7 ms·

We should be cautious, but provided the scientific community is ok with it, I see no reason to limit editing human DNA to just treating disease. What is the do

We should be cautious, but provided the scientific community is ok with it, I see no reason to limit editing human DNA to just treating disease. What is the downside of increasing the number of geniuses? What is the downside of saving someone from dealing with severe teenage acne? Why should some men have to worry about their genitalia being well below average in size? Why should some women never experience an orgasm? I get the instinctual revulsion to the idea of playing God or reducing our diversity, but I try to model my ethics as if I didn't know who I was going to be in the simulation before hand. These are changes that we should be advocating for if they are possible.

Retric 9y ago
IMO, the core issue is we simply don't understand DNA that well and are likely to introduce many problems potentially across a huge swath of the population. Disease treatments on the other hand are likely a lot more straightforward and the net gains are also likely larger.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  There are risks with all activities. The kind of gaps in our knowledge are smaller than ever and there if the experts say there is no obvious risk we would remiss to disregard them. There will always be the risk of the unknown, there is still the risk of the unknown with seemingly every day things like cars. The utility of cars and gene therapies is so large that we really can't afford for all the data to come in.
  - Retric 9y ago
    It's a question of sum(risk * each downside) vs benefit. Large scale genetic editing for cosmetic reasons has minimal benefit and several high risks with large associated downsides. Protein folding as a tiny example is something we have trouble simulating, expanding to multi cellular mechanisms across a lifetime is basically impossible without directly testing it. And those tests will be done on people. Prions are just an example of the kind of issues people will be dealing with. It’s really not just about inserting some code from somewhere else it’s a question of how physical structures interact and degrade. Long term I have no problem with it. But, right now we could give children blue hair for example but we have no idea what else that might cause. PS: That said, copying things from other humans is probably significantly safer and this editing will take place. I just don't think we should introduce it at the society level without at least a lifetime of test data and significant sample sizes.
waiquoo 9y ago
The issue as I see it is that this is effectively an advanced form of eugenics. The idea behind eugenics (improving the lives of future people) is probably not bad, as you say, what is the downside in increasing the number of geniuses and reducing the incidence of defects? Who doesn't want their children to be strong, beautiful, smart, and happy? The problem is that people are dicks and we will probably end up in an arms race to some sort of superhuman masterrace. It will be like going to college, where before not everyone needed to go to college, but now you have to get a 4 year degree to compete for entry level jobs (I realize there are exceptions, but you know what I mean). We need to be cautious not to end up in a GATTACA situation.
- mooseburger 9y ago
  The only real problem with the GATTACA world was that not everyone got the genetic enhancements, creating an underclass. If everyone got the mods, what's the downside? Well, I guess Jude Law's character couldn't live with the idea of being completely engineered for winning, and still losing. But his problem seems orthogonal to widespread genetic engineering. Everyone has their ambitions thwarted at some point. It has always been a problem humans faced. Hell, maybe even that can be engineered away, by being created with low propensity for self-loathing.
  - emmab 9y ago
    > If everyone got the mods, what's the downside? You can't get germline gene therapy if you're not a zygote.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      Yet? There is not property of physics that stop us from making the tech. It won't e in the first gen tech, but with all those 20 something geniuses coming out of college they can start working on that tech before too many generations pass.
  - waiquoo 9y ago
    So we should eliminate all the undesirables? Or manipulate the undesirables until they are desirable? Who chooses what traits are desirable, even if they are universally applied. I'm not arguing that this isn't amazing technology that could potentially cure a lot of disabling diseases, that possibility is very exciting. I am just stating that there are some tricky ethical dilemmas involved.
vbuwivbiu 9y ago
There's no downside. It's only the same as what we did with smallpox and polio. I'm all for it: I'd get genedrives for all kinds of genetically-determined diseases. What concerns me is how genes affect personality. I don't want a world of geniuses if a side-effect is they're all nasty people. Now I like to think that smarter people are also nicer, on the whole. And violence is often associated with frontal-lobe defects. I would like to live in a happier more secure world, and if that means engineering people to be nicer, less murderous people then so be it. But that's Clockwork Orange territory.
dontreact 9y ago
The downside would be that if we modify or select only for intelligence, we may get morally worse individuals. Perhaps morality and intelligence are somewhat correlated, but that may break down if we explicitly select only for intelligence. Imagine flooding the world with ultra-smart ultra-selfish hackers who manage to break all security systems and steal all the wealth or otherwise wreak self serving havoc.
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  Compared to the current qualities we select for? Breeding among humans is by no means random, and I think selecting for intelligence would be an improvement. I think the bigger concern is how we select for intelligence. Doing it based on a few genes that correlate strongly with intelligence can lead to an increased vulnerability to health issues related to those genes we don't know about, but I think this applies to any gene level selection based on any characteristics.
  - dontreact 9y ago
    Right I guess that part of my point is that even if you resolve all those issues you would still really want to select for is intelligence and pro-social/moral behavior in order to optimize the positive impact of a person.
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  Your comment is phrased as if antisocial traits don't already confer greater reproductive success. http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2814%2900077-4/abstract http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2814%2900077-4/a... >Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners.
  - 9y ago

Retric 9y ago

IMO, the core issue is we simply don't understand DNA that well and are likely to introduce many problems potentially across a huge swath of the population. Disease treatments on the other hand are likely a lot more straightforward and the net gains are also likely larger.

sqeaky 9y ago
There are risks with all activities. The kind of gaps in our knowledge are smaller than ever and there if the experts say there is no obvious risk we would remiss to disregard them. There will always be the risk of the unknown, there is still the risk of the unknown with seemingly every day things like cars. The utility of cars and gene therapies is so large that we really can't afford for all the data to come in.
- Retric 9y ago
  It's a question of sum(risk * each downside) vs benefit. Large scale genetic editing for cosmetic reasons has minimal benefit and several high risks with large associated downsides. Protein folding as a tiny example is something we have trouble simulating, expanding to multi cellular mechanisms across a lifetime is basically impossible without directly testing it. And those tests will be done on people. Prions are just an example of the kind of issues people will be dealing with. It’s really not just about inserting some code from somewhere else it’s a question of how physical structures interact and degrade. Long term I have no problem with it. But, right now we could give children blue hair for example but we have no idea what else that might cause. PS: That said, copying things from other humans is probably significantly safer and this editing will take place. I just don't think we should introduce it at the society level without at least a lifetime of test data and significant sample sizes.

waiquoo 9y ago

The issue as I see it is that this is effectively an advanced form of eugenics. The idea behind eugenics (improving the lives of future people) is probably not bad, as you say, what is the downside in increasing the number of geniuses and reducing the incidence of defects? Who doesn't want their children to be strong, beautiful, smart, and happy? The problem is that people are dicks and we will probably end up in an arms race to some sort of superhuman masterrace. It will be like going to college, where before not everyone needed to go to college, but now you have to get a 4 year degree to compete for entry level jobs (I realize there are exceptions, but you know what I mean). We need to be cautious not to end up in a GATTACA situation.

mooseburger 9y ago
The only real problem with the GATTACA world was that not everyone got the genetic enhancements, creating an underclass. If everyone got the mods, what's the downside? Well, I guess Jude Law's character couldn't live with the idea of being completely engineered for winning, and still losing. But his problem seems orthogonal to widespread genetic engineering. Everyone has their ambitions thwarted at some point. It has always been a problem humans faced. Hell, maybe even that can be engineered away, by being created with low propensity for self-loathing.
- emmab 9y ago
  > If everyone got the mods, what's the downside? You can't get germline gene therapy if you're not a zygote.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    Yet? There is not property of physics that stop us from making the tech. It won't e in the first gen tech, but with all those 20 something geniuses coming out of college they can start working on that tech before too many generations pass.
- waiquoo 9y ago
  So we should eliminate all the undesirables? Or manipulate the undesirables until they are desirable? Who chooses what traits are desirable, even if they are universally applied. I'm not arguing that this isn't amazing technology that could potentially cure a lot of disabling diseases, that possibility is very exciting. I am just stating that there are some tricky ethical dilemmas involved.

vbuwivbiu 9y ago

There's no downside. It's only the same as what we did with smallpox and polio. I'm all for it: I'd get genedrives for all kinds of genetically-determined diseases. What concerns me is how genes affect personality. I don't want a world of geniuses if a side-effect is they're all nasty people. Now I like to think that smarter people are also nicer, on the whole. And violence is often associated with frontal-lobe defects. I would like to live in a happier more secure world, and if that means engineering people to be nicer, less murderous people then so be it. But that's Clockwork Orange territory.

dontreact 9y ago

The downside would be that if we modify or select only for intelligence, we may get morally worse individuals. Perhaps morality and intelligence are somewhat correlated, but that may break down if we explicitly select only for intelligence. Imagine flooding the world with ultra-smart ultra-selfish hackers who manage to break all security systems and steal all the wealth or otherwise wreak self serving havoc.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago
Compared to the current qualities we select for? Breeding among humans is by no means random, and I think selecting for intelligence would be an improvement. I think the bigger concern is how we select for intelligence. Doing it based on a few genes that correlate strongly with intelligence can lead to an increased vulnerability to health issues related to those genes we don't know about, but I think this applies to any gene level selection based on any characteristics.
- dontreact 9y ago
  Right I guess that part of my point is that even if you resolve all those issues you would still really want to select for is intelligence and pro-social/moral behavior in order to optimize the positive impact of a person.
sbierwagen 9y ago
Your comment is phrased as if antisocial traits don't already confer greater reproductive success. http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2814%2900077-4/abstract http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2814%2900077-4/a... >Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners.
- 9y ago