4 ms·

I love to hate on tech bros as much as the next tech bro, but I've watched so many people suffer with terrible diseases that I'm totally fine if it we end up wi

by qgin 4y ago

I love to hate on tech bros as much as the next tech bro, but I've watched so many people suffer with terrible diseases that I'm totally fine if it we end up with 1000 hairloss biotech startups if that also means we get one that prevents Alzheimer's.

benreesman 4y ago
I’m not saying that we should outlaw Cas9 or something. I’m saying that a company with the ethics of Theranos and the leadership of Theranos and the gold-plated, infinite money VC backing of Theranos playing jazz with the human germline is the stuff of nightmares.
michaelt 4y ago
Hair loss cures aren't the problem. But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  Why would it remain affordable to them only? Economies of scale apply even if just the productivity learning curve. Doing the cost/benefit analysis it may make sense for a government to subsidize or outright provide it for free. It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Far better writers than me have done all manner of speculative fiction on this, but the main thrust of it all is that as bad as our racism problem is now, and that’s very bad, it’s an appetizer for the main course that will come from speciating the human race on the basis of both meaningful and measurable genetic “superiority”. That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model? Yeah that fucking terrifying.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    > Why would it remain affordable to them only? It's at the intersection of education and healthcare. Is it so outlandish to think that, in a country where education is so expensive it takes the average college student 20 years to pay off their debt; and medical costs are the cause of more than 60% of bankruptcies; a procedure that combined the two might be expensive?
    - kwere 4y ago
      It will be a global market, like today cost savy people can go study in Europe and mtf bottom surgery is done in Thailand, future customers will go global, expecially with tens of thousands of dollars on the line
- samhyde69 4y ago

by qgin 4y ago

benreesman 4y ago

I’m not saying that we should outlaw Cas9 or something. I’m saying that a company with the ethics of Theranos and the leadership of Theranos and the gold-plated, infinite money VC backing of Theranos playing jazz with the human germline is the stuff of nightmares.

michaelt 4y ago

Hair loss cures aren't the problem. But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?

Nasrudith 4y ago
Why would it remain affordable to them only? Economies of scale apply even if just the productivity learning curve. Doing the cost/benefit analysis it may make sense for a government to subsidize or outright provide it for free. It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?
- benreesman 4y ago
  Far better writers than me have done all manner of speculative fiction on this, but the main thrust of it all is that as bad as our racism problem is now, and that’s very bad, it’s an appetizer for the main course that will come from speciating the human race on the basis of both meaningful and measurable genetic “superiority”. That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model? Yeah that fucking terrifying.
- michaelt 4y ago
  > Why would it remain affordable to them only? It's at the intersection of education and healthcare. Is it so outlandish to think that, in a country where education is so expensive it takes the average college student 20 years to pay off their debt; and medical costs are the cause of more than 60% of bankruptcies; a procedure that combined the two might be expensive?
  - kwere 4y ago
    It will be a global market, like today cost savy people can go study in Europe and mtf bottom surgery is done in Thailand, future customers will go global, expecially with tens of thousands of dollars on the line
samhyde69 4y ago