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First Human Embryos Edited in U.S
- Cozumel 9y agoRelated: 'Unexpected mutations after CRISPR–Cas9 editing in vivo' http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4293.html http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4293.h...
- corndoge 9y agoAddressed by the article
- mbreese 9y agoKind of addressed in the article. I'd still like to see more data before calling the issue "addressed". (Then again, this is a lay-press article, so I don't entirely expect a lot of detail)
- corndoge 9y agoNot sure I would call MIT technology review lay press
- mbreese 9y agoGood point... but how would you describe it? It's not exactly lay-press, but it's still a secondary source. It's written for an educated audience, but not necessarily in this field. What would you call them in this case? Science press? Still - not enough room in an article like this for too many details.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 9y agoIt is, at least in the sense that it is written by journalists writing for a general audience. I subscribed for a while, I stopped after the number of eye rolls had gotten too high.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 9y agoThis paper was incredibly sloppy and has been widely dismissed by scientists in the field.
- Cozumel 9y agoEh, not at all.
- djsumdog 9y agoWell it was refuted by people in biotech, who have a considerable stake in that field. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608073/gene-editing-companies-hit-back-at-paper-that-criticized-crispr/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608073/gene-editing-compa... I thought the original authors had a rebuttal, but I can't seem to find it.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 9y agoI don't think there's any need for a cui bono line of thinking. There are biologists who have nothing to gain who thought this paper was lousy. For example, every single biologist in my department that I spoke to, and every biologist I've found online who had something to say on the matter. Perhaps that's too much of a selection bias for you, so I'll offer this critique: if you wanted to measure the off target effects of Cas9 in an organism, you would probably sequence the organism before you edited it, and then sequence it again after you edited it. But that's not what they did.
- tstactplsignore 9y agoAlso refuted by a team from Harvard medical school: http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/05/159707 http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/05/159707
- gehwartzen 9y ago"Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases." Seems a little early for such a claim based on embryos that only developed for a few days.
- corndoge 9y agoIn the US human embryos used for research are restricted from developing for more than two weeks
- roceasta 9y agoThe talk is of 'genetic enhancement' but the potential benefit seems more boring and necessary to me: removal of many new and as-yet-unidentified mutations. It is thought that these have been accumulating generation by generation since about 1800 when child mortality started to fall.
- evolve2017 9y agoI would be very interested to read an academic paper that made this point. 200 years is a blink of an eye in almost any vertebrate's evolutionary time. Also, to support your claim, one would need evidence that the child mortality of the past reflected genetic unfitness (as opposed to poverty or the unavailability of antibiotics).
- sillysaurus3 9y ago200 years is a decent chunk of time from an evolutionary standpoint. We feel it's short because of how long our history has been. But within 200 years you can manufacture N new breeds of dogs, for example. We just underestimate how much change takes place in the world.
- maxerickson 9y agoDogs are fertile at 1 or 2 years of age. You can do an awful lot more in 100-150 generations than you can in 10-15 generations (probably more like 6-8. Checking my family tree, many of my great-great grandparents were born ~1850, so for me personally, 5 or 6 generations). In any case, we have to go back to the question that the GP asked, that dogs are malleable doesn't help us. Does reduced child mortality really cause more mutations to accumulate?
- evolve2017 9y agoI think you're misunderstanding my point, but maybe I shouldn't have taken vertebrates as an example; we can of course imagine some island where massive selection pressures lead to speciation. I would be interested if you have such an example. However, dog breeds are not species and, given their non-random mating, don't really tell us much about whether 200 years is long in vertebrate evolutionary time. As far as humans go, I will grant that allele frequencies may have changed if you pick an isolated subpopulation of humans (say, everyone in Greenland) but even that seems extremely unlikely. As an aside, there are researchers who are using the caste system in India as a way to explore genetic architectures within a civilization. As these castes have existed for considerably longer than the period we're discussing, meaningful allele frequency changes may arise.
- eggie 9y agoWe would need a very particular set of conditions for embryonic editing to be justifiable under a medical dogma that aims to "do no harm." Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, as this would make embryonic selection of non-carriers very difficult. Then we would need the editing system to be so reliable as to not introduce off-target mutations. In a preimplantation setting, we can't easily observe if non-desired mutations have been introduced in some cells, as this would require sequencing every cell in the developing embryo. Serious disease introduced through chimeric errors in the editing process would be a real possibility, and there is no feasible way we could guard against this result using sequencing as it would require destruction of the embryo. A more realistic scenario would be to develop a human embryonic stem cell culture that has been edited as desired and then implant this into a developing blastocyst at a point at which it would take over the and develop into the fetus. This is done with mice and there is no reason it wouldn't work for humans. I think that most people would find this much more abhorrent than directly editing the germline. However, it would be much safer for the engineered proband and would not require a "perfect" editing system that we do not have.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- alextheparrot 9y agoI'm not certain where the premise that our medicine must "Do no harm" comes from. Chemotherapy, for example, is known for being extremely toxic and harmful, yet the justification is that it often yields better outcomes than no treatment. Why can we not use the same justification for editing DNA? Honestly some therapies cause mutations by design, as some cancers are less capable of DNA repair. I do see one argument, hinging on the difference between an embryo and an adult aged many years. If your argument is that better techniques may exist at the embryonic stage, then I submit to the medical community to ascertain the appropriate course. However, I don't think offsite mutations pose a significant enough risk that one can say that, on aggregate, gene editing won't "do some good".
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
- sethbannon 9y agoI am so insanely excited for the potential of this technology. There are many ethical questions here, but the potential benefits far outweigh the downsides. In the near future, we can detect and eliminate genetic disorders, ensuring no child has to suffer from these defects any longer. Long term, this gives us a tool to take control of our own evolution in a way never before possible. Couldn't be more excited for what's possible.
- tcbawo 9y agoWhile I appreciate the optimism in this sentiment, the similarity to the early atomic age gives me pause. Human beings have shown time and time again that they cannot be absolutely trusted.
- spraak 9y agoYes, the worst really must be assumed
- theWatcher37 9y agoThe atomic age came without the world or our species ending.
- saiya-jin 9y agoyes but we were so close, quite a few times...
- austinjp 9y agoBy that token, every single activity of anyone, anywhere, any time has been a success.
- bengale 9y agoSort of I guess, every activity puts us in a new place. We know we can't stand still. Doesn't mean we can't be careful, but handwringing won't help much.
- cellis 9y agoCRISPR is coming. I seriously think with CRISPR we could see several trillion dollar companies. From cancer and aids cures to fundamentally altering what it means to be human, this is all within the near grasp of CRISPR ( if what i've been reading is to be believed ).
- adventured 9y agoGilead managed to demonstrate how curing a major disease does not result in such a spectacular outcome (of the trillion dollar scale). They did very well by curing HepC, briefly, and now they're eroding back down after just a few boom years. The same would occur with curing HIV/AIDS. There would be a brief boom derived from sales in some developed nations (most nations would receive the cure extremely inexpensively, as with HepC). It might get a company to a couple hundred billion market cap short-term, nowhere near a trillion dollar outcome however. Further, attempting to charge a lot for the HIV/AIDS cure (such that you could get to a trillion dollar market cap), would result in a far worse PR outcome than what Gilead & Co. saw with HepC drugs; calls for nationalization would be overwhelming. Nations such as India and China would simply ignore all patents and proceed to copying the cure - few would support any economic counter/consequence against that move. It is often said that companies would intentionally prefer not to cure major diseases. Then Gilead (Pharmasset), goes ahead and does so, while charging less for the cure than the cost of healthcare for living with HepC (much less all that is lost from HepC, including quality of life and economic contribution) - and for doing so, they were treated as a villain due to what they charged. For such reasons, I doubt we'll ever see drug prices high enough to deliver trillion dollar outcomes. Throw on top of this, that the last bastion of crazy drug prices - the US - is nearing an end on its tolerance for such.
- trhway 9y agowhat you describe just shows that the old business model - pill in exchange for money - starts to show its limitations in the globalized world. Facebook would never get where it is now if it charged $10/year in Africa and $100/year in US. The pharma company who figures out that new business model would become that trillion dollar company.
- WalterBright 9y agoGene editing is probably the only way humans can colonize space. By adapting people to different gravities, air chemistry and pressure, radiation, etc., the need for life support equipment can be significantly reduced, and the quality of life of the colonists can be improved.
- cwkoss 9y agoIain Banks' Culture series (sci-fi novels) explores this subject in a way I enjoyed greatly. "Biologically, the Culture's citizens have been genetically enhanced to live for centuries, and have modified mental control over their physiology, including the ability to introduce a variety of psychoactive drugs into their systems, change biological sex, or switch off pain at will. Culture technology is able to transform individuals into vastly different body forms but, for unclear reasons, the Culture standard form remains fairly close to human."
- smallnamespace 9y agoOn the flip side, if we have a problem with racism now just on the basis of skin color/ethnicity/(culture), just imagine what sort of conflicts would arise once there are actual different human races. Even more so if they cannot reproduce with one another.
- coffeevradar 9y agoLife, uh, finds a way.
- ne_way 9y agoI finally registered an account just to show how much I appreciated the double entendre!
- rxhernandez 9y agoLet me start by saying I'm not a biologist. However, it would seem prudent to think we are much much farther from doing most of what you said than doing terraforming at small levels when we just started editing embryos. Ostensibly the science doesn't even yet exist to do what you are describing whereas funding is the majority of the problem for terraforming at small levels.
- floatboth 9y agoShit. If David Cameron's pig story was Black Mirror coming true, this is Orphan Black's moment.
- albertTJames 9y agoEthics questions need to be raised now, and guidelines have to be decided. The future of humanity is in gene editing. It should not depends on the lazyness of law makers and outrage of godfearing creatures to decide the fate of humanity. It is time we take our evolution into our own hands.
- rubatuga 9y agoMost agree that it is unethical to purposely have a disabled/diseased child if it possible to not have a nondisabled one. In that case, I think it is quite ethical for this technology to be used on those with debilitating genetic defects. We’re in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that.
- resf 9y agoThat some people are too vain to adopt is not a good enough justification. It is a foundational point of ethics that medical experimentation must be voluntary.
- nyolfen 9y ago> We’re in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that. china in particular does not have the west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics. i think this 'debate' will last about as long as it takes for the first generation of modded chinese children with two or three SDs on the mean to be brought into the world.
- ernestipark 9y agoI don't think you can make a very strong argument for the "west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics" when you look at the prevalence of convenience abortions and the history of eugenics in America.
- Sprocklem 9y agoThe west has been very anti-eugenics for over half a century at this point, but I agree it isn't very historical. That being said, there's a big difference between genetic editing and abortions of fetuses with genetic disorders (which is what I assume you mean by "convenience abortions"). A lot of people are scared of GMOs, even if it's just a simple alteration to a plant. I doubt that genetic modification of people will begin in the west without significant outcry and pushback.
- mmirate 9y agoWell this is exciting, but hopefully it will advance beyond "genetic disease". Or maybe in the future we will be able to expand our definition of that term, to include all genetic predispositions to suboptimal traits? (e.g. slow observation-decision loop, hedonism, sentimentalism/too-much-empathy, neuroticism, etc.) Either way - hopefully, when this tech is completed, we will be able to accept and enjoy that our descendants will literally be superior beings to us, and not look upon them with too much envy.
- zanny 9y agoWait, being empathic is now a negative trait? I'd hope we would want our first generation of superhumans to be too empathic, or else they might exterminate all of us of inferior breed.
- bluGill 9y agoYou would want that, but that choice may not be possible. There are some known genes where you choose between social skills or memory. You cannot have both as it is the same gene.
- mmirate 9y agoIn addition to the factors mentioned in the sibling comment, empathy can often lead one to make the wrong decision. (Where by "wrong" I mean any decision other than the one best supported by one's rational analysis.)
- mmirate 9y agoSo I suppose it's not the empathy itself that's the problem; rather, it's that we are so emotionally sensitive to the data we gain from our empathy.
- analog31 9y agoIn the future, every dissertation will include in its Acknowledgements section, the student's parents, faculty advisor, and gene editor.
- Mikeb85 9y agoAs if there wasn't enough inequality in the world, now the rich will be able to afford to make their offspring genetically superior to everyone else's. Have fun with a 1% that are literally overlords.
- literallycancer 9y agoIdeally we'd all improve together, but hey, I'm not going to let people like you stop me, you are right about that.
- biggerbistro 9y agoDo you really think you will be among the ones allowed at the top? Protip: if you were you wouldn't be here right now. We will all likely be denied access to the best technology and will quickly fall behind within a couple generations.
- literallycancer 9y agoHere? As in posting on the internet? Why not?
- biggerbistro 9y agoI of course have no sources to back this up (how would one even get such data?) but I suspect billionaires have better things to do than go e-slumming with those of us with fewer than 30 cars.
- gpawl 9y agohttps://www.reddit.com/user/martinshkreli/ https://www.reddit.com/user/martinshkreli/
- TallGuyShort 9y agoBillionaires? Perhaps. But aren't most of us on here taking a quick break from our Silicon Valley-like software engineering jobs that put us in or near the highest income 1% of the United States, and firmly within the highest income 1% of the world? I'm sure any significant medical advance that is remotely scalable will be available to most of us if our competitiveness and survival depends on it.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoWasn't there a HN post/thread a week or so ago about some scientist having a (new-ish) theory about DNA and the role specific genes play? If there's enough doubt that there's still room for other theories, is CRISPR really a good idea?
- 88e282102ae2e5b 9y agoWell, you wouldn't want to modify a gene that isn't well-characterized, sure. But there are some things that are known with a great deal of certainty.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoI remember they used to say that...when the world was flat :) The issue I have with this type of engineering is there is no means of egress (if you will), no thought about how a recall would be implemented. Humans are flawed. The history of engineering displays those flaws. But instead we purposely stand in our own blindspot and insist "no. THIS time I'll be different" completely forgetting the countless times that was said previously. Long to short, our certainty is likely overstated. It wouldn't be the first time either.
- kanzure 9y agohere's a TODO list i made for possibly interesting genome editing targets: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/ Many of these have low demonstrated correlation or significance so don't just blindly load everything on that document into your at-home CRISPR kit http://www.the-odin.com/gene-engineering-kits/ http://www.the-odin.com/gene-engineering-kits/ but it should be a good starting point for thinking about what can be modified, improved, disimproved, etc.
- ralusek 9y agors193536 affects male genitals you say? Here I go, injecting it directly into my penis without any further questions (his decision, not mine).
- mattbettinson 9y agoFascinating. This just popped in my head: does the human genome contain pointers? Or am I missing a key piece?
- kanzure 9y agoMany things in biology could be construed to be pointers if you squint hard enough--- promoters, transcription factors, all sorts of far-reaching regulation-effecting small molecules and proteins and variations of DNA/RNA molecules. Is "guide RNA" a pointer? what about the other gene targeting techniques-- like TALENs? see http://diyhpl.us/wiki/gene-editing/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/gene-editing/ "Primer for synthetic biology" http://www.openwetware.org/images/3/3d/SB_Primer_100707.pdf http://www.openwetware.org/images/3/3d/SB_Primer_100707.pdf pretty old presentation but here you go, "Synthetic Biology: A primer" http://cellbase.epfl.ch/twiki/pub/IGEM/PaperCollection/iGEM_synth_bio_lecture_2010.pdf http://cellbase.epfl.ch/twiki/pub/IGEM/PaperCollection/iGEM_...
- mattbettinson 9y agoThis is what I was looking for without realizing it. Metastructures signing DNA to regulate. Wow!
- nonbel 9y agoYet another mainstream news report on CRISPR before any scientific report is available.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoYeah, science by press release is unfortunately quite common nowadays.
- dr_ 9y agoI realize that scientific consensus is that gene editing should not be permitted to enhance human performance - be it mental or physical. But if one nation ignores this consensus, and starts producing "super humans" wouldn't other nations be compelled to follow? Otherwise, over time, wouldn't their citizens, and their nation, slowly fall behind as a country of power and status? Just a thought.
- david927 9y agoMy understanding is that China has been doing this for years. *https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
- drngdds 9y ago>Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. Wow, that's a huge deal if it's accurate. (I don't know much about the science involved so I can't judge whether it is.)
- theWatcher37 9y agoI all honestly, we can not allow a gene-gap. Forget racism, what happens when a country can actually make it's people "better" (faster/smarter/live longer/stronger) by significant margins?
- Tade0 9y agoThe rest of the world either catches up or lands in a zoo eventually.
- biggerbistro 9y agoThe fact that more people aren't terrified of this worries me. Hitler may have been wrong with his "aryan superman" view but what happens when there is science backing it up? Not really looking forward to a genetically-enforced caste system.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aphextron 9y agoWhy?
- thrwaway655366 9y agoGATTACA!
- noir-york 9y agoEvolution made us, then we discovered it, and now we can directly code it. Pity evolution didn't give us the intelligence, restraint and good judgement to make sure that we will not screw this up. And we will. A myriad of reasons will be given. Medical reasons - how could one refuse? Then parents: "Harvard is expensive and I want to give my child the best chance I can afford". Then nation states will feel pressure to 'level the genetic playing field'. On the other hand, with AI soon replacing us, apparently, we can fight back and enhance ourselves!
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> Pity evolution didn't give us the intelligence, restraint and good judgement to make sure that we will not screw this up. And we will. Because this is how we grow up. We screw up, again and again, but as long as we come out stronger each time, I'd say it's worth it. That's why I believe a top priority today should be ensuring that our technological civilization does not collapse - through neither technological mistakes, nor through social upheaval. And if we were not given enough intelligence, restraint and good judgement to avoid making stupid errors, then maybe at some point, we'll fix that too.
- jlebrech 9y agoReactivate Vitamin C synthesis, etc.
- k__ 9y agoSounds nice, but I don't want children, I want myself to be improved.
- plaidfuji 9y agoThis is the real shit right here. There's going to be gene-ism against older generations with inferior genetics, talk of "cutting them off" of government health programs because their fragile bodies are too expensive to maintain...
- gpawl 9y agoDid you know that even today, old people are less healthy than young people?
- artur_makly 9y ago"Although none of the embryos were allowed to develop for more than a few days—and there was never any intention of implanting them into a womb—" oh im sure human trials have begun by the time mass articles like this surface. i've met young gententic research students who told me they went to work for labs based in Latam simply because they were allowed to do perform any experiments deemed illegal in the US - to get a precious few years of a head start.
- austenallred 9y agoYup. Common startup advice for US startups in the healthcare space is "go to India"
- thosakwe 9y agoIn my class just Monday, we watched a film titled Gattaca, which tells the story of a society fueled by eugenics, where most births are in-vitro modified babies, and there is clear discrimination against those with "imperfect" genes. It's crazy how close these things are to reality.
- literallycancer 9y agoPeople refusing genetic modifications to remove risks of birth defects are more harmful than antivaxxers.
- nerdponx 9y agoNo. Birth defects aren't contagious and are not often fatal. Also -- where do you draw the line between "defect" and "cosmetic enhancement"? It will become a race to the bottom.
- i_are_smart 9y ago> Birth defects aren't contagious and are not often fatal. Well, not immediately fatal, anyway. What if a gene modification is developed that halves the rate of aging? Is it a birth defect to have a maximum life expectancy of only 120 years instead of 200 years?
- PrimalDual 9y agoHow would genetic editing be a race to the bottom? If anything it would be a race to the top. If every generation got smarter, healthier and more attractive thanks to procedures like this humanity would be better for it. This would probably be true even if only a minority of people can afford it. If we had orders of magnitues more of genius level intellects pushing the boundaries of technology and science, humanity would be better for it. I just don't see where this would be harmful if it works as intended.
- yulaow 9y agoIt depends, if you create a super-race which ends to fight their "inferiors" or viceversa, well, you just doomed humanity Elisium style.
- ziikutv 9y agoWow it's a Brave new world.
- theRhino 9y agoquestion is did they use emacs or vim?
- plaidfuji 9y agoI've seen most of these arguments for and against gene editing before, but the fact of the matter is that it will come down to the economic competitiveness of nations, as always. What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species' genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A "zero day exploit" that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.
- speby 9y agoThing is, we are naturally not diverse at all (in part because our nearest ancestors with whom which we, at one time, did have reproduction compatibility with, are no longer here): https://www.ashg.org/education/pdf/geneticvariation.pdf https://www.ashg.org/education/pdf/geneticvariation.pdf Specifically, modern humans have, on average, less than 0.1% of differences in their DNA amongst each other: "How diverse are we? Perhaps the most widely cited statistic about human genetic diversity is that any two humans differ, on average, at about 1 in 1,000 DNA base pairs (0.1%). Human genetic diversity is substantially lower than that of many other species, including our nearest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee. Genetic diversity is a function of a population's "age" (i.e., the amount of time during which mutations accumulate to generate diversity) and its size. Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals). To put the 0.1% genetic diversity estimate into perspective, it is useful to remember that humans have approximately 3 billion base pairs in a haploid cell. Thus, any pair of humans differs by approximately 3 million base pairs. These differences contain much useful information about the evolutionary history of our species. In addition, the small proportion of differences that occur within genes can lead to critical inferences about the effects of natural selection. "
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- plaidfuji 9y agoThis is definitely true, but all of these genes have been vetted by millions of years of evolution, so we know they're rock solid. The edits we're talking about will be happening on a time scale that won't be constrained by natural selection, so by the time a weakness is found in one of these new genes, it's likely that it will already be widely adopted. I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to anticipate what natural selection will look like when we multiply the "mutation rate" by probably > 10 orders of magnitude.
- ysleepy 9y agoWhy do in on human embryos instead of any other animal? At this stage, it must be for publicity reasons alone. Tasteless in my view.
- freeflight 9y agoBecause we've already done it with plenty of other animals, even cloned them and let them grow to maturity. Never heard of Dolly? We've been at a point, where it's viable for human application, for quite a while. But the ethical and religious stigma is preventing us from going the full distance. As of right now, it is very likely that the first genetically engineered/enhanced human will be a Chinese person because they are way more pragmatic about those issues.
- pcnonpc 9y ago"The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838 What do you think about this? From what I gather, the Chinese and much of East Asia do not have cultural resistance against using genetic engineering to increase their children's IQs. I will even guess that the governments will encourage their populations to use it. Will the US, in particular the educated portion of the population, will adopt the practice soon after it is proven safe? If China starts to do that en masse, Europe and the US will likely criticize them initially. Will they then be forced to adopt the practice soon afterwards? If so, how many years of lag approximately? How much resistance will there be on adopting the practice especially considering the left's belief on everyone's fundamental equality? The denial about the importance of intelligence is quite obvious now at least by a significant percentage of Americans and Europeans. (They claim "hard work and culture are what matter.", ignoring twins and adopt studies) Will they wait for 1-2 generations until it's so obvious they cannot compete when they start to use genetic engineering themselves?
- pcnonpc 9y agoThe average Chinese also values education and intellgence much more than the average American. "Beijing parents splurge £154,000 on street alleyway in catchment area for desirable school It may be a dusty passageway, ridden with insects and with electric cables dangling precariously from crumbling concrete overhead, but its value outstrips top-end property in Kensington and Chelsea due to rising demand from Chinese parents battling to get their children into elite schools." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/beijing-parents-splurge-154000-on-street-alleyway-in-catchment-a/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/beijing-parents-s...
- stillhere 9y agoSeems like a more socially acceptable form of Eugenics since society seems to value advanced science more than it does traditional mate selection based on desired physical traits.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vivekd 9y agoI think enough people recognize the ethical issues inherent in designer babies enough that we are in no danger of reaching that point. I think the tech could have great applications in livestock and curing genetic defects.
- djohnston 9y agoWe already have a clear division in health along socioeconomic lines, but delivberately encoding our inequalities into our DNA is a future I could skip.
- SiempreZeus 9y agoYou want a Gattaca world?? This is how you get a Gattaca world.
- idibidiart 9y agoEvolutionary logic is like a massive legacy codebase without any tests. Fuck with it at your own risk. You could definitely get lucky and improve functionality but you'll never know what you'll be breaking.
- patkai 9y agoI know very little about this topic, but let me shoot: isn't this method for improving competitiveness misguided and shortsighted? How about working on emotional intelligence, better education and talent management, better food in schools, better child care, more support for disadvantaged families - there is so much we can do... Or is it just not about improving society, but individuals (with deep pockets)?
- Noos 9y agoI don't think the modest raise in IQ would be worth a society that considers children as products they can alter to specification. Bill McKibben in Enough wrote eloquently about the existential dread that could happen if we somehow managed to select for musical skill for example. It's one thing to deal with your talent or lack of it in terms of the randomness of normal life, another thing to realize you are little more than a racehorse that has been bred because your parents want you to be something.
- greendestiny_re 9y agoI'm eager to see the long-term results of the gene editing procedures. >The earlier Chinese publications, although limited in scope, found CRISPR caused editing errors and that the desired DNA changes were taken up not by all the cells of an embryo, only some. Instability is an inherent property of genes.