4 ms·

Why can't we just fix one letter in the DNA and make diabetes not happen? Diabetes is stupid. All internal organ illnesses are stupid. Still that's the best we

Why can't we just fix one letter in the DNA and make diabetes not happen? Diabetes is stupid. All internal organ illnesses are stupid. Still that's the best we can do atm. Still all those anti-GM people actively hurt our chances to get real treatments soon.

alphaoverlord 13y ago
Because that's not how diabetes works
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Wikipedia tells us that diabetes type I is usually genetic. If you're susceptible, you might get it, might not; if you aren't, you aren't. Guess what, no point of carrying bad genes around.
  - micro_cam 13y ago
    The genetics are complex and not yet understood. (I am a diabetic who does genetics)
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      Are you sure it's possible to understand them fully without actually doing some hacking? How would you be sure when you understand enough to start acting?
      - PeterisP 13y ago
        There are known workarounds that make diabetes-1 not fatal; "doing some hacking" (whatever you'd mean by that) would likely have a significant percentage risk of being fatal if you want do do anything that does something to your body at all without spending, say, less than a year. "Above all, do no harm" makes for a very conservative approach of being really sure before risking actual action.
      - micro_cam 13y ago
        They do "hacking" etc in mouse models but it is expensive and time consuming. You might have about 700,000,000 genomic variants to choose from so we need to do other studies to try things. For the time being one of the most effective means of studying a disease is to sequence a pedigree of individuals some of whom have the disease and analyze the inheritance patterns until you narrow it down to the point you can be sure. You can also do studies where you just sequence a ton of people with and without the disease but those can be more problematic statistically because of the number of possible variants.
adamnemecek 13y ago
> Why can't we just fix one letter in the DNA and make diabetes not happen? I'm sure that it's because of the big pharma conspiracy which tries to keep that technology secret so that they can make more money. /s

alphaoverlord 13y ago

Because that's not how diabetes works

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Wikipedia tells us that diabetes type I is usually genetic. If you're susceptible, you might get it, might not; if you aren't, you aren't. Guess what, no point of carrying bad genes around.
- micro_cam 13y ago
  The genetics are complex and not yet understood. (I am a diabetic who does genetics)
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    Are you sure it's possible to understand them fully without actually doing some hacking? How would you be sure when you understand enough to start acting?
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      There are known workarounds that make diabetes-1 not fatal; "doing some hacking" (whatever you'd mean by that) would likely have a significant percentage risk of being fatal if you want do do anything that does something to your body at all without spending, say, less than a year. "Above all, do no harm" makes for a very conservative approach of being really sure before risking actual action.
    - micro_cam 13y ago
      They do "hacking" etc in mouse models but it is expensive and time consuming. You might have about 700,000,000 genomic variants to choose from so we need to do other studies to try things. For the time being one of the most effective means of studying a disease is to sequence a pedigree of individuals some of whom have the disease and analyze the inheritance patterns until you narrow it down to the point you can be sure. You can also do studies where you just sequence a ton of people with and without the disease but those can be more problematic statistically because of the number of possible variants.

adamnemecek 13y ago

> Why can't we just fix one letter in the DNA and make diabetes not happen? I'm sure that it's because of the big pharma conspiracy which tries to keep that technology secret so that they can make more money. /s