12 ms·

A Baby with 3 Genetic Parents Seems Healthy, but Questions Remain

70 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

devereaux 10y ago
No, no scientific questions remain. The baby is alive and healthy as predicted, with a percentage of abnormal mitochondria too low to cause any manifestation of the disease. Only bigotry remains.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Actually there are scientific questions in regards to life long latent effects that might manifest themselves later on.
  - devereaux 10y ago
    There is the hypothesis that the abnormal mitochondria could be in different proportion in different tissues, and that this percentage could change with age. It is highly unlikely to happen, or to cause any clinical manifestations. Most of the flesh of the article is about ethics, being banned by the FDA, etc. Let's call things by their name. Being worried about uncertainty is just a pretext here to try to enforce some religious values according to which a child can only have 2 parents of different sex. Science is making such views obsolete. Many people hate that, so they try to use science as a pretext
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Again I don't dispute that there is bigotry but we aren't close to understanding the full scope of genetic treatments. Cloning mamals so far has gone horribly wrong in most cases and there are a lot of issues that are manifested in later stages of life. We are still finding out new mechanisms for activating and rewriting genes and we don't understand all the interactions which are possible and might happen over a span of a life time. I wish the child good health and hope that there won't be any complications but this isn't a proven treatment by any stretch.
      - devereaux 10y ago
        In general, I would agree with you, but this is several orders of magnitude less risky than cloning, and closer to IVF than anything else.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        IVF had a lot of medical complications early on. Even today IVF isn't without issues.
    - tremendo 10y ago
      > Science is making such views obsolete. What Science is making is a new reality for which our ethical and legal frameworks may not be best suited, and we need to ask ourselves questions about how best to address the inadequacies of our current standards. It's not enough to just throw our arms up and say "views obsolete", they have after all served us well for the entirety of history. Yes we need to reconsider them now, so… "questions remain". > It is highly unlikely to happen, or to cause any clinical manifestations. Ok, says you, based on… ?
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        they have after all served us well for the entirety of history. That's a pretty goddamn extreme claim.
        laretluval 10y ago
        The view that a child can only be produced by two parents of opposite sex has served us very well in terms of making children. Until very recently, if you believed otherwise, you might have had a lot of trouble producing children.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        Do you have anything to say about the ethical and legal frameworks that the post I replied to was talking about?
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  The journal editors are the ones who pointed out the potential issues with the work. So unless you are an expert in the field, you really are not in a position to judge whether or not scientific questions remain. Heck, even if you were an expert, not many people would take such an absolute tone seriously. After all, falsifiability is a basic tenet of the scientific method.
tabeth 10y ago
I'm not really following this article: what "questions remain", exactly? The child is better with the procedure than without, no? What exactly is the alternative that would leave no questions remaining? --- To add, I guess I understand the questions, but rather am struggling with the distinction between this procedure specifically, and the outcomes when any child is born, generally.
- nxc18 10y ago
  The question is about whether the child will develop symptoms later in life, as the defective DNA was not 100% removed. The larger questions around issues like these is whether or not the fix will last. Solving a problem 90% can actually have pretty bad consequences; If you solve a problem that causes infertility or early death only temporarily, you could create a child that grows to adulthood only to have life cut short. Would this process still be a good thing if the child died at 10 years rather than 3? 15? 20? Questions remain because we actually have no idea how this is going to play out. I'm with you, this is probably a good thing, but it will be many years before we know for sure.
  - Mz 10y ago
    The question is about whether the child will develop symptoms later in life, as the defective DNA was not 100% removed. If he does not die by age 3, it is an improvement. Duh.
    - Teever 10y ago
      So if the child lives to age 53, but after age three it is a life full of agony and tremendous burden to society that's an improvement in your book?
      - Mz 10y ago
        You know, I have a form of Cystic Fibrosis. I was diagnosed late in life and I get accused of being insane and making shit up for talking about getting myself well. I would literally commit suicide if I thought my future was as hopeless as what doctor's promise you for Cystic Fibrosis. Yet, I have been on email lists where parents said very touching things like "My son turned 18 today. Today, the life expectancy is age 36. When he was born, it was 18." And I have talked to people who have had double lung transplants -- a thing I have no desire to go through and the idea of being listed fills me with horror because you basically wait for someone young and healthy to die tragically young in an accident so that you might live -- and they describe the agony they have been through and say they would do it all again and have no regrets. The parents wanted this child. Their two previous children died by age 3 due to the genetic disorder the mother carries. It seems they felt it was better. Who the hell are you to judge?
scurvy 10y ago
I'm always torn on the amount of money and resources that goes toward fertility and reproductive sciences. Money and resources that should be going towards cancer research, vaccinations in the third world, etc. I'm not trying to be overly harsh, but nature is telling you not to have kids. We shouldn't fight that. On the other hand, as a parent, I know how wonderful kids are.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I am always torn on the amount of money put into antibiotic research [1]. A bacterial infection is nature's way of telling you that you need to die from a stubbed toe. Medical research is not a zero sum game. 1. Actually we put far to little into antibiotic research, but that is another rant.
  - pottersbasilisk 10y ago
    We have billions of people already but antibiotic resistance is increasing. I can sympathize with the idea we need to be more pragmatic with the amount of money and scientists we have.
- pick_your_tech 10y ago
  I'm thoroughly confused by your comment. Let's start with the conclusion that individuals who cannot have children without this technology are being told by 'nature' not to have children. In what way is this different from a cancer patient being told by 'nature' that s/he should die? Or an unvaccinated newborn being told by 'nature' that s/he should succumb to horrible illnesses? We could go on and on. I'm not sure why you draw the line at giving potential parents the opportunity to have a child, something you clearly enjoy yourself.
  - paulryanrogers 10y ago
    Not the OP, though I have been involved in fertility treatments. And I do feel conflicted knowing my family's genetic history will be passed on, both good and bad. Long term a reliance on these things could be a net negative for society as a whole.
jakob223 10y ago
I'm often frustrated by the extremely cautious attitude some people have toward technology with the potential to have negative consequences, when it seems much more likely to create positive ones. For example, self-driving cars and the possibility of an accident a human would have prevented. I think sometimes we need to be a little bit better at accepting risk when it comes with positive things.
- praneshp 10y ago
  If you have some time, The Gene [0] is a good read. One of the cases the author describes is when a lot of people decided to be very optimistic at the same time and things didn't end well. Not questioning your frustration though, but it's good to have extremely cautious people around. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/1476733503 https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...
- logicallee 10y ago
  I don't find extreme over-caution to be too far-fetched at all. I often am frustrated that people ignore possible new technology and its possible positive consequences (i.e. in simple cases where there really isn't any negative in sight) but on the whole people are generally correct to be fearful of potentially negative unknowns. Often this leads to extremely important safety measures. For example, you mention "self-driving cars and the possibility of an accident a human would have prevented" - but that is a very poor metric, as driving a vehicle is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do with your time, and one of the most likely activities anyone does day to day to kill or injure yourself, another driver or passengers, a cyclist or pedestrian. It seems the end-game to this extreme over-caution will be a redesign of cities that, in fact, puts a final end to this: the bar is set for self-driving cars much higher than "necessary" (to reap benefits), but the end-game will be good. For other examples of extreme over-caution: how many nuclear reactors have melted down in the United States? How many times does a Mars Rover just explode or stop receiving or answering communications, since a simple bash script was good enough? (And in that case, no lives are even at stake.) How many times do pacemakers have a blue screen of death? How often does a drug get taken off of the market since it turns out that if you take it, suddenly you'll keel over and die, oops. I am very often frustrated by people ignoring benefits, but I simply don't object to the level of caution people place on these things. I mean we are talking about engineering super-humans. Humans are the only biological organism that is currently not being genetically engineered for better characteristics. Do you want people to just splice in DNA willy-nilly, seeing if we can get smarter or faster or stronger babies, assuming they survive? Where does this end? I am excited by the potential of technologies but by no means are people's skepticism less than justified! We have a fragile equilibrium with the environment and the technological environment we have created and caution, where there are very obvious negative potentialities, is not at all misplaced in my opinion! This stuff is genuinely scary. One bad click and you engineer a psychopathic superhuman Hitler who does not share our morals but is able to manipulate, as a sociopath, all of our systems. This isn't "hypothetical" -- examples throughout history are real. Genetic engineering of humans is very scary, in my opinion. The reason I do not have quite the same view of GMO is that a plant might very well be nothing more than the sum of its characteristics: its rate of growth in certain climates, its nutrient needs, how much protein, carbohydrates, fats it provides. But a human is not just a set of characteristics, for the benefit of the rest of humans. Optimizing for these is very scary. Perhaps more than people are raising the alarm about. You know how large supermarket fruit tastes bland and awful? (But it ships really well and is huge and looks great!). Do you really want our humans to look like that in a few years? (with respect to some wrong metrics that were chosen to be optimized for.) These things are alarming. Really, they are. Really, really.
andrewclunn 10y ago
Outlaw the practice to force it overseas. Blame the physician for avoiding regulatory oversight. Yeah, that sounds like the genetic luddites alright.
ouid 10y ago
"ethical challenges"
mankash666 10y ago
It's unfortunate that the US made this experiment illegal. At least wait for the results of the research before making a conclusion! Needless to say, put in safeguards to contain damage, if any.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  What safeguards could you even put in place that wouldn't deprive the child of basic human rights? The major fear I could see is that the child could pass damaged genetic material down to their offspring that may not cause immediate harm in a single generation, but over the course of N generations the resulting genetic mutation from daily life + combination with other DNA during fertilization could potentially cause serious issues. How do you protect against that? Stop a human being from ever having children? The dangers of mucking with the DNA of a human are much higher putting self-driving cars on the road or splicing genes into simpler organisms like crops. Now, to be fair: this wasn't actually genetic modification, but "simply" replacing the mitochondria of the embryo with that provided by a donor. The dangers here are minimal in reality, from what I can tell.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
laythea 10y ago
Rights for parent is one thing, but what about my rights to live in a world defined by nature, not humans? I don't want my genetic heritage to be polluted with this kind of meddling.
- jpttsn 10y ago
  That's not a right you have; you're out of luck.
  - laythea 10y ago
    apparently not; apparently so.
theprotocol 10y ago
I'm sorry but I think your replies are incoherent. It's nothing but specious, self-referential and circular statements and you just seem to reword and redefine things as you please, and modify things established prior whenever convenient. I unfortunately cannot debate with someone whose arguments rely so heavily on retroactive editing and reinterpretation of what was said.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  I disagree, I've been very specific. If you can't understand, quote original lines like I have. > self-referential and circular statements Please quote these circular statements. > modify things established prior established how? Is it 'established' that I believe "all good behavior is ultimately selfish"? > retroactive editing and reinterpretation Then provide quotes. I have not edited any of my own comments. How have I "reinterpretat[ed]" anything?
  - theprotocol 10y ago
    I want to clarify that I don't mean literal editing. Beyond that, I'll refrain from commenting as I've said my piece on the conveniently shifting "fluidity" of your understanding of what's said.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Phhhht. It's funny how you allow yourself the only authoritative 'understanding' of this thread, and accuse me of 'convenient' shifting interpretation, but all while refusing to quote anything that's was actually said. You've said your piece, and it's a cop-out in any context. Guess it saves face.
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086312 and marked it off-topic.

No, no scientific questions remain. The baby is alive and healthy as predicted, with a percentage of abnormal mitochondria too low to cause any manifestation of the disease. Only bigotry remains.

dogma1138 10y ago
Actually there are scientific questions in regards to life long latent effects that might manifest themselves later on.
- devereaux 10y ago
  There is the hypothesis that the abnormal mitochondria could be in different proportion in different tissues, and that this percentage could change with age. It is highly unlikely to happen, or to cause any clinical manifestations. Most of the flesh of the article is about ethics, being banned by the FDA, etc. Let's call things by their name. Being worried about uncertainty is just a pretext here to try to enforce some religious values according to which a child can only have 2 parents of different sex. Science is making such views obsolete. Many people hate that, so they try to use science as a pretext
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Again I don't dispute that there is bigotry but we aren't close to understanding the full scope of genetic treatments. Cloning mamals so far has gone horribly wrong in most cases and there are a lot of issues that are manifested in later stages of life. We are still finding out new mechanisms for activating and rewriting genes and we don't understand all the interactions which are possible and might happen over a span of a life time. I wish the child good health and hope that there won't be any complications but this isn't a proven treatment by any stretch.
    - devereaux 10y ago
      In general, I would agree with you, but this is several orders of magnitude less risky than cloning, and closer to IVF than anything else.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        IVF had a lot of medical complications early on. Even today IVF isn't without issues.
  - tremendo 10y ago
    > Science is making such views obsolete. What Science is making is a new reality for which our ethical and legal frameworks may not be best suited, and we need to ask ourselves questions about how best to address the inadequacies of our current standards. It's not enough to just throw our arms up and say "views obsolete", they have after all served us well for the entirety of history. Yes we need to reconsider them now, so… "questions remain". > It is highly unlikely to happen, or to cause any clinical manifestations. Ok, says you, based on… ?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      they have after all served us well for the entirety of history. That's a pretty goddamn extreme claim.
      - laretluval 10y ago
        The view that a child can only be produced by two parents of opposite sex has served us very well in terms of making children. Until very recently, if you believed otherwise, you might have had a lot of trouble producing children.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        Do you have anything to say about the ethical and legal frameworks that the post I replied to was talking about?
Cyph0n 10y ago
The journal editors are the ones who pointed out the potential issues with the work. So unless you are an expert in the field, you really are not in a position to judge whether or not scientific questions remain. Heck, even if you were an expert, not many people would take such an absolute tone seriously. After all, falsifiability is a basic tenet of the scientific method.

tabeth 10y ago

I'm not really following this article: what "questions remain", exactly? The child is better with the procedure than without, no? What exactly is the alternative that would leave no questions remaining? --- To add, I guess I understand the questions, but rather am struggling with the distinction between this procedure specifically, and the outcomes when any child is born, generally.

nxc18 10y ago
The question is about whether the child will develop symptoms later in life, as the defective DNA was not 100% removed. The larger questions around issues like these is whether or not the fix will last. Solving a problem 90% can actually have pretty bad consequences; If you solve a problem that causes infertility or early death only temporarily, you could create a child that grows to adulthood only to have life cut short. Would this process still be a good thing if the child died at 10 years rather than 3? 15? 20? Questions remain because we actually have no idea how this is going to play out. I'm with you, this is probably a good thing, but it will be many years before we know for sure.
- Mz 10y ago
  The question is about whether the child will develop symptoms later in life, as the defective DNA was not 100% removed. If he does not die by age 3, it is an improvement. Duh.
  - Teever 10y ago
    So if the child lives to age 53, but after age three it is a life full of agony and tremendous burden to society that's an improvement in your book?
    - Mz 10y ago
      You know, I have a form of Cystic Fibrosis. I was diagnosed late in life and I get accused of being insane and making shit up for talking about getting myself well. I would literally commit suicide if I thought my future was as hopeless as what doctor's promise you for Cystic Fibrosis. Yet, I have been on email lists where parents said very touching things like "My son turned 18 today. Today, the life expectancy is age 36. When he was born, it was 18." And I have talked to people who have had double lung transplants -- a thing I have no desire to go through and the idea of being listed fills me with horror because you basically wait for someone young and healthy to die tragically young in an accident so that you might live -- and they describe the agony they have been through and say they would do it all again and have no regrets. The parents wanted this child. Their two previous children died by age 3 due to the genetic disorder the mother carries. It seems they felt it was better. Who the hell are you to judge?

scurvy 10y ago

I'm always torn on the amount of money and resources that goes toward fertility and reproductive sciences. Money and resources that should be going towards cancer research, vaccinations in the third world, etc. I'm not trying to be overly harsh, but nature is telling you not to have kids. We shouldn't fight that. On the other hand, as a parent, I know how wonderful kids are.

danieltillett 10y ago
I am always torn on the amount of money put into antibiotic research [1]. A bacterial infection is nature's way of telling you that you need to die from a stubbed toe. Medical research is not a zero sum game. 1. Actually we put far to little into antibiotic research, but that is another rant.
- pottersbasilisk 10y ago
  We have billions of people already but antibiotic resistance is increasing. I can sympathize with the idea we need to be more pragmatic with the amount of money and scientists we have.
pick_your_tech 10y ago
I'm thoroughly confused by your comment. Let's start with the conclusion that individuals who cannot have children without this technology are being told by 'nature' not to have children. In what way is this different from a cancer patient being told by 'nature' that s/he should die? Or an unvaccinated newborn being told by 'nature' that s/he should succumb to horrible illnesses? We could go on and on. I'm not sure why you draw the line at giving potential parents the opportunity to have a child, something you clearly enjoy yourself.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  Not the OP, though I have been involved in fertility treatments. And I do feel conflicted knowing my family's genetic history will be passed on, both good and bad. Long term a reliance on these things could be a net negative for society as a whole.

jakob223 10y ago

I'm often frustrated by the extremely cautious attitude some people have toward technology with the potential to have negative consequences, when it seems much more likely to create positive ones. For example, self-driving cars and the possibility of an accident a human would have prevented. I think sometimes we need to be a little bit better at accepting risk when it comes with positive things.

praneshp 10y ago
If you have some time, The Gene [0] is a good read. One of the cases the author describes is when a lot of people decided to be very optimistic at the same time and things didn't end well. Not questioning your frustration though, but it's good to have extremely cautious people around. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/1476733503 https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...
logicallee 10y ago
I don't find extreme over-caution to be too far-fetched at all. I often am frustrated that people ignore possible new technology and its possible positive consequences (i.e. in simple cases where there really isn't any negative in sight) but on the whole people are generally correct to be fearful of potentially negative unknowns. Often this leads to extremely important safety measures. For example, you mention "self-driving cars and the possibility of an accident a human would have prevented" - but that is a very poor metric, as driving a vehicle is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do with your time, and one of the most likely activities anyone does day to day to kill or injure yourself, another driver or passengers, a cyclist or pedestrian. It seems the end-game to this extreme over-caution will be a redesign of cities that, in fact, puts a final end to this: the bar is set for self-driving cars much higher than "necessary" (to reap benefits), but the end-game will be good. For other examples of extreme over-caution: how many nuclear reactors have melted down in the United States? How many times does a Mars Rover just explode or stop receiving or answering communications, since a simple bash script was good enough? (And in that case, no lives are even at stake.) How many times do pacemakers have a blue screen of death? How often does a drug get taken off of the market since it turns out that if you take it, suddenly you'll keel over and die, oops. I am very often frustrated by people ignoring benefits, but I simply don't object to the level of caution people place on these things. I mean we are talking about engineering super-humans. Humans are the only biological organism that is currently not being genetically engineered for better characteristics. Do you want people to just splice in DNA willy-nilly, seeing if we can get smarter or faster or stronger babies, assuming they survive? Where does this end? I am excited by the potential of technologies but by no means are people's skepticism less than justified! We have a fragile equilibrium with the environment and the technological environment we have created and caution, where there are very obvious negative potentialities, is not at all misplaced in my opinion! This stuff is genuinely scary. One bad click and you engineer a psychopathic superhuman Hitler who does not share our morals but is able to manipulate, as a sociopath, all of our systems. This isn't "hypothetical" -- examples throughout history are real. Genetic engineering of humans is very scary, in my opinion. The reason I do not have quite the same view of GMO is that a plant might very well be nothing more than the sum of its characteristics: its rate of growth in certain climates, its nutrient needs, how much protein, carbohydrates, fats it provides. But a human is not just a set of characteristics, for the benefit of the rest of humans. Optimizing for these is very scary. Perhaps more than people are raising the alarm about. You know how large supermarket fruit tastes bland and awful? (But it ships really well and is huge and looks great!). Do you really want our humans to look like that in a few years? (with respect to some wrong metrics that were chosen to be optimized for.) These things are alarming. Really, they are. Really, really.

andrewclunn 10y ago

Outlaw the practice to force it overseas. Blame the physician for avoiding regulatory oversight. Yeah, that sounds like the genetic luddites alright.

ouid 10y ago

"ethical challenges"

mankash666 10y ago

It's unfortunate that the US made this experiment illegal. At least wait for the results of the research before making a conclusion! Needless to say, put in safeguards to contain damage, if any.

snuxoll 10y ago
What safeguards could you even put in place that wouldn't deprive the child of basic human rights? The major fear I could see is that the child could pass damaged genetic material down to their offspring that may not cause immediate harm in a single generation, but over the course of N generations the resulting genetic mutation from daily life + combination with other DNA during fertilization could potentially cause serious issues. How do you protect against that? Stop a human being from ever having children? The dangers of mucking with the DNA of a human are much higher putting self-driving cars on the road or splicing genes into simpler organisms like crops. Now, to be fair: this wasn't actually genetic modification, but "simply" replacing the mitochondria of the embryo with that provided by a donor. The dangers here are minimal in reality, from what I can tell.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

laythea 10y ago

Rights for parent is one thing, but what about my rights to live in a world defined by nature, not humans? I don't want my genetic heritage to be polluted with this kind of meddling.

jpttsn 10y ago
That's not a right you have; you're out of luck.
- laythea 10y ago
  apparently not; apparently so.

theprotocol 10y ago

I'm sorry but I think your replies are incoherent. It's nothing but specious, self-referential and circular statements and you just seem to reword and redefine things as you please, and modify things established prior whenever convenient. I unfortunately cannot debate with someone whose arguments rely so heavily on retroactive editing and reinterpretation of what was said.

Chris2048 10y ago
I disagree, I've been very specific. If you can't understand, quote original lines like I have. > self-referential and circular statements Please quote these circular statements. > modify things established prior established how? Is it 'established' that I believe "all good behavior is ultimately selfish"? > retroactive editing and reinterpretation Then provide quotes. I have not edited any of my own comments. How have I "reinterpretat[ed]" anything?
- theprotocol 10y ago
  I want to clarify that I don't mean literal editing. Beyond that, I'll refrain from commenting as I've said my piece on the conveniently shifting "fluidity" of your understanding of what's said.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Phhhht. It's funny how you allow yourself the only authoritative 'understanding' of this thread, and accuse me of 'convenient' shifting interpretation, but all while refusing to quote anything that's was actually said. You've said your piece, and it's a cop-out in any context. Guess it saves face.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086312 and marked it off-topic.