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We can now edit the human genome – how far should we go? [video]
- msie 6y agoI really enjoyed the video. I guess I could have read about CRISPR and CAS9 but the video was more engaging.
- hanselot 6y agoCan't wait to be edited until I too am just another protruding arm of the infinite blob.
- alhasaniq 6y agoIs the video hosting down? "We're sorry, but this video is not available."
- stephenroller 6y agoPerhaps you are outside the United States? PBS is the public television channel, so perhaps they geolock :(
- dekhn 6y agoHuh, I was surprised to learn PBS is geolocked. https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/5000673797-i-live-outside-the-united-states-why-can-t-i-stream-pbs-video-content-from-pbs-org- https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/5000673797-i...
- _jahh 6y agoblame GOP legislators wouldn't want dem fornurs gittin nun a stuff
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- s5300 6y agoHuh? I thought there's always been an obvious answer to this... Cat girls edit: ahh... I love the part of HN that can't enjoy even the lightest of humor. FWIW: I have a severe chronic/borderline terminal health condition that is near certain to leave me dead quite early, not to mention the hell it's brought upon my physical body. In 10 years or so (maybe even sooner) - it will probably be something that's editable out in vitro. Also... I'm young as it is. Let me have fun with my dreams of cat girls. Maybe you'd end up enjoying them too. :)
- Retric 6y agoThe hype cycle is overselling what’s possible with this tech today and in the near future. If for example you need most cells edited then that’s far less viable etc. PS: The original comment brought a smile, but I still downvoted. Keeping most jokes and obvious comments off HN is a major long term benefit.
- xeromal 6y agoThere's one comment replying to you and it's not complaining
- s5300 6y agoI got like 10 downvotes in three minutes ;) Sometimes it's not about what's visible to your eye... Though, I do agree, in general, it's best practice not to have too many laughs on HN. Also... yeah, current state of things is a bit hype. I have a lot of hope though having spoken with people doing research at places like University of Tokyo. I'm sure whether ethically or not, China has probably made some great strides we're not 100% aware of.
- tuesdayrain 6y agoThe thought of China creating an army of genetically modified 200 IQ super soldiers/scientists is both fascinating and horrifying. It's comparable to the technological singularity that would occur if we had chains of AI creating superior AI.
- drivingmenuts 6y agoWell, I, personally, would much enjoy having my T-2 Diabetes fixed. Also, my hearing and eyesight.
- nathanyz 6y agoThese are the types of things that will be fixed as we tip toe into altering our genes. But in the end, like most technology, someone will end up doing whatever is possible if the outcome gives them an advantage. Some country will allow it as it gives them a leg up on others. And once you can do it in X country, the pressure will be strong for others to follow suit and allow it or fall behind. This is excepting the case where it generates some near term negative effect that outweighs the gains to be had by it.
- ImaCake 6y agoUnless I am unaware of something, CRISPR is not yet ready for medical usage. Sure, it is an amazing research tool. But every gene editing trick built on the back of this incredibly useful protein (Cas9, that is) has "off-target" effects. These mean that not only do you mutate your target, you cause a whole bunch of other mutations. The future of human genome engineering is almost certainly going to feature CRISPR genes in some capacity, but we just don't have the precision, reliability, and ability to avoid other deleterious mutations yet to do so. Also, as someone working with CRISPR, it isn't quite as easy as it is made to sound. It is relatively easy, but still a lot of work! I guess that is a footnote when it makes the impossible, possible though. We need to keep having these ethics conversations though, so we can use this tool wisely. For further reading I would recommend Jennifer Doudna's "A crack in creation". She is one of the founders of CRISPR as a gene editing tool, and her book is good reading on the topic.
- Animats 6y agoCRISPR isn't quite enough. That's just patching. Direct synthesis of a human sized genome will probably be available at some point. The human genome is about 3 billion base pairs. Largest synthesis so far is 580,000 base pairs. Then we'll need CAD tools. Really good CAD tools.
- vikramkr 6y agoJust synthesizing a genome isn't going to get us to designer humans - frankly its already well within the reach of modern technology to synthesize 3 billion bases. You cant just bootstrap from the nucleotide sequence - even in really simple bacteria we have to pop the genome into a pre-prepared genome free cell with the machinery to start working on doing life stuff, and adding the complexity of human epigenetics and a multicellular organism makes that a nonstarter currently. Especially when just editing the genome is so much easier.
- adrianN 6y agoI would be interested in reading some literature about the current problems of plopping a synthesized genome into a vertebrate ovum. Or a simpler multi-cellular species, say C. elegans.
- charliebrownau 6y ago* Make all males 6-7 foot * Make all women 4.5-5.5 foot * Remove balding from men * Alter jews so they have long nose ,black hair and blue skin
- WalterBright 6y agoI suspect the only way humans will successfully colonize the solar system is with gene editing. Genetic modification can be used to reduce the life support requirements in various environments. For example, different gravities, different gas pressure, gas composition, tolerance of various chemicals, radiation, etc.
- drdeadringer 6y agoI've read several SciFi books which incorporate this idea. The way I consider it, it's different flavors of humanity per given planetary environment.
- majkinetor 6y agoAlso in Pandorum movie.
- akira2501 6y agoMay of these don't seem like binary adjustments, though. Perhaps you can increase the tolerance to radiation, but how? Perhaps by causing the body to produce a protein that shields cells from these effects, much like melanin does for UV. Assuming you do this, you immediately have to ask, what other effects does that have on the body? When these cells are destroyed by radiation, what are their breakdown products? How quickly can the body replenish them? What new nutritional requirements will be necessary to support them? The same questions can be raised for any of these "DNA feature flags." It seems to me, viewed a certain way, the human body is almost entirely driven by emergent phenomenon. I have serious doubts about our ability to edit the source code to achieve very straight-forward single side-effect modifications. We may very well be limited to merely adjusting "errant" DNA sequences that cause or are implicated in disease or undesired attributes. Who would choose a short child? Or one with myopia? Or one with weak muscles? Or even one with the misshapen chest and facial orifices necessary to survive lower partial pressures of oxygen? The long term effect of custom genetic modification actually seems like it would just be used to reduce the overall genetic diversity of humans on the whole, not to improve it in drastic ways.
- wespiser_2018 6y agoLet's say we can edit the human genome (CRISPR is not approved for human use), even then, there should extremely tight limits to our genomic editing, since for the majority of the genome by sequence, expressed regions, and possibly still coding regions, has largely unknown function. We just don't understand so much of genomic function through evolutionary time from the simple fact that we cannot easily observe it, that making anything more than a SNP change is asking for major, unfixable problems at a population level down the line. If risk is (threat x vulnerability x consequence), we need to practice the utmost caution when that vulnerability period is the rest of our species existence!
- radium3d 6y agoDo we have a way to measure the "resolution" accuracy of techniques like CRISPR? I feel like we don't even know the actual "resolution" of the genome to begin with...
- lioeters 6y agoFrom @ImaCake's comment¹ above, I learned that: > Cas9 cannot edit the DNA by itself, but you can add a second enzyme to it that is able to change a single base of DNA from one letter to another. In theory this means you could target a single nucleotide somewhere in the ~3 billion letters of the genome. ..A single letter flipped from A to G or C to T. That seems like an answer to your question. The "resolution", or a single "unit", in a genome sequence is a nucleotide. > But it will still have unintended edits! As for the accuracy of CRISPR, two kinds of errors are mentioned. "Off-target" mutations that occur elsewhere in the sequence: > It is pretty trivial to test for these in whole genome sequencing, and it turns out you will get plenty of them. And mutations that occur in the same targeted location: > ..[The] base editor will actually target a region of about 5-6 bases around the intended target and will happily flip those bases too. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24459427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24459427 --- On further reading, a single "unit" for double-stranded D/RNA is the base pair: > bp = base pair(s) — one bp corresponds to approximately 3.4 Å (340 pm) of length along the strand, and to roughly 618 or 643 daltons for DNA and RNA respectively. (A picometer, "pm", is 1×10^−12 m, or one trillionth of a meter.) @ImaCake does mention that CRIPSR is able to "target a single nucleotide", a single base of DNA. For single-stranded D/RNA, the nucleotide is the unit, abbreviated nt (or knt, Mnt, Gnt). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair#Length_measurements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair#Length_measurements
- stephc_int13 6y agoHow far should we go? The science might not be ready yet, but it seems likely that progress in field will enable us to change our own species. We can't predict the outcome, even in out wildest dreams or worst nightmare, we'll always be wrong. Are we afraid of uncertainties? Of course we are, evolution taught us to be. Not doing everything we can would be in total contradiction with the behavior of humankind since the dawn of ages. I am both an optimist and an atheist, there is no God and nothing is sacred.
- _jahh 6y agothe fact we've only had one nuclear war would be in opposition to doing everything and i hope we similarly are able to avoid
- imtringued 6y agoDon't underestimate this comment. Nuclear war is the expected outcome of a conflict between two intelligent species. Especially if the older species feels inadequate.
- majkinetor 6y agoStrange thing you say you are an atheist but here you are optimistic about intelligent design.
- stephc_int13 6y agoI am not talking about intelligent design. The beauty of evolution is that this is a process without designers. There is simply no need for them.
- LostTrackHowM 6y agoA more interesting question is how far will we go. Based on human history, I am fairly sure the end of humanity is approaching. 100 to 150 years I'd guess. I don't mean we'll be gone, just that what we'll become will not be recognized as human by our ancestors.
- ImprobableTruth 6y agoIf the modifications go far enough (e.g. something like completely suppressing all human emotions) I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that we'll be gone. At least I don't see any reason why we should view these potential future 'humans' as any thing more related to us than say a potential 'species' of robots.
- Nasrudith 6y agoDepending on the ancestor we may have already qualified centuries if not millenia ago - but that has more to do with them than us. If they call those who do not worship their long forgotten gods not human then we technically already lost. Let alone other specific aspects like not considering pygmy peoples human. The point being hypothetical bigotries of the long dead is an unmeasurable metric (oxymoronic) and pretty useless.
- imtringued 6y agoHumanity will end the same way the neanderthals ended. Extermination by the "superior" life form.
- miki123211 6y ago> How far should we go? If we don't go far enough, someone else will. Whether Iran or China or North Korea, someone else will eventually start producing superintelligent children that will outshine all western scientists and engineers[1]. If we don't start doing it too, we will become irrelevant, prehistoric tribes that have no place in the modern world. If we decide to allow genetic enchancements, though, we need to ensure the society won't split into classes. Some parents will probably want the freedom to choose if their child is enchanced or not, but the unenchanced children will have no chance at anything in life. The only way forward is to require genetic enchancement, no matter the opposition from religious or other groups. I am still shaken by that conclusion, but it seems inevitable. Irrelevance, inequality or force. Choose one, or they will choose for you. [1] assuming science allows us to do this eventually
- jart 6y agoYour way of thinking is kind of how the world economy is already saving people from poverty. Plenty of folks have managed to evade plugging into the rat wheel so far, such as the amish and hasidic jewish communities. Do you take modernity seriously enough to patch their genes like Windows 10?
- vmception 6y agorevert the original sin commit and make us perfect godtoshi's vision
- valgor 6y agoWe should go as far as possible assuming proper safety guidelines. To do otherwise is an injustice to the future.
- cwhiz 6y agoGene editing is the surest path to dystopia that I can currently imagine. And I don’t see any way to avoid the inevitable arms race. If North Korea is engineering super intelligent kids it is almost certain that South Korea and/or China will do the same. Then it will just cascade from there. Engineered vs not engineered could easily become the new class system where the rich-ish are able to produce “better” children and exponentially widen the gap. Could also lose all semblance of uniqueness. Want your child to be a redhead with a 170 IQ? Okay, pay enough and it’s yours. So I think the real question is not how far SHOULD we go, but instead how far WILL we go. And how quickly will we go there.
- dusted 6y agoHow far? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe8jJBoEmuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe8jJBoEmuY
- imtringued 6y agoGo far enough that the new humans are so different and superior that they think of themselves as a different species. Go far enough that parents sue companies because their child doesn't match the designer baby form they have filled out. Go far enough that there will be racial violence between the "natural" and genetically engineered humans. Too much ambition will bring severe consequences... Please don't go beyond what is absolutely necessary.
- Jemm 6y agoAs someone with genetic illness, please do what you can to eliminate genetic diseases.