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Genetically Modified Humans Born
sh64109 writes: "According to this article that just popped up on the BBC, some children were born recently with modified genes. The modification was made to mitochondrial (not nuclear) DNA so only the girls (if there were any) will be able to pass this on. The purpose of the mod was to correct an infertility problem."
I wonder if I can "meta-mod" these babies. I think they have been modded up too much :P
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Oh bother.
"Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year-old children confirm that they contain a small quantity of additional genes not inherited from either parent."
The truth (tm):
Baby is genetically tested. Genes exist that don't match either parent. Wife, afraid of admitting that she was fucking the plumber, tries to explain it "Our child was genetically manipulated by them scientists."
...to CORRECT an infertility problem. On an overpopulated planet. Great.
Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps there's a REASON some people are infertile?
I might sound overly harsh, but if this continues, we'll have lots and lots of perfectly healthy, long-lived, incredibly weak and fragile human beings walking this planet.
Let the flames begin.
El riesgo vive siempre!
From the nice quote box on the BBC Page
[This] is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children
St Barnabas Institute for Reproductive Medicine researchers
Does that imply there has been genetic modification resulting in not so healthy children? Just wondering...
So I guess this means that gene splicing, etc was NOT involved. And what they did was to add mitochonria from one person into the cells of another.
Sort of similar to replacing whole chromosomes, though that could be the next step.
Sort of like hacking code by replacing whole sections of code. This should be safe, as far as the children goes.
But the can of worms it opens...
I do not mind it by itself, it is just that I do not know of any agency that I would feel comfortable in trusting with this sort of thing.
That, ultimately, is the problem. Who do you trust?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder how long until all the quake mod geeks become human mod geeks.
"Our new auto-aim mod for the standard U.S. soldier causes instant and accurate targeting of the enemy ..."
Will skin color be considered a "defect?" How about height? In the future how will those who's parents were not wealthy enough to modify their babies have a fair chance in the world?
Watch the second ending to GATTACA on the DVD version. There is a very real possibility of this technology being abused beyond anyone's imagination. It is quite possible that this slope is just too slippery to continue down.
When nuance becomes the only objective we lose the ability to function
Darn mutants! Turn 'em all in!!!
You want fries with that?
Dancin McSanta
Can you imagine how much a kid would get picked on in school once the other children learned they were genetically modified? Or even the reaction from adults?
I'm not arguing about this particlar experiment. I have no expertise in genetics. From what I understand, this didn't seem to be some huge step (it's not like they were alterted for more IQ).
I'm just saying in a world that hasn't even overcome racism or religious intolerance, these kids could have a hard time.
We normally inherit genes from our biological parents, the term GM is used when the child has genes that don't come from either parent.
Monkey sense
Imagine a Gattaca-like future 100 years from now, when everybody's DNA is vigorously scrubbed free of defective genes. Maybe people have different skin, hair, or eye color, just for fashion's sake, but internally we all look pretty much the same. Wouldn't this drastically increase the risk of some killer pathogen taking advantage of such a uniform field of hosts?
Nature is sloppy, but it tends to be highly resilient. Human efforts, on the other hand, tend to be much more focused, but also highly brittle.
Do domain names matter?
That was one of the reasons I went into BioChem as an undergrad.... help change the world. I became a code monkey to feed my family, but my heart is still there.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Last time I checked, the population of the earth was growing out of control, thanks to medical treatments, etc.. But I really do think we should be focusing on ways to fit more people or earth, or populate the moon or mars or at least something before we work on ways to keep people living longer and having more children.. I'm sure this would be flamebait but hey, its the honest truth.. if we don't figure out something soon it'll be like China all over the world, with everyone sleeping in drawers and showering in the kitchen.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
If cloning were done by dividing an original cell into two, then yes, it would be fairly safe.
Cloning is usually done by taking cells from a living creature, however, and placing them into a newly-emptied egg cell. This is dangerous like you wouldn't believe, because the DNA of the clone is prematurely aged. The telomeres at the ends of strings are much shorter, and eventually the DNA degenerates and cannot be copied. Cloned animals (including the famous Dolly, IIRC) often exhibit serious problems after only a few years of life.
As for the reduction of diversity, this is only the case for mass cloning. If the population is cloned entirely, thus doubling its size, there is no problem with loss of genetic diversity.
"The purpose of the mod was to correct an infertility problem."
The mod itself was performed by Kyle of HardOCP.com using a dremel tool, artic silver heatsink compound, and ten 180mm high output fans. When asked why he was modding babies, Kyle replied "Modding computer cases was too easy. Now that I have modded babies, I plan to overclock them and see if they can play Quake ]|[ faster than unmodified babies."
Thomas Pabst of TomsHardware.com stated that "... the modded babies are imperfect, and will need further revisions before we can accurately ascertain performance enhancements."
The modification was made to mitochondrial (not nuclear) DNA so only the girls (if there were any) will be able to pass this on.
This is incorrect. Recent (5-10 years ago) it has been shown that mitochondria do migrate from father to child.
How? A sperm cell is basically a protein capsule with DNA in it, and a tail on the back end. However, around this tail there's an enormeous amount of mitochondria present, which create energy for the tail to function.
When an eg is fertilised, the sperm cell head fuses with the egg cell. In a number of occasions this fusion also includes part of the tail, and with the tail these mitochondria.
Even if the amount of mitochondria present is very small compared to those provided by the mother, they can get the upperhand if they are 'fitter' (e.g. multiply faster)
Therefore, genetically modified boys (because the mother can get a boy) can pass on the modified genes. Although in this case no genes were modified, but just recombined.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Maybe it's a bit offtopic, but when i read this the next thought came up. What happened to adoption? I still think adopting a child and give him parents is a better solution than adjust the patents and give them children. This will just create more hungry mouths to feed.
Maybe there sould a ethical law that for every child you give life to you should also adopt a child in the 3rd world. Just to geve them a chance also.
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Privacy is terrorism.
So is humanity 1.1b compatible with 1.0? So far they're stable, but they haven't had a lot of uptime thus far to brag about.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Recently, the US government passed regulations saying that genetic experiments will not be conducted on humans. This is most certainly a back door taken advantage of, because technically, the ova is not a human being until it is fertilized by spermatozoa.
I find myself subtly worried about this. On the one hand, it's a good thing if this means an easier, safer, and beter way to improve fertility. This is what medical science is supposed to be doing. On the other hand... it seems a bit early, doesn't it, to start actively messing with genetics?
Now, technically, this wasn't geneering, it was simple injection of mitochondia into ova. (Were they fertilized or unfertilized? I think I missed that in the article if they mentioned it.) This is a good thing! But we really don't know everything that mitochondia EM in a cell. While it's not genetic engineering, it's cellular engineering so early in development that it might have unforseen effects. These kids have mitochondrial DNA that belongs to neither their parents. While I don't think it's unethical, I have to wonder if this really is a path we want to start down at our level of knowledge.
And what the HELL is this "US Government Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee?" When the heck did our government cobble together this? It sounds like the seeds for some sort of genetic regulatory agency. Okay, maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't like it when my governm,ent starts making esoteric and little-known agencies that start issuing legistlation or making any srt of decisions that impact me. The Federalist Society and Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Affairs are already plugged into our events too much. Or maybe I've just been playing Deus Ex too much.
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It looks to me like the people quoted in this article were trying to score points with the Catholic church; maybe the authors were too.
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Knowing the current trends in IP law, I'm very surprized that the scientists didn't modify the babies so that they would be *unable* to reproduce. Unauthorized reproduction would be a violation of their IP rights, after all.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The baby only has one ass! He's useless to me, I'll have to kill it.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Hmm... Nope. I don't see it in the old testament anywhere. There's no evidence that it's unethical. Even despite the fact that these kiddos now have a better (Unfair) chance of having their own kiddos one day, I don't see how it is in any way unethical.
Now 'Stupid' is another matter altogether. Think about it for a second. Haven't the vast majority of gene scientists come forth to agree with the fact that the complexity of the human genome lies not in the number of genes that exist, but in the way they interact?
Who's to say that having an extra set of Mitochondrial DNA won't snafu those interactions somehow? Yeah, it's nice to think "Hey, that's where the problem is, so why don't we replace those parts", but where the hell is the animal testing to see what happens when baby mice and rhesus monkeys have too many Mitochondria? I see no references to the research in the (very sensational) BBC article.
Also, there's the fact of 'Natural Selection' to consider. Something is wrong with those genes if they're not being passed on. Now these kids have a set of 'bad' Mitochondrial DNA along with their 'good' M-DNA. That gets passed on to their kids, and so on. What other problems are lurking in that 'bad' DNA along with infertility? A tendancy toward cancer? Schizophrenic or psychotic behavior? Yeah, it's harsh to say that you can't reproduce because you got damaged genes, but hey, You're genes are damaged! Are you really sure you want to give those to your kids anyway?
There are a *lot* of really good options for people who want kids but can't have them. It is more difficult to adopt than it is to just have a child, but there are millions of homeless children all around the world.
Rather than making it easier for people with bad genes to have children, why don't we concentrate on streamlining the adoption process and make it easier for people to adopt children from underprivaleged nations around the world? Let's have social justice before we start muckign around in the old gene-code there, pals.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
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I think this is a really important as well as scientifically responsible experement.
The fact is, one day we are going to have to come head to head with massive genetic manipulation. Eventually, people with genetic diseases will not accept that their children must be born with the same disease despite the technology to prevent it being available. Whether this is a Good Thing in the long run for the human race as a whole is unclear, and will likely not factor into the debate at all.
In any case, one day this will happen. Slight tinkering with mitochandrial DNA by transplanting whole healthy mitochondria is a relatively low-risk way to gain experience and knowledge about genetic engineering, since it doesn't involve gene splicing or removal of any of the original parents DNA.
This has nothing to do with human DNA as in the genome, the double helix we all think of. This is our main source of genetic information and defines the majority of our genetic characteristics.
Mitochondria are organelles (subcellular organisms) which are necessary for our cells to produce energy. Without them we would die. Mitochondria are stand-alone units in our cells. Our cells' DNA cannot produce mitochodria. When we are conceived, there are mitochondria in our mother's egg cell. When the zygote divides, the mitochondria divide too. All the billions of mitochondria in our cells are descended from those which come from our mothers eggs.
Because of the mitochodria's relatively autonomous existence and reproduction, many scientists believe they are actually a seperate life form (something similar to a bacteria, for example) which "moved in" to our cells, creating a symbiotic relationship and resulting in the basis for cellular life on earth.
It appears to me that what these scientists have done is take genetically unaltered, presumably healthy mitochondria out of an individual's cell and implanted them into the egg cell of a mother who's mitochondria are presumably defective. This is not, to my mind, genetic modification, although the resulting children do have some genetic material in their cells that their mothers don't have.
What's causing the ruckus is these are the first children born with modified "germ" cells (i.e. sperm or egg). The changes should change every cell in the body - if succesful they will all contain the healthy donor mitochondria. Ethically I don't see the issue - You can put another person's heart in someone's chest, but not an organelle in an egg? Mitochondria are probably alien to our cells anyway, so to me the ethics of this is a pretty grey area. Anyway, it's a long long way from Gattaca in anything but abstract conception.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Exactly the problem!
Our choice will be large scale genetic engineering vs. a large scale die off.
Unfortunately, I think the latter would be more beneficial.
I believe the Gene-ie is officially out of the bottle.
(apologies to David Weber from whom I first learned the term Gene-ie for a genetically engineered human)
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Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
I want to build my own roads. Or, more correctly, I want building roads to be handled by the market. I don't really have any plans of going out and learning to pour asphalt or anything myself. If we were in early soviet Russia, and having this argument, would you tell me "all you libertarians who want to grow your own food, raise your hands"? Or maybe in modern northern europe, you could say "all you libertarians who want to pay for supporting the church out of your own pocket, raise your hands"?
Imagine, next thing I may be advocating private provision of health care, or of education. Both of which, I might add, are provided much better by the market than by government.
Remember, this is a government by, for, and of the people. The government has no needs. People have needs that are difficult to meet through means other than by government. Don't confuse the means (government) with the end (a free, productive society).
Why do so many environmentalists hate people so much? I guess people like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc, had the right idea then. they got rid of lots of people.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
So will succeeding generations now come with changelogs instead of birth certificates?
why? you probably wouldn't even notice it. have you travelled across the u.s. and seen how empty it is? sure, some parts of the country and the rest of the world are somewhat crowded - but vast areas of land are virtually empty.
Well, I live in the second-least crowded state - Nevada - with two people per square mile - so I think I'm qualified to give some input on this.
In Las Vegas, the population exceeded the capacity of the land to support it long ago - it pipes in a majority of its water from California, at a gigantic cost to everyone.
In Reno, we manage to get by through our sound policies of raping the Truckee River and Lake Tahoe, watering our lawns only 1-2 times a week, and, every ten years, being formally denied showers for a couple weeks. I hear there used to be fish in that river. But, when I was 17, and on the cross-country team, I ran right across it. My socks got wet; my pants did not.
In Fallon, Nevada, there isn't easy access to natural sources of water, so most citizens drill shallow wells to get at the ever-lowering water table. These wells tend to be loaded with concetrations of arsenic as high as 1,000 ppb. The result? One of the largest and most alarming leukemia clusters in the U.S.
Certainly the earth can support a larger population than six billion people if resources were distributed correctly - but don't try telling me that you could alleviate L.A.'s overcrowding problem by 50% by moving half of them to Winnemucca (Recent town billboard: "Winnemucca! Now with paved roads!"). Nevada would be dry in a week - and we'd have to make do with gin.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
The LAST thing we need is genetically engineered mutants who are MORE likely to reproduce.
This got modded as insightful? This is flamebait trolling, nothing more or less. Do you, Mr. Coward, Anonymous esq. believe that we should use genetic modification to make certain people infertile? Maybe you'd put yourself forward first, and remove yourself from the gene pool. You do know that there is already enough food produced per day to feed the worlds population, don't you?
And your use of the word mutants is disgraceful. These are people. You are obviously the type of person who naturally pronunces the word "negro" with two g's.
I would like to put MHO opinion in here. The advent of genetics is wonderful. First, genetic disorders that would have made these peoples lives less full have been corrected. They can now lead normal lives.
We have also seen blind dogs having their sight restored, and other amazing feats. The hope that this brings millions of people (excepting the anonymous troll who posted this from under their bridge) is wonderful. Congratulations to the people who made this possible.
Well, there goes some Karma...I might as well finish it altogether!
Whoever modded this up, if you seriously read this and found it insightful, I feel sorry for you. This is possibly one of the most classic examples of trolling I have seen for a bit, even surfing at +1. Xenophobia like this (and that's what it is) is not welcome.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
No, the worst patents can do is prevent them from becoming teenage parents, which most would say is a good effect. Patents are 20 years from filing right now. Assuming you file on the day you implant the egg, that means the patent expires around the kid's sophomore year of college.
This'll probably get modded down, but....
You can imagine what the Team Fortress gene-mod would be. You're either blue or red, you very much think 'in the box' and you like to stereotype everyone. Oh, and you get very possessive of your things.
The Action gene-mod. John Woo is your god, and Michelle Yeoh is his prophetess. Why do things halfway? You can drink soda from akimbo cans! You can dive through life with great vigour!
Counterstrike gene-mod. Too bad the world is all either for you or against you... unless they set the friendlyfire chromosome to ON, then it gets interesting.
Aliens TC gene-mod. Axed by 20th Century Fox. All your telomeres are belong to us. Besides, human body and acid blood just didn't go well together. Unless you're Sigourney Weaver.
DXMP gene-mod. You start thinking that, not only is everyone out to get you, but they, like you, have the ability to hide a sniper rifle, GEP gun, and a brace of LAMs in nothing more than a black leather trench coat. The US Genetic Regulatory Agency gets particularly nervous about this mod....
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"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
All the things you mention are most likely products of lifestyle. Sitting in front of a CRT for several hours every day from cradle to grave seems to precipitate the need for glasses. Asthma is probably from respiratory irritants that we haven't adapted to. Most obese people eat the wrong foods and don't exercise. It is true that scientists have found a certain gene in a majority of obese people tested for the gene, but the causation is surely the diet. The GM proponents always try to distract the audience by blaming humanity's problems on its genes.
Inserting old, incomplete genetic material into eggs looks good on the surface, but how many lifetimes will it take to accurately decide whether the GM kids are alright? No matter what, it is too early to say that GMing is 100% safe or that it will even give the recipient a higher quality of life.
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
So, gee, it's a *good* thing that what used to be beautiful forest with some of the best singletrack on the east coast of the United States was just clearcut????
Too many people, 'needing' too many things, building too many fucking golf courses and driving too many miles in cars while throwing away tons of trash a day, encouraging it by eating at places like McDonalds.
We're fucking it all up people.
Not enough oxygen? Where do you live, Mars?
You obviously have some kind of really twisted hatred of people, and spend way too much time reading wacko environmentalist propoganda. I just hope someone like you never gets any kind of power. We don't need another Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot.
As far as I'm concerned, this planet ain't worth a plugged nickel without people to benefit from it, and while I certainly don't condone the actions of those who destroy the environment, and am certainly not totally blameless myself by virtue of being a U.S. citizen, I'm also not some Earth-worshipping hippie who considers humanity a cancer on the planet. The fact that a human being is alive is reason enough for him or her to exist.
p.s. I'm not implying all environmentalists are wackos, but GemFire, you have certainly bought into their logic-free rhetoric.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
So are Nevada's water problems the fault of people in general or because some people are stupid enough to grow a lawn in the desert?
To paraphrase Sam Kinison: Move to where the water is!
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Our agricultural methods have already led to the desertification of the worlds richest lands, namely the fertile crescent that was the birthplace of our civilization. The once fertile Tigris and Euphratis valley is now desert, primarilly because the land was farmed until the soil simply died and was consumed by an ever-growing dustbowl.
Similar agricultural catastrophe is believed to have played a signifigant role in the downfall of the ancient Mayan civilization, and has plagued other agricultural regions as well.
Already in the world's so-called bread-basket (the American mid-west) we have lost well over half of the topsoil that was here just a century ago. Wind and water erosion, coupled with agricultural procedures which are not sustainable, are literally killing the land.
Is there a way to perform agriculture without killing the land? Yes. Is there a way of doing so and feeding even half of the people currently residing on the planet? No, not even if every square inch of arable land were converted, with the sole purpose of creating food for humans (read: no more parks, no more building above ground, no more wildlife refuges, no more wildlife).
Worse, it would do no good. You could use every square inch of the planet to produce food for humans, and have the most effecient distribution system possible, and there would still be widespread starvation. Why? Because populations always grow to meet their supply of food, whether that population consists of rats in a cage or humans in the wild is immaterial. "Meeting the supply of food" in a biological sense doesn't mean everyone is well fed, it means that the poluation is as large as the food supply will permit, which generally means that a significant portion of that population is living on the edge of starvation.
Population pressures aren't just a question of getting what was grown today into someone's mouth, or about elbow room to build a house, it is a question of sustainability. Daniel Quinne has written some excellent works on this very subject (and its ramifications). "Ishmael" and "The Story of B" in particular are quite insighteful and thought provoking.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If I understand the article correctly, DNA is NOT being inserted into mitochondria. The children are not "genetically modified" in the traditional sense. The mitochondria from mother 1 had a defect, so mitochondria from mother 2 was injected into the haploid egg or single cell diploid embryo. The term for this is cybrid (CYtoplasmic hyBRID). This is a technique that's been used before when working with cell lines that have had their mitochondria killed off through exposure to ethedium bromide for ~3 months (rho0 cells). You kill off the mito, then repopulate the cell with mitochondria you want. In this case, it sounds like the children have a mixed population of mitochondria. This would mean that females could still pass the defect to their offspring.
Tell me, forkboy, by what mechanism does overpopulation - in itself - produce infertility?
...
How exactly does "natural selection" say we are breeding too much?
Just curious
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
Try? There is no try. There is only do.
because mitochondrial dna is only passed from mother to offspring, in the late eighties some scientists were able to reconstruct a "mitochondrial eve."
;-)
i'm not talking about one original human mother, i'm talking about a mitochondrial genome that existed eons ago that we all share as our common heritage. they plotted a slow constant rate of mitochondrial mutation versus cytoplasm taken from people from all over the globe to arrive at this. you backtrack from all the different mitochondrial dna versions that exist today and reconstruct the common mitochondrial ancestor. sort of like triangulation: you can actually calculate how long ago this common ancestral mitochondria lived and what it's genome was like.
the point is that you can do a sort of "genetic archaeology" with mitochondrial dna because unlike our regular chromosomal dna, which is always being swapped and reshuffled like a giant deck of cards sexually and via transposons and all sorts of wacky chemical promiscuity... mitochondrial dna is relatively stagnant, change-wise. that's because:
1) it's only passed down from one parent, the mother (no recombination)
2) it has a very tiny amount of genes, many orders of magnitude smaller than a single chromosome
3) it is the cell's fuel supply and is extremely vital to survival... so tinkering with it is very dangerous and most mutations would immediately result in dead offspring and never get passed on.
so what?
well it's kinda "neato" to think that in 1,000 years a future "genetic archaeologist" can probably trace the mitchondrial tweak mentioned in this article to all of these children's offspring down the generations... a different kind of mitochondrial eve here, if you will, with a different kind of original sin: tinkering with the human genome...
i'm no religious freak, but the parallel is somewhat profound if you please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I browsed through but didn't see one thing that I think should be addressed that I thought would be really neat, well, counting on the way you feel about certain things at least. Take Lesbian Couple, both totally fertile, but wanting children. take one who wants to carry child, carry out this process with the significant others cells. Perhaps even fertilizing the cell with sperm from the significant others family for a donor. As the article states, children with two mothers.And the realisation of a wish that I know many of my female friends have. Pretty damn neat.
-Amber
Without deviation from the norm,progress is not possible. -Frank Zappa
World fossil energy consumption for 1995 was in the neighborhood of 340 quads (1 quad = 10^12 BTU). 1 BTU = 1054.4 joules, so call it 3.58*10^17 J. The Sun delivers about 1360 watts of power per square meter of surface, or about 1.18*10^8 J/m^2/day. The Earth presents a disk roughly 3200 km in radius, for an area of about 3.22*10^13 square meters. 1.18*10^8 J/m^2 * 3.22*10^13 m^2 = 3.80*10^19 J/day.
Conclusion: The Earth receives more energy from the sun every fourteen minutes than humanity uses (from fossil sources) in a year. (Nowhere near that amount is stored in fossil form, but that's not what you said.)
You should qualify your statements and check your numbers. You should also note that your claims assume current technology; if someone starts farming green algae to produce hydrogen and feeds that to a Haber-process plant to make ammonia, bingo, you've got non-fossil nitrogen fertilizer!
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
We humans already breed like fucking rats -- as long as there are huge rotting piles of dead, unwanted babies lying around, infertility ought to be considered a blessing.
There is no environmental problem that couldn't be solved by reducing our population to reasonable levels.
"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top. " - Edward Abbey
I would add that there I doubt there is much of a correlation to being infertile based on physical traits either (other than the being infertile part). I.E. - a very physically fit person can be infertile just as a lazy obese person can be infertile.
These critics will be looked on as niave luddites at best (racist at worst) in a few decades. How will these children feel about being called "wrong in principle"?
On the other hand, will there be a "godhatesclones.com"* in 20 years?
I kept thinking the same thing to myself. I was somewhat young at the time, but I seem to recall that 20-25 years ago there was a very similar outcry against in vitro fertilisation and other fertility techniques. Nowdays they are pretty standard practice. I can't imagine that things won't be the same way 20-25 years from now, only we'll be talking about genetic manipulation.
The thing to remember is that this will happen, no matter what you do to stop it. You're better off allowing it so that it can be monitored and regulated, otherwise you'll end up with a genetic engineering lab that keeps a "land of misfit toddlers" for when the experiments go wrong and nobody wants to claim the result.
I mean, certain things are inevitable. And if it's inevitable that it is going to happen, then I think that it needs to be approached responsibly rather than with semi-hysterical castigation.
I was making a point that the post I was responding to did the same thing. I then proceeded to state what I believe the issues really are.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
So without knowing if it would do any good, someone went ahead and did it. I have always lived by the saying to "look before you leap." I wish others did the same.
While I agree that "look before you leap" is a good motto, there's only so far you can look before you have to leap or go home. I find it interesting that all of the anti-modding scientists were claiming that there was no evidence to support this "as a possible valuable treatment for infertility" when it obviously wouldn't have been attempted if there wasn't at least some evidence that it might work. Since it wasn't government funded, that means that it was done by private enterprise (read: business). I don't know about you, but I can't imagine that any company would willingly open themselves up to that kind of a beating on "moral" and financial ground unless they were highly confident of success.
Beyond that, define "possible valuable treatment." What is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. Is it considered valuable when there are currently more economical and reliable ways to to achieve a similar effect (in vitro fertilization)? Probably not. Is it valuable if it is a proof-of-concept of a technique that will in all likelyhood become as affordable as in vitro is today, but will permanently correct the problem in future generations rather simply working around it for this generation? I would think so.
Keep in mind that the man who made that statement works for a government that has outlawed this kind of experimentation. It's his job the toe the line in the press...
> I guess you are right in a way, though. There's no
> population problem, just too many humans.
Well, here's a different spin for you. Too many humans for what? If there were really too many humans, we'd start dying off for lack of resources to live.
> Replace some with Siberian Tigers, Giant Pandas, etc
> and so on - and don't forget to replace a few greedy
> Brazilians with some foliage for the Amazon Rainforest
> (where a lot of Earth's oxygen is converted.)
What is it that makes these beings intrinsically better than the humans you'd replace with them? Why tigers as opposed to carrier pigeons or flies or mushrooms? If diversity is your goal, I have to ask why you only chose endangered mammals and forest in a particular area.
> Even the suggestion that Earth can maintain a lot more
> population is an insult to anybody even mildly interested
> in the state of the environment. Humans are the WORST thing
> to ever happen to this planet and I'm including the asteroid
> that killed the dinosaurs and the effects of the ice age.
Actually, it's only an insult to those even mildly interested in the current state of the environment. As per your statement about humans being the worst thing that ever happened to the Earth, why is it that the state of the environment before humans came around is a "better" state than the state we're in now? If biodiversity is the most important factor in your equation, then by a huge margin the asteroid (some scientists think it was a comet) that wiped out the dinosaurs by fundamentally changing the Earth's environment is the winner, since it eliminated many more different species than the paltry efforts of humans to date. But again, why is the particular state of biodiversity we have today any better or worse than then, or Precambria, or any other time, for that matter?
I have discovered that in large measure those that say that humans beings are "destroying the Earth" are more accurately stating that we're slowly altering the environment toward rendering it unsuitable for higher mammalian life. This isn't destruction of the Earth by a long shot. The Earth will go on in this state, and most life forms will adapt to the new environment, just like what happened to the Earth during every Ice Age. It would truly suck for humans and other higher mammals, but the Earth has been there before and will be there again.
Please don't interpret this to mean that I think that humans should therefore rape the planet until it won't support us any more. As a human myself, I'd really like to see the Earth continue in a state compatible with the continuation of my species. My post is simply to make you think about why you consider any species as intrinsically more important than any other, and to remind you that the Earth won't take personally the damage we do to the environmental state, but we as humans should. Let's make sure we're angry about the right thing here.
Virg
I don't think there is any difference in curing disease as to curing infertility. By curing disease you are also unnaturally increasing the population, and the average age of the population. I certainly do not think it is right to distinguish between disease and infertility.
It is also human nature to want to have children, and to want to reproduce- where would we be if this were not the case? Many people in solid relationships have problems with infertility, and it is unfair to say that they should not have the chance to have children because it's nature's way of limitting our population, when you suggest that diseases, for example downs syndrome, could be cured thus increasing our population.
I cannot agree that you can distinguish between infertility and disease- both are intended to keep our population under control. One is not more "natural" than the other, and so if genetic manipulation is to take place in order to overcome such problems, infertility should be treated alongside other genetic diseases equally.
The notion that infertility is a product of natural selection is completely absurd. "Natural selection" is simply the process by which individuals with favorable combinations of genes have greater chances of reproducing and passing those genes on to their offspring. Thus, nature selects against infertile individuals by definition.
Are we there yet? No. Not even close. This is only the beginning. Will things be wierd? Yes. Horribly, wonderfully wierd. But hopefully not catastrophically wierd.
As H.G. Wells said in "Things to Come" (1936). Our choices are "All the Universe, or nothing. Which shall it be?"
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If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
There's also the argument that though some humans are infertile "by nature" (and a totally separate argument that some infertile people are infertile due to side effects of industrialization; chemicals, stress, frigidity. . .)
Even if some humans are infertile "by nature", does that mean that we should not use science to reproduce them? Yes, with present technology, it does somewhat limit all of their progeny to technologically assisted reproduction, but we're only violating the rules of nature here. We've been doing that for thousands of years now. Why not continue? If that infertile person technologically bears a child that invents the faster-than-light drive, or even a child who grows up and works flipping burgers at McDonalds, they become an integral and necessary part of our society.
Overpopulation is a separate problem, and needs to be dealt with separately, either by expanding our territory (again, with the faster-than-light drive-), or culling the population (counterproductive to technological reproduction, I know). In culling, do we do this randomly? Or do we cull with an operational plan - cull the weak? cull the poor? cull the infertile? cull the tasty? (soylent green). All of those raise separate questions, and are quite different than the topic of technologically assisted reproduction, and the reasons why it may be a good thing.
At some point, humanity is going to have to start answering these questions. That may be several mass starvations down the road.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Ummm.
Infertility is not CAUSED by overpopulation. Infertiity is caused by genetic variations during the process of reproduction.
The greater the population, the more often you will see Infertility.
Look at it this way: If 1 percent of people in a population are infertile, and there are 100 people in the population there will be one infertile person. If there are 1000 people in the population, there will be 10 infertile people.
The fact that the number of infertile people rose with the population does not mean that infertility is caused by a rise in population.
People are not infertile because they are bad. They are not infertile beacuse God hates them. They are not infertile becase of overpopulation.
They are infertile because a small number of the many possible life producing combinations of sperm and egg are infertile.
It is the fault of no one that some people get dealt a bad hand of genes. If we can use gene therapy to improve the quality of the lives of the infertile, then we should do it.
Here's an intersting fact about the population of the planet (I read it on the internet - it must be true). If you take every person on the Earth. Every Living soul. Give each family a house with a small yard. You could pack them all into the state of Texas. I'm not saying that this is a good idea, just that you could do it.
P.S. It really doesn't help your arguemnt to claim that people that support your eugenicistic opinions have Common Sence and Intuition, and those that do not are meerly selfish people incapable of seeing the 'Big Picture'. In fact, it just makes you look arrogant.
Phew. Fortunately it was not _nuclear_ DNA.
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The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
yeah, the whole Golf Course thing is whacked. THAT has got to stop. Golf produces nothing. Except maybe a few stupid movies. (now, Caddyshack was pretty funny though. . .)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
My in-laws live in Phoenix, where it is against the law to have a lawn.
Rocks, cacti, that's about it.
Also, there is an ordinance against streetlights, so it's really fucking dark out at night, which is bad if you're driving or walking, but good if you're sitting out in your back yard looking at the night sky.
All the building that's going on out there is just fucking crazy, when you think about the fact that they live in a desert. But then again, they do try to do some things right.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Generally, an infertile women wouldn't produce any offspring thereby preventing here infertility from being passed on to the next generation. That should solve the problem. Now they're tinkering with what nature intended and altering the outcome.
It hasn't been survival of the fittest for humans for the longest time. Those who would've died from diseases have been kept alive by medicine to propagate their "weaker" genetic code. Pretty soon, the human race will be so screwed up that we will only reproduce through genetic manipulation, because everyone has become infertile.
That's probably the only reason for ever doing this in the first place. Haven't any of you read. The average sperm count of this generations males have reduce in number compared to the sperm count of generations past. One day we will need all the help we can get to reproduce even a single offspring. Talk about population control... nature is starting to do it for us.
>Presently United States accounts for 25 % of
>world's carbon dioxide emissions while having
>only less than 5 percent of the population.
And while producing more than 33% of the world's GDP. We emit more pollutants because we produce most of the world's economically valuable products. Perhaps you should start by trying to make the remaining 95% of the world's population a little more efficient and productive rather than bitching about the people who are doing most of the work in producing your Birkenstocks and iMacs...
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Jim, I wonder how many of these pseudo-Luddite enviromentalist posers are actually willing to live without air conditioning? i wonder how many of these folks adopt this I hate all humans" mentality because it goes so well with their black trenchcoats.
I'm with you, dude. U.S.A, U.S.A.!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Ooooo! I'm so scared. We're going to run of fossil fuels. I know it's true because technology would never advance. There have been no signicant advances in technology in the last 100 years, why would there be any in the future.
Repent! The end is near.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
This is an excellent and important point, but it is based on the premise that Mother Nature knows better than we do what's right and wrong.
Which is demonstrably false. Mother Nature knows nothing. Selection has no higher plan other than the favouring of genes that make you more likely to live long enough to breed and to be able to breed successfully enough that your genes are spread to future generations, based on whatever the environmental conditions are at the time. Which is fine in a situation where the conditions in your ecosystem stay reasonably static over time, but works rather less well in a situation where the favoured conditions vary between pretty much every generation. Like the situation that we've been in for the past few hundred years, for example. We're able to predict the future better than nature is (we stand some chance of being right. Nature "assumes" that conditions are going to stay the same as they currently are, which is pretty much the least likely outcome), so imposing our own selection pressure on the genes at an earlier stage is more likely to lead to "well suited" individuals than just letting nature get on with it.
This doesn't mean that I'm in favour of genetically modified humans. The social considerations are pretty fascinating and damned difficult, and when we screw up it's likely to be pretty graphic.
Why do so many environmentalists hate people so much?
They think if all the people are killed off, they can buy their land really cheap.
Unfortunately, they don't realize the property values have to drop in order for this to happen. Once that gets out, it'll all blow over.
That, or they'll all die out, while the genetically-engineered supermen continue to evolve.
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Natural selection says we're breeding to friggin much
Natural selection says nothing of the sort. Natural selection works to create organisms that will produce children that will produce more children than any of their competitors. It's pretty trivial to demonstrate this.
We have two genes, a and b. We have two organisms, X and Y. (I'm going to assume assexual reproduction here. The principle is much the same in sexually reproducing organisms, it would just take a bit longer). a is a gene that results in the parent having 4 children. b is a gene that results in the parent having 8 children. X carries a. Y carries b.
At generation 0, we have 1 a and 1 b.
At generation 1, we have 4 a and 8 b.
At generation 2, we have 16 a and 64 b.
At generation 3, we have 64 a and 256 b.
As can clearly be seen, b will spread throughout the population much faster than a. Now assume that starvation hits the population. No more than 512 organisms can live in the population at once. Assuming organisms carrying a and b are otherwise of similar fitness and hence the same proportion of each type dies per generation, we get:
At generation 4, we have 102 a and 410 b
At generation 5, we have 57 a and 455 b
At generation 6, we have 30 a and 482 b
Even in starvation, the gene giving fewer children is selected against. A mutation that controls the size of the population of a species is of absolutely no use whatsoever because of a single fundamental flaw - if you don't have children, you won't pass on that mutation. If you're going to try to use natural selection as an argument for anything, at least try to learn something about it first.
While true, this doesn't really have anything to do with the Church encouraging population growth
It dosn't matter WHY the Church dosn't want you to do these things.
If I got drunk, and ran over some and killed them. It wouldn't matter why I did it the person is still fucking dead.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
...Mitochondrial DNA...
I've always wanted more mitochondrians... Are these babies strong with the force???
Oh wait....
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Natural selection says we're breeding to friggin much...we're making more problems for ourselves by bypassing this.
So, you're saying that because there are to many people around, those who are unable to reproduce are more likely to have helthy children, and more of them?
I can only conclude from that statement that you are a fundamentally non-reasoning person.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Your response attempts to say "No, that's not what the Church wants..." but you are unable to deny it; you claim that allowing abstinence means that the Church does not encourage large numbers of children. That is naive beyond belief. You talk of the danger of speaking without background knowledge, yet what the poster stated was accurate.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
I don't have any hard data about what happened in the ancient lands you mention, but those people probably didn't manage their soil nitrogen correctly. Or maybe the natural changes in the earth's climate altered weather patterns and rainfall went somewhere else.
I have lived in Nebraska most of my life (currently Omaha) and most of my family are dirt farmers. Guess what? Not one lick of topsoil problems here. Nature has a wonderful way of making more. The farmers just have to be bright enough to manage the flux and prevent a major negative swing.
We are growing so much corn the free market price for it is a whopping $1.80 or so. Why? Because the farmers are growing 150+bu./acre corn, sometimes 200+bu./acre. Just 50 years ago irrigated land that produced 120bu./acre was good. Non-irrigated land does better than that now. We grow so much corn in this country now our wonderful government is paying farmers to STOP growing corn. Eat more Corn Nuts, Doritos and Taco Bell, and of course juicy, tasty, beef. Every corn nut/chip/torilla and steak adds to my inheritance.
In all seriousness, how could the MD's who performed this be so arrogant as to think that they had the right to act unilaterally, irregardless of the "safety" of the "procedure."
It will most likely be proven that this procedure is safe, after the fact. In the meantime I assume the donor mitochondria were screened for rare, but inheritable mitochondrial diseases?
After all, we do have a complete mitochondrial genome too, right? And of course we have been looking at it long enough that we know what a healthy mitochondrial genome looks like -- we can read it forwards and backwards, eh?
At the very least these "doctors" should lose their licenses. At the most they should be charged with crimes against humanity and brought before an international tribunal. The human genome carries the most fundamental definition of "human". To experiment with that, even at the simple level of mitochondrial manipulation without previous debate -- or trials in non-human subjects -- is completely inexcusable.
These babies may be OK. What if they weren't? Don't these doctors accrue some penalty for performing experiments on humans?
This may be "science", but it's certainly not good science. It may be beneficial in the long run, but it is purported that so were some of the experiments performed by the Nazis. The end does not justify the means.
I am by no means a Luddite, I do believe there is promise in genetic manipulation, and I welcome careful research. Unfortunately, this was not careful research. This was show-boating with God's toys.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
http://www.kathleensworld.com/mitochon.html.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
The Mitochondrian Research Society
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!