[Nicodimas]

https://www.google.c...-china-46368731

Discuss! This seems fascinating to me. Morality-wise uncertain about these implications so going to lead with that. To me the removal of life is the worst thing we can do. So this seems counter of that. Obviously if this turns out to be a very very dangerous path...we should not go this route. I don’t think they are arguing to create “khhhhans” or anything, but I see the slippery slope argument too (gattaca anyone ?).

However is this the next stage of scientific development for health, if immunizations are so fifty years ago is this the natural next level.

Obviously I think the biggest risk would be messing around with this would ideal create a immunity to something, however does messing with these the immune system create all sorts of risks as some articles suggest to other biological nasties ? I know we have some smart people in this field who could break it down in layman’s terms and infill us in. As with anything side effects and all that.

[Abyss]

This is how zombie apocalypses start.

[Maark Abbott]

If used sensibly, it's a great thing - the removal of hereditary conditions that can impact on life, or conditions developed before birth that cause someone to not be able to walk for example.

I actually agree that immune system tampering seems risky (see: the Sentinelese and why outside contact could be lethal for them in respect of illness, also see Martions, ullah), but if handled well it could be a great breakthrough for us as a species.

[Cause]

No proof this is real though. Guy could just be nutjob

[Gorefest]

He gave a talk about it at a scientific conference in Hong Kong the other day and preliminary data does suggest that his story is true. Obviously it should still be verified by an independent research panel, but his data was compelling.

Lots of food for thought, I guess. It definitely will not have done the whole gene editing debate any good on a global scale, because this was a totally irresponsible and gung-ho action by a sole researcher without proper ethical backing or support (or even knowledge) from his institution. The PR damage alone could be disastrous, let alone the impact on future research into gene editing.

You also have to question why he chose CCR5, which functions in normal immunity are still partly unknown (so who knows what long-term negative effects its deletion might have) although people with natural CCR5 mutations do not seem to have any significant alterred phenotype. But HIV in its core is preventable and to some extent can be treated or contained, so it would have been far more ethically sound to target an actual genetic and severely impactful disease such as Huntington's or cystic fibrosis. But I guess the guy may not be familiar with those disease areas and chose something he knew about.

Well, in any case it looked like it happened and the scientific community will have to step up and deal witht his somehow, as well as our wider society. This is not science fiction anymore.

[Aptorian]

I'm gonna ask a crack pot question right now.


Surely there's (at least) dozens of labs around the world doing secret Gene research and running unethical experiments, right? I mean from a national security perspective nobody wants to be the super power who didn't invest in smart kids and super soldiers and suddenly find yourself generations behind a genetic arms race.

Or have I been watching too much X-files?

[Gorefest]

I am hoping too much X-files. Sure, I cannot vouch for secret government installations etc, but that was not the case here. As far as 'above board' scientific research goes, any work that involves gene manipulation in animals or humans requires ethical approval by a qualified government-approved ethical board. There is a lot of very extensive legislation to cover this sort of work, scientists cannot just on a whim start knocking out or sticking in genes into organisms without structured review. Even when it is just cells, you still need a project registered on the institutional biosafety database with a risk assessment which reviews the proposed genetic modifications, the target organism and any potential effects of the modification or what would happen in case of accidental release to the environment.

But yeah, no clue about secret government labs, if they are there I imagine they don't share that. Still, even those guys cannot operate in a total vacuum and expect to make any meaningful scientific progress.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 29 November 2018 - 03:04 PM

[Abyss]

More likely private labs and corporations as opposed to governments.

In super secret facilities located on private islands in the Carribean.

Maybe.

I hear.

From... a... friend.


Of a friend.

[Dadding]

I'm in the camp of thinking this has most definitely been done before, but obvious they haven't published their work. If the technology is out there, somebody's doing it regardless of ethics. Doesn't seem to have been that successful though. One was mozaic for the trait and the other was heterozygous.

Such an arbitrary choice of target gene. Why not fix some SNP disease? HIV incidence is lower in Asia than elsewhere, and is no longer a life-threatening infection. Kind of silly though, this guy's goal was to obviously just to be able to say: "FIRST!" Ultimately it's just going to harm synthetic biology advances going forward. As if there weren't enough hoops to jump through as is (for good reason).

People already hate GMOs (thanks Green Peace & Lobbyists), even if they solve a lot of our problems (See Tanzania just banning GMO trials - now they can stay malnourished for even longer!) I imagine this will eventually have a similar, if not bigger, backlash.

Edit: Here's a nice interview on the subject with George Church, basically the big cheese of synthetic biology (he's less critical than others)
https://www.sciencem...-editing-babies

This post has been edited by Dadding: 29 November 2018 - 04:25 PM

[Nicodimas]

Alternative Goose, on 29 November 2018 - 02:50 PM, said:

I'm gonna ask a crack pot question right now.


Surely there's (at least) dozens of labs around the world doing secret Gene research and running unethical experiments, right? I mean from a national security perspective nobody wants to be the super power who didn't invest in smart kids and super soldiers and suddenly find yourself generations behind a genetic arms race.

Or have I been watching too much X-files?

The government institution isn’t even secret. It’s called DARPA and the stuff they have is decades ahead.

[Tiste Simeon]

Serious question, as this is something that interests me but I have next to no knowledge about ("Explained" on Netflix has an episode about it which is pretty fascinating)...

Gene editing obviously has some amazing possibilities linked to it but what separates it from eugenics? Is it merely the intention or ethics of the people behind it? The line seems a bit thin to me...

Furthermore, what is to do this becoming yet another way for the super rich to genetically enhance themselves while the poor get sicker? It's not too much of a stretch to assume that 1) it's gonna be expensive to do and 2) while the idea of using it to eradicate diseases is an excellent one, I fear it will once more be a case of running numbers to see how much profit can be made by doing so. The front runners of this kind of research will be the well funded ones and investors are going to want benefits beyond financial gain.

Hope that makes sense I'm tired right now. Maybe someone could do some genetic editing to give me more energy on little sleep...

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 29 November 2018 - 09:37 PM

[Nicodimas]

@ Tiste: this is exactly the reasoning I wanted to bring up.
I await one of our resident experts to tell us about.

(On that point if it’s being done in secret, wouldn’t you want people researching to get ahead of it just in case)

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 29 November 2018 - 09:51 PM

[Gorefest]

Well, eugenics basically just means 'improving' the human gene pool. So yes, gene therapies such as crispr technology are a form of eugenics. The negative connotation from eugenics stems from the fact that until recently, the only effective way of practicing it was by selective breeding or by removing 'undesirable' genetic traits from the population by killing or sterilising people.

The moral implications of it are something that society needs to ponder over. Being able to 'cure' horrendous life altering or deadly diseases is awesome, but being able to choose your child's eye colour may be a thing that in our present-day society we step away from in horror. 50 years down the line pople might look back and snigger about our reaction to it.

The thing is, sure it may be expensive at first but that goes for most things. Lots of current medical treatments are only accessible if you have lots of money. That doesnt make the treatments bad. It will get cheaper and more accessible to everyone as time and rechnology advances. But again, it is up to society to decide how far we want to take it and what is or isnt considered justified. And those judgements will change as time progresses.

On a side note, we are still a long way off using these sorts of technologies for "making someone smarter" or something like that. We dont even know what most of our genes do yet, or what sort of interactions there are. Knocking out/altering CCR5 like the Chinese guy seems to have done may have loads of unexpected life altering effects on the subject other than having greater resistance to HIV infection. Which is why this was such an insanely irresponsible thing to do. I very much doubt that many rich people out there like to be used as guinea pigs.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 29 November 2018 - 10:19 PM

[Morgoth]

Yeah, intelligence is not something we can select for yet. We don't even know if intelligence as we measure it is mainly genetic. Intelligent parents get stupid children and stupid people get smart children. The category of children that have on average the highest intelligence are adopted children. At least from the research I've seen.

I think CRISPR et.al. have great promise, especially for genetic ailments, and I have little doubt it'll be a part of our national health services in a few decades.

[Aptorian]

Morgoth, on 30 November 2018 - 08:24 AM, said:

Yeah, intelligence is not something we can select for yet. We don't even know if intelligence as we measure it is mainly genetic. Intelligent parents get stupid children and stupid people get smart children. The category of children that have on average the highest intelligence are adopted children. At least from the research I've seen.

My God. The Illuminati have been seeding adoption agencies with smart gene babies.

[Tsundoku]

Alternative Goose, on 30 November 2018 - 09:35 AM, said:

Morgoth, on 30 November 2018 - 08:24 AM, said:

Yeah, intelligence is not something we can select for yet. We don't even know if intelligence as we measure it is mainly genetic. Intelligent parents get stupid children and stupid people get smart children. The category of children that have on average the highest intelligence are adopted children. At least from the research I've seen.

My God. The Illuminati have been seeding adoption agencies with smart gene babies.

One would have thought they and their Deep State/NWO/MLB allies would have preferred the opposite effect. A smarter population is, after all, harder to control.

[Cause]

Id say gorefest nailed it. Eugenics has a bad wrap because as he says currently the only way to do it is to decide who should have sex with whome and preventing people who have, or who carry bad traits from breeding. It gets more evil when you go full Nazi and euthanize the undesirables. Gene editing will in theory allow people to create any baby they want, remove and negative genes and produce uber Space marines without having to do anything about the source material. So gene editing can be a positive form of eugenics. There is also complications, many undesirable mutations such as color blindness which I have are quite stable in the human population at about 5% of people. You cant see color the same way, its a defect. Or its a defect until your hunting for camouflaged animals. Sickle cell is a deadly disease if your homogenous for it and is a benefit against malaria if your heterozygous for the trait. Sociopaths might not interact well with others but they are possibly very successful in business or survival situations because they care only for themselves. Desirable vs undesirable is often a question of environment. Their are genetic disorders in which people burn off calories like crazy, lots of people might love that disorder in todays world of plenty but in a famine those people will be first to die.

The negative side of gene therapy is also that people who opt out of gene therapy (the religious perhaps) or people who cant afford it, or people who get accidentally pregnant and keep the baby will be possibly creating second class citizens. Not as strong, not as smart or beautiful as the Space Marines. Their health insurance premiums will be higher etc. Id say costs will come down. Governments may even subsidize it. Its better to create a human who cant get cancer than it is to pay for chemo for cancer patients. Again Id say gorefest has it, not everyone can afford chemo but we don't ban chemo.

As for secret research I doubt it. The most successful 'secret' science project was the mnahattam project and it cost billions and had almost all the worlds foremost physicists working on it. The work was secret but I don't think the fact that it was happening could be kept all that secret. Physics is also very different to biology and genetics. They can do a lot of their work theoretically because the causes and effects are understood to a good degree. Secret genetics works cant be done in secret Id say. The advances require too much collaboration and input from the world wide scientific community and frankly we don't understand biology, genetics etc as much as we would like. We know how to alter genes, we know what the bad mutations are and what the average good sequences are like, so removing genetic diseases is probably not too far away in out future. However editing genes to select for trait like beauty and intelligence or strength is beyond us. We can't predict what a single amino acid substitution/deletion/addition will have on a protein with high certainty. We cant predict with certainty what secondary effects increasing muscle mass might have for example or changing the immune system or messing with hormones. Biology is very much a trial and error science and when that comes up against human experimentation its obviously frowned on.

[Gorefest]

To follow-up on this, an interesting article in BioTechniques:

https://www.biotechn...CH%202020-01-27

The Chinese researcher got 3 years in jail.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 27 January 2020 - 04:08 PM