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China, Unhampered by Rules, Races Ahead in Gene-Editing Trials
- Nerada 9y agoUnhampered by Fear? The article states 'Rules', which is probably more apt.
- dang 9y agoNot sure if that was editorialized or the WSJ changed the title, but we've s/Fear/Rules/ above.
- neonate 9y agohttp://archive.is/pZ9My http://archive.is/pZ9My
- dtornabene 9y agoThank you! I actually really wanted to read this one but can't afford a subscription at the moment.
- dmix 9y agoClick the "web" link on HN to read paywalled articles.
- dtornabene 9y agoi had no idea. thanks for that.
- crusso 9y agoThat still didn't work for me in Chrome - even in incognito mode. I copy-pasted the link to a normal Firefox window and it worked from there.
- mirimir 9y agoDoesn't work for me? Overloaded? But https://gizmodo.com/china-has-already-gene-edited-86-people-with-crispr-1822297524 https://gizmodo.com/china-has-already-gene-edited-86-people-...
- nateburke 9y agoA great primer on CRISPR can be found here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-crispr/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-crispr/
- tormeh 9y agoIf there was a sector fund for Chinese biotech (preferably Gene editing) I would buy it instantly. So far the closest I've gotten is ARKG, but that's US. Anyone know if there's any way for a retail investor to gain exposure to Chinese Gene editing industry/startups?
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoNot sure which exchanges without some more digging, but I see a fair number of companies are listed[1], apparently. 1: http://www.chinabiotoday.com/categories/stockwatch http://www.chinabiotoday.com/categories/stockwatch
- tormeh 9y agoIdeally I'd want some kind of fund holding a lot of stocks. Individual companies are too volatile for me. I tend to buy high and sell low when investing in individual companies.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIf you want to play with A shares, it is almost day trading on individual stocks and the Chinese stock exchange isn't sophisticated enough yet where people actually go and buy funds. Of course, foreigner individuals are mostly locked out of A shares, so this is mostly moot, maybe try Hong Kong?
- melling 9y agoWow, I posted this story twice within the past 24 hours. The first one didn't quite get enough momentum, and the second got nothing. I knew it was a winner. I should have gone for 3. 1pm on Monday didn't do it. Looks like 5pm EST was a better time.
- dang 9y agoI think it's mostly just random what does or doesn't get attention. I noticed an article yesterday that only took off on its ninth posting: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservice%20Madness%20in%202018&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservic.... We try to rescue good stories that fell through the cracks and put them in the second-chance queue, described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and links back from there. But it's random what gets seen that way, too. Plus it depends on how much energy we have and whether there are flamewars going on elsewhere and whatnot.
- staunch 9y agoIf the human race was a bit more functional, we might already be living in a Star Trek-level near-utopia. A great thing about being alive today is knowing how much less humans will suffer in the future. A tough part of being alive today is knowing that you're likely to miss out on it, and will instead suffer greatly. Our descendants will pity us for lacking medical technology the same way we pity our ancestors.
- linkmotif 9y agoDepends on your perspective. Bioethics exist in the West because people here have cared to ask some very sensible questions about what it means to be human, and the trade offs we make as we become post human. > Our descendants will pity us for lacking medical technology the same way we pity our ancestors. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe our descendants will be homogenous near-automatons, the product of normalizing and optimizing humanity to something that today we wouldn’t even recognize as human. I’m glad the West is “hampered” by bioethics. China is generally not hampered by ethics or advanced social thought of any kind. God bless them.
- stanfordkid 9y ago"Advanced Social Thought" is really just a western pseudonym for "the shadows of judeo-christian morality". I wouldn't be so quick to under-estimate them so quickly. Chinese art & philosophy is just as profound as those in the west. America may seem secular but our attitudes towards death and the individual are the result of our Christian roots.
- linkmotif 9y agoDefinitely what you’re saying about China, especially historically, is true. Thanks for leaving your comment, to acknowledge this. But these days what they’re doing is end-of-days stuff in my opinion even without bringing Judeo-Christian morality into the mix. Mass collecting DNA to catch criminals. Etching IDs onto knives. Convenient—yes. Desirable socially? Questionable. (America doesn’t seem secular. I am, however, excitedly watching it progressing back to paganism. Who knows where that will shake out though.)
- xr4ti 9y agoUnrestricted gene editing in humans is probably a bad idea. (1) Evolution has been pretty effective to this point, (2) decreasing genetic variability will make humans as a species more susceptible to extinction from a single event, and (3) it will probably backfire as humans do not possess the foresight to know what the world will be in 1-3 generations and what traits might predispose their descendants to success. Hell what we think of as genetic "diseases" give an evolutionary advantage under the right circumstances (ex. sickle cell anemia + malaria, cystic fibrosis + cholera).
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>Evolution has been pretty effective to this point Survivorship bias, pure and simple. In terms of evolutionary timescales, the success of humans is an anomaly, if not an outright accident. The overwhelming majority of all species that have ever existed has gone extinct. Gene editing has the potential to not leave things up to chance, moving forward.
- xr4ti 9y agoNot leave things up to chance?! Is the universe not inherently probabilistic? I'm guessing you mean make things a little more deterministic than they are now in terms of human evolution? Maybe, but I think its important to ask whether or not we already exist in some sort of thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the universe (on an evolutionary spacetime scale). I also think it's not totally accurate to say that most species have gone extinct vs have evolved into something else.
- landryraccoon 9y agoIt's equally risky not to do it. Human genetic engineering is a completely new technology. It could be massively disruptive or a dud. But if it is disruptive, then people who are conservative and late to get on board will be left behind. If you're risk adverse, that's probably why it concerns you. Are you afraid it works, or afraid it doesn't?
- calimac 9y agoWhy not applaud China for their swift justice mobile execution vans. "China, the country where a death sentence is actually carried out in a timely fashion." Or how about the black market organ trade? You liberal SJW's are so limited in your recognition of gene editing.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoSome opinions. Unhampered!=Free Unhampered~Abuse of Human Rights Loosening some protections for terminal/near terminal patients who may want to take a gamble on an untested treatment may be warranted, however.
- zawerf 9y agoThere is a great talk on some of the dangers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY News article if you can't watch: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/31/bioweapons-cancer-moonshot-gene-editing https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/31/bioweapons-c... tl;dr “The reason you haven’t heard much about bioweapons is that they’ve been held back by a pretty severe limitation, which is the potential for blowback." Unlocking the ability to target specific genes will overcome this since the same tech that allows targeting only cancer cell will allow targeting specific groups or individuals. > What, for example, if groups spread their agenda in a very direct way, by literally rewriting DNA to make it impossible to live a life against their credo? Suppose militant vegans wanted to end meat eating: there’s a gene for that. Or imagine if radical misogynists wanted to force the veiling of all women: there’s a gene for sunlight intolerance, and the genetic functions of gender are already well-known. > Or, he suggested, attacks could be done on an individual level: targeting public figures by stealing their genetic code, or targeting their whole family by sequencing the genes of someone who’s closely related. And the attacks could be subtler than what’s expected: Sotos cited genes for intractable diarrhea, massive weight gain, total baldness and “an intense fishy body odour”.
- wbl 9y agoHow on earth will they contaminate my bodily fluids?
- andygates 9y agoHandwave handwave, SyFy-original movie-plot technobabble.
- ejolto 9y agoHe talks about using the measles virus as an attack vector. Measles is an extremely contagious virus.
- SolarNet 9y agoDepends how resilient they can make it, and how much they need. There are plenty of espionage stories involving being stuck by needles without knowing it. Or if they can get it into your food (but they'd have to make it resistant to being digested). Or if they can aerosolize it and spray it on you. The truly scary thing is if they can make it contagious, but only effect the target. There are so many benign strains of DNA that we just live with it would be hard to detect. Then you just infect someone close to the target and wait for them to be effected (and perhaps some collateral damage from those unlucky enough to be similar enough to the target). The nightmare scenario is not when terrorists use this to target specific groups of people (e.g. all women, all people of a specific ethnicity), it's when it goes beyond our control by accident and contaminates all of our bodily fluids.
- grwthckrmstr 9y agoFirst,gene-editing will become accepted as a norm to prevent/cure? diseases. Then, the same technology will be used to create superior beings (hacking our own evolution). It's only natural that something which promises to heal, also aids in enhancement (think Viagra). I for one am excited about it's prospects in the future. For example - Can we live in a world free from cancer?
- true_tuna 9y agoPaywalled articles are bullshit. If you post them you legitimize the process. You are building the wrong world when you do that.
- jaimex2 9y agoI have no problems with China beta testing gene editing. I wonder what bugs they will find...
- grondilu 9y agoFor people who can read French, I highly recommend Dr Laurent Alexandre's latest book on related subjects[1] He talks about how China will likely be the first to pursue human enhancement via genetic engineering (though he mainly talks about Preimplantation genetic diagnosis[2], not at all CRISPR). 1. http://www.editions-jclattes.fr/la-guerre-des-intelligences-9782709660846 http://www.editions-jclattes.fr/la-guerre-des-intelligences-... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagno...