6 ms·

Designer babies incoming. Turn off the genes that would make my child below 6'5 in adulthood, turn off the genes that wouldn't make him naturally muscular, tur

Designer babies incoming. Turn off the genes that would make my child below 6'5 in adulthood, turn off the genes that wouldn't make him naturally muscular, turn off the genes that would give him an average intelligence, etc. $10M + options. Payable in monthly installments.

zen_1 4y ago
Turn on the Myostatin inhibitors!
WitCanStain 4y ago
A new genetic aristocracy. Great.
- elif 4y ago
  Yea human culture will find a new level of 'basic' combined with an inferred and understood if not blatantly codified position of social superiority... Sounds more like twilight zone than social progress to me.
fgkramer 4y ago
We just need to see Gattaca to be horrified at the results of such experiment.
- sneak 4y ago
  I have seen Gattaca and don't find human genetic engineering to be horrific. It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise.
  - nescioquid 4y ago
    > It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise. You know, I used to be wary of eugenics, but when you put in that light, yeah, I'm kinda tired of putting up with everyone's crap kids. If you could make them be quiet, sit still, and do as told, that would be a fantastic achievement! Oh, and maybe make them smarter, too. Ever try to actually talk to one (the newer ones are really pretty stupid)?
    - sneak 4y ago
      Genetic engineering of one's own children is not eugenics. It's not even close. Most of my friends' children are smart. The ones not raised in the USA are generally well-behaved. Your sample size may need to be increased.
    - donkarma 4y ago
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > I have seen Gattaca and don't find human genetic engineering to be horrific. It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise. Did you even pay attention to the movie? The horrific aspect was the human genetic engineering led 1) to the the unengineered to be turned into an underclass that was blatantly and unfairly discriminated against, and 2) that same discrimination would be turned against the engineered if they had an accident that caused them to fall short of the expected perfection. I have little doubt that the reality of genetic engineering (that was is effective as that depicted) would rhyme with that movie. It's also nearly certain that any such technology would not be distributed in an egalitarian way, so the sentiment should be more like "it's cool and exciting that [well off] people will be able to have [genetically superior] children than [the plebs]."
    - o_____________o 4y ago
      I understood the intention of the movie, but I'm also in the camp that thinks engineering ourselves is the way forward, and a given. Genetic and silicon advances have a real potential to make us super/transhuman and immortal. > It's also nearly certain that any such technology would not be distributed in an egalitarian way This argument could have been made about early computers as well. But time and its economies of scale come into play. We can't limit our species based on shortsighted fairness, there's a longer view to take.
      - tablespoon 4y ago
        > I understood the intention of the movie, but I'm also in the camp that thinks engineering ourselves is the way forward, and a given. Genetic and silicon advances have a real potential to make us super/transhuman and immortal. Techno-optimism hasn't really panned out as promised. And I really doubt it will be "us." If trans-humanism pans out (though I suspect it's bunk), we'll be the Homo erectus populations to their Homo sapiens. > This argument could have been made about early computers as well. But time and its economies of scale come into play. We can't limit our species based on shortsighted fairness, there's a longer view to take. Capital got automation from computers, the plebs got distraction boxes that push ads.
  - o_____________o 4y ago
    People will balk at this, which is funny in contrast to how much human energy is poured into ego, signaling and mate selection as proxies for perpetuating favorable genetics.
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
$10M+ now and then in 20 years figure out that changing that gene sequence creates a dramatically higher likelihood for Alzheimer's or infertility. I personally am not against the modification of humans in practice, I think it's an interesting opportunity for humans to take control over the evolutionary process and optimize ourselves for the world we live in now (and future ones), e.g., what if we could minimize the amount of sleep needed, or our tolerance to heat so climate effects were somewhat mitigated, or so our bodies were less affected with long periods in space? The tie-in of capitalism to it creates a weird dynamic but I'm not sure I see an obvious better solution unless we want to outlaw everything except for government approved research and let the ideas be at the whims of whatever bureaucrat or political appointee happens to be in charge at the time.
- dekhn 4y ago
  In the short term, a lot of gene therapy focuses on the set of diseases where the repair really does seem to be "change this one base" and there are no side effects due to complex, unknown gene interactions or other unexpected phenomena. m And nearly all of it (I haven't looked at the details in a while) is just treatment (IE, injections of a gene therapy in a post-birth individual), rather than preventive by germline manipulation, which IMHO It's likely that for the time being we'll only use gene therapy for things which are recognized as devastating diseases and the treatment is extremely reliable; germline modification for enhanced attributes in typical individuals is still a fairly out-there concept that would probably get panned in the media.
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  >$10M+ now and then in 20 years figure out that changing that gene sequence creates a dramatically higher likelihood for Alzheimer's or infertility Not only that, but any genes that are not selected against (e.g. your Alzheimer’s example, which occurs after reproductive age) are now permanently circulating in the population, with absolutely zero (humane) way of ever removing them.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
This already is what happens with sexual selection. That is the purpose of sexual selection from the point of view of genetic integrity. People are designing their babies every time they have sex. There's huge amounts of money involved there too. And like how do I know the geneticist isn't slipping his own in-born DNA in my place, like that fertility doctor did or that criminal inseminator who broke into poorly-guarded sperm banks and substituted his sperm for that of astronauts with Nobel Prizes? Had like 660 kids that way. Like there good reasons to do this are, OK genetic malformation, ie osteogenesis imperfecta, that's a SNIP, totally. Or you were raped, want to punish that rapist by making the egg have even less genes in common with him than it would ordinarily, making his rape counterproductive genetically. Another good reason, defensible. Or you want to protect rare alleles, considering weaknesses to be strengths, this is like a left-handed man marrying a left-handed woman, or freckles (I think something about freckles make children hate them til they're 19, rare exceptions, not even the iconic Lindsay Lohan accepted her own freckles). Preserving their identity and diversity. Don't pass laws as much as using judgment to decide, individually and collectively, what the future will be. Talk and think instead of setting up magic words for lawyers to copy-paste--an isomorphic problem to genetic design. No fucking blind copy-paste, don't use copy-paste with your copy paste to copy-paste yourself.
cronix 4y ago
What do you think they would choose if they had the option for gender, orientation and sexual preference?
- Victerius 4y ago
  Most wealthy couples with the means to afford designer babies would probably want heterosexual children. Gender would be left at their discretion.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    Not just wealthy couples. Most parents want their children to be heterosexual and bear them grandchildren. Having successfully procreated, they are more likely to have natalist genes and inclinations.
    - lajamerr 4y ago
      Why would they need to be heterosexual to successfully procreate. If the future is designer babies/baby incubation pods. It doesn't matter what sexual orientation the kid is. The parent would have a designer baby, then why would the child eventually not have a designer baby as well?
      - DrudgeCorporate 4y ago
        You will always need an Egg or Sperm depending on which is missing in the relationship. Also, one of the parents would not have genetic code in the offspring since you can't splice two eggs/sperm together as far as I know.
        inglor_cz 4y ago
        In Vitro Gametogenesis has been improving lately. 20 years from now, making an egg from a stem cell harvested from a male might be possible.
    - 4y ago
rowanG077 4y ago
Honestly I love this future. There are so many bad traits humans have that would help everyone a great deal if they would be eliminated.
- elif 4y ago
  Consider that idea's other subscribers in history, the ones utilizing that exact rationality... Are you in good company?
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    I think so. Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Plato and there are countless more. Just because we didn't have the technology to implement it humanely in the past doesn't mean it can't be done in the future. In fact. I would consider a society, that has the capability to noninvasively eliminate for example sickle cell anemia or Huntingtons and doesn't because some people one hundred years ago did horrible things, barbaric.
    - elif 4y ago
      Helen Keller defended a doctor's 1915 non-intervention in the case of a child that was not capable of "the possibilities of happiness, intelligence, and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed creature", and then later supported adoption of disabled children, such as the a case of an infant with tumor-induced blindness saying "blindness is not the greatest evil, it is only a physical handicap. that is life. the annals of progress show that much of humanity's finest work has been wrought by persons with with a severe handicap, that she may be spared to help open the eyes of ignorance" I hope that she can help you to open your eyes as well.
      - rowanG077 4y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not advocating for killing anyone. I don't think you are arguing in good faith here.
ineptech 4y ago
This doesn't really pass the sniff test; if there were any easy one-gene changes that resulted in unambiguously better results, it's highly likely that we'd all have them already.
- elevaet 4y ago
  Well, these aren't unambiguously "better results", not in a biological sense. Just better in terms of what our culture values, and not necessarily better survival and reproduction.
  - dharma1 4y ago
    memes manipulating genes
- pilom 4y ago
  BCRA mutations: "It’s estimated that 55 – 65% of women with the BRCA1 mutation will develop breast cancer before age 70" [0] ApoE4: "individuals with two versions of the ApoE 4 gene have a 50% chance of developing Alzheimer’s" [1] HTT: The Huntingtons gene. If you have the wrong version of this gene, you will get Huntington' disease. All that to say that, in these cases, sure _most_ people have positive traits from these genes, not all do and we could theoretically use CRISPR to change people with the negative versions of these genes to the positive versions of these genes. [0]: https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/what-is-brca https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/what-is-brca [1]:https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/alzheimers-gene-apoe4 https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/alzheimers-gene-apoe4
civilized 4y ago
It's embarrassing when self-appointed "bioethicists" do nothing but handwring about distant transformative technology - stuff that could confer such incredible benefits on humanity and that we are light-years from having. It's so easy for them to posture as virtuous protectors of humanity, sowing FUD about things that are so far from existing that nobody even understands how they might work or what capabilities they might have or not have. So easy, when the benefits are nowhere near close enough to factor into anyone's near-mode thinking. I'm cheering for the scientists. Give us the choice to have brilliant, strong, healthy children. Then laugh at how little anyone cares about the so-called "ethics", facile cloud-talk that never considered real people facing real decisions. The "ethicists" had their chance to intelligently weigh the pros and cons and give real advice based in prudence, empathy, and a love for human flourishing. They chose to self-indulgently chinstroke about dystopia on the taxpayer dime. We'll figure it out without them.
- hooande 4y ago
  This is how I feel about AGI
inglor_cz 4y ago
Given that people already travel for IVF to cheaper locations abroad (Ukraine was one of them until the war), it is going to be more like $100K+ in the future. Medicine is practised outside the US as well, including high tech medicine. And for a much more reasonable price tag.
Gatsky 4y ago
Some problems come to mind: - this is performing an irreversible procedure on a person without their consent. Justifiable for a disease but less so for vanity traits. - genes are pleiotropic and modifying multiple genes could have unexpected effects. An easy example is that taller people have a higher risk of cancer. Barring some great advance in predicting the effects of genetic changes, this will remain a problem. - it has a homogenising effect, optimising for traits a culture finds appealing and that can be easily measured. You will eventually get a eugenic army that all look like swimwear models and score highly on IQ tests. At the same time, I think that modifying the organism is the only way to get rid of diseases like heart disease and cancer.

zen_1 4y ago

Turn on the Myostatin inhibitors!

WitCanStain 4y ago

A new genetic aristocracy. Great.

elif 4y ago
Yea human culture will find a new level of 'basic' combined with an inferred and understood if not blatantly codified position of social superiority... Sounds more like twilight zone than social progress to me.

fgkramer 4y ago

We just need to see Gattaca to be horrified at the results of such experiment.

sneak 4y ago
I have seen Gattaca and don't find human genetic engineering to be horrific. It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise.
- nescioquid 4y ago
  > It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise. You know, I used to be wary of eugenics, but when you put in that light, yeah, I'm kinda tired of putting up with everyone's crap kids. If you could make them be quiet, sit still, and do as told, that would be a fantastic achievement! Oh, and maybe make them smarter, too. Ever try to actually talk to one (the newer ones are really pretty stupid)?
  - sneak 4y ago
    Genetic engineering of one's own children is not eugenics. It's not even close. Most of my friends' children are smart. The ones not raised in the USA are generally well-behaved. Your sample size may need to be increased.
  - donkarma 4y ago
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I have seen Gattaca and don't find human genetic engineering to be horrific. It's cool and exciting that people will be able to have better children than they would have otherwise. Did you even pay attention to the movie? The horrific aspect was the human genetic engineering led 1) to the the unengineered to be turned into an underclass that was blatantly and unfairly discriminated against, and 2) that same discrimination would be turned against the engineered if they had an accident that caused them to fall short of the expected perfection. I have little doubt that the reality of genetic engineering (that was is effective as that depicted) would rhyme with that movie. It's also nearly certain that any such technology would not be distributed in an egalitarian way, so the sentiment should be more like "it's cool and exciting that [well off] people will be able to have [genetically superior] children than [the plebs]."
  - o_____________o 4y ago
    I understood the intention of the movie, but I'm also in the camp that thinks engineering ourselves is the way forward, and a given. Genetic and silicon advances have a real potential to make us super/transhuman and immortal. > It's also nearly certain that any such technology would not be distributed in an egalitarian way This argument could have been made about early computers as well. But time and its economies of scale come into play. We can't limit our species based on shortsighted fairness, there's a longer view to take.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > I understood the intention of the movie, but I'm also in the camp that thinks engineering ourselves is the way forward, and a given. Genetic and silicon advances have a real potential to make us super/transhuman and immortal. Techno-optimism hasn't really panned out as promised. And I really doubt it will be "us." If trans-humanism pans out (though I suspect it's bunk), we'll be the Homo erectus populations to their Homo sapiens. > This argument could have been made about early computers as well. But time and its economies of scale come into play. We can't limit our species based on shortsighted fairness, there's a longer view to take. Capital got automation from computers, the plebs got distraction boxes that push ads.
- o_____________o 4y ago
  People will balk at this, which is funny in contrast to how much human energy is poured into ego, signaling and mate selection as proxies for perpetuating favorable genetics.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago

$10M+ now and then in 20 years figure out that changing that gene sequence creates a dramatically higher likelihood for Alzheimer's or infertility. I personally am not against the modification of humans in practice, I think it's an interesting opportunity for humans to take control over the evolutionary process and optimize ourselves for the world we live in now (and future ones), e.g., what if we could minimize the amount of sleep needed, or our tolerance to heat so climate effects were somewhat mitigated, or so our bodies were less affected with long periods in space? The tie-in of capitalism to it creates a weird dynamic but I'm not sure I see an obvious better solution unless we want to outlaw everything except for government approved research and let the ideas be at the whims of whatever bureaucrat or political appointee happens to be in charge at the time.

dekhn 4y ago
In the short term, a lot of gene therapy focuses on the set of diseases where the repair really does seem to be "change this one base" and there are no side effects due to complex, unknown gene interactions or other unexpected phenomena. m And nearly all of it (I haven't looked at the details in a while) is just treatment (IE, injections of a gene therapy in a post-birth individual), rather than preventive by germline manipulation, which IMHO It's likely that for the time being we'll only use gene therapy for things which are recognized as devastating diseases and the treatment is extremely reliable; germline modification for enhanced attributes in typical individuals is still a fairly out-there concept that would probably get panned in the media.
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
>$10M+ now and then in 20 years figure out that changing that gene sequence creates a dramatically higher likelihood for Alzheimer's or infertility Not only that, but any genes that are not selected against (e.g. your Alzheimer’s example, which occurs after reproductive age) are now permanently circulating in the population, with absolutely zero (humane) way of ever removing them.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

This already is what happens with sexual selection. That is the purpose of sexual selection from the point of view of genetic integrity. People are designing their babies every time they have sex. There's huge amounts of money involved there too. And like how do I know the geneticist isn't slipping his own in-born DNA in my place, like that fertility doctor did or that criminal inseminator who broke into poorly-guarded sperm banks and substituted his sperm for that of astronauts with Nobel Prizes? Had like 660 kids that way. Like there good reasons to do this are, OK genetic malformation, ie osteogenesis imperfecta, that's a SNIP, totally. Or you were raped, want to punish that rapist by making the egg have even less genes in common with him than it would ordinarily, making his rape counterproductive genetically. Another good reason, defensible. Or you want to protect rare alleles, considering weaknesses to be strengths, this is like a left-handed man marrying a left-handed woman, or freckles (I think something about freckles make children hate them til they're 19, rare exceptions, not even the iconic Lindsay Lohan accepted her own freckles). Preserving their identity and diversity. Don't pass laws as much as using judgment to decide, individually and collectively, what the future will be. Talk and think instead of setting up magic words for lawyers to copy-paste--an isomorphic problem to genetic design. No fucking blind copy-paste, don't use copy-paste with your copy paste to copy-paste yourself.

cronix 4y ago

What do you think they would choose if they had the option for gender, orientation and sexual preference?

Victerius 4y ago
Most wealthy couples with the means to afford designer babies would probably want heterosexual children. Gender would be left at their discretion.
- mcculley 4y ago
  Not just wealthy couples. Most parents want their children to be heterosexual and bear them grandchildren. Having successfully procreated, they are more likely to have natalist genes and inclinations.
  - lajamerr 4y ago
    Why would they need to be heterosexual to successfully procreate. If the future is designer babies/baby incubation pods. It doesn't matter what sexual orientation the kid is. The parent would have a designer baby, then why would the child eventually not have a designer baby as well?
    - DrudgeCorporate 4y ago
      You will always need an Egg or Sperm depending on which is missing in the relationship. Also, one of the parents would not have genetic code in the offspring since you can't splice two eggs/sperm together as far as I know.
      - inglor_cz 4y ago
        In Vitro Gametogenesis has been improving lately. 20 years from now, making an egg from a stem cell harvested from a male might be possible.
  - 4y ago

rowanG077 4y ago

Honestly I love this future. There are so many bad traits humans have that would help everyone a great deal if they would be eliminated.

elif 4y ago
Consider that idea's other subscribers in history, the ones utilizing that exact rationality... Are you in good company?
- rowanG077 4y ago
  I think so. Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Plato and there are countless more. Just because we didn't have the technology to implement it humanely in the past doesn't mean it can't be done in the future. In fact. I would consider a society, that has the capability to noninvasively eliminate for example sickle cell anemia or Huntingtons and doesn't because some people one hundred years ago did horrible things, barbaric.
  - elif 4y ago
    Helen Keller defended a doctor's 1915 non-intervention in the case of a child that was not capable of "the possibilities of happiness, intelligence, and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed creature", and then later supported adoption of disabled children, such as the a case of an infant with tumor-induced blindness saying "blindness is not the greatest evil, it is only a physical handicap. that is life. the annals of progress show that much of humanity's finest work has been wrought by persons with with a severe handicap, that she may be spared to help open the eyes of ignorance" I hope that she can help you to open your eyes as well.
    - rowanG077 4y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not advocating for killing anyone. I don't think you are arguing in good faith here.

ineptech 4y ago

This doesn't really pass the sniff test; if there were any easy one-gene changes that resulted in unambiguously better results, it's highly likely that we'd all have them already.

elevaet 4y ago
Well, these aren't unambiguously "better results", not in a biological sense. Just better in terms of what our culture values, and not necessarily better survival and reproduction.
- dharma1 4y ago
  memes manipulating genes
pilom 4y ago
BCRA mutations: "It’s estimated that 55 – 65% of women with the BRCA1 mutation will develop breast cancer before age 70" [0] ApoE4: "individuals with two versions of the ApoE 4 gene have a 50% chance of developing Alzheimer’s" [1] HTT: The Huntingtons gene. If you have the wrong version of this gene, you will get Huntington' disease. All that to say that, in these cases, sure _most_ people have positive traits from these genes, not all do and we could theoretically use CRISPR to change people with the negative versions of these genes to the positive versions of these genes. [0]: https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/what-is-brca https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/what-is-brca [1]:https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/alzheimers-gene-apoe4 https://www.alzheimersorganization.org/alzheimers-gene-apoe4

civilized 4y ago

It's embarrassing when self-appointed "bioethicists" do nothing but handwring about distant transformative technology - stuff that could confer such incredible benefits on humanity and that we are light-years from having. It's so easy for them to posture as virtuous protectors of humanity, sowing FUD about things that are so far from existing that nobody even understands how they might work or what capabilities they might have or not have. So easy, when the benefits are nowhere near close enough to factor into anyone's near-mode thinking. I'm cheering for the scientists. Give us the choice to have brilliant, strong, healthy children. Then laugh at how little anyone cares about the so-called "ethics", facile cloud-talk that never considered real people facing real decisions. The "ethicists" had their chance to intelligently weigh the pros and cons and give real advice based in prudence, empathy, and a love for human flourishing. They chose to self-indulgently chinstroke about dystopia on the taxpayer dime. We'll figure it out without them.

hooande 4y ago
This is how I feel about AGI

inglor_cz 4y ago

Given that people already travel for IVF to cheaper locations abroad (Ukraine was one of them until the war), it is going to be more like $100K+ in the future. Medicine is practised outside the US as well, including high tech medicine. And for a much more reasonable price tag.

Gatsky 4y ago

Some problems come to mind: - this is performing an irreversible procedure on a person without their consent. Justifiable for a disease but less so for vanity traits. - genes are pleiotropic and modifying multiple genes could have unexpected effects. An easy example is that taller people have a higher risk of cancer. Barring some great advance in predicting the effects of genetic changes, this will remain a problem. - it has a homogenising effect, optimising for traits a culture finds appealing and that can be easily measured. You will eventually get a eugenic army that all look like swimwear models and score highly on IQ tests. At the same time, I think that modifying the organism is the only way to get rid of diseases like heart disease and cancer.