet safe
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    If you're referring to their offspring, correct. That's an ethical question. If you're using it on unwilling/unknowing participants alive today, that's criminal assault (up to murder, depending how reckless you are).
- adrianN 11y ago
  If gene editing techniques become mature enough to actually work reliably (with CRISPR is currently not), "damage to the gene pool" is a lot less scary.
- RogtamBar 11y ago
  A hundred million of people around the world are doing provable, obvious damage to the human gene pool and their offspring are very likely to be disadvantaged because of their parents' choices. Yet people are concerned about possible problems due to a now experimental technique.

chrisprobert 11y ago

I would put > 50/50 odds on there being a human alive today with at least one CRISPR-edited germline variant. I think the question is now how can we regulate/control CRISPR germline editing; not how can we prevent it. Human embryo gene editing was reported in May 2015 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5). It's reasonable to assume that the editing took place significantly before the submission date, especially given reports that the paper was first rejected from several other journals on ethical grounds (http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378#/b1 http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-mo...). I'm not trying to suggest that these particular scientists have performed experiments on viable embryos also, but I'd be very surprised if someone hasn't.

nonbel 11y ago
Don't they need to use controls? I mean these are faulty zygotes, they could already have mutations at that site and other places as well.

grownseed 11y ago

An interesting, related article was posted on HN not long ago: "Better Babies - The long and peculiar history of the designer human" - https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-long-and-peculiar-history https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-l... I think it's probably a good idea to keep in mind that we don't know nearly as much about editing DNA as we'd generally like to think.

lemevi 11y ago

One of the quoted "transhumanists" is labeling those opposed to CRISPR as "bioconservatives", my first encounter with this word. Let's just keep labeling people and calling them names, this is going to advance the discussion in positive ways I'm sure.

Karunamon 11y ago
Labels are how humans reason about categories of people, behavior, and things, so raging against the way the mind works is pretty futile at best. Anyways - the label fits. If I want to tinker with my own genes, it is downright regressive to suggest that I don't own my own body enough to do precisely that. Questions about passing those modifications into the gene pool are a separate from the question from the freedom of a person to do whatever they wish to themselves. I'd be willing to put up money on a bet that we will eventually have restrictive laws against self genetic modification along the same lines as the War On Drugs, and that those laws will not have exceptions for people who are unable to reproduce.
- Retra 11y ago
  You don't own your body enough to do whatever you want with it. Everything you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body, and every law that exists is a means of restricting your ability to do just that. If I genetically engineered myself to produce an STD that selectively mutated into a deadly virus when it comes into contact with certain groups of people selected by genetic markers, well... that's not justifiable under the guise of "owning my own body" -- which is a vague concept anyway. I only own it insofar as everyone else allows me to control it. Ownership is negotiated, it is not assumed.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Why do these discussions always swing towards reductions to the absurd and otherwise analogies that are more horrible than usual? Your scenario is not a thing people are actually doing, or will actually do, and in a universe where it was, it's immune to the kind of regulation I was discussing anyways, so it's pointless to talk about. Everything you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body We both know what we're discussing here. Stop it. Who is harmed or even impacted in any way if I, say, make myself immune to malaria? Or give myself red hair or blue eyes? And don't have kids?

reasonattlm 11y ago

Already happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_name_is_liz_parrish_ceo_of_bioviva_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_n... BioViva is a small group that recently announced they have moved ahead with a human test of telomerase and myostatin-related gene therapies as a potential method to modestly slow the effects of the aging process. Their initial goals are to get things moving in this part of the field by taking this step forward, observing the results, and raising funding for further development efforts to try to lower the costs of this sort of approach. The BioViva CEO Liz Parrish, who is also the initial test subject, recently hosted an AMA (ask me anything) event at Reddit's /r/futurology community. Her comments below are lightly edited for continuity, since they are pulled from numerous distinct answers to questions posted by the community ---- I am patient zero. I will be 45 in January. I have aging as a disease. To take on this role myself was the only ethical choice. I am happy to step up. I do feel we can use these therapies in compassionate care scenarios now but we will have to work them back into healthier people as we see they work as preventive medicine. The genes targeted are human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and follistatin (FST). In animal models neither FST nor hTERT have increased the risk of cancer. We expect to see the same result on myself, and to that effect we are measuring all known cancer biomarkers. The gene therapies on my body are to measure the effects on humans. There is plenty of animal research to support these gene therapies but no one was conducting human tests. We are using both visual biomarkers, MRI and a panel of blood and tissue testing including work on telomere length and epigenetic testing. We are collecting as much data as we can, but unfortunately we currently don't have the coverage rate for this therapy, how much of the tissue of the body is affected. Depending on the tissue and vector used we ultimately expect to see similar rates of transfection as seen in mice, which is somewhere between 5 to 60%. We are working as hard as we can to bring it to the world as quickly and safely as possible. We will will evaluate monthly and within 12 months we will have more data. If the results are good we hope to have something to the general public, that is cost acceptable, in 3-5 years. Our goal is to build laboratories that will have the mission of a gene therapy product at a reduced cost. Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can afford. We need to do the same with these therapies. What you will get in 3-5 years will be vastly more predictable and effective that what we are doing today and at a cost you or your insurance can cover . We need a lab that works solely to bringing those costs down. We would need about $1 - 1.5 million to build one lab to focus on this. We can expand as needed. I would love to crowdfund this project but I do not know how to get good results at that scale - I think the price tag is high for that modality. We are raising investment to do offshore clinical trials. Many USA companies do this. If we can cut costs we will be able to bring back a treatment that people can afford. ----

cryoshon 11y ago

Uhh... I don't believe that these concerns are valid at this point in time because the technical complexity required to actually "use CRISPR on yourself" (which isn't even a coherent idea in the first place) is extremely daunting. We're talking intermittent failure with a fully kitted lab, trained people, good protocols, and a concrete goal. CRISPR being scientifically "easy" to implement relative to the other solutions on the market doesn't mean you can just slop together some new genes and go wild. Geneticists should probably know that, but whatever. The point is, you can't just "take CRISPR" and "chop up some cool new genes" then "use it on yourself". I mean, I shouldn't have to say this at all, but only with a childlike understanding is such a sequence of events remotely conceivable. Each of those items within quotation marks entail a deeply complicated series of planning actions and laboratory manipulations within different scientific paradigms, executed without mishap. Even if it WAS that simple, who cares? People unambiguously have the right to experiment on themselves and alter their bodies however they wish without unwanted external interference.

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TheCraiggers 11y ago
I love everything you said, but the last sentence gave me pause. There are a few cases were experiments on themselves using CRISPR may be at best morally "wrong". Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring, for example. Another (probably less likely but more interesting to me) example is altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.
- curryst 11y ago
  I don't think it's any different from many things we already do that are considered "right". > Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring Is it wrong for someone who has a genetic disorder to breed? What about cases where both parents are carriers of a recessive genetic disorder, which gives the child a 25% chance of expressing the disease and a 50% chance of being a carrier themselves? > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong. Is it morally wrong to let your basement be damp and grow mold? Sure, it's stupid, but is it morally wrong? Is it morally wrong to have unprotected sex? We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. I think the more compelling argument is, what happens to people who don't want to alter their DNA if this actually works? If this is allowed in sports, much like steroids, other athletes will be compelled to undergo treatment just to remain competitive. If we can make people smarter, then people who won't undergo treatment could be relegated to doing menial tasks simply because they won't edit their own DNA. To add another interesting corollary to that, what about people that won't do it for religious reasons? I know some people who oppose any kind of genetic alterations for whatever reason because it violates "God's design". I'm sure someone will call it discrimination when they have to flip burgers because they haven't undergone treatment to have an Einstein level IQ like the rest of the workforce.

SixSigma 11y ago

Would that count as Prior Art come patent day ?

api 11y ago

War on drugs 2.0 here we come... sigh.

andrewclunn 11y ago

If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK CARES?! Like the people claiming that we're, "playing god," weren't going to be against this shit regardless. The best defense against bullshit regulations by busy bodies is to get ordinary people excited about this, not to grovel and cower in fear. Bring on the future!

jerf 11y ago
"If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK CARES?!" Strawman. For better or worse, far more things are on the table than that, if gene manipulation becomes practical. We have to live with the results of the genetic tinkering, and not all the things that could be done are anywhere near that neutral.
- andrewclunn 11y ago
  Oh, so "slippery slope" then. See, I can throw out logical fallacies like they're candy too.
  - jerf 11y ago
    That's not thinking, that's an attempt to stop thinking. We already know things we can do that would be far more interesting and dangerous to live with, if we just had control over genes. If all that we could do is make "a tall person", there'd be no debate. Your brain is probably recoiling from the possibilities, because you simply can't accept them, and reaching for denial and bad humor in an attempt to cover it over, but that's going to be really, really dangerous in the near future. You'd better look reality in the face instead of trying to mock it or it'll blindside you, and the same goes for our regulators and bioethicists.

rsync 11y ago

Fantastic! We need early adopters and "early failers". Godspeed to those intrepid pioneers!

abandonliberty 11y ago

The early adopters and concerned geneticists are both living in the future. With their help someday we may be able to eliminate genetic conditions like [color] blindness, aging, deafness, homosexuality, blackness, and your less preferred gender. Where do you get uncomfortable with this list? Technology has benefits and risks. It's not too early to start the discussion. It's even relevant to what society and people today categorize as "healthy" vs "disease". Many in the deaf community argue that they are not diseased. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture