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At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those con
by dekhn 4y ago
At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be.
I would say that in the area of reproductive science, you need to be exceptionally cautious about what's permitted as you are permanently modifying the germline, and society has very strong opinions about that. At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease (except in a limited number of Mendelian diseases) while also baking that harm into a person's genome so that if they do survive, their children may also inherit that.
(I worked towards germline modification for several decades and concluded, well before He Jianku shat the bed, that we're not ready to do it, and there do need to be some guardrails preventing rogue scientists finding naive parents and getting them to sign inadequate consent forms).
- telotortium 4y agoWhat do you think about embryo selection?
- codeddesign 4y ago[flagged]
- klodolph 4y agoNo. There are lots of interventions available for possible gender dysphoria, and we have some nice options available like puberty blockers which are relatively safe. If you change your mind, you can stop taking the puberty blockers. This is easy. You can make a reversible decision first and take whatever time you need to make the less reversible decisions later, or never. That’s not how gene editing works—once you edit genes, it is hard to un-edit them.
- password11 4y ago> At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be. Are the consequences really that permanent? It's pretty easy (in China) to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce. > At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease The potential upside of developing the science is huge, which is essentially what He is doing.
- kevviiinn 4y agoHow, exactly, would you ensure they don't reproduce?
- dudeofea 4y agoman-made horrors beyond your comprehension, that's how.
- quickthrowman 4y agoForced sterilization is the only option. Forced sterilization only ceased in the United States in 1981, I'm sure the CCP has enough authoritarian power to forcibly sterilize genetically altered humans if they chose to do so. I disagree with forced sterilization, just to be clear.
- kevviiinn 4y agoAre there cases of that happening? Besides the known ones in the US I mean, I'm talking about China
- quickthrowman 4y agoYeah, against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-weekend-reads-china-health-269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we... I’m not sure if there are any cases against Han Chinese people, probably the one child policy was effective enough.
- trasz3 4y agoThe article is FUD of course, but one thing worth noting is how it assumes a dropping pregnancies are because of forced sterilization and not just improving life quality - which is how it works everywhere else.
- Xeoncross 4y ago