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Chinese scientist who edited twin babies' genes jailed for 3 years
- cltsang 7y agoSurprise surprise, he has 3 million yuans to be fined. Had he given more of those to the government officials and/or jurisdiction, he wouldn't even have to face the charges in the first place.
- JadeNB 7y ago1 million yuan, apparently: > Zhang was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan ($143,000), while Qin was given a suspended sentence of one year and six months in prison and fined 500,000 yuan ($71,600).
- fasicle 7y agoIt will be interesting to see if the babies grow up with any side affects from the editing. DNA is hugely complex and changing some elements of it could easily effect other parts (I imagine).
- baybal2 7y agoVery unlikely. For a conception happening from people around 30 years, they will be passing 20 to 30 thousand DNA mutations to their offspring, and around 100-150 genetic mutations. Statistically cas9 is barely worse than just be born to a late parent.
- Barrin92 7y ago>Statistically cas9 is barely worse than just be born to a late parent. Depends on what's being mutated. It seems likely that 1. random mutations with catastrophic outcome would be negatively selected for evolutionary, 2. Humans try to meddle with genes that may be disproportionately important. So I'd put the risk of gene editing quite a bit higher.
- imtringued 7y agoIt's also very unlikely to be born with down syndrome. It still happens.
- eganist 7y agoWhoa, lite.cnn.io is back? (context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804160)
- LinuxBender 7y agoIt comes and goes. I have no idea who maintains it. I check it every day and it is up at least part of the week. Some weeks it stays up.
- baybal2 7y agoI do feel this follows the same genre as what was going under Xi's hounding campaigns. Not content with simple fraud charge, those guys always go for complete demonisation of the persona accused and self-denunciation.
- corporate_shi11 7y agoSurely I'm not the only one who thinks this sort of research is necessary. The sooner we are able to genetically engineer improved humans - first eliminating the incidence of genetic disease and second making overall healthier, happier and smarter people - the better the world will become.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoShall they try your children first? Oh so sorry - they died young and in agony, from unintended side effects. But Science!
- nkkollaw 7y agoI agree. I find many comments on this thread pretty despicable.
- corporate_shi11 7y agoOf course we wouldn't try on humans first. Animal trials precede human trials.
- PunchTornado 7y agoanimals are not humans so something that works on a mouse or a pig could have unknown bad side effects for humans.
- ggreer 7y agoThat is a fully general counterargument against animal testing to show the safeness of any drug or treatment. Clearly humans and other animals have enough in common such that successful animal trials are evidence of safety in humans.
- krapp 7y agoBut human trials have already begun, thus the posted article.
- 7y ago
- loceng 7y agoIs this punishment because he was caught or because it was on "acceptable citizens"? Yes, I'm referencing the stories coming out of the concentration camps in China and ethics related to organ harvesting, etc.
- thiagoharry 7y agoWell, in America imigrants are put in concentration camps and desperated poor people are allowed to sell their blood 2 times a week. But it doesn't mean that if a scientist does that kind of unethical experiment, he wouldn't be put in jail.
- krapp 7y ago>But it doesn't mean that if a scientist does that kind of unethical experiment, he wouldn't be put in jail. It does if he's doing it for the government. I can absolutely see the US setting aside some black funds to guarantee that it doesn't suffer a "Superman gap."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI don’t think immigrants in detainment camps are allowed to sell their blood at all, let alone 2 times a week.
- nitrogen 7y ago> poor people are allowed to sell their blood 2 times a week. Plasma "donation" is paid in the US.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoYes, but incarcerated persons are not allowed to participate.
- ZhuanXia 7y agoInteresting. I still roll to disbelieve on China shunning human enhancement. The gains are just too great, the fruit too low hanging. Several standard deviation increases in polygenic traits are on the table, including the most important economic trait, intellectual ability: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Given China’s almost unique state capacity to think long term, history of eugenic policies in sport, an ironically less Lysenkoist population than America, and a cultural focus on educational achievement and competition, this seems overdetermined. In fact, animal breeders are getting very keen on iterated embryo selection. So the technology will get investment even in environments where it is illegal for humans. We live in interesting times. Even a 2 standard deviation increase would allow a small population to produce the vast majority of genius-level intellects. 2 standard deviations is on the way low end of what iterated embryo selection offers. Should we find the causal variants, direct editing offers vastly more. A world-wide ban on this technology is not on the table. Plan accordingly.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoWow those are optimistic numbers. Considering we have NO idea what genes select for most features (if any).
- ZhuanXia 7y agoWe don’t need the causal variants for embryo selection, just the predictive variants. We have this for height now. The only reason we don’t have this for IQ now is everyone doing GWAS studies are too chicken to put an IQ test in with their other measures. As the cost of a sequence declines, this will not last. Obviously, this is not an issue if there is state involvement.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pcrh 7y agoPeople have done IQ vs genetic variation in GWAS. They find that there is almost no impact of common variants on IQ. Example: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample sizes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509
- quotz 7y agoWe are gonna look back on this just how we look back on Giordano Bruno. Future generations would find it ridiculous that he was jailed for technological progress and science.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoHe was completely irresponsible, did no do what he advertised he would do, and endangered the health of many people. Don't get seduced by the dream he was selling. He was in fact a fraud, not a researcher.
- sdinsn 7y ago> endangered the health of many people Endangered the health of two people
- quotz 7y agoYou could say that for any invention ever. Even the internet, our greatest invention so far. However, the net benefit is a non-negative value.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoYou can also say that for any fraudulent enterprise ever. He added no benefit whatsoever, having done wrong what his betters could have done right.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lxe 7y agoWhat is up with these comments? State sponsored behavior modifications? Eugenics? Public propaganda while hiding some sinister truth? China isn't some kind of dystopian conspiracy-laden techno-thriller enemy state. The team simply wanted to sneak this experiment past medical practice laws and scientific ethics -- they probably would have been fined and punished in a similar fashion have they done it in the U.S or Europe.
- danmg 7y agoPeople really like sino bashing for some reason.
- Huycfhct 7y agoComplete mystery. No human rights abuses in China... Quick reply with a false equivalency!!
- dysy2u37u 7y agoA lot of it comes down to appearances it seems like. For awhile a year or two ago there were articles coming out about how some American scientists would do difficult to get approved work done in South America. If rules aren't universal then the global system just incentives skirting regulations to keep up with less inhibited peers.