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Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA
- mentos 8y agoI think this could have far greater dangers in the creation of super diseases. How long until China turns this into a weapon by creating a virus with the spread of a common cold and the devastation of Ebola?
- FakeComments 8y agoUh, what makes you think government bioweapon labs haven’t been doing that for decades, since the invention of genomics?
- stevehawk 8y agoMost major governments have already admitted to it because it's the only way to study how to counter such attacks without actually engaging in said warfare.
- ggggtez 8y agoCitation needed. Most governments that admitted to having a program, only admitted it after it had already been shut down. Very few countries if any, admit to having a bioweapon program, let alone one based on gene-edited bioweapons.
- ggggtez 8y agoBioweapons are 1) Cheaper 2) Harder to control 3) Less reliable than traditional arms. This makes them great weapons for poor countries who don't care about indiscriminate killing, but bad weapons for large countries that want precision strikes against specific enemies.
- Nasrudith 8y agoWait cheaper, how? Maybe in terms of development of say a fighter jet but it is certainly more expensive than a bunch of surplus Russian equipment. Not to mention most combatants don't do their own arms development - that only really makes sense if you are nearing state of the art or effectively lack a market (say nuclear weapons).
- jf- 8y agoSomething that would rapidly spread back into their own highly dense population centres and wipe them out? For the most part world leaders aren’t this stupid. Mostly.
- bicubic 8y agoEh. With gene drives we already have the technology to selectively target or not target particular ethnic groups. Bio weapons are amongst the top threats we pose to ourselves as a species. There’s a youtube series by a guy who made a virus to cure himself of lactose intolerance via gene therapy, that was pretty eye opening. To go from what he did to making a targeted bioweapon is not that much of a leap. https://youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY https://youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY
- jf- 8y agoWhen you release something it becomes subject to natural selection. It would evolve to target everyone. It’s still dumb.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIt's also a sort of safeguard. Pathogens that are too deadly to the organisms they infect are selected out.
- abakker 8y agoNot if they are eventually deadly, like HIV. If HIV spread in a targeted way, with the level of contagion in a common cold cold it would be bad. Of course, it’s not great if you want to prevent retaliation.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoWorld leaders are getting more stupid before our eyes though, it's not like this tech is only available until Christmas or something. Couldn't targetting specific ethnicities seem feasible enough at some point that someone just might try it?
- Waterluvian 8y agoChina's better angle is to capitalize on their collectivist social attitudes, allowing them to discard as many babies as necessary to win the race to superhuman-ness.
- api 8y agoViruses aren't loyal, so nation states would not be likely to unleash such a thing. Its more likely that something like this would be created by a lone nut or a fanatical apocalyptic cult or terror group.
- dyarosla 8y agoI imagine that viruses could very much be ‘loyal’- if we’re gene editing you could not so theoretically target ethnic-specific genes to attack.
- whatshisface 8y agoIf viruses can jump between animals and humans, they can jump between ethnicities.
- dyarosla 8y agoRight but YOU’d be developing the payload...
- whatshisface 8y agoThe payload could also mutate, virus DNA isn't very stable.
- api 8y agoThe virus could very easily evolve to target a broader profile.
- dyarosla 8y agoDo viruses normally evolve their payload on their own?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- danmaz74 8y agoIs China the new empire of evil? Why would they do such a stupidly suicidal thing?
- awakeasleep 8y agoThe catch here is that pathogen has been evolving for billions of years, already. If something like that fit in the constraints of life on earth it'd most likely be here already.
- dang 8y agoTaking this thread straight into nationalistic flamewar is wildly off topic and outright vandalism on this site. I'm sure you didn't mean it intentionally but please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nerdponx 8y agoThis just in: fucking with stuff we don't fully understand has negative consequences we don't fully understand. I'm grateful this is happening, otherwise our hubris might get too out if hand.
- Valmar 8y agoIndeed. DNA is the most fucking complex and complicated programming language. We have barely any understanding of how the whole thing hangs together, let alone how it's parsed and written, and how it all translates from stem cells to whole organs, an immune system, the complex interrelation between organs, the nervous system, the whole gamut. And that's not even touching on the nature of mind and consciousness in relation to the body, a perhaps even more enigmatic mystery than the whole story of DNA itself.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAll of those are nothing but challenges. We'll figure all of them out, eventually.
- Valmar 8y agoYou have too much faith in science. Scientists are highly fallible, and prone to making errors, as well as being corruptible by politics and corporate greed. DNA is ridiculously hard to understand, and it continues to defy current theories. So, messing with DNA at this time is extremely dangerous, due to just how incomplete our knowledge of DNA is shown to be, and just how fragile DNA is in terms of resilience to random changes. The OP is case in point, as to where we currently are.
- sleepydog 8y agoIt's like if you had a version of C that replaced all compilation errors with undefined behavior.
- grawprog 8y agoThere's a small part of me that wants this to exist. That sounds both horrifying and pretty hilarious at the same time.
- jchw 8y agoThis is very conflicting. Clearly, we have to learn somehow... But this is just about the last kind of thing where you want to do trial and error.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoWhat if the consequences are some kind of natural DRM? Like if you can't cut out that gene to remove X without also altering Y and you can't live with the possibility of altering Y in a negative way then you cannot remove X.
- xvilka 8y agoIt is more like a low-level, holographic language. We have to figure a higher level one, which defines all the properties and create a compiler into DNA sequences. Most likely it will change quite a bit in the resulting sequence.
- neonate 8y agohttps://outline.com/PmDuj6 https://outline.com/PmDuj6
- vxxzy 8y agoThere's always the argument about "Playing God" but we do vaccinate ourselves right? I mean I think the real issue is inflicting a change to a being that will become "Sentient" or "Conscious". When we genetically alter that which has potential for "life", do we know, beyond a doubt, that the change we inflict will be positive for the individual AND positive for our species as a whole? If we cannot say for certain, then genetically altering sentient life (who have no choice), is not a good idea.
- all2 8y ago> There's always the argument about "Playing God" I come from a religious background and this is an argument that has ceased to have meaning to me. We can't possibly play God. We can't create something from nothing. All we can do is fiddle around with this existence we're in. Part of that happens to be genetics. What drove me to change my mind was the question "if you have the ability to treat a genetic disease, and you don't exercise that ability, are you complicit in the person's condition?"
- intralizee 8y agoI’m writing from a hard determinist mindset. I would argue that whatever is done in life is the will of God. Since choices are an illusion around oneself believing in free will. So basically life is predetermanism for every cause & effect. The phrase playing God just makes me think of something similar to how a bunch of game programmers have already created a simplified replication. The Sims. Who is to say the sims are any different than us. Anyway the create anything out of nothing is symbolic. I really do like your last sentence “last paragraph” and made me want to reply with mentioning this.
- vxxzy 8y agoIt’s interesting... I like to think that we have freedom to make decisions within the “hard bounds” of the system. I don’t think the existence of “hard bounds” indicate a system’s lack of potential for free will to exist. I do think “bounds” can limit an agents Choice, but not their ability to make a decision. Our current existence/system appears bounded in some aspects and unbounded in others. As we learn more, ideas and perception will be adjusted.
- cronix 8y agoFrom my laymans POV, DNA is just a shit ton of variables in a very complex code that interact with each other. No single point just does a single thing. They all interact with each other. No different than changing a variable in one piece of code and having it create a bug in another that was previously working. For me, the real scary part is altering something, which inadvertently changes something else that isn't quite as obvious and visible or noticeable. Something that might not present itself until whatever organism it is reaches maturity, or beyond. Something like "everybody will get Alzheimers by age 50" where it takes 50 years to even discover it. And in the meantime, they thought whatever they originally tweaked was a success and made other tweaks during those 50 years thinking everything was just fine.
- jayalpha 8y ago"No single point just does a single thing." Exactly this! And this is why GM foods are more dangerous than you might expect. Even if gene x does only x in organism A, there is no guarantee that gene x does only one thing or the same thing in organism B.
- smaddox 8y agoGM foods are arguably no more dangerous than any massively engineered foods we've been eating for decades/centuries. Direct gene modification is more like using a scalpel rather than a 2x4. Still potentially dangerous, but far more precise.
- curious_fella2 8y agoCan you elaborate?
- dpflan 8y agoThe irony is too strong: “”” The goals are to improve agricultural productivity, produce hardier beasts and reduce practices that are costly or considered inhumane. “”” I can’t help but think about Oryx and Crake. I’m more interested in applying these principles and efforts and resources to plants and non-animal sources. I feel that further modifying animal agriculture is orthogonal to direction we can move civilization and is not necessary if we can essentially apply the same techniques for increasing commodity yields to non-animal ag. (I would love counter arguments and opinions to this. Perhaps I am not seeing the whole picture or far enough.)
- tardigraded 8y agoWe'll, the reality is that most people will continue eating meat regardless of what people like me and you think of it, so it's probably a good idea to put some effort into minimizing the negative consequences. Also, we can research lots of things at once, and research funding is not a zero-sum game. I don't think anybody's defunding non-animal agriculture research for this. Finally, there's a good chance that this sort of research will produce results that will be useful in other fields (e.g. for genetically engineering of plants, or curing genetic disorders in humans).
- dpflan 8y agoGood points, thanks! 1. This is true, I do feel that such consumption is guided by and influenced by culture more so than just taste buds. 2. I feel there could be a bias towards whichever research leads to the best economic results, and with the current economic system we live in, I feel the most wealth generating outcome will overshadow. 3. I agree, science is non-linear and we can do much more of it these days, the benefits of many parallel efforts will compound.
- theslurmmustflo 8y agoMeat could get very expensive soon if climate change reduces the amount of easily farmable land, and that might quickly change peoples opinions. Part of the reason I’m eating more vegetarian food is because the quality of meat that I want to be eating is very expensive.
- laretluval 8y agoWhat's the agenda behind the spate of gene editing alarmism lately? The article cites the July Nature Biotechnology article about unintended consequences of CRISPR-Cas9 but subsequent work has eliminated many such consequences using slightly different techniques. No word of that fact in this article. If consequences of genetic engineering are poorly understood, then this isn't reason to worry about reckless research. It's reason to rapidly accelerate the research, and remove as many barriers as possible, so that we can reach understanding and controllability quickly, while obviously taking precautions before products of such engineering are widely available. The fact is that the majority of this work is happening in China, where no one cares what the moral mavens of the WSJ and the NYT think. I don't understand why such sources continually call for barriers to be put in the way of genetic engineering research.
- trophycase 8y agoI definitely don't want barriers on research. Rather, the issue is that this technology is being used by overzealous profiteers who likely care very little about potential consequences. Alarmism is warranted IMO when corporations that have proven to be sociopathic are using this technology and potentially affecting near every in the country (and maybe the planet). Haven't we learned anything from global warming?
- trevyn 8y agoThe media has incentive to report controversy. Certain other nations have incentive and experience with sowing controversy and conflict. There’s probably more incentive structures involved, but those two + a small native group of alarmists seem sufficient to support current levels of perceived alarmism.
- AlexCoventry 8y agoI agree, it's awesome that we can now do targeted forward genetics on mammals. Weird phenotypes in mutants are a classic path to biological insight.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe most cynical answer assuming an actual agenda is 'vested interests' who fear that they won't be able to compete. however not all apparent agendas come from interests - at times they are essentially memes run amok. There isn't a rational interest behind anti-vaccination efforts yet they are sadly growing.
- hnauz 8y agoI don't understand. Some rabbits were born with longer than usual tongues as a result of an experiment. So kill them and iterate... What's the problem?
- Gibbon1 8y agoQuote: and they fear that mutated genes may spread unchecked as animals breed. Reminds me, similar thing happened with cattle. Some breeding bulls are used to impregnate tens of thousands of cows. I fail to remember the details but one of them 30-40 years ago had a genetic defect which contaminated a lot of the US stock. Found a link https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/the-dairy-industry-lost-420-million-from-a-flaw-in-a-single-bull/505616/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/the-dairy...
- ejstronge 8y ago> Some breeding bulls are used to impregnate tens of thousands of cows. I fail to remember the details but one of them 30-40 years ago had a genetic defect which contaminated a lot of the US stock. The other side to that story is that, while the breeding male's genes led to more spontaneous abortions (i.e., pregnancies that ended unexpectedly with calf loss), his daughters produced a lot more milk. From the same article: > That’s a crazy number, but here’s an even crazier one: Despite the lethal mutation, using Chief’s sperm instead of an average bull’s still led to $30 billion dollars in increased milk production over the past 35 years. That’s how much a single bull could affect the industry.
- Gibbon1 8y agoThe cautionary note is this wasn't discovered until the recessive gene effected about 10% of the cattle population. Given the unknowns there is the potential that malign genetics wouldn't be discovered until several generation have passed. Human generations are 20-40 years. Possible that propagating rare mutations that appear to have beneficial effect may come at a high cost that is only apparent 50-100 years from now.
- ejstronge 8y agoI share your general concern, but would like to point out that this particular example couldn’t happen in human genetics for a variety of reasons (we are less consanguineous, practice assortative mating, get extensive medical care including fertility treatments). A bigger issue would be one particular implementation of genetic testing taking off in a group of humans who might otherwise be expected to produce offspring together. Perhaps - community of wealthy families all ordering the same IQ boosting agent may find that their grandchildren all share some unusual, genetically recessive ailment.
- trophycase 8y agoYes, you're interfering with an extremely complex system. Are we really so naive to believe there is some exact 1:1 mapping of genes to traits, or even close to that? The fact I've heard things like "75% of DNA is useless" [1] seems like such a laughably naive statement I fear for the future of humanity. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140926-at-least-75-per-cent-of-our-dna-really-is-useless-junk-after-all/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140926-at-least-75-per...
- code_beers 8y ago...What future of humanity? Call me cynical, but we seem absolutely bound on wiping ourselves out one way or another. Our focus on money above all else is killing us all. We’re playing useless games, winning useless tokens, and spending them on useless prizes, all inside an arcade that’s on fire. Climate change, GMO foods, overpopulation, water pollution, nuclear war, ecosystem destruction, we’ll find a way eventually. Just a matter of time.
- zilian 8y agoListing all hard problems is a common trope/trend we see often these days with doomsayers. Is it an excuse to be a nihilist and not act on those problems ?
- code_beers 8y agoNot at all, and I did not intend to give that impression. But that “list of hard problems” contains things which are MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to kill us all. Climate change, in particular. I don’t advise inaction. But I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’m personally doing anything to change it. I’m just trying to live my life and get by. Problem is, that’s EVERYONE. So if we’re headed off a cliff, and nobody is grabbing the wheel... Where’s the hope? Why would humanity have a sudden change of heart, come together, solve our shared problems, and move forward with a plan that could actually prevent climate change? How would we get everyone to do that simultaneously? Because if anyone can answer that question, they’ve just saved the world. And if nobody can...
- anigbrowl 8y agoI'm no biologist but I don't feel like we have a good enough theoretical understanding of DNA, in the same way that doing search and replace on object code in a hex editor doesn't mean you have a good understanding of programming. The little I know about systems biology from using Cytoscape and reading a few papers reminds me of learning to use a disassembler instead of a debugger.
- rubatuga 8y agoArticle says they are using an "older method" of gene editing. Well no wonder then, we know that older gene editing methods have a lot of off target effects, crispr cas9 using base modification (instead of deleting whole DNA stretches by splicing) is very safe. This is a FUD article.
- tinus_hn 8y agoPretty likely the same thing was said about that older method.
- ejstronge 8y ago> Article says they are using an "older method" of gene editing. Well no wonder then, we know that older gene editing methods have a lot of off target effects, crispr cas9 using base modification (instead of deleting whole DNA stretches by splicing) is very safe. This is a FUD article. Base editors are a very new (first published in the last two years) and have a whole new class of off-target effects compared to the ‘standard’ Crispr-Cas9 approach, namely editing multiple bases in the targeted regions. I’m not sure why you would say that’s base editing is inherently superior to homologous recombination at the point in time.
- kingkawn 8y agoThey’re still actively discovering the modes of regulation via folding structures. They have noooo business messing with this shit
- detcader 8y agoI share the worries of "messing with things we don't understand" but that comes after not accepting this practice of using conscious beings who can experience pain as objects. It's inventing more suffering on purpose, intentionally breeding animals that were born to potentially suffer. Breeding animals in general always has a chance to result in painful deformities but this is treating them like they don't matter.