7 ms·

Japan set to allow gene-editing tools for research into early human development

108 points by benryon 8y ago

vjsc 8y ago
What I am looking forward to is when someone tries to start cloning process on a human being. When I was a kid, in 1990s, there was a lot of fuss around cloning. Most people rejected it as unethical. I wonder how far the state of the art has come since then in cloning technology. I am guessing that cloning maybe a real chance for humans to become immortal or atleast live longer lives.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  i.e. via cloning yourself and then harvesting organs / injecting blood from your clone? Transplanting your brain into the clone body? Or ...?
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    It would take extreme idiocy to think that this is morally sound. There is no defensible argument for treating a human clone as anything less than human.
    - a_imho 8y ago
      What if we don't call it a human | engineer it just so it does not meet some agreed criteria for human | offers their organs voluntarily* | ... ?
      - anonytrary 8y ago
        That's not how cloning works. Clones aren't empty husks full of free organs ripe for the taking, any more than non-clones are. Even if you could create a clone without a brain, it's still hard to condone. If an anencephalic fetus miraculously grew to 24 years of age, would people post a "free organs" sign on him and lay him down on their lawn? Gonna have to say... probably not.
  - beerlord 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant I don't think its outside of the realms of possibility for the mega-rich. Grow a clone for 20 years, and transplant your brain into a fresh body.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Cloning people for harvesting organs doesn't really make that much sense: it'll take many years to grow the organs to the size needed to be useful as replacements. We're already working on growing (or even 3D-printing) replacement organs without the human; that avoids ethical problems, but it also doesn't require the huge investment in time and resources needed to grow clones of yourself and raise them to adulthood. They'll probably have this technology ready for prime-time before they could have human cloning working plus have those clones grow to late adolescence.
    - grecy 8y ago
      Surely if we're cloning people it won't be too hard to accelerate growth as well. If not, just stick all the clones somewhere and have them sit around waiting until their organs are needed. ie. the movie "The Island"
      - magduf 8y ago
        That's my point. We don't need "the island"; when we've worked out the genetic issues with cloning, we'll already know how to just grow organs on-demand. The whole clone thing doesn't make that much sense when you look at it that way; it would cost a fortune to raise a human to adulthood just for organ harvesting, plus garner all kinds of ethical problems and controversy and protesters etc. No one's going to protest organ-growing or 3D-organ-printing except maybe a few religious nuts. And with the clone, what happens when you harvest its heart (killing it), and now you need a lung? Or you harvest one thing, and then get injured and need that same part, but you didn't have multiple clones lined up? With organ-printing, you just make the organ you need when you need it. We still don't have truly 100% working clones; we tried with a sheep a while ago and it wasn't 100% and died early. However, we're already experimenting with 3D-printing organs.
- rqs 8y ago
  I think as far as current tech goes, even if somebody gets 100% cloned, their mind (data in the brain) would still be different. That of course is when The 6th Day[0] (Brain data copy + clone) will never become a reality. Here is a video about cloning dogs you may interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHYUvmiXQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHYUvmiXQI [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/
- anonytrary 8y ago
  > [In the 90s] most people rejected it as unethical. I don't understand this. If a clone is given the same rights as a non-clone, I can't see how cloning is unethical. It's not like non-clones get a choice in whether or not they want to exist. Why would we treat clones differently, anyway? > I am guessing that cloning maybe a real chance for humans to become immortal Sounds like you are confusing classes with instances. If every human is a different class, the class gets to potentially live forever, but each instance of the class still goes through the lifecycle. It's not like the consciousness of a previous instance is copied to a later instance. Each instance presumably gets its own state.
  - paxy 8y ago
    In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out. If you instead framed it as birthing a child who was exactly like you, I'm sure the perception would be a lot different.
    - Zanni 8y ago
      Yes. The word "clone" has been so abused by popular media that people have wild misconceptions and objections. We should call them "elective identical twins."
      - jobigoud 8y ago
        They won't be twins as they won't necessarily be carried by the same mother/womb and won't have the same age. (In the "cloning an adult" scenario).
    - anonytrary 8y ago
      > In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out. I highly doubt this is even close to true. Most people are smart enough to know that cloning has something to do with "modifying the egg and sperm and growing the baby". That's literally all they have to know to not think the absurd thing you mentioned. What you've described is "teleportation gone wrong" which is complete and utter science-fiction, and most people know that. I would even go further and say that most people are familiar with Dolly and already know cloning to be possible. Plus, they are already familiar with twins (about two pairs per high-school) which is natural cloning. You'd have to be living under a rock to think twins share the same mind.
YouCantBanMe 8y ago
They’ll be able to eliminate neckbeards - hooray!
yipbub 8y ago
Some points: * The draft is of guidelines that are not legally binding * This was previously completely unregulated before * The proposed guidelines encourage embryo research * The proposed guidelines restrict manipulation of human embryos for reproduction Also: > Japan’s draft guidelines will be open for public comment from next month and are likely to be implemented in the first half of next year.
Salgat 8y ago
It's going to be depressing if we get to a point where the next generation is vastly superior both in intelligence and physical fitness. Mind you, still great for humanity, but depressing to have missed out on that. We may be considered primitive compared to humanity in a few centuries.
- vtange 8y ago
  IMHO that next generation is going to seriously need it; the world has grown very dense with information and distractions - much more than when we were younger or our parents. They're going to need that extra concentration to filter out all the garbage..and I sure hope they can discern fake information from real information because it will be everywhere by the time they come of age. If anything, we're the lucky ones to see these problems grow from the start. The ones after us will be in the deep end right from the start.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- adtac 8y ago
  We're the last dumb gemeration. Has a nice ring to it, I like it.
  - teekert 8y ago
    Yes but we're the ones who made the smartness possible, right ;)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- PakG1 8y ago
  Humans today are vastly superior in intelligence to humans centuries ago. Physical fitness, maybe not. Anyway, why be depressed? Would Columbus be depressed to know that if he had lived a few centuries later, he could have just flown around the world on a plane instead of going on his big adventure to confirm his big claim? The guy got to go on an adventure that he firmly believed in. Be content with who you are and where you are, and find your calling to go farther and higher if you can't be content. Just... no reason to be depressed.
JohnyDeppp 8y ago
I fully support this as long as they get rid of neckbeards.
erikig 8y ago
I’m glad that governments are cautiously allowing progress in gene editing even in human embryos instead of taking a hardline stance or outright banning the practice. Gene editing in human embyros is controversial to say the least but it has shown great promise in the last couple of years. It would be great to see the US get on board and allow the use of public funds for this research.
PakG1 8y ago
It is interesting to note that Japanese popular fiction (especially various anime) often has human genetic modification as a central theme. Non-Japanese popular fiction does as well, but my perception is that it's not to the same extent and quantity. I am curious how much popular fiction influences people's comfort level with the concept. Or is there more prevalence of these themes in popular fiction because the people are more comfortable with it? Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around? Or my perception could be completely off. It happens. :)
- skissane 8y ago
  I also wonder what role religious backgrounds of different countries might have in this. Are Christians more likely to have a religious opposition to human genetic modification (such as on the grounds of "playing God") than Shintoists and Buddhists might be? (I suspect the answer is "Yes", but I don't know enough about Japanese religions to be confident in that answer.)
yipbub 8y ago
If this leads to "enhanced" humans, I wonder how countries will react to competition from modified humans that can better compete. The human race is in the unfortunate position of needing global regulation, and having a push back against globalization. I don't know if the path of corporate globalization we are on can help either. We need a non-profit approach to global regulation of technologies like genetic engineering, self driving vehicles, and AI deployment because each of these has the potential to completely reshape the human condition. I wonder if countries could cooperate on issues like this in a meaningful way. Can we come up with a sufficient momentum without drivers like profit or fear? Both of these drivers should ideally drive rational people to take action on these issues, but I think the perceived difficulty is what makes us ignore it. We need to clarify a path to profit and security for people to see taking action on this as an option they can take. I'm an intern at a software company, what can I do? I'm struggling with choosing between the long term and the short term. The wide view and the narrow focus. For now, I'm building the scaffolding of my life, so that when I see an option that has better tradeofs between these I can take it and build something.
- thefounder 8y ago
  Maybe the enhanced humans will find a way to enhance poor old grandpha!...getting smart after being dumb must feel better than being "born" smart.
- Zarath 8y ago
  I think we need a total re-evaluation of human rights for the modern age. I'm not terrified of technology or this technology in particular. Just this technology existing within the current power structures of our society.
- beerlord 8y ago
  We will soon come to the point of realisation that billions of humans are superfluous, and that the lands they occupy would be better off as huge nature parks. Any critical farming or mining operations can be carried out mostly by robot labour and a few genetically uplifted human engineers.
  - 8y ago
Zarath 8y ago
Is this the real singularity?
crististm 8y ago
The ethical implications of this road are appalling. I read comments here on this thread and people are amazed that they will become irrelevant to next-gen super-humans. As if this the only possible outcome. What I see is that people are blind to something that will come back to bite really hard.
- beerlord 8y ago
  Was it unethical for Homo Sapiens to out-compete Neanderthals? Same concept applies here. It is merely the continued advancement of humanity biologically and genetically.
  - crististm 8y ago
    I don't see what makes the two concepts are one and the same. How can you know that the result is an advancement and not a regression?
    - greenrd 8y ago
      New technologies face the same risk when unproven. Capitalism has a simple solution to that - people just stop buying them if they turn out to be worse than what was on offer before. In the future, genetic enhancements will be available in a regulated competitive marketplace, and the ones that have unforseen bad consequences will fall out of favour.
      - crististm 8y ago
        Technology does not answer to questions about ethics. Technology dispenses with any value propositions. Capitalism doesn't either. Capitalism answers to profits and not necessarily to _everybody_'s profits.
        mantas 8y ago
        Technology doesn't have wide variance too. Thus it hinders natural selection.
crististm 8y ago
Did you guys hear about Unit 731?
randyrand 8y ago
I wonder how much being pro choice correlates with being pro human gene research in fetuses. I would think the arguments on the value of the unborn fetus vs the value to society are very similar. personally - it correlates for me. I’m in favor of both.

108 points by benryon 8y ago

vjsc 8y ago

What I am looking forward to is when someone tries to start cloning process on a human being. When I was a kid, in 1990s, there was a lot of fuss around cloning. Most people rejected it as unethical. I wonder how far the state of the art has come since then in cloning technology. I am guessing that cloning maybe a real chance for humans to become immortal or atleast live longer lives.

jacobolus 8y ago
i.e. via cloning yourself and then harvesting organs / injecting blood from your clone? Transplanting your brain into the clone body? Or ...?
- anonytrary 8y ago
  It would take extreme idiocy to think that this is morally sound. There is no defensible argument for treating a human clone as anything less than human.
  - a_imho 8y ago
    What if we don't call it a human | engineer it just so it does not meet some agreed criteria for human | offers their organs voluntarily* | ... ?
    - anonytrary 8y ago
      That's not how cloning works. Clones aren't empty husks full of free organs ripe for the taking, any more than non-clones are. Even if you could create a clone without a brain, it's still hard to condone. If an anencephalic fetus miraculously grew to 24 years of age, would people post a "free organs" sign on him and lay him down on their lawn? Gonna have to say... probably not.
- beerlord 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant I don't think its outside of the realms of possibility for the mega-rich. Grow a clone for 20 years, and transplant your brain into a fresh body.
- magduf 8y ago
  Cloning people for harvesting organs doesn't really make that much sense: it'll take many years to grow the organs to the size needed to be useful as replacements. We're already working on growing (or even 3D-printing) replacement organs without the human; that avoids ethical problems, but it also doesn't require the huge investment in time and resources needed to grow clones of yourself and raise them to adulthood. They'll probably have this technology ready for prime-time before they could have human cloning working plus have those clones grow to late adolescence.
  - grecy 8y ago
    Surely if we're cloning people it won't be too hard to accelerate growth as well. If not, just stick all the clones somewhere and have them sit around waiting until their organs are needed. ie. the movie "The Island"
    - magduf 8y ago
      That's my point. We don't need "the island"; when we've worked out the genetic issues with cloning, we'll already know how to just grow organs on-demand. The whole clone thing doesn't make that much sense when you look at it that way; it would cost a fortune to raise a human to adulthood just for organ harvesting, plus garner all kinds of ethical problems and controversy and protesters etc. No one's going to protest organ-growing or 3D-organ-printing except maybe a few religious nuts. And with the clone, what happens when you harvest its heart (killing it), and now you need a lung? Or you harvest one thing, and then get injured and need that same part, but you didn't have multiple clones lined up? With organ-printing, you just make the organ you need when you need it. We still don't have truly 100% working clones; we tried with a sheep a while ago and it wasn't 100% and died early. However, we're already experimenting with 3D-printing organs.
rqs 8y ago
I think as far as current tech goes, even if somebody gets 100% cloned, their mind (data in the brain) would still be different. That of course is when The 6th Day[0] (Brain data copy + clone) will never become a reality. Here is a video about cloning dogs you may interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHYUvmiXQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHYUvmiXQI [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/
anonytrary 8y ago
> [In the 90s] most people rejected it as unethical. I don't understand this. If a clone is given the same rights as a non-clone, I can't see how cloning is unethical. It's not like non-clones get a choice in whether or not they want to exist. Why would we treat clones differently, anyway? > I am guessing that cloning maybe a real chance for humans to become immortal Sounds like you are confusing classes with instances. If every human is a different class, the class gets to potentially live forever, but each instance of the class still goes through the lifecycle. It's not like the consciousness of a previous instance is copied to a later instance. Each instance presumably gets its own state.
- paxy 8y ago
  In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out. If you instead framed it as birthing a child who was exactly like you, I'm sure the perception would be a lot different.
  - Zanni 8y ago
    Yes. The word "clone" has been so abused by popular media that people have wild misconceptions and objections. We should call them "elective identical twins."
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      They won't be twins as they won't necessarily be carried by the same mother/womb and won't have the same age. (In the "cloning an adult" scenario).
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    > In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out. I highly doubt this is even close to true. Most people are smart enough to know that cloning has something to do with "modifying the egg and sperm and growing the baby". That's literally all they have to know to not think the absurd thing you mentioned. What you've described is "teleportation gone wrong" which is complete and utter science-fiction, and most people know that. I would even go further and say that most people are familiar with Dolly and already know cloning to be possible. Plus, they are already familiar with twins (about two pairs per high-school) which is natural cloning. You'd have to be living under a rock to think twins share the same mind.

YouCantBanMe 8y ago

They’ll be able to eliminate neckbeards - hooray!

yipbub 8y ago

Some points: * The draft is of guidelines that are not legally binding * This was previously completely unregulated before * The proposed guidelines encourage embryo research * The proposed guidelines restrict manipulation of human embryos for reproduction Also: > Japan’s draft guidelines will be open for public comment from next month and are likely to be implemented in the first half of next year.

Salgat 8y ago

It's going to be depressing if we get to a point where the next generation is vastly superior both in intelligence and physical fitness. Mind you, still great for humanity, but depressing to have missed out on that. We may be considered primitive compared to humanity in a few centuries.

vtange 8y ago
IMHO that next generation is going to seriously need it; the world has grown very dense with information and distractions - much more than when we were younger or our parents. They're going to need that extra concentration to filter out all the garbage..and I sure hope they can discern fake information from real information because it will be everywhere by the time they come of age. If anything, we're the lucky ones to see these problems grow from the start. The ones after us will be in the deep end right from the start.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
adtac 8y ago
We're the last dumb gemeration. Has a nice ring to it, I like it.
- teekert 8y ago
  Yes but we're the ones who made the smartness possible, right ;)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
PakG1 8y ago
Humans today are vastly superior in intelligence to humans centuries ago. Physical fitness, maybe not. Anyway, why be depressed? Would Columbus be depressed to know that if he had lived a few centuries later, he could have just flown around the world on a plane instead of going on his big adventure to confirm his big claim? The guy got to go on an adventure that he firmly believed in. Be content with who you are and where you are, and find your calling to go farther and higher if you can't be content. Just... no reason to be depressed.

JohnyDeppp 8y ago

I fully support this as long as they get rid of neckbeards.

erikig 8y ago

I’m glad that governments are cautiously allowing progress in gene editing even in human embryos instead of taking a hardline stance or outright banning the practice. Gene editing in human embyros is controversial to say the least but it has shown great promise in the last couple of years. It would be great to see the US get on board and allow the use of public funds for this research.

PakG1 8y ago

It is interesting to note that Japanese popular fiction (especially various anime) often has human genetic modification as a central theme. Non-Japanese popular fiction does as well, but my perception is that it's not to the same extent and quantity. I am curious how much popular fiction influences people's comfort level with the concept. Or is there more prevalence of these themes in popular fiction because the people are more comfortable with it? Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around? Or my perception could be completely off. It happens. :)

skissane 8y ago
I also wonder what role religious backgrounds of different countries might have in this. Are Christians more likely to have a religious opposition to human genetic modification (such as on the grounds of "playing God") than Shintoists and Buddhists might be? (I suspect the answer is "Yes", but I don't know enough about Japanese religions to be confident in that answer.)

yipbub 8y ago

If this leads to "enhanced" humans, I wonder how countries will react to competition from modified humans that can better compete. The human race is in the unfortunate position of needing global regulation, and having a push back against globalization. I don't know if the path of corporate globalization we are on can help either. We need a non-profit approach to global regulation of technologies like genetic engineering, self driving vehicles, and AI deployment because each of these has the potential to completely reshape the human condition. I wonder if countries could cooperate on issues like this in a meaningful way. Can we come up with a sufficient momentum without drivers like profit or fear? Both of these drivers should ideally drive rational people to take action on these issues, but I think the perceived difficulty is what makes us ignore it. We need to clarify a path to profit and security for people to see taking action on this as an option they can take. I'm an intern at a software company, what can I do? I'm struggling with choosing between the long term and the short term. The wide view and the narrow focus. For now, I'm building the scaffolding of my life, so that when I see an option that has better tradeofs between these I can take it and build something.

thefounder 8y ago
Maybe the enhanced humans will find a way to enhance poor old grandpha!...getting smart after being dumb must feel better than being "born" smart.
Zarath 8y ago
I think we need a total re-evaluation of human rights for the modern age. I'm not terrified of technology or this technology in particular. Just this technology existing within the current power structures of our society.
beerlord 8y ago
We will soon come to the point of realisation that billions of humans are superfluous, and that the lands they occupy would be better off as huge nature parks. Any critical farming or mining operations can be carried out mostly by robot labour and a few genetically uplifted human engineers.
- 8y ago

Zarath 8y ago

Is this the real singularity?

crististm 8y ago

The ethical implications of this road are appalling. I read comments here on this thread and people are amazed that they will become irrelevant to next-gen super-humans. As if this the only possible outcome. What I see is that people are blind to something that will come back to bite really hard.

beerlord 8y ago
Was it unethical for Homo Sapiens to out-compete Neanderthals? Same concept applies here. It is merely the continued advancement of humanity biologically and genetically.
- crististm 8y ago
  I don't see what makes the two concepts are one and the same. How can you know that the result is an advancement and not a regression?
  - greenrd 8y ago
    New technologies face the same risk when unproven. Capitalism has a simple solution to that - people just stop buying them if they turn out to be worse than what was on offer before. In the future, genetic enhancements will be available in a regulated competitive marketplace, and the ones that have unforseen bad consequences will fall out of favour.
    - crististm 8y ago
      Technology does not answer to questions about ethics. Technology dispenses with any value propositions. Capitalism doesn't either. Capitalism answers to profits and not necessarily to _everybody_'s profits.
      - mantas 8y ago
        Technology doesn't have wide variance too. Thus it hinders natural selection.

crististm 8y ago

Did you guys hear about Unit 731?

randyrand 8y ago

I wonder how much being pro choice correlates with being pro human gene research in fetuses. I would think the arguments on the value of the unborn fetus vs the value to society are very similar. personally - it correlates for me. I’m in favor of both.