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The main thing* holding back this is that we don't understand the human genome enough to make really useful edits. It's very rare that there's a change that wou
by technotony 8y ago
The main thing* holding back this is that we don't understand the human genome enough to make really useful edits. It's very rare that there's a change that would be better done with germline engineering than somatic cell engineering or gene therapy. One day that won't be true however, and that's when the problems will really begin.
To me the strongest non-religious argument against doing this is that it will further accelerate wealth benefits, eg if you could make your kids smarter. One of the problems with that however is that this technique is so cheap and easy that banning it will just create a black market, or a single country decides to allow it for economic or political reasons and people travel there to get pregnant.
That impossibility of controlling this is why I think we have no choice but to proceed slowly, cautiously, but under full transparency.
* there are also uncertainties about off-target effects and overall safety of the technique but I'm confident those issues will eventually be fixed too.
- john_alan 8y agoAgree with you. As much as I generally don’t like intervention I think regulation may be best here.
- wetpaws 8y agoWhy would anyone prefer having less intelligent people to having more smart people for the sake of eqality is beyond me.
- DuskStar 8y agoEspecially since regulations won't meaningfully impact the very richest - they'll travel to Thailand or wherever to have their kid's embryo edited and implanted. What it will do is prevent those innovations from coming into the reach of the rest of us.
- sho 8y agoAssuming nation states don't hoard what could be considered to be a long term strategic advantage. My fear would be that the West, in paroxysms of misguided equal-outcomes ideology, ban genetic improvements - whereas China mandates it, and bans its availability to outsiders, setting themselves up for a long-term fundamental advantage which we might never be able to overcome. In a sense, it doesn't matter what the West "decides". If China et al have this technology - and they do - and if they decide to exploit it - and they will - we have no real choice but to follow, or face our inevitable and profound outcompetition in the medium to long term.
- ben_w 8y agoHm. Depends how you do it. Given how much it costs childbirth costs in the USA, I’m surprised there isn’t already health tourism from the USA to literally anywhere else. The cost of genetic modification will probably be small compared to the cost of childbirth, if the current existence and price of amateur CRISPR bio-hacking kits is anything to go by[1]. Could this be overcome by requiring all newly registered children to have full genome DNA tests, along with their parents, and prosecute on the basis of clear genetic modification? Or is that likely to get too many false positives? [1] http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yeast-combo-kit/ http://www.the-odin.com/bacterial-crispr-and-fluorescent-yea...
- iguy 8y agoIndeed, there is some health tourism, but much less than I would expect given the prices. I can't imagine that setting up a "Department Of Prosecuting New Parents" would go down well. Or even be possible. For example, most first-world countries today have millions of residents with no legal right to be there, most of whom the state does not prosecute/deport/fine. I think both for the lack of capacity to do so, and for lack of popular support for doing this at full scale. And deciding where someone was born (and who their parents are) is much much easier than deciding whether they got 100% of their DNA the old-fashioned way.
- keiferski 8y agoThe entire history in Europe of the past 2,000 years is precisely this - the preference for equality over excellence. See: Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche.
- identity-haver 8y agoI'm not really sure where to start here. There was more "excellence" in the Roman Republic and prior times than the following 2000 years of European history? This is a familiar critique that seems to conflate the modern self-esteem craze, communism, and the utopian "equality of outcome" with the traditional religiously based idea of equality, which is that every soul is made in the image of and has equal responsibility before God and that's it. The Lockean idea of human rights is cladistically derived from this.
- keiferski 8y agoNietzschean philosophy is a bit too complex for me to explain in a HN comment, but I was referring more to the Master-Slave Morality concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality
- identity-haver 8y agoOh I know what it is, I just think it’s completely wrong to apply to Europe pre WWI. How a culture that explored and conquered almost the entire world had a “slave morality” because of the beatitudes or something was always baffling. What would be interesting is applying it to today’s secular Europe.
- dmitriid 8y agoGovernments in general would prefer less intelligent people in the populace for the sake of power and control.
- sasaf5 8y ago>To me the strongest non-religious argument against doing this is that it will further accelerate wealth benefits, eg if you could make your kids smarter. The exact same argument could be made against education, or any other human development.
- wz1000 8y agoWhich is why most countries have some sort of public funded compulsory education.
- x220 8y agoYeah, but a moratorium on gene editing is the equivalent of banning all schools.
- mkhalil 8y agoNot even remotely right. Banning all schools will affect all children. Banning gene-editing will effect the children of the wealthy, or those who's parents chose to go that route. A better example will be banning private schools, but even then, that requires the child to at least work hard and the parents to constantly invest for a child to get any value out of it, as oppose to gene editing.
- chr1 8y agoBanning all schools will affect all children now because we have reached a point where schools are common. 200 years ago they were not, and if we decided to not allow any schools until we could provide schools for everyone, we still would not have any schools.
- jobigoud 8y agoIMHO if you have the means to make your kids smarter (all other things being equal) it's unethical not to do so.
- vixen99 8y agoEthics won't matter at all if it comes down to our survival on Earth. Among the multitude of reasons for getting several factors smarter very rapidly is the necessity for developing the means to avoid immanent extinction when we detect a suitably-sized lump of rock coming our way from space. If it's one with a diameter of 10-100 km then with current technology it's all over bar nothing (not even shouting). Back to square 1 or maybe 1.1 if we're lucky. You'd think we'd focus on this rather than on some of the issues which seem to obsess us. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-huge-previously-undetected-asteroid-just-came-very-close-to-earth https://www.sciencealert.com/a-huge-previously-undetected-as...
- senectus1 8y agoand what if gene edited children all produce children with autistic conditions? We dont know enough about it to allow it open slather in the community at large.
- chr1 8y agoThen this gene edited children will again use gene editing to produce children with genes similar to theirs that are already known to not produce too many autistic conditions. > We dont know enough about it to allow it open slather in the community at large. Who are those "guardians of the community" that are allowed to decide what technology community at large can have access to and what can't? You can argue for regulation preventing fraud: doctors hiding possible complications, editing different genes than what was advertised, etc. but you can't disallow people to decide with what genetic code they create their own children.
- chii 8y ago> I think we have no choice but to proceed slowly, cautiously, but under full transparency. but if there's any slight advantage to be had by going faster (e.g., there's a moratorium on editing certain traits), then those who would disregard the "rules" may gain and therefore, create a black-market anyway. I think the only reasonable thing to do is to have unfetted access, and the lowest possible price point. Then let darwinian selection take place.
- mirimir 8y agoThat makes sense to me. Proliferation of nuclear-weapon technology has been somewhat effective. Because it's hugely technical and resource intensive. But CRISPR, not so much.
- Ultimatt 8y agoNot sure I agree with the first premise. If the technology was relatively safe and robust you could just routinely "edit" all births with a package of corrections for all known rare genetic diseases. There are several hundred well understood variants that are disease causing and correctable with editing a fertilised egg, with essentially zero available treatments later on.
- bencollier49 8y agoWould you correct carriers as well (heterozygous with no symptoms). What about where the gene was advantageous in a heterozygous configuration? Would you eliminate all sickle-cell genes?
- chr1 8y agoThat's not something that you can decide for other people. If some people like their sickle-cell gene no one can force them to remove it, and similarly if they don't like it no one should be able to force them to keep it.
- iguy 8y agoIIRC this has already happened with Tay-Sachs, although not by editing, just by testing (either before marriage, or of embryos). I think the disease is now more common among non-Ashkenazim, who are unlikely to be tested. Seems like a useful test case to think about, and read about, rather than relying only on imagination.
- chrischen 8y agoI think the strongest argument against gene editing is the tendency for societal biases to be taken to the extreme. Gene editing is drastic and has the potential to greatly reduce genetic diversity in a population since people tend to want to become “normal”, or meme certain popular traits. If you gave minorities the ability to become a white males in America, would they? Certainly many would and it would mean losing the benefits of such diversity we currently have, even if it’s tougher for many people to be non-white male. See “Chinese footbinding”, “injecting cement into posteriors for beauty”, “plastic surgery” for examples of the absuridty people will go to to fit in.
- ramblerman 8y agoI can't help but find this incredibly condescending. You would take away a technological advantage from majorities and minorities alike because their choices might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.
- iguy 8y agoHere's a different take, on a different sort of diversity: Suppose it turns out that extremely high-achievers are gambles on the part of nature, which have some chance of going wrong. For example, suppose that every birth of a potential future Nobelist comes with a 10% chance of serious disabling autism. (I stress, I'm not claiming that this is true, just setting up a thought experiment.) Many parents would decline this gamble: 10% is quite a high chance of devoting the rest of your life to care, for a tiny chance of having a world-class star in the family, who will anyway have very little personal gain from his contributions. But if the whole society decides never to gamble, we will (in my scenario!) miss out on major advances.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chr1 8y agoIf we get to the point where we can distinguish genes that cause autism to be able to remove them, we'll also be able to distinguish 10% Nobelist case. But even if that was not the case, with gene editing some parents who did not have a chance to make that gamble, will be able to make it intentionally.