6 ms·

This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them depend

This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies. We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.

UweSchmidt 4y ago
From the article I learned that there is "somatic gene editing, a therapeutic application of CRISPR administered by injection to consenting subjects", as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo". The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  What OP describes, at least to the extent that I agree with them, is both but mostly germline editing. Most genetic issues aren't really treatable after birth (though we are nowhere near the limit, so in the future who knows). Genes don't really code for traits so much after the embryo develops, most of the effect comes from the manual process of cells bumping against each other
  - dekhn 4y ago
    this is far from the truth in multiple ways. There are a wide range of genetic issues (typically recessive mutations) where somatic engeering would work great. And genes continuous encode for "traits" (really, molecular phenotypes) after development (which ends long after the embryo is born).
- acadapter 4y ago
  I think I would be okay with germline editing too, in selected cases. It's not like a child is going to say "hey, thanks for not fixing my cancer-causing mutation when you had the chance, mum".
  - UweSchmidt 4y ago
    Then you have less qualms about it than the author of the article, whose career would benefit a lot from a free-for-all. "The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Personally I think both are true. There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away. For example, when I was a child, British tabloids were saying “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-1993-daily-mail-ian-mckellen/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-19... (Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so). As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.
xeornet 4y ago
And at what point does "problems that they were unfairly born with" stop?
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Nowhere! Why draw the line right beneath yourself, we could all be better and it sucks that we aren't
  - michaelt 4y ago
    If parents could get their children cured so they don't turn into borderline-autistic weirdos, where would we get our tech company CEOs? :) Of course, it's not like society has any choice - if rival nations are willing to genetically engineer humans, can we afford to fall behind?
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      If parents could turn their children into tech company CEOs, how could we get non-borderline-autistic weirdos? That's the real question lol. But honestly, I'd expect that the actual result would be that severe autism which results in disability could largely be selected out, but neurodivergency would mostly fade into the background of the data. It's still around for a reason, and I personally am thankful even if I do have trouble with eye contact. If my sensory sensitivities were significantly worse though, or I had co-morbid epilepsy, I might want a tweak or two.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    For too long, the children of the rich have been denied their rightful genetic advantages. We need a ruling class we can really worship with a straight face.
    - Nasrudith 4y ago
      It is called education and has been around for millenia. If somebody suggested limiting education due to offering "unfair advantages" and contributing to inequality they would be considered absolutely bonkers. Yet with genetic engineering it is somehow completely different.
jimbob45 4y ago
You say that but most of the ways that humans would want fixing have already been readily implemented via surgery. Between boobjobs, HGH, limb-lengthening surgery, hair transplants, and even labiaplasty, there’s very little you can’t fix on your body today. My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.
- Shacklz 4y ago
  Nonsense. There's no surgery in the world which would make me lose my allergies and eczema problems, but a few edited genes before birth might just do the trick. Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.
- dorolow 4y ago
  What an incredibly uninformed and ableist take. There are a plethora of illnesses and disorders that are merely coped with. With no way of improving prognosis, the best medical science can offer is attempting to improve the quality of the life of the individual while they waste away.
angstrom 4y ago
Agree. A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life. For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell. These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation. For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
8note 4y ago
Most people lose the genetic lottery by being born to poor parents. You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth. Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  is there a citation for that correlation? (it's interesting)
throw0101a 4y ago
> This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Gattaca here we come: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca After that, axlotl tanks.
- hoseja 4y ago
  Nah, actually probably perfectly obedient communist supercitizens, casually outcompeting the primitive individualistic westerner too concerned with ethics.
whoomp12342 4y ago
Disagree. The assumption is that we can engineer better than natural selection. The weeds in my yard prove that natural selection always wins
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  Do you also think that we should get rid of all of the plants and animals that humans have engineered through selective breeding?
- netizen-936824 4y ago
  You seem to be assuming that human selection is not natural Humans are natural, we are part of nature
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Natural selection augmented with human ingenuity performs better on average than natural selection alone. After all, human ingenuity is a result of natural selection that emerged precisely because it works better.
- MisterSandman 4y ago
  You're also assuming that you are a better gardener than those scientists are at doing their jobs.
michaelbrave 4y ago
Long term it's great, it will remove diseases, promote equality, and fix all kinds of medical problems and deficiencies. I'm for it, but there are cautions to watch for. My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided. My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution. Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.
uuee 4y ago
A book on this subject: The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how life begins and how it ends

UweSchmidt 4y ago

From the article I learned that there is "somatic gene editing, a therapeutic application of CRISPR administered by injection to consenting subjects", as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo". The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.

ravi-delia 4y ago
What OP describes, at least to the extent that I agree with them, is both but mostly germline editing. Most genetic issues aren't really treatable after birth (though we are nowhere near the limit, so in the future who knows). Genes don't really code for traits so much after the embryo develops, most of the effect comes from the manual process of cells bumping against each other
- dekhn 4y ago
  this is far from the truth in multiple ways. There are a wide range of genetic issues (typically recessive mutations) where somatic engeering would work great. And genes continuous encode for "traits" (really, molecular phenotypes) after development (which ends long after the embryo is born).
acadapter 4y ago
I think I would be okay with germline editing too, in selected cases. It's not like a child is going to say "hey, thanks for not fixing my cancer-causing mutation when you had the chance, mum".
- UweSchmidt 4y ago
  Then you have less qualms about it than the author of the article, whose career would benefit a lot from a free-for-all. "The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Personally I think both are true. There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away. For example, when I was a child, British tabloids were saying “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-1993-daily-mail-ian-mckellen/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-19... (Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so). As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.

xeornet 4y ago

And at what point does "problems that they were unfairly born with" stop?

ravi-delia 4y ago
Nowhere! Why draw the line right beneath yourself, we could all be better and it sucks that we aren't
- michaelt 4y ago
  If parents could get their children cured so they don't turn into borderline-autistic weirdos, where would we get our tech company CEOs? :) Of course, it's not like society has any choice - if rival nations are willing to genetically engineer humans, can we afford to fall behind?
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    If parents could turn their children into tech company CEOs, how could we get non-borderline-autistic weirdos? That's the real question lol. But honestly, I'd expect that the actual result would be that severe autism which results in disability could largely be selected out, but neurodivergency would mostly fade into the background of the data. It's still around for a reason, and I personally am thankful even if I do have trouble with eye contact. If my sensory sensitivities were significantly worse though, or I had co-morbid epilepsy, I might want a tweak or two.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  For too long, the children of the rich have been denied their rightful genetic advantages. We need a ruling class we can really worship with a straight face.
  - Nasrudith 4y ago
    It is called education and has been around for millenia. If somebody suggested limiting education due to offering "unfair advantages" and contributing to inequality they would be considered absolutely bonkers. Yet with genetic engineering it is somehow completely different.

jimbob45 4y ago

You say that but most of the ways that humans would want fixing have already been readily implemented via surgery. Between boobjobs, HGH, limb-lengthening surgery, hair transplants, and even labiaplasty, there’s very little you can’t fix on your body today. My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.

Shacklz 4y ago
Nonsense. There's no surgery in the world which would make me lose my allergies and eczema problems, but a few edited genes before birth might just do the trick. Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.
dorolow 4y ago
What an incredibly uninformed and ableist take. There are a plethora of illnesses and disorders that are merely coped with. With no way of improving prognosis, the best medical science can offer is attempting to improve the quality of the life of the individual while they waste away.

angstrom 4y ago

Agree. A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life. For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell. These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation. For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

8note 4y ago

Most people lose the genetic lottery by being born to poor parents. You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth. Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries

jjtheblunt 4y ago
is there a citation for that correlation? (it's interesting)

throw0101a 4y ago

> This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development. Gattaca here we come: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca After that, axlotl tanks.

hoseja 4y ago
Nah, actually probably perfectly obedient communist supercitizens, casually outcompeting the primitive individualistic westerner too concerned with ethics.

whoomp12342 4y ago

Disagree. The assumption is that we can engineer better than natural selection. The weeds in my yard prove that natural selection always wins

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
Do you also think that we should get rid of all of the plants and animals that humans have engineered through selective breeding?
netizen-936824 4y ago
You seem to be assuming that human selection is not natural Humans are natural, we are part of nature
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Natural selection augmented with human ingenuity performs better on average than natural selection alone. After all, human ingenuity is a result of natural selection that emerged precisely because it works better.
MisterSandman 4y ago
You're also assuming that you are a better gardener than those scientists are at doing their jobs.

michaelbrave 4y ago

Long term it's great, it will remove diseases, promote equality, and fix all kinds of medical problems and deficiencies. I'm for it, but there are cautions to watch for. My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided. My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution. Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.

uuee 4y ago

A book on this subject: The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how life begins and how it ends