6 ms·

It's only matter of time before gene-editing becomes commonplace. March of progress can't be stopped. He Jiankui will eventually be vindicated and possibly laud

by Hitton 7y ago

It's only matter of time before gene-editing becomes commonplace. March of progress can't be stopped. He Jiankui will eventually be vindicated and possibly lauded as visionary and pioneer.

de_watcher 7y ago
I look at it as a huge pile of obfuscated code. So yes, it's all there...
wickedsickeune 7y ago
Gene editing humans was not per se the problem. The huge issue was that it's not obvious that this gene would in fact not cause other issues to these people, and the fact that it was done at a later stage in fetal development, causing possibly some of the cells not having the same genetic code as the rest. This is reckless and stupid, apart from the whole experimenting on humans thing. Someone who jumped off a cliff while trying to build an airplane, was not lauded as a visionary, but as a splat on the ground.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Why is it stupid or reckless? In fact, this is a good way to mitigate risk. Most genes in mosaicism, even if parts of the mosaic is faulty, continue to function or partially function. Would you rather risk complete failure? (Potentially killing the fetus or embryo.) Also, someone has to take those (potentially reduced) risks if germ line modifications are needed.
imtringued 7y ago
What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA?
- SEJeff 7y ago
  I believe the term you're looking for is Eugenics. If you google it for some background, it has been tried before and uh, didn't end out so well.
  - cookieswumchorr 7y ago
    only thing that actually speaks against it is being associated with [godwin's law]. As far as everyone involved is consenting this shouldn't be an issue.
    - SEJeff 7y ago
      Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again. Will we inevitably have "designer" babies at some point in the future morals / legality be damned? Probably so. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily. The area I can see it being acceptable is fixing congenital defects or genetic abnormalities. "We've made your fetus 10x less likely to develop vascular disease or we've prevented cyctic fibrosis in your baby" vs "We made super strong soldiers who don't feel pain".
      - asdkhadsj 7y ago
        > Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again. So.. we'll make them non-white, and sidestep that issue? I mostly kid. Yet, it's a shame that even a fairly tame discussion about selecting sperm based on DNA has to be dragged through the mud with racism and godwin-eugenics. At some point humanity needs to stop being so anti-racist-racist. I'm not saying I don't understand where you come from, I just long for the day when we can discuss DNA selection without someone bringing up skin color.
        SEJeff 7y ago
        Given the current situation (here in the US at least) where white supremacy is very much on the rise, I feel it is very important to politely discuss, so we don't repeat the past. Just because I'm a privileged cis white male doesn't mean I think it is easy for everyone else.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  What is a premium DNA?
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Presumably sperm from a donor that had desirable traits.
- astrodev 7y ago
  > What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Traditional values, norms, religions. Those are pretty much gone by now, anyway. > Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA? Ever heard of Tinder?
  - gingabriska 7y ago
    >What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? It's happening, just that we do not acknowledge it. People are always selecting for the traits they see as favourable either consciously or subconsciously. Women do not date me because I look scary (as terrorist as some woman put succinctly) it means they are selecting for man who look less scary. Some women also told me that I do not respect women, so they are selecting for men who respect women. I am cool with that because I also select for a woman who is comfortable with me without I changing myself completely.
    - Merrill 7y ago
      It goes the other way in countries where matches are based on sexual attraction. Families decay when bright, successful men choose women for their beauty. In societies where matchmaking is done by parents or by recognized matchmakers, the outcome is likely much better in terms of creating and maintaining high achieving strains.
      - gingabriska 7y ago
        Men select for youth, fertility, beauty and agreability. Even in countries where there is arranged marriage, successful men are matched up with more beautiful women (but within equal cast and somewhat equal socio-economic status) >Families decay when bright, successful men choose women for their beauty. I don't follow how family decays when beauty is selected. Women can be beautiful and successful at the same time. >In societies where matchmaking is done by parents or by recognized matchmakers, the outcome is likely much better in terms of creating and maintaining high achieving strains. It might lead to a stable family on average but it doesn't mean people in such setting are happy. What I've observed is that countries were arranged marriage is common, women when they are young have lovers in college but they flush down their social media, dress more conservative when time for arrange marriage come, often they also take up a job for short duration to signal independence/education. In west, where there is more freedom. Young women date handsome men but if such relationship doesn't last long, their priorities change and they look for financially stable average looking men, though if they are lucky they might also get handsome and financially well off man. It's quite rare for a woman to marry a man who doesn't make as much money as her if not more.
- aaron695 7y ago
  We've done traditional selective breeding of humans in many cultures for different traits for thousands of years and it's worked. We've also done premium sperm bank services. Which should have worked, but I've yet to see studies either way, but no reason to think otherwise. But breeding is slow, and especially if it's your kids you care about now, not generations in the future which is why we need genetic engineering.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Confused. This happens all the time. Sperm banks. They don't hand out random stuff. There's a rigorous screening and selection process.
  - sverige 7y ago
    I'm not at all convinced that sperm banks have procedures that are in any sense "rigorous." For example, there's a Dutch man who fathered 200 children through a sperm bank. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/24/sperm-donor-man-who-fathered-200-children https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/24/sperm-donor-...
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Well, they purported to be. Questionaires to select donors; catalogs for the recipients to peruse and choose. In many banks other than the strawman provided, it meant that 'eugenics' was alive and well most places.
      - sverige 7y ago
        Not really a strawman. In reality, sperm banks are not regulated closely at all. Most of the laws have to do with parental rights, not "quality control." Even self-regulation is just that and nothing more. The idea that people choosing donors from a catalog amounts to eugenics assumes that the people choosing the donor (in the case of anonymous donors, which is only a portion of all artificially inseminated children) have some rigor in choosing; i.e., that marketing doesn't influence them somehow. Most of the supposed rigorous screening is nothing more than checking boxes for physical characteristics such as height and eye color, education level attained, and family history of certain diseases. There have been quite a few sperm bank scandals, including one where the proprietor of the sperm bank used his own seed even though he told his cutomers they were selecting someone else's from a catalog. The Dutch case is notable because it violates one of the recommendations (no law in the U.S.) that limit a donor to 25 births per 800,000 population. [0] But it is certainly not the only case. [0] "The closest thing to a regulatory body overseeing sperm donation throughout the U.S. is a nonprofit called the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. The ASRM has a set of recommendations that physicians, fertility specialists, and sperm banks are encouraged to follow." "The ASRM also recommends setting a limit of 25 births per donor within a population of 800,000, in order to lower the risk of accidental incestuous relations. In many other countries, there are laws putting caps on the number of births per single donor within populations of a certain size, but the U.S. doesn’t have any such law." https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/07/sperm-donations-emotional-consequences/564587/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/07/sperm-don...
- samgtx 7y ago
  >Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA? They can. High end sperm banks that do thorough background checks and create profiles on donors already exist.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Much human breeding is traditional selective breeding (whether using sperm/egg donors or more ancient methods, pairings are often selected based in part on the expected genetically-determined qualities of any offspring), but it's just not a program maintained over many generations with consistent selection criteria, outside of conspiracy theories and science fiction (e.g., Heinlein’s Howard Families.) Shorter term (usually not by intent) eugenics programs have been tried, and they are usually moral disasters tied to movements that are rapidly (sometimes violently) rejected, or at least the eugenics portion of the program is abandoned before long.
vibrio 7y ago
As we are now living in a "reality show" world, maybe. But if such decision is based on scientific, ethical, and clinical rational, that is very unlikely. The details of his work were sloppy and unethical including, (not exhaustive): He generated mutations in CCR5 that are uncharacterized. That is he didn't even use the 'delta 32' mutation observed in the gene pool). Beyond that, there is not solid rational that the kids are at risk for HIV transmission sufficiently to justify any procedure, let alone an unconsented, germ-line genetic modification. The physicians that ran the Tuskegee Studies thought they would be lauded. That hasn't happened and won't.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  You're confusing a work of one scientist and the whole field. Gene edited babies are inevitable, as soon as we start seeing massive benefits (lack of genetic disease, increases IQ, increased speed, increased muscle mass, improved cardiovascular and immune systems). Parents already spend ridiculous money for the tiniest benefits for their kids. Genetic editing will be huge.
  - 3JPLW 7y ago
    I saw the parent's comment more countering the grandparent's assertion that He Jiankui will be lauded. He will not. He may go down in history, but he will appear in the ethics chapter alongside Dr. Rascher and will not be lauded.
  - vibrio 7y ago
    Biology is complicated and there are always unintended consequences even with simple drugs or other procedures. you've listed outcomes, but not how to get there. do we increase muscle mass by overexposing growth hormone? in which exact cells and how do we time it? Do we increase IQ by increasing Nerve growth factor or some synaptic channels? What if the wrong cells are expressing them at the wrong time? We barely understand what many of these factors do on a cell to cell level. chasing the things you list WILL come with toxicities and/or a failure rates. Perhaps in 'patients' whom we will have to look in the eyes and explain why we did what we did. Maybe we will get where you suggest but it won't be a straight road there.
dekhn 7y ago
I think this is fairly shortsighted. While I do think that germline gene modification will probably become routine, He specifically was a serious doofus who shat the bed for this area- he made a collection of poor decisions that would easily have been caught in hindsight, ignored multiple suggestions to improve his plans, ignored multiple suggestions to not proceed, and then managed to make a change that probably didn't achieve what he intended. Getting all those things wrong mean he's not going to be considered a visionary or pioneer.
astrid88 7y ago
Yes, but isn't it scary that at some point you can't stop that? I mean, all of the research is taken place 'somewhere out there' in the world and all we get is just a few articles that say it all was a super secret operation and no-one wants to speak about it openly. I have nothing against progress but will it still be one when it bursts and can't be controlled?

by Hitton 7y ago

It's only matter of time before gene-editing becomes commonplace. March of progress can't be stopped. He Jiankui will eventually be vindicated and possibly lauded as visionary and pioneer.

de_watcher 7y ago

I look at it as a huge pile of obfuscated code. So yes, it's all there...

wickedsickeune 7y ago

Gene editing humans was not per se the problem. The huge issue was that it's not obvious that this gene would in fact not cause other issues to these people, and the fact that it was done at a later stage in fetal development, causing possibly some of the cells not having the same genetic code as the rest. This is reckless and stupid, apart from the whole experimenting on humans thing. Someone who jumped off a cliff while trying to build an airplane, was not lauded as a visionary, but as a splat on the ground.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Why is it stupid or reckless? In fact, this is a good way to mitigate risk. Most genes in mosaicism, even if parts of the mosaic is faulty, continue to function or partially function. Would you rather risk complete failure? (Potentially killing the fetus or embryo.) Also, someone has to take those (potentially reduced) risks if germ line modifications are needed.

imtringued 7y ago

What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA?

SEJeff 7y ago
I believe the term you're looking for is Eugenics. If you google it for some background, it has been tried before and uh, didn't end out so well.
- cookieswumchorr 7y ago
  only thing that actually speaks against it is being associated with [godwin's law]. As far as everyone involved is consenting this shouldn't be an issue.
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again. Will we inevitably have "designer" babies at some point in the future morals / legality be damned? Probably so. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily. The area I can see it being acceptable is fixing congenital defects or genetic abnormalities. "We've made your fetus 10x less likely to develop vascular disease or we've prevented cyctic fibrosis in your baby" vs "We made super strong soldiers who don't feel pain".
    - asdkhadsj 7y ago
      > Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again. So.. we'll make them non-white, and sidestep that issue? I mostly kid. Yet, it's a shame that even a fairly tame discussion about selecting sperm based on DNA has to be dragged through the mud with racism and godwin-eugenics. At some point humanity needs to stop being so anti-racist-racist. I'm not saying I don't understand where you come from, I just long for the day when we can discuss DNA selection without someone bringing up skin color.
      - SEJeff 7y ago
        Given the current situation (here in the US at least) where white supremacy is very much on the rise, I feel it is very important to politely discuss, so we don't repeat the past. Just because I'm a privileged cis white male doesn't mean I think it is easy for everyone else.
gingabriska 7y ago
What is a premium DNA?
- izzydata 7y ago
  Presumably sperm from a donor that had desirable traits.
astrodev 7y ago
> What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Traditional values, norms, religions. Those are pretty much gone by now, anyway. > Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA? Ever heard of Tinder?
- gingabriska 7y ago
  >What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? It's happening, just that we do not acknowledge it. People are always selecting for the traits they see as favourable either consciously or subconsciously. Women do not date me because I look scary (as terrorist as some woman put succinctly) it means they are selecting for man who look less scary. Some women also told me that I do not respect women, so they are selecting for men who respect women. I am cool with that because I also select for a woman who is comfortable with me without I changing myself completely.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    It goes the other way in countries where matches are based on sexual attraction. Families decay when bright, successful men choose women for their beauty. In societies where matchmaking is done by parents or by recognized matchmakers, the outcome is likely much better in terms of creating and maintaining high achieving strains.
    - gingabriska 7y ago
      Men select for youth, fertility, beauty and agreability. Even in countries where there is arranged marriage, successful men are matched up with more beautiful women (but within equal cast and somewhat equal socio-economic status) >Families decay when bright, successful men choose women for their beauty. I don't follow how family decays when beauty is selected. Women can be beautiful and successful at the same time. >In societies where matchmaking is done by parents or by recognized matchmakers, the outcome is likely much better in terms of creating and maintaining high achieving strains. It might lead to a stable family on average but it doesn't mean people in such setting are happy. What I've observed is that countries were arranged marriage is common, women when they are young have lovers in college but they flush down their social media, dress more conservative when time for arrange marriage come, often they also take up a job for short duration to signal independence/education. In west, where there is more freedom. Young women date handsome men but if such relationship doesn't last long, their priorities change and they look for financially stable average looking men, though if they are lucky they might also get handsome and financially well off man. It's quite rare for a woman to marry a man who doesn't make as much money as her if not more.
aaron695 7y ago
We've done traditional selective breeding of humans in many cultures for different traits for thousands of years and it's worked. We've also done premium sperm bank services. Which should have worked, but I've yet to see studies either way, but no reason to think otherwise. But breeding is slow, and especially if it's your kids you care about now, not generations in the future which is why we need genetic engineering.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Confused. This happens all the time. Sperm banks. They don't hand out random stuff. There's a rigorous screening and selection process.
- sverige 7y ago
  I'm not at all convinced that sperm banks have procedures that are in any sense "rigorous." For example, there's a Dutch man who fathered 200 children through a sperm bank. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/24/sperm-donor-man-who-fathered-200-children https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/24/sperm-donor-...
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Well, they purported to be. Questionaires to select donors; catalogs for the recipients to peruse and choose. In many banks other than the strawman provided, it meant that 'eugenics' was alive and well most places.
    - sverige 7y ago
      Not really a strawman. In reality, sperm banks are not regulated closely at all. Most of the laws have to do with parental rights, not "quality control." Even self-regulation is just that and nothing more. The idea that people choosing donors from a catalog amounts to eugenics assumes that the people choosing the donor (in the case of anonymous donors, which is only a portion of all artificially inseminated children) have some rigor in choosing; i.e., that marketing doesn't influence them somehow. Most of the supposed rigorous screening is nothing more than checking boxes for physical characteristics such as height and eye color, education level attained, and family history of certain diseases. There have been quite a few sperm bank scandals, including one where the proprietor of the sperm bank used his own seed even though he told his cutomers they were selecting someone else's from a catalog. The Dutch case is notable because it violates one of the recommendations (no law in the U.S.) that limit a donor to 25 births per 800,000 population. [0] But it is certainly not the only case. [0] "The closest thing to a regulatory body overseeing sperm donation throughout the U.S. is a nonprofit called the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. The ASRM has a set of recommendations that physicians, fertility specialists, and sperm banks are encouraged to follow." "The ASRM also recommends setting a limit of 25 births per donor within a population of 800,000, in order to lower the risk of accidental incestuous relations. In many other countries, there are laws putting caps on the number of births per single donor within populations of a certain size, but the U.S. doesn’t have any such law." https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/07/sperm-donations-emotional-consequences/564587/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/07/sperm-don...
samgtx 7y ago
>Why can't women just go to a sperm bank and buy premium DNA? They can. High end sperm banks that do thorough background checks and create profiles on donors already exist.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> What prevents us from using traditional selective breeding on humans? Much human breeding is traditional selective breeding (whether using sperm/egg donors or more ancient methods, pairings are often selected based in part on the expected genetically-determined qualities of any offspring), but it's just not a program maintained over many generations with consistent selection criteria, outside of conspiracy theories and science fiction (e.g., Heinlein’s Howard Families.) Shorter term (usually not by intent) eugenics programs have been tried, and they are usually moral disasters tied to movements that are rapidly (sometimes violently) rejected, or at least the eugenics portion of the program is abandoned before long.

vibrio 7y ago

As we are now living in a "reality show" world, maybe. But if such decision is based on scientific, ethical, and clinical rational, that is very unlikely. The details of his work were sloppy and unethical including, (not exhaustive): He generated mutations in CCR5 that are uncharacterized. That is he didn't even use the 'delta 32' mutation observed in the gene pool). Beyond that, there is not solid rational that the kids are at risk for HIV transmission sufficiently to justify any procedure, let alone an unconsented, germ-line genetic modification. The physicians that ran the Tuskegee Studies thought they would be lauded. That hasn't happened and won't.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
You're confusing a work of one scientist and the whole field. Gene edited babies are inevitable, as soon as we start seeing massive benefits (lack of genetic disease, increases IQ, increased speed, increased muscle mass, improved cardiovascular and immune systems). Parents already spend ridiculous money for the tiniest benefits for their kids. Genetic editing will be huge.
- 3JPLW 7y ago
  I saw the parent's comment more countering the grandparent's assertion that He Jiankui will be lauded. He will not. He may go down in history, but he will appear in the ethics chapter alongside Dr. Rascher and will not be lauded.
- vibrio 7y ago
  Biology is complicated and there are always unintended consequences even with simple drugs or other procedures. you've listed outcomes, but not how to get there. do we increase muscle mass by overexposing growth hormone? in which exact cells and how do we time it? Do we increase IQ by increasing Nerve growth factor or some synaptic channels? What if the wrong cells are expressing them at the wrong time? We barely understand what many of these factors do on a cell to cell level. chasing the things you list WILL come with toxicities and/or a failure rates. Perhaps in 'patients' whom we will have to look in the eyes and explain why we did what we did. Maybe we will get where you suggest but it won't be a straight road there.

dekhn 7y ago

I think this is fairly shortsighted. While I do think that germline gene modification will probably become routine, He specifically was a serious doofus who shat the bed for this area- he made a collection of poor decisions that would easily have been caught in hindsight, ignored multiple suggestions to improve his plans, ignored multiple suggestions to not proceed, and then managed to make a change that probably didn't achieve what he intended. Getting all those things wrong mean he's not going to be considered a visionary or pioneer.

astrid88 7y ago

Yes, but isn't it scary that at some point you can't stop that? I mean, all of the research is taken place 'somewhere out there' in the world and all we get is just a few articles that say it all was a super secret operation and no-one wants to speak about it openly. I have nothing against progress but will it still be one when it bursts and can't be controlled?