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> People making a big stink out of ethical concerns virtually ensure that this stuff is going to happen first in a place with the least concern for ethics. Chin

by rtkwe 8y ago

> People making a big stink out of ethical concerns virtually ensure that this stuff is going to happen first in a place with the least concern for ethics. China seems to be where the action is on this front. What's the alternative, because this is a big deal. Even if we ignore where this is going eventually which will be designer babies there's still the issue that when you run this experiment you're creating a person with a permanently altered genome, in many cases that edit will be heritable and there's no way we know of to fix this other than in embryos so if it goes wrong the best that can be offered is palliative care. Simply because other places will be unethical isn't a reason to lower the ethical bar in places with standards.

jillesvangurp 8y ago
Assume it will happen eventually and act accordingly to ensure that happens under reasonable circumstances instead of just blanket forbidding everything until somebody changes the status quo anyway. It just delays the inevitable; it doesn't prevent it and it ensures somebody else gets the glory, technology and benefits. IMHO cloning or gene modifications are not inherently scary but doing that in a way that has a high failure rate probably is bonafide scary. The scandal is not that people are doing this but they are doing it poorly. When the result is healthy individuals things are great. But otherwise things are not so great when the result is lots of late stage abortions, still born babies, or children with all sorts of unforeseen genetic defects and issues. So, I'd prefer this to happen in modern research institute under reasonable conditions where progress is possible instead of being forbidden and taboo for decades. Even stuff like stemcell research is highly controversial still, not because of the above but of all sorts of ethical cliches about baby hitlers, designer babies, etc. So, we're not doing all sorts of research that could contribute to curing common defects on the off chance that somebody reenacts the Boys of Brazil or somebody's religious believes or might be confronted with the notion that this Darwin dude might have been on to something after all.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  > Assume it will happen eventually and act accordingly to ensure that happens under reasonable circumstances instead of just blanket forbidding everything That's kind of what's happening. We're studying it thoroughly in animal models because we still don't know that we can do this reliably and safely there first. Just because we're not ready to allow human testing doesn't mean progress will get frozen.

by rtkwe 8y ago

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Assume it will happen eventually and act accordingly to ensure that happens under reasonable circumstances instead of just blanket forbidding everything until somebody changes the status quo anyway. It just delays the inevitable; it doesn't prevent it and it ensures somebody else gets the glory, technology and benefits. IMHO cloning or gene modifications are not inherently scary but doing that in a way that has a high failure rate probably is bonafide scary. The scandal is not that people are doing this but they are doing it poorly. When the result is healthy individuals things are great. But otherwise things are not so great when the result is lots of late stage abortions, still born babies, or children with all sorts of unforeseen genetic defects and issues. So, I'd prefer this to happen in modern research institute under reasonable conditions where progress is possible instead of being forbidden and taboo for decades. Even stuff like stemcell research is highly controversial still, not because of the above but of all sorts of ethical cliches about baby hitlers, designer babies, etc. So, we're not doing all sorts of research that could contribute to curing common defects on the off chance that somebody reenacts the Boys of Brazil or somebody's religious believes or might be confronted with the notion that this Darwin dude might have been on to something after all.

rtkwe 8y ago
> Assume it will happen eventually and act accordingly to ensure that happens under reasonable circumstances instead of just blanket forbidding everything That's kind of what's happening. We're studying it thoroughly in animal models because we still don't know that we can do this reliably and safely there first. Just because we're not ready to allow human testing doesn't mean progress will get frozen.