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>Those who think this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans, or so called "designer babies" Well...this is the start of ever more i

>Those who think this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans, or so called "designer babies" Well...this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans.

Cogito 12y ago
I guess it is! That said, I don't think the 'slippery slope' arguments made in parliament are valid, precisely because this is a very specific kind of genetic modification: > "But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorise today go ahead, there will be no going back for society." Replacing mitochondria is very different to designing genetic traits, either through careful selection of eggs and embryos, or splicing, and I think that conflating the two is silly. If laws were introduced that would allow modification of the primary genetic material that debate would be had then. This law will not shoo-in laws that provide for that kind of genetic modification.
- 2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
  The 'slippery slope' argument also seems easy to fix in this case. Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.
  - skore 12y ago
    > Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis. Cue people shouting about how politics are slow and killing people while also forcing politicians into making medical judgements that they may not be qualified for, further increasing the chance that they become the playthings of lobbyists who "do their homework for them". I'm utterly divided on this issue by the way, just noting the inevitable discussion that follows your logic.
- one-more-minute 12y ago
  You could equally apply the slippery slope argument to regular medicine. > If the NHS starts giving out vaccines today they'll be giving out botox in a few years time, right!? People can already (though perhaps to a lesser extent) have designer bodies, if they can afford it, thanks to modern medicine. Genetic medicine doesn't seem to introduce a fundamentally new problem.
adamnemecek 12y ago
> invasive genetic modification of humans Besides safety, are there any issues with that?
- rpedroso 12y ago
  There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. The film imagined a future in which genetic superiority could be measured by percentile and that job eligibility was based almost exclusively on your genetic score. The implication is that the widespread but costly availability of genetic modification in tandem with free market capitalism would necessarily form such an enormous social wedge. I haven't thought about the issue enough to agree or disagree with the theory, but I am stating it here as a potential answer to your question.
  - maratd 12y ago
    > There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. Absolutely nothing we can do artificially will have as great of an impact than genetically gifted individuals having children together ... which is already happening and has been happening for eons ... I mean, that's what evolution is. The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool. If anything, genetic modification will allow the less gifted to pool funds and improve their own gene pool in a way that was simply not possible before. Now, I think all of this is futile, for reasons touched in GATTACA. It is my absolute most favorite movie. Watch it again =)
    - avar 12y ago
      > Absolutely nothing we can do artificially > will have as great of an impact than > genetically gifted individuals having > children together. When those two individuals have children their genes are fused together by random chance. Do you really think gene technology won't get better than random chance? We already have technology that's good enough to improve on that, e.g. splicing out a gene known to cause a disease from one of those parents.
Dylan16807 12y ago
But no DNA is being modified.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  Technically you are correct, no DNA is being modified. However, the mix of genetic material is being altered.
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    The mix of genetic material gets altered every time an egg is fertilised. In humans, across the planet, this happens several hundred thousand times each day. It's not something that we should be afraid of.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Not really. Nobody calls it genetic modification when you change your gut flora. No genome has changed at all.
SilkRoadie 12y ago
My concern about this isn't the specific procedure, it is the moving of the line of what is allowed. What will happen next? I am sure there will be an illness where just a tiny bit of gene splicing could improve the lives of x amount of babies. You look the blocking of websites.. It started with child porn which everyone thought was acceptable but then the same legislation was used against piracy websites. Now Britain has an internet filter... Before there was a red line in genetics. Allowing this procedure really blurs that line and I worry this is just the start of a slippery slope.. As for how much it helps parents. It doesn't help many with their first child as the parents are often not aware they are carriers of conditions. For subsequent children adoption was always available.
- antirez 12y ago
  How is different than giving antibiotics to somebody ill? You are preventing the natural outcome, with something artificially created. I think many people when the topic is "DNA" simply over-react.
  - robmcm 12y ago
    The argument is that changes to genetics bridge generations. If you kill someone with medicine they die. If you give someone a faulty gene, it could affect exponential number of people with each generation. Unless it affects reproduction ;)
    - antirez 12y ago
      It is the same with antibiotics, people that naturally would not be able to reproduce, will, so the global genetic outcome will change, and possibly something making a given person susceptible to a given infection will be passed to the next generation. But nobody, fortunately, pretends that it is a bad idea to give antibiotics to patients.
Fuxy 12y ago
What's wrong with "designer babies". I think it would be cool if you could clean up your DNA removing all the nasty genetic diseases you could pass on to your children. I wouldn't really change the appearance of my child though. Plus I would keep most of the original genetic material just fix the bits that are detrimental to a long and healthy life.
- viccuad 12y ago
  You end up with an aristocracy that can afford to have better superhuman children meanwhile the plebs can't afford it. And it would perpetuate itself. Bye tabula rasa in birth and death.
  - Shivetya 12y ago
    We already have an aristocracy that can afford better schools, better neighborhoods, and the like. If designer babies one day leads to no more birth defects or unwanted children it is not a future to be feared. there will always be people who have an advantage over others, the majority simply comes from where you were born followed to whom to you were born too. The real fear is likely that some will make choices that are not politically correct, it is certain this would happen in non Western countries.
  - task_queue 12y ago
    We computer professionals think we'll be or are part of that aristocracy, so it's okay.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      We will probably become collared pets once "gene hacking" becomes a thing. The real aristocracy will use the law to make unauthorized genetic modifications a crime punished more harshly than unauthorized computer access, which is already sometimes punished more harshly than crimes like armed robbery. Consider the ethical implications of the job they pay you to do. Always. Who will be benefiting from my work? Who might be harmed by it? Can I trust my employer to protect--or even just accurately represent--my own interests? Do not take jobs that grant more power to the powerful at the expense of the weak. My litmus test for human gene-mod technology will be whether I will ever be able to repair my phi-GULO pseudogene, to restore the mammalian ability to synthesize ascorbates (vitamin C) in the liver, without needing to get permission from anyone to do it, and without paying more than a year's salary or using more than one garage of space on the equipment. If I can do that, this particular genie cannot be re-bottled. And you can bet I'd be selling CKGGRAKDC-GG-D(KLAKLAK)2 under the table, too.
rmc 12y ago
It is for saving lives, not making people prettier.
- palmer_eldritch 12y ago
  One day, in a decade, a century, a millennium, it will be used to make kids prettier. I don't think it will make them happier though.
  - task_queue 12y ago
    There's a genetic modification for that.

>Those who think this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans, or so called "designer babies" Well...this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans.

Cogito 12y ago

I guess it is! That said, I don't think the 'slippery slope' arguments made in parliament are valid, precisely because this is a very specific kind of genetic modification: > "But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorise today go ahead, there will be no going back for society." Replacing mitochondria is very different to designing genetic traits, either through careful selection of eggs and embryos, or splicing, and I think that conflating the two is silly. If laws were introduced that would allow modification of the primary genetic material that debate would be had then. This law will not shoo-in laws that provide for that kind of genetic modification.

2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
The 'slippery slope' argument also seems easy to fix in this case. Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.
- skore 12y ago
  > Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis. Cue people shouting about how politics are slow and killing people while also forcing politicians into making medical judgements that they may not be qualified for, further increasing the chance that they become the playthings of lobbyists who "do their homework for them". I'm utterly divided on this issue by the way, just noting the inevitable discussion that follows your logic.
one-more-minute 12y ago
You could equally apply the slippery slope argument to regular medicine. > If the NHS starts giving out vaccines today they'll be giving out botox in a few years time, right!? People can already (though perhaps to a lesser extent) have designer bodies, if they can afford it, thanks to modern medicine. Genetic medicine doesn't seem to introduce a fundamentally new problem.

adamnemecek 12y ago

> invasive genetic modification of humans Besides safety, are there any issues with that?

rpedroso 12y ago
There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. The film imagined a future in which genetic superiority could be measured by percentile and that job eligibility was based almost exclusively on your genetic score. The implication is that the widespread but costly availability of genetic modification in tandem with free market capitalism would necessarily form such an enormous social wedge. I haven't thought about the issue enough to agree or disagree with the theory, but I am stating it here as a potential answer to your question.
- maratd 12y ago
  > There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. Absolutely nothing we can do artificially will have as great of an impact than genetically gifted individuals having children together ... which is already happening and has been happening for eons ... I mean, that's what evolution is. The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool. If anything, genetic modification will allow the less gifted to pool funds and improve their own gene pool in a way that was simply not possible before. Now, I think all of this is futile, for reasons touched in GATTACA. It is my absolute most favorite movie. Watch it again =)
  - avar 12y ago
    > Absolutely nothing we can do artificially > will have as great of an impact than > genetically gifted individuals having > children together. When those two individuals have children their genes are fused together by random chance. Do you really think gene technology won't get better than random chance? We already have technology that's good enough to improve on that, e.g. splicing out a gene known to cause a disease from one of those parents.

Dylan16807 12y ago

But no DNA is being modified.

TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
Technically you are correct, no DNA is being modified. However, the mix of genetic material is being altered.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  The mix of genetic material gets altered every time an egg is fertilised. In humans, across the planet, this happens several hundred thousand times each day. It's not something that we should be afraid of.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Not really. Nobody calls it genetic modification when you change your gut flora. No genome has changed at all.

SilkRoadie 12y ago

My concern about this isn't the specific procedure, it is the moving of the line of what is allowed. What will happen next? I am sure there will be an illness where just a tiny bit of gene splicing could improve the lives of x amount of babies. You look the blocking of websites.. It started with child porn which everyone thought was acceptable but then the same legislation was used against piracy websites. Now Britain has an internet filter... Before there was a red line in genetics. Allowing this procedure really blurs that line and I worry this is just the start of a slippery slope.. As for how much it helps parents. It doesn't help many with their first child as the parents are often not aware they are carriers of conditions. For subsequent children adoption was always available.

antirez 12y ago
How is different than giving antibiotics to somebody ill? You are preventing the natural outcome, with something artificially created. I think many people when the topic is "DNA" simply over-react.
- robmcm 12y ago
  The argument is that changes to genetics bridge generations. If you kill someone with medicine they die. If you give someone a faulty gene, it could affect exponential number of people with each generation. Unless it affects reproduction ;)
  - antirez 12y ago
    It is the same with antibiotics, people that naturally would not be able to reproduce, will, so the global genetic outcome will change, and possibly something making a given person susceptible to a given infection will be passed to the next generation. But nobody, fortunately, pretends that it is a bad idea to give antibiotics to patients.

Fuxy 12y ago

What's wrong with "designer babies". I think it would be cool if you could clean up your DNA removing all the nasty genetic diseases you could pass on to your children. I wouldn't really change the appearance of my child though. Plus I would keep most of the original genetic material just fix the bits that are detrimental to a long and healthy life.

viccuad 12y ago
You end up with an aristocracy that can afford to have better superhuman children meanwhile the plebs can't afford it. And it would perpetuate itself. Bye tabula rasa in birth and death.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  We already have an aristocracy that can afford better schools, better neighborhoods, and the like. If designer babies one day leads to no more birth defects or unwanted children it is not a future to be feared. there will always be people who have an advantage over others, the majority simply comes from where you were born followed to whom to you were born too. The real fear is likely that some will make choices that are not politically correct, it is certain this would happen in non Western countries.
- task_queue 12y ago
  We computer professionals think we'll be or are part of that aristocracy, so it's okay.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    We will probably become collared pets once "gene hacking" becomes a thing. The real aristocracy will use the law to make unauthorized genetic modifications a crime punished more harshly than unauthorized computer access, which is already sometimes punished more harshly than crimes like armed robbery. Consider the ethical implications of the job they pay you to do. Always. Who will be benefiting from my work? Who might be harmed by it? Can I trust my employer to protect--or even just accurately represent--my own interests? Do not take jobs that grant more power to the powerful at the expense of the weak. My litmus test for human gene-mod technology will be whether I will ever be able to repair my phi-GULO pseudogene, to restore the mammalian ability to synthesize ascorbates (vitamin C) in the liver, without needing to get permission from anyone to do it, and without paying more than a year's salary or using more than one garage of space on the equipment. If I can do that, this particular genie cannot be re-bottled. And you can bet I'd be selling CKGGRAKDC-GG-D(KLAKLAK)2 under the table, too.

rmc 12y ago

It is for saving lives, not making people prettier.

palmer_eldritch 12y ago
One day, in a decade, a century, a millennium, it will be used to make kids prettier. I don't think it will make them happier though.
- task_queue 12y ago
  There's a genetic modification for that.