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>We should not proceed down this road until we know far more about the consequences of what we are doing. In the present climate of pessimism it's worth remind

>We should not proceed down this road until we know far more about the consequences of what we are doing. In the present climate of pessimism it's worth reminding ourselves that we never know all the consequences of what we're doing. The 'Precautionary Principle' kills people too; it merely does so in a less obvious way. Personally I think we should be going hell for leather in identifying and eliminating genetic diseases that arise from known mutations. And we should of course expect new problems to arise down the road from these treatments.

mannykannot 8y ago
This is a particularly bad example to make that case over, as it is hard to discern any scientific or medical justification for it, while the known risks are considerable. Frankly, it looks to me like a posterity-grabbing stunt - an attempt by the researcher to write himself into the history books.
- candiodari 8y ago
  First, the event reported on is almost certainly a scam (HIV resistance ? Seriously ?). But let's assume it's valid. But I don't agree at all with the sentiment. Most/all current gene editing is about fixing known issues, and in nearly all cases (at the moment) it seems like the edited gene, even if it goes disastrously wrong, would still be superior to the "natural" gene. E.g. MVD, MS, ... Should we also outlaw (and enforce) that people with known genetic defects produce babies the "natural" way ? How about people where we don't know what exactly is wrong, but clearly something is wrong (e.g. very small, bone disease, large family incidence of leukemia, ...). There's some justification for that as making those babies produces a LOT of terrible suffering, but aside from the moral problems it seems very impractical to do this as well. A LOT of "suboptimal" humans are produced, a LOT of humans are born with a body that just ... won't work in certain ways or will die in painful ways in a decade or less. Mostly in cases where the odds of a better outcome than the parents had is zero (meaning the terrible outcome was testable beforehand or even predictable). So I would argue there is plenty of reason to give people access altered babies. Perhaps there are indeed some bridges not to be crossed, but I would argue that we should probably still cross them a few times to see first. That will suck badly for a few babies, but not doing it has sucked for ~0.5% of humanity for all of history (that's about the incidence of genetic defects that kill on average before adulthood, all taken together). That means this year alone half a million babies will be born with genes so defective they will never grow up (but the vast majority of them will gain enough intelligence to make the inevitable suffering really bad before they die) That's not counting serious defects, like Down syndrome, that won't kill but have incredibly bad consequences nevertheless. Nor is it counting people born with disabilities that will survive (e.g. blind, deaf, paralyzed (ouch), deformed, ...) I feel like that makes it reasonable to say that we should do nothing until we have something like 10000 edited babies born. Hopefully at that point we will know what works, actually have some data, and know what doesn't work and perhaps cut that half a million figure in half or better. That won't change the number of people who are screwed by their genes meaningfully. In fact, it ought to make it possible to lower that number by a LOT. This is one of those cases where "doing nothing" is not the morally neutral option. Doing nothing is accepting the status quo as good enough. The status quo is that worldwide, something like 20 million children are on death row due to bad genes. 5 US states worth of children. Most of them are children with no real outward sign of any problem, who will just die, relatively suddenly (meaning from "going to school and playing" to dead takes months, no more).
  - buboard 8y ago
    This seems like a reasonable justification but there still the ethical thorn of "the child did not ask/consented to this". If science ethics can get beyond that border, then the new standard might be to seek out rare genetic defects throughout the world and attempt treatments in parallel.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      What idiot would not consent to this though? Okay, there might be religious issues - if you believe this will send you to hell I can accept that. I can't think of any other reason that someone would not agree to removing good genes. And since this is my child that we are talking about we can assume the child's values are mine. I carry one of the bad cholesterol genes (I haven't been medically tested but family history suggest it is generic), I'd love to rid it from my kids so they don't need these annoying drugs I take. I'll even take such a treatment myself if it is possible to fix my liver.
      - buboard 8y ago
        obviously embryos can't consent that is the problem. I think there is an entire field of philosophy dedicated to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_rights
        bluGill 8y ago
        Babies cannot consent to vaccines, but it is unethical to not give them to them anyway.
    - jerf 8y ago
      I didn't consent to my current loadout of genes. How would a bundle of genes consent to be some other bundle of genes? What does that even mean?
Nasrudith 8y ago
We should but only after we know about its safety in model animals. They have DNA as well as often being simpler systems to model with shorter generations to model effects. I mean I am pro genetic engineering but it is senseless to learn the basics of cardiac suturing on a live human when there are cadavars and livestock byproducts to do it on without the loss.

mannykannot 8y ago

This is a particularly bad example to make that case over, as it is hard to discern any scientific or medical justification for it, while the known risks are considerable. Frankly, it looks to me like a posterity-grabbing stunt - an attempt by the researcher to write himself into the history books.

candiodari 8y ago
First, the event reported on is almost certainly a scam (HIV resistance ? Seriously ?). But let's assume it's valid. But I don't agree at all with the sentiment. Most/all current gene editing is about fixing known issues, and in nearly all cases (at the moment) it seems like the edited gene, even if it goes disastrously wrong, would still be superior to the "natural" gene. E.g. MVD, MS, ... Should we also outlaw (and enforce) that people with known genetic defects produce babies the "natural" way ? How about people where we don't know what exactly is wrong, but clearly something is wrong (e.g. very small, bone disease, large family incidence of leukemia, ...). There's some justification for that as making those babies produces a LOT of terrible suffering, but aside from the moral problems it seems very impractical to do this as well. A LOT of "suboptimal" humans are produced, a LOT of humans are born with a body that just ... won't work in certain ways or will die in painful ways in a decade or less. Mostly in cases where the odds of a better outcome than the parents had is zero (meaning the terrible outcome was testable beforehand or even predictable). So I would argue there is plenty of reason to give people access altered babies. Perhaps there are indeed some bridges not to be crossed, but I would argue that we should probably still cross them a few times to see first. That will suck badly for a few babies, but not doing it has sucked for ~0.5% of humanity for all of history (that's about the incidence of genetic defects that kill on average before adulthood, all taken together). That means this year alone half a million babies will be born with genes so defective they will never grow up (but the vast majority of them will gain enough intelligence to make the inevitable suffering really bad before they die) That's not counting serious defects, like Down syndrome, that won't kill but have incredibly bad consequences nevertheless. Nor is it counting people born with disabilities that will survive (e.g. blind, deaf, paralyzed (ouch), deformed, ...) I feel like that makes it reasonable to say that we should do nothing until we have something like 10000 edited babies born. Hopefully at that point we will know what works, actually have some data, and know what doesn't work and perhaps cut that half a million figure in half or better. That won't change the number of people who are screwed by their genes meaningfully. In fact, it ought to make it possible to lower that number by a LOT. This is one of those cases where "doing nothing" is not the morally neutral option. Doing nothing is accepting the status quo as good enough. The status quo is that worldwide, something like 20 million children are on death row due to bad genes. 5 US states worth of children. Most of them are children with no real outward sign of any problem, who will just die, relatively suddenly (meaning from "going to school and playing" to dead takes months, no more).
- buboard 8y ago
  This seems like a reasonable justification but there still the ethical thorn of "the child did not ask/consented to this". If science ethics can get beyond that border, then the new standard might be to seek out rare genetic defects throughout the world and attempt treatments in parallel.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    What idiot would not consent to this though? Okay, there might be religious issues - if you believe this will send you to hell I can accept that. I can't think of any other reason that someone would not agree to removing good genes. And since this is my child that we are talking about we can assume the child's values are mine. I carry one of the bad cholesterol genes (I haven't been medically tested but family history suggest it is generic), I'd love to rid it from my kids so they don't need these annoying drugs I take. I'll even take such a treatment myself if it is possible to fix my liver.
    - buboard 8y ago
      obviously embryos can't consent that is the problem. I think there is an entire field of philosophy dedicated to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_rights
      - bluGill 8y ago
        Babies cannot consent to vaccines, but it is unethical to not give them to them anyway.
  - jerf 8y ago
    I didn't consent to my current loadout of genes. How would a bundle of genes consent to be some other bundle of genes? What does that even mean?

Nasrudith 8y ago

We should but only after we know about its safety in model animals. They have DNA as well as often being simpler systems to model with shorter generations to model effects. I mean I am pro genetic engineering but it is senseless to learn the basics of cardiac suturing on a live human when there are cadavars and livestock byproducts to do it on without the loss.