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In principle I think that we should consider doing germline edits in humans. In general, if we have the ability to improve ourselves, we should absolutely do it
In principle I think that we should consider doing germline edits in humans. In general, if we have the ability to improve ourselves, we should absolutely do it.
However, in this specific instance, I think being strict on the scientist is okay.
The scientist made a mutation that was supposed to make the babies immune to HIV. But it turns out that the alleged CCR5 mutation that he induced a) didn't make the babies immune to all HIV strains only most of them (there are CXCR4 based HIV strains) [1], and b) made them more susceptible to other diseases like west nile virus infection [2].
He didn't just do that, he also circumented the approval infrastructure of science that is supposed to watch out for unethical experiments. If such behaviour is rewarded, people will start to do ethically questionable experiments. Biology is still in the shadow of past ethical violations like e.g. the HeLa cell samples that were being used throughout science without consent from the donor. Or think of the contergan scandal where the manufacturer company advertised that pregnant women should take contergan. Later it turned out that it had an absolutely harmful effect on fetuses, crippling them for life. The worst thing about this: the company knew about the effects but chose to hide the facts from the public.
I don't say that we shouldn't do germline edits at all. We should just be really careful at what we are doing, especially at the start. After all we are forcing (we don't ask the baby) a human being to live with that genetic change for an entire lifetime and their offspring.
Instead, we could maybe have started with one of those really ugly hereditary diseases that end in certain early death due to an unpopular mutation of a certain gene... Changing that gene to the popular variant would be objectively helpful and meaningful.
[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07545-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07545-0
[2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2118086/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2118086/
> In principle I think that we should consider doing germline edits in humans. In general, if we have the ability to improve ourselves, we should absolutely do it.
What if not everyone has the ability to improve themselves, say due to cost?
Doesn't this already manifest in the form of gyms, advanced medicine, proper exercise and nutrition, and various other "improve ourselves" things that require money?
It does, and it turns out that poor people suffering is morally acceptable to those with the means to ease it.
Yes it does, but genetics could take the wealth and power gap to a whole new level. Maybe vanilla humans will just be servants and pets to modified humans.
So? Should we not have cars, planes, antibiotics, computers, etc. because some cannot afford them?
Cost would not be my biggest concern.
Genes are not like points you can spend in a game to upgrade stuff. Editing them is a two edged sword.
Cystic Fibrosis is likely so much more common in Caucasians because having one copy of the gene protects against at least a couple of diseases that were seen a lot in Europe for a time. So being a carrier was protective and made you more likely to survive, similar to how Sickle Cell is protective against malaria.
"Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean the strongest, smartest, etc. Evolution is more about winnowing than about adapting per se. The ones that don't die in the face of unexpected new challenges are the "winners," even if it means they have a defect protecting them from something worse than what the defect does to them.
A fish out of water dies. But gills have a lot of advantages in the water.
Genes just do not work the way comments like this one (above) seem to assume. They just don't.
We are possibly many decades away to "execute" entire human genome and verify that edited code does not introduce other bugs. A bad mutation can spread in to population and cause damages that are too expensive to contemplate. The reason evolution has been slow is very likely because genome is so complex and it takes time to test out mutations. One can probably accelerate this process by throwing in simulation utilizing immense computing power. But until that happens we probably don't want to edit ourselves.
> Cost would not be my biggest concern.
i believe the comment refers to the way genes get inherited to the next generation. If making gene editing is expensive, the poor will have yet another disadvantage that their children will be less 'capable' than their rich counterparts.
If gene editing is possible - it should also be subsidized so that all of society benefits, not just select few who can afford it.
Genes are not like points you can spend in a game to
upgrade stuff. Editing them is a two edged sword.
Sure... but relative to the objective function that our genes currently optimize. All bets are off once a different objective function gets involved. Given that our genes are currently optimizing something like "reproductive fitness for pre-writing tribes circa 500ky BCE", and that that environment is completely different from what we're dealing with right now - no drug-resistant pathogens or globe-spanning plagues (hell, not even any antibiotics in the first place), low or negative value on longer lifespans, massively lower rewards for cognitive capabilities especially in comparison to the rewards for physical power, no surgery or vitamin supplements or blood testing, surprising (and tragic) lean toward r-selection over K-selection, quite a lot more - I would be surprised if we were unable to find some wins that are, relative to our current objectives, major, obvious, safe, and free.
The objective function currently in effect has kept us going through an extremely wide variety of environmental and cultural conditions.
Will the new one? Suppose the current civilization doesn’t last forever?
We have a responsibility to people a thousand years from now, not just the people of tomorrow.
hell, not even any antibiotics in the first place
No man-made antibiotics. I assure you, Mother Nature was way ahead of humankind there and, in fact, a lot of our drugs are based on things already found in nature.
We have a want center. We tend to like the taste of things that benefit us. There is research on such things.
If you are sick and you respect your cravings, it's possible to find yourself consuming a thing that contains a natural form of medication that addresses your issue, and doing so in sufficiently high quantities as to hit a medicinal dosage of it.
This is likely a root cause of the idea that "god" made someone better: We don't know what they were sick with or what cured it, so it seems miraculous. That doesn't mean there wasn't something in specific that they did or that simply happened that fixed the issue.
We are swarming with billions of microbes at all times. Some are beneficial and we can't digest our food without them. Some are harmful. Low levels of harmful microbes are a routine norm that the body deals with daily. It's only when it gets beyond a certain threshold that it becomes identifiable sickness.
I would be surprised if we were unable to find some wins that are, relative to our current objectives, major, obvious, safe, and free.
When antibiotics first came out, the world announced the end of disease. It's a few decades later and we are dealing with the rise of super bugs instead of living in the predicted disease-free utopia.
You and I fundamentally don't see this problem space at all similarly.
There's a huge difference between "you can give yourself an extra two percent by gnawing on a tree" and "if you follow orders we can wipe out almost every single-celled organism in your entire body within twenty-four hours".
It's a few decades later and we are dealing with
the rise of super bugs instead of living in the
predicted disease-free utopia.
You're cherry-picking, so I'll do a bit of that myself too:
We eradicated smallpox. Tangled bedsheets kill more people than polio. Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives. Malaria will die with Anopheles gambiae.
People once knew that flight was impossible. Not just hard, but impossible, prevented by the laws of physics and not meant for mankind. I flew home from my holiday vacation yesterday. It cost me as much as a good pair of shoes. Less than two days' pay at minimum wage.
"We can never know enough to be safe" is simply and obviously false. Crab-bucket thinking at its finest. We can improve the human condition. We can know enough. Even better, we're getting to the point where we know enough to also recognize that we do or don't know enough.
If you really believe that single bad actors will inevitably ruin everything good and we cannot ever make anything better, well, good luck to you. I submit that, with that point of view, you're better off quitting now so you don't have to experience the doomed future you propose.
We can never know enough to be safe" is simply and obviously false. Crab-bucket thinking at its finest.
Way to go to wildly twist my words out of shape.
I submit that, with that point of view, you're better off quitting now so you don't have to experience the doomed future you propose.
I'm quite open about my struggles with being suicidal. But let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't actually know that.
As kindly as possible, actively encouraging an internet stranger to off themselves because you don't agree with what you imagine they said has got to be one of the absolute ugliest tactics I've ever seen in an internet argument.
So I'm done here. That's not something I consider to be remotely within the realm of a good faith argument.
Note to self: Suggest to my would-be co-founder that such a thing should be a bannable offense on his forum. Cuz: Ew!
If we can edit, and it's reliable, we (those that can afford it, not I) will. I don't think that's a conversation that we as a society can really have while delivering much impact.
A more salient set of questions to me, is how do we decide what constitutes improvements, and what responsibility do we have to improve those around us once it's economically feasible?
I recently had a discussion with someone who believed that inhibiting genes that correlate with aggression or certain levels of in-group bias should be mandatory for the general population once we as a society are able to do it safely and reliably.
In his eyes, sanding off our rougher edges in pursuit of a social ideal net improvement on humanity.
I personally was appalled by the idea.
I agree that once this is possible, and advantageous, it will happen. Flying out to Thailand or wherever is already cheap compared to any serious medical procedure. Would we arrest people if they come home pregnant? But before we see this for editing, we will see it for embryo selection... which has all the same questions in milder forms.
I'm similarly appalled by your friend's beliefs, although I imagine Beijing will not feel the same way.
Besides worries about individual illness, I worry that self-interested improvements may accidentally remove certain types of people it turns out we need. For example, what if a change protective against autism turned out to weed out the best scientists? For each individual this may be a great choice.
Now I'm curious. What did you intend to write? Your post gives equal credence to herbal pseudoscience and modern medicine and, in context, questions whether antibiotics were worth it.
Yes, I should probably find a way to condemn luddite fatalism and anti-intellectualism without pointing out that they are species-wide suicide, exactly as irrational as the personal version and exactly as unacceptable to push for. Maybe I should have simply downvoted you, flagged your post, and hoped nobody saw it. I'll even apologize; I am sorry.
That said, honestly, "disagree" is entirely too weak a word for my perspective on the beliefs your comment helps people believe. I'm going to contest moloch-worship and naturopathy and luddism even when they're unintentional. When they show up on Facebook and Reddit they end with twentysomething mommies deciding not to vaccinate their babies and assaulting Waymo safety personnel. And, well, my real audience are those potential antivaxxers and bucketed crabs, so logos is actively counterproductive and I'm stuck with ethos and pathos, neither of which are anything like good faith. :/