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This is one of the many existential risk vectors we face as a species. It's also disturbing that the same people who brought us widespread hormone-like chemica

This is one of the many existential risk vectors we face as a species. It's also disturbing that the same people who brought us widespread hormone-like chemicals leeching into our food are arguing that this, too, is good for us. Scientists are definitely batting low on responsible R+D and not causing society-wide or global damage through their amoral-to-immoral, ego-stroking work. But sure. It's about mosquitoes and not some post-doc trying to be alpha nerd to the point they're willing to endanger the species. > Yet what first drew the developmental biologist Kimberly Cooper to dabble in gene drive technology for mice was not conservation but evolution. In her laboratory at UCSD, she and her colleagues study the evolution of the jerboa, a long-legged rodent with a jumping, bipedal gait, which diverged from the mouse lineage tens of millions of years ago. Cooper and her colleagues are trying to find the unknown combination of genetic changes responsible for that evolutionary transformation by making lab mice carry incrementally more jerboa traits.

chr1 8y ago
> It's also disturbing that the same people who brought us widespread hormone-like chemicals leeching into our food are arguing that this, too, is good for us. I am not sure this argument works, because it's continuation is that "they also brought us autism inducing vaccines, cancer inducing wifi, and potato fish hybrids that are evil in some vague way". Whether you like it or not eliminating mosquitos, colorado beetle, etc. will help billions of people to live better lives, and your ad hominem at "some post-doc trying to be alpha nerd" is out of place, because no matter their motives, the work of people like this is what allows us to write things on screen, instead of sitting in a cave.
- crazynick4 8y ago
  > I am not sure this argument works, because it's continuation is that "they also brought us autism inducing vaccines, cancer inducing wifi, and potato fish hybrids that are evil in some vague way". Just because wifi doesn't induce cancer doesn't mean it's a good idea to have plastic leeching into our water. I don't see the correlation. Also, I should add that messing with the balance of an ecosystem can have drastic unforeseen consequences. China decided to get rid of sparrows (or some other small bird) mid-20th century, and for the next few years they were struck with famine because there were no birds left to control the locust population, which then multiplied out of control.
  - ajr0 8y ago
    not only is the comment about China accurate it elicits a great point. to add in a Hayek quote >The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.' there is a great podcast from Econtalk [0] talking about this in detail that I highly recommend a listen if you are not familiar with it. back to the point, these changes have unforeseen consequences, some may be good but some could cause a new type of famine or disease that could have devastating consequences. I do not think this point can be overstated. [0] https://www.econtalk.org/frank-dikotter-on-maos-great-famine/ https://www.econtalk.org/frank-dikotter-on-maos-great-famine...
  - chr1 8y ago
    There can be unforeseen consequences, that's why nobody advocates to just randomly create gene drives for all the insects. The targeted species of mosquito is not the only one, it is an invasive species in many places, and everywhere there are other mosquitos that can take its place. Should we use gene drives to eliminate species with caution? Of course! But does that mean we should not even think about it just because there may be unforeseen consequences (or as the grandparent comment says: because it is invented by scientists who also invented plastic, which other people used as cheap water bottles, and there is an unconfirmed hypothesis about it being bad)? I think the answer to this question is clearly no, and the way the grandparent comment is written is simply antiscience fear-mongering.
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      nobody banned thinking or communicating about technological possibilities, and it is healthy to communicate concerns
    - crazynick4 8y ago
      I just think that there needs to be significantly more caution - almost a pathologically high amount of caution. Think of it from a software engineering perspective. All the unit tests that are done to ensure 100% code coverage, all the testing in identical staging environments, and yet we still have to revert sometimes, once the code is in production. And this all still happens in environment where the code is something we wrote ourselves, is properly and thoroughly documented, with all dependencies and relationships clearly defined. And still, major problems happen but it's nice that we can just go to Git and try again. With genetic engineering, the genetic code was not written by us, has zero documentation, the relationships are left for us to figure out, and there's no proper staging environment with a working ecosystem for us to test things in. We basically deploy straight to production after a few unit tests. So, yes, definitely I don't think there is currently enough caution being taken. Of course, the reality is that genetic engineering won't stop, not until we shoot ourselves in the foot a few times and people realize the seriousness of it.
- qw9qwdpijqwdiji 8y ago
  >the work of people like this is what allows us to write things on screen, instead of sitting in a cave. This is a pet-peeve of mine in arguments about the future. Why is it unthinkable that someone could support the development of one technology, and not the other? Better yet, why is unthinkable that someone could prefer that one technology gets developed _before_ another? Yes, implicit in technological development is a dependency chain, but that does not imply every technological advancement is predicated on every other technological advancement. Pretending that all technology/research has the same social utility is ridiculous (not that you are specifically doing so). Unfortunately in this case, it appears we are developing a great method for extincting species without also having a method prevent that.
- baldeagle 8y ago
  I was really hoping that someone had made an (obviously improbable) potato fish hybrid. I imagine that would be tasty (and full of unintended side effects of crossing a starch and a protein). To save everyone the ducking of it, I think it is a reference to Mona the Vampire, in which potato jellyfish hybrids do... things. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/do4e7AJKafE?t=634 https://youtu.be/do4e7AJKafE?t=634
Retra 8y ago
Society is ultimately responsible for protecting itself, not individuals. You can't blame individuals for their compartmentalization, irreverence, and sociopathy when we reward people for these things. The post-doc only produces work that other people want to publish, after all.

chr1 8y ago

> It's also disturbing that the same people who brought us widespread hormone-like chemicals leeching into our food are arguing that this, too, is good for us. I am not sure this argument works, because it's continuation is that "they also brought us autism inducing vaccines, cancer inducing wifi, and potato fish hybrids that are evil in some vague way". Whether you like it or not eliminating mosquitos, colorado beetle, etc. will help billions of people to live better lives, and your ad hominem at "some post-doc trying to be alpha nerd" is out of place, because no matter their motives, the work of people like this is what allows us to write things on screen, instead of sitting in a cave.

crazynick4 8y ago
> I am not sure this argument works, because it's continuation is that "they also brought us autism inducing vaccines, cancer inducing wifi, and potato fish hybrids that are evil in some vague way". Just because wifi doesn't induce cancer doesn't mean it's a good idea to have plastic leeching into our water. I don't see the correlation. Also, I should add that messing with the balance of an ecosystem can have drastic unforeseen consequences. China decided to get rid of sparrows (or some other small bird) mid-20th century, and for the next few years they were struck with famine because there were no birds left to control the locust population, which then multiplied out of control.
- ajr0 8y ago
  not only is the comment about China accurate it elicits a great point. to add in a Hayek quote >The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.' there is a great podcast from Econtalk [0] talking about this in detail that I highly recommend a listen if you are not familiar with it. back to the point, these changes have unforeseen consequences, some may be good but some could cause a new type of famine or disease that could have devastating consequences. I do not think this point can be overstated. [0] https://www.econtalk.org/frank-dikotter-on-maos-great-famine/ https://www.econtalk.org/frank-dikotter-on-maos-great-famine...
- chr1 8y ago
  There can be unforeseen consequences, that's why nobody advocates to just randomly create gene drives for all the insects. The targeted species of mosquito is not the only one, it is an invasive species in many places, and everywhere there are other mosquitos that can take its place. Should we use gene drives to eliminate species with caution? Of course! But does that mean we should not even think about it just because there may be unforeseen consequences (or as the grandparent comment says: because it is invented by scientists who also invented plastic, which other people used as cheap water bottles, and there is an unconfirmed hypothesis about it being bad)? I think the answer to this question is clearly no, and the way the grandparent comment is written is simply antiscience fear-mongering.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    nobody banned thinking or communicating about technological possibilities, and it is healthy to communicate concerns
  - crazynick4 8y ago
    I just think that there needs to be significantly more caution - almost a pathologically high amount of caution. Think of it from a software engineering perspective. All the unit tests that are done to ensure 100% code coverage, all the testing in identical staging environments, and yet we still have to revert sometimes, once the code is in production. And this all still happens in environment where the code is something we wrote ourselves, is properly and thoroughly documented, with all dependencies and relationships clearly defined. And still, major problems happen but it's nice that we can just go to Git and try again. With genetic engineering, the genetic code was not written by us, has zero documentation, the relationships are left for us to figure out, and there's no proper staging environment with a working ecosystem for us to test things in. We basically deploy straight to production after a few unit tests. So, yes, definitely I don't think there is currently enough caution being taken. Of course, the reality is that genetic engineering won't stop, not until we shoot ourselves in the foot a few times and people realize the seriousness of it.
qw9qwdpijqwdiji 8y ago
>the work of people like this is what allows us to write things on screen, instead of sitting in a cave. This is a pet-peeve of mine in arguments about the future. Why is it unthinkable that someone could support the development of one technology, and not the other? Better yet, why is unthinkable that someone could prefer that one technology gets developed _before_ another? Yes, implicit in technological development is a dependency chain, but that does not imply every technological advancement is predicated on every other technological advancement. Pretending that all technology/research has the same social utility is ridiculous (not that you are specifically doing so). Unfortunately in this case, it appears we are developing a great method for extincting species without also having a method prevent that.
baldeagle 8y ago
I was really hoping that someone had made an (obviously improbable) potato fish hybrid. I imagine that would be tasty (and full of unintended side effects of crossing a starch and a protein). To save everyone the ducking of it, I think it is a reference to Mona the Vampire, in which potato jellyfish hybrids do... things. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/do4e7AJKafE?t=634 https://youtu.be/do4e7AJKafE?t=634

Retra 8y ago

Society is ultimately responsible for protecting itself, not individuals. You can't blame individuals for their compartmentalization, irreverence, and sociopathy when we reward people for these things. The post-doc only produces work that other people want to publish, after all.