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Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader sends word that a three-day summit has begun in Washington to discuss the future of genetic engineering. It has a particular focus on the CRISPR technique, which has made gene editing quicker and more robust than ever before. "The reason CRISPR is so controversial is that it works well on 'germline' cells, such as sperm, eggs and embryonic cells, and the genetic editing results in heritable traits. Many scientific organizations have called for a time-out on any experiments on human cells, fearing that this crosses into dicey ethical territory. This meeting in Washington could potentially generate a new call for restraint, or some guidelines in how to handle the explosive technology." Many scientists, lawyers, and policymakers are present at the summit to try to reach consensus on how the scientific community should proceed with such research, and how the fruits of their research should be used. Professor Alta Charo said, "The more we can have effective systems for responsible oversight for the development and deployment of a technology, the more we can take chances. We have the chance to back up at the end, and change course."
It's too late for my kids - but I could have augments for grandkids.
Our country is too fond of market-based solutions to matters like this. Once (at least) one company finds a way to make a lot of money off of this, the discussion will be over and we will convince ourselves that it is for the better.
Arguably the bigger loss is in the fact that it will force even more scientists away from ethically sound research and into profit-driven work instead because there won't be any other careers.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Do we want changes for the human genome to be patentable? And every time you sleep with somebody from the other sex you'll have to google whether the company which supplied your genome has a contract with the company which supplied the genome for the person you sleep with? How should we treat infringements? Should there be DRM, as in infertility for genetically engineered humans? Or only fertility if its enabled via an app on your smartphone?
[x] enable fertile sperm production
[] boy sperm cells enabled
[x] girl sperm cells enabled
[] my eye color
[] her eye color (costs $250)
[x] custom eye color (costs $3k), please chose [green]
What if their servers get DDOSed? News headlines like "couples from all over the world with a baby with couldn't work on their project last night as the servers from 23andMe, an alphabet holding corporation were temporarily down.". What if you want something the app doesn't offer? What if google abandons a specific feature, will you have to get an outdated version of the app in order to style the baby as you want?
The entire pharmaceutical industry is based around market-based solutions. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't have its warts--Big Pharm has waay too much influence, doctors and medical researchers do not understand basic statistics, and the entire industry needs better regulation, and everything needs to be more affordable--but when you consider the drugs and procedures we have today to what was prevalent even thirty years ago, it's hard to deny we've made progress.
So I personally have no problem with "market-based solutions" to gene engineering, as long as the market is well-regulated and backed up by good, hard science.
Instead of being frightened we should instead establish some reasonable policies and then go all-in on the human genome editing side. We're going to need it. Either our bodies are going to need to be both longer lived and much less prone to radiation, or we are never going to get our species out of this solar system (or even off this planet).
We are not suited for space travel. Either we make ourselves suited or we wait until we randomly evolve some traits that will help us. If we wait, we may go extinct before it happens.
Life is just natures way of keeping meat fresh after all...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Summit is now a widely abused term. It should be reserved for meetings of the heads of governments; to use it for anything else is ignorant and self serving, playing to PR puffery. STOP IT!
yep. that was his name. hope he protected it, or at least made some money.
Nobody* wants us to descend into a Gattaca-style society (or have a bunch of Khans running around), but that doesn't have to be where this ends up. There are plenty of genetic diseases that are unquestionably, undeniably bad. No one is going to stand up and say that they're glad they have Huntington's or that they want to preserve the uniqueness of children born with Tay Sachs. Yes, the line does get fuzzier around schizophrenia and non-fatal chromosomal abnormalities, but the benefits of curing so many horrible diseases easily outweigh the inconvenience of any "hard thinking" we'd have to do about where to draw the line.
Really, this should just be treated the same way we treat plastic surgery. There's the "never under any circumstances" (say, pec implants on a newborn), the "not covered by insurance" (boob jobs for adults) and then there's the procedures that not even the most militantly anti-plastic-surgery person would object to, such as cleft palate repair (which is even covered by insurance!). Of course there's plenty of gray area in between where people can argue about what should be legal to perform and about what insurance should cover. But just because there are moral and ethical issues doesn't mean we ban all plastic surgery.
*Fine. I'm sure some people saw Gattaca and thought, "That's the coolest idea ever! Let's make it happen!"
Eugenics, because the perfect race is a noble cause.......Oh wait........Didn't someone else try this??? Oh that's right. Margaret Sanger! Maybe someone else too...
The Institute is humanity's only hope for survival.
that's creeped out by this???
No. "Just remember that for every Julian Bashir that can be created, there's a Khan Singh waiting in the wings."
It will be mostly an incremental process. Already many children with certain forms of retardation are aborted. People will become smarter and healthier as the techniques get better. Gattaca is an unrealistic extreme, but perhaps the average new baby will get five IQ points from genetics in fifty years, and ten in a hundred. Maybe it will even help diminish the unfair genetic advantage that smart families have.
The medical system is absolutely not market based, unless you are attempting to change the definition of market to be "marketing" and psychological manipulation.
I'm not a full on anarchist because the Government has a role in my opinion. The role is extremely limited in my mind, but does exist. That said, the Government has caused nearly everything else to fail for all but a select few. The Government regulation system is a forced at gunpoint monopoly. If you want to play you have to pay, and if you are not wanted in the game the rules will change to ensure you can't play. This has happened repeatedly through history, and more and more in the last few decades. If you want to sell a widget you need to pay a registration fee to be a widget seller. As soon as your widget cuts into richguy's profits, you not only need to pay for the license but you have to have a person on staff with government certification for widget knowledge, and that certification may take 19 years and specialized precursory degrees to obtain.
The government's role here should be binary. Pass a law allowing or denying the activity. My desires get measured into that decision, but beyond providing the legal status the Government should have no role. The "why" of that is explained very simply. Bob puts out a splice that causes a problem. Do you think anyone else will be buying Bob's splicing? If the market had it's way Bob would have to bake bread or something for a living, not splice genes. However, if the Government certified him Bob would be able to continue on his merry way. It was not Bob's fault, it was a faulty regulation that caused the problem. Bob didn't have the newly required government certified piece of paper, and didn't have the right member of staff which is now in regulations. Form GOV330033-GENE-112L must now be used which saves any confusion for people like "Bob" in the future, right?
Same ole same ole won't make things better, it will only ensure that there is no real market would ever exist.
As to whether or not this should be legal? My well educated opinion says "HELL NO!". Enhanced genetics will ensure that the rich folks get babies that would have the ghosts of Himmler and Hitler creaming all over themselves. "Rich" babies will all be 6' or taller kids with 130+ IQs and the "trendy" bits (blond or brunette, busty or well endowed, blue or green eyed, always tan complexion, etc.. ) included. Anyone below this threshold will be filthy poor people who can't afford the "therapy". Look at how well cosmetic surgery has been for society as a whole, and how the altruistic roots have turned into the cesspool we know and love today.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Our country is too fond of market-based solutions to matters like this. Once (at least) one company finds a way to make a lot of money off of this, the discussion will be over and we will convince ourselves that it is for the better.
Arguably the bigger loss is in the fact that it will force even more scientists away from ethically sound research and into profit-driven work instead because there won't be any other careers.
Ethical restraints are actually one of the biggest things holding back US research. People are afraid of regulatory and publicity risk, and science goes much slower because experiments have to go through IRB processes. The result will be that other countries with comparable resources will play catch-up and then will be able to research faster than we can.
The ethics rules may not be as restrictive as you would like and their ethics may not track with your morality, but that doesn't mean US ethics aren't there.
This is really just cosmetic surgery all over again. There are some practical uses for cosmetic surgery, such as helping people with deforming injuries. There are also plenty of people who will carve up an aging woman with cash to make her look young for a few more years. Any technology you create is going to have good and bad uses.
Should we refrain from developing genetic engineering technology that might be able to cure genetic disease? Hell no. And yes, some idiots might want to spend money to give their kids purple eyes.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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I just want to find the gene for genital baldness.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Perhaps before arguing about someone else's limitations you should remove the plank from your own eye?
You still haven't addressed where your hosts file is blocking an ad that magically the local DNS server is allowing it through since the comment was that they both have the same records. Or did you miss that part while admiring your own lack of intelligence and coming up with all those libelous lies.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The can of worms this could potentially open digs much further than ridding diseases and improving cognitive function. What of sexual orientation, or skin color? What of a "height" race? What of corporate encouragement of a particular set of cognitive preferences that lend well to obedient drones and not so much creative iconoclasts? What of privileged access to certain gene modifications that are disallowed to the large bulk of the population?
If this technology were made accessible it would lead to so many clusterfucks that could not be legislated out of existence. Worry for the future. If we get there.
I see lots of intelligent, otherwise perfect unemployed people in our future
love is just extroverted narcissism
Seems doubtful. The only reason to use the Brave New World approach and create a drone caste is because Huxley couldn't imagine a world where sophisticated robots could do most of the mundane jobs. In such a world, there's no sense to creating an unintelligent human to do some tedious task because a robot will be able to do it better and won't have to stop. You're better off creating some highly intelligent people that can design better robots.
The only way I can see it being used in a cruel manner would be if someone could figure out how to engineer people that would be perfect slaves (i.e., they just want to work and don't care if they're mistreated, etc.) but I don't know if you could make a person who's highly intelligent and capable of solving complex problems requiring some level of creativity while destroying free will.
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Learn to read, and open your mind to the possibilities! You still haven't proven me wrong, and you are just grasping at straws trying to make your same argument work when it has been dis proven.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Let the eugenics wars begin!
"Why wouldn't you"
Because at some point they are no longer "your kid". Gattaca was about having the best of your genes selected for a child. Gene editing at some level is just creating the desired kid and it doesn't really matter whose DNA you start with if you can fully manipulate it.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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You really shouldn't repeat yourself so much, it makes it look like you might have a point....until my response is found, and oh, you don't.
Keep moving those goalposts! If you move them far enough, you might win your argument versus that horrible strawman you are fighting.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Actually, in one of his books Heinlein offered a perfectly ethical, yet very useful approach: genes of the future parents are examined for various traits and the best possible combination is created for the embryo.
So, each kid born carries the gene-set he could have gotten naturally. But it is always the best possible combination.
And just what is "best" — is determined by the parents and the professional performing the procedure.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
People without means to pay for anything (including healthcare) must — wherever they live — either do without or rely on others for help. There is simply no alternative.
Different regimes make it harder/easier to compel strangers to help you — and Socialist regimes, being the least free, are exceptionally "good" at it, leading to the oft-repeated perception you just cited. But it is hardly a good thing...
The bottom lines (conclusions) are: it is better to be rich than poor. It is better to live in a wealthy nation, than in a poor one. Incidentally, Socialism quickly ruins one's chances of both.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Can you say 'Eugenics Wars'? This is a very bad idea if used the the wrong way.
In California, modified babies would have to be labeled so that the anti-science woo sorority, and their mangina husbands, could refuse to let their "natural" kids play with them.
So you're saying his brain is an ASM stack?