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Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation in Human Embryos
- bognition 9y agoThis is really exciting news. However, a big challenge that makes this work extremely difficult to bring to fruition is that you have to let an embryo develop fully to figure out to determine if the therapy actually produces a healthy human. At which point the consequences of failed experiments become increasingly difficult to work with for obvious ethical and moral reasons.
- abhi3 9y agoThey did let them grow for 5 days which should have provided some data. Though what I don't get is why were they destroyed after 5 days? If it's considered ethical to allow abortions for periods up to 20+ weeks, then it should be considered ethical for science as well.
- sbuttgereit 9y agoThe issue would be abortions for periods up to 20+ weeks considered ethical by whom? There's nowhere near consensus on that issue in society. Also the ethics of abortion wouldn't be the same as the ethics of such experiments; in abortion the rights of the mother are at play, minimally, and there are reasonable discussions about when an embryo obtains rights as well as whose rights reign supreme. Even if considered legal, given that law != ethics, the balance of rights is not the same as abortion. I would also expect the scientists to deal with this pretty conservatively because if they push those limits, the likely cries to stop funding, etc, etc, would become much more pronounced and the likelihood of the work hitting a political wall much higher.
- pishpash 9y agoUh no? Pregnancy is usually not an elective experiment. Standards are much higher for experiments, c.f. standards applied to human subject studies vs. medical treatment.
- aaronmck 9y agoCurrently there's limits on how long you can keep embryos going -- the '14-day rule': http://www.nature.com/news/embryology-policy-revisit-the-14-day-rule-1.19838 http://www.nature.com/news/embryology-policy-revisit-the-14-... Will be interesting to see the moral and ethical debate on any change here.
- gasbag 9y agoThere is a Radiolab episode about this too. They talk about all of the things that we don't know about that happen between days 14 and ~30 (working from memory), and also how the person who came up with the 14 day rule chose that number at least in part because, at the time, it was way out of reach and did not seem like it would ever be achievable. http://www.radiolab.org/story/primitive-streak/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/primitive-streak/
- openasocket 9y agoThe practical reason is it's not clear how long they would survive. These embryos are in a petri dish, unless they were to implant them in a women's uterus I'm not sure how long they would be able to develop. You might be able to develop them longer than five days, but then you hit the ethical issues. The entire moral argument for abortions is based on bodily autonomy of women, and that those rights trump the rights of an unborn fetus. But for raising a fetus in an artificial environment there is no body autonomy argument. Another issue is murkier, and is based on the circumstances. Generally abortions are used by women who did not intend to get pregnant as a last resort form of birth control. When you're performing abortions for scientific purposes it's different, and there are different ethical standards to consider.
- chii 9y agoI think i would put the same importance on the well-being of a women and scientific progress. One shouldn't trump the other.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- phkahler 9y agoI've often wondered about Cystic Fibrosis and DNA editing. For people with two copies of the variant gene, they get the disease. But there are indications that having one copy of it can bring benefits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterozygote_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterozygote_advantage). So what if the optimum for humans is to have both variants? It would seem appropriate to move the newer CF gene variant to a different place on the chromosome so that doesn't need to displace the original gene. I imagine nature may eventually figure this out, but embryonic DNA editing could bring it about sooner. Of course this is speculative on my part and people would obviously debate taking such action even if the science really suggests it's a good idea.
- komali2 9y ago>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exert control over their environment, it's inevitable that we also learn to control our own evolution. Rejecting this seems like tying our hands behind our backs unnecessarily. But I get that huge swathes of the population reject it for religious reasons or what have you. I argue that the "arms race" argument could work well to sway these people, and then before we can send super-soldiers into battle, our much more intelligent children will realize total species improvement is a better investment than squabbling over arbitrary borders, and carry on the race without these disputes.
- abhi3 9y agoActually, the take away from this experiment is not that 'designer babies' are becoming more likely. In fact, when the researchers tried to genetically add synthetic DNA to the male genome it ended up rejecting it and took the copy from the female genome. >> They injected a synthetic healthy DNA sequence into the fertilized egg, expecting that the male genome would copy that sequence into the cut portion. That is how this gene-editing process works in other cells in the body, and in mouse embryos, Dr. Mitalipov said. Instead, the male gene copied the healthy sequence from the female gene. The authors don’t know why it happened.
- jxramos 9y agoThat would be incredibly interesting if there is some unknown molecular self-defense mechanism sort of thing in place.
- jcadam 9y agoI don't like it, but I have to admit you're most certainly correct that it's only a matter of time before human genetic-enhancement is commonplace. Best case, we'll be living in a Gattaca-esque world before the end of the century.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago> They injected a synthetic healthy DNA sequence into the fertilized egg, expecting that the male genome would copy that sequence into the cut portion ... Instead, the male gene copied the healthy sequence from the female gene. The authors don’t know why it happened. This seems like the most remarkable part of this entire article. It sounds like a huge discovery. There's a lot of ethical concerns that can be laid aside if the embryo is simply replacing genes from the other parent. That's still just a healthy baby, not a "designer" baby.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoIt almost sounds like there's an anti-tampering (i.e. counter-mutagenic) system in place we don't understand. Makes sense. Not only is meiosis more error-prone than mitosis, there's also a wide difference in error rates between the sexes (40 to 60% for women and 3% for men) [1]. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=I1ACBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=mitosis+versus+meiosis+error+rates&source=bl&ots=aUJ61ftpzI&sig=pgueao99GZb1Ckzfyc7uImlbUaY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqksrGkrnVAhXkz4MKHYSODq44ChDoAQgnMAE#v=onepage&q=mitosis%20versus%20meiosis%20error%20rates&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=I1ACBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA...
- Balgair 9y agoI went through a human neural development class in grad school and the most interesting thing I learned is that we have no/little idea what is going on. We know that rostralization/posteriorization is set up at initial fertilization in most vertebrates, but we have no what causes it (utube-spindles? actin responses to puncture?). Same with dorsal/ventralization. The way we know this small bit? Toads' (xenopus) have a dark/light side to their eggs and we can track that, but other 'clear' egged species are assumed to be like that, as we can't 'tattoo' a cell membrane reliably yet. In general, I was really stunned at the insane complexity and fervor of development. I mean, you go from one tiny little cell and one tiny little sperm, and then you end up with a trillion little cells all different and all really specialized in under a year. And it mostly all works! Some of those cell migrate a very long way (from a baby elephant's head to it's toes with some nerves) almost perfectly. Some of the time, tons of cells are born, shepherd other cells about, and then die off in about a day (like apoptosis in breast-feeding). Why? No clue. Maybe evolutionary 'holdovers', dunno, more funding please. Really, the shear complexity and energy of the system, with things crashing into each other, traffic jams of cells in a neural cleft, all going about all at once, it is stunning. I can understand a lot of researchers that are in that field and how deeply religious they are, seeing and 'understanding' it all can be moving.
- quotemstr 9y agoGood! For too long, we've been hampered by the limitations of a human nature evolved millions of years ago for a very different environment. All previous attempts at changing human nature have failed. Activism does not work. Grand social movements do not work. Policing language does not work. We now have a chance to succeed in improving ourselves using tools that actually work.
- lallysingh 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaver_(Firefly)#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaver_(Firefly)#Origin
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoFallacy of Fictional Evidence.
- jerrylives 9y agoWhat's the gene for racism you plan on editing? The human body isn't a config file
- logronoide 9y agoBaby Designer... DNA Architect... Genes Coder... they will sound very good in Linkedin.
- pishpash 9y ago"Led the effort to clean up the genetic debt introduced by previous teams and refactored for efficiency. Offspring eats less and no longer randomly shits everywhere."
- donbronson 9y ago> She doubts a flood of couples will have “edited children.” And one person's gut check should be ok, right?
- fbdhsfagdshafgh 9y agoThe particular fix done in this study prevents hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disorder that I have. I cannot explain how weird it feels to read front page headlines that scientists have "fixed" me, that its a huge breakthrough that scientists will be able to remove part of what makes me ME from future generations. I'm all for it, of course. HCM, most frequently diagnosed in people by their sudden death, is bad. But at a personal level, this feels unnerving.
- angersock 9y agoNow imagine when we can "cure" things like autism, nonstandard genders, race, etc. A lot of tolerance is predicated on things being out of our hands, practically. That goes away if we can change them.
- 0xffff2 9y agoI can't claim to represent the last two, but I would gladly trade a great deal less tolerance of autistic people for no one to ever be born with autism ever again, even if I didn't personally benefit at all.
- jubabuba 9y agoI can't wait until this technology matures and I can fly in to a clinic somewhere in the world to have this work completed so my future children will never have to suffer from debilitating diseases.
- CoolNickname 9y agoA lot of people will be talking about ethics. But I'm thinking more along the lines of economics. Rich people having expensive gene edited kids. They're stronger, smarter, more driven, and healthier than your kids. They are better looking. They'll be more advanced than kids their age. They'll have all sorts of built in advantages. The social and economic gap will widen. Opportunities come easier to the people who look great, are crazy smart, and are driven to attain them. So the rich kids become richer and more powerful. It's one thing to get a head start in life because your parents give you money. It's a much bigger advantage when your parents can also afford to give you built in physical and mental advantages far beyond other people. Imagine being the kid who realizes he's slower than his classmates because his parents are poor, and that it's too late to ever change that.
- 0xffff2 9y agoI don't see any alternative here. You could theoretically make the gene-editing a standard benefit paid for by the government, but the US at least can't even agree on how to provide basic healthcare, so it's unlikely we would agree on this. You could outlaw gene-editing, but as long as it's medically possible some people will still do it, and at best you get the same result at a slower rate.
- arpa 9y agoYou know what's funny? That it already is as you describe - due to environmental reasons. Better food. Better rearing. Better access to developmental aids. And all this without any needless expensive gene editing.
- EvilDictator 9y agoAs someone with a genetic disease that involves my spine disintegrating and my heart basically being a time bomb, I have a really hard time seeing a problem with this. Limit it to diseases and genetic anomalies so it doesn't become a race thing and voila. Why would getting rid of things like my disease be a bad thing?
- The_Notorious 9y agoI think it's unethical for us to not pursue gene editing. Why bring children into this world with greater susceptibilities to disease? Also, if people want to go a step further and alter traits like appearance and athletic ability that should be their choice. It is their genetic material.
- chii 9y agoThe issue I think is one of accessibility and availablity. If you're poor, and can't afford this, you are literally priced out of the gene pool. There has to be regulation to make sure that the tech is not out of reach of the poor.
- ngneer 9y agoIt would be nice if we could figure out a way to encode knowledge in the genotype (serialization) to be extracted by the phenotype (deserialization). Injecting Wikipedia into an embryo...
- NationLider 9y agoSo where do i sign up i do not want kids if i can not guarantee there going to have the best life available. I suppose its a form of evolution that we choose.
- craptocurrency 9y agoTo stop spread and misuse of this research, never make a Chinese as part of this scientific committee. See how they helped spread the nuclear arsenal.
- dang 9y agoRacial and national flamewar is not allowed on HN, and we've banned this account.
- gressquel 9y agothink banning him is a bit harsh. A warning should be fine. I also don't think he meant to be racist, he is just afraid something as powerful as gene editing can get into hands of wrong people. Not saying all chineese are bad.
- dang 9y agoI'm always happy to see community members reading others charitably, and I'm also happy to be wrong about any HN user's intentions (and unban or adjust accordingly). However, in my experience comments like this never lead anywhere good in the future, both in terms of their effect on threads and in terms of future output from such accounts. So we'd need a commitment not to post like this again to HN.
- gressquel 9y agoseeing through his posting history, you may be right in banning him.
- roceasta 9y agoThere's a huge difference between eliminating known mutations and somehow engineering for enhanced positive traits. The latter requires knowledge that we simply don't have. Even if we did obtain it, it doesn't follow that Jo Slow would be worse off. We're all of us already better off living in a world with smart people in it. We're obviously better off living in a world with healthier people in it (reduced healthcare costs) Futhermore it doesn't make sense to be personally jealous of smart people. It seems that being smart can be a significant burden; you're an outsider at best or you veer into mental disorder at worst. Only rarely do smart people flower into creative geniuses, the kind of people who contribute to progress. Most people use their smarts to be more normal than the norm...
- justonepost 9y agoHealthier people don't reduce costs, they just delay them.
- macleodnine 9y agoWhat? Maybe if you only count the costs of someone on their deathbed. Someone who requires Care their whole life definitively costs more than someone who doesn't
- basicplus2 9y agoOne step closer to the 'master race', I guess my decendants will end up as pets, slaves or killed off.