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Ethics Panel Endorses Mitochondrial Therapy, But Says Start With Male Embryos (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: An experimental assisted reproduction technique that could allow some families to avoid having children with certain types of heritable disease should be allowed to go forward in the United States, provided it proceeds slowly and cautiously. That is the conclusion of a report released today from a panel organized by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), which assesses the ethics questions surrounding the controversial technique called mitochondrial DNA replacement therapy. More controversially, however, the panel recommended that only altered male embryos should be used to attempt a pregnancy, to limit the possible risks to future generations. (Males can't pass along the mitochondrial DNA that is altered in the procedure.)
Why is it controversial, exactly?
Are critics worried about the X-Men? Or are they mad because of religious rigmarole?
Because they are creating genetically modified human beings. Currently, the technique is being looked at for certain negative conditions, but it has the potential to be used for other purposes, too. The issue of designer babies is a moral question, not a scientific one. And, moral questions are often controversial.
Males can't pass along the mitochondrial DNA that is altered in the procedure
Well, they can, it's just that sperm mitochondria usually get swamped out by egg mitochondria.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
There's a very small but non-zero chance of screwing up - introducing some unintended damage to the DNA which will go initially unnoticed, until the subject's muscles start to turn to gloop twenty years later. At least this way any screwups are contained to one individual.
Gender is a social construct ;)
Well it is; at least all that pink-is-for-girls, blue-is-for-boys rubbish is. People who are biologically male can wear high heels and enjoy chick flicks, but they can't pass on mitochondrial DNA, which is the relevant point here.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Has everything to do with Scientists ignoring Darwinism
You could make the same argument against smallpox vaccination. Or indoor plumbing.
depends on perspective, it could be considered anti male performing genetic experiments on only males.
SMASH THE MATRIARCHY 8-).
I see you haven't looked into mitochondrial disease at all.
I knew a couple that just lost their child to it. The baby took 9 months to die, losing all bodily functions and slowly withering away, unable to obtain energy for the cells from food. A colleague of my wife lost their baby in two months to a comparable but slightly different genetic failmode, which caused the skin to fall off her body. She died in horrible agony without eyes, nose and cheeks, and black, rotting skin all over.
There are pretty compelling reasons to want to do something about this, and it's really no coincidence that the mitochondrial diseases are first in line for an attempt at a cure.
Even then, sickle cell trait may have genetic strengths against malaria, but it's a stopgap measure at best and we have much better treatments nowadays - if you can afford to get a genetic cure, you can certainly afford profylaxis and medication against malaria. This goes for many other "genetic strengths" that are mostly crippling disabilities, as well. So to me, your statement is merely a variation on the rather worn out theme that "man should not meddle with Nature".
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Since TFS didn't explain what "mitochondria" are, I had to look them up myself and found a documentary about them. One scientist explains them as:
Mitochondria are a microscopic lifeforms that reside within all living cells. And we are symbions with them. Without the mitochondrians life could not exist and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us telling us the will of the Force.
I hope this helps.
You had to say meat because blubbering blubber sounds redundant.
Genetic modification in humans is not necessarily safe. Human's are complex organisms and we just don't fully understand all the gene interactions. It is one thing to choose to modify your own genes but it is another to want to modify someone else's when there are still so many unknowns. It is why most of the time it is limited to curing disease rather than something like changing eye color or height.
Well, I think this is one of those cases where there's an umbrella rule that serve purpose, but which might also have sensible exceptions. In this case the rule is that selecting embryo sex is something that ought to be discouraged.
There are lots of reasons to discourage selecting offspring sex, some of which a reasonable person might disagree with. For example some would object that it's playing God. Others might say say that it's wrong to value persons of one sex more than others. I don't find those particular objections compelling, but one thing I do find convincing is that changing the almost 1:1 balance of reproductive age men and women could destabilize society in various ways. But note that under that particular objection we could certainly tolerate exceptions that are relatively rare. For example the slight discrepancy between the number of males who identify as gay and the number of females who identify as lesbian has no practical impact on straight people. Clearly an exception in this case would only affect a handful of people and is not a concern under the demographic balance argument.
The knee-jerk controversy that follows any proposal to do something which as a rule of thumb is frowned upon does serve a useful function. Because of confirmation bias, people tend to be blind to unintended consequences of things they've decided to do. Making them address those consequences is, within reason, a good idea.
Anyhow, that explains why restricting this to male embryos is more controversial than allowing either sex. Doing it at all is controversial because of the burden a failure could put on future society and the potential suffering it could cause.
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I don't always talk about meat, but when I do, it's blubbering!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Moral decisions should be made by individuals, not governments.
So as long as I think a murder is justified...?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Mitochondrial DNA (actually more like mRNA) only passes to children from the mother's DNA contribution. So if a male has it altered, they can't pass it on to kids.
That said, it's not quite as straightforward as you might think. Chromosomal abnormalities could, theoretically, allow the sequences to pass from fathers, but most or all of the maternal mitochondrial sequences would have to not transcribe and some bizarre stuff would have to happen.
If you were going to Mars, the exposure to radiation, or some Fantastic Four coronal event might do this, but it's fairly safe to do this on males only, as a biological precaution.
A long time ago we absorbed these buggers to power our cells, and misfires are one reason to force mitochondrial replacement periodically (what is often referred to a calorie restricted diet, or fasting 10-24 days with water and minerals and broth), as damaged mitochondria build up inside your cells.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
High heels were originally invented for men to wear when riding horses, so sure men can wear high heels.
I can't conceive of a man enjoying a chick flick though.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You forgot polygamy, where the state says three consenting adults can't get married...because reasons.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
and mitochondrial DNA from surrogate
It depends.
Not all surrogate pregnancies work that way. A Surrogate could just be someone carrying the baby for a couple where the female has various issues preventing carrying a baby to term.
http://www.webmd.com/infertili...
According to that article in fact, you are completely wrong. I have however heard of what you are speaking of, I just don't recall what it is called, but apparently it isn't surrogacy. What you speak of is the current therapy for mitochondrial disorders where they use a viable egg from someone else where the DNA is removed and the DNA from the desired mother is injected instead.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How is the creation of a slave caste not only a big problem, but something you should always put a lot of consideration into before embarking on? I don't care if slavery already exists, it is still a big deal.
Also, while there exists areas like running where one genetic group dominates, none of them dominate in more than one area. Kenian's still have an average IQ of 90 or something like that. And fortunate or not, society is so far away from a meritocracy that we simply do not see the pooling of genetic excellence and failures into distinct groups. Rich people do score higher on average, but there is a huge income mobility in America. Most successful people become less successful and most unsuccessful people become more successful, so the direct opposite of a meritocracy.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
How is the creation of a slave caste not only a big problem, but something you should always put a lot of consideration into before embarking on?
Wow - that escalated quickly. I'd like bones that would resist osteoarthritis, and tendons/ligaments that would be stronger, ad you're going on a planet of the Apes scenario.
Also, while there exists areas like running where one genetic group dominates, none of them dominate in more than one area. Kenian's still have an average IQ of 90 or something like that.
For crying out loud - don't go there. Because You can't tell a thing about a person's IQ just by telling us what genetic background he or she has. I don't care if the average IQ is 150, it still doesn't predict.
And fortunate or not, society is so far away from a meritocracy that we simply do not see the pooling of genetic excellence and failures into distinct groups.
Wait - your sentence parses like a eugenicist. I had to g oback and re-read your other post I replied to as well.
You have fallen for the bell curve syndrome, where for some not quite sane reason, we have to determine an individual's worth based on his ethnicity.
That makes as much sense as deciding that because I make X number of dollars a year, all the members of my family also makes that much money per year. Even in genetics - you can't tell. My family has a generally high IQ But my mother and one sister were normal IQ. So you couldn't tell their IQ from the others in the family, without meeting them and those of us with the higher IQ's did not function any better, nor they any worse. We were all just a family with no slaves at all. Wrath of Kahn was a movie, not how people with some improved functions are going to act.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Birds are usually only non-threatening to us because they're small. But if they were huge, they'd be like monsters.
Along those lines, here's an interesting NatGeo article.
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Put feathers on most dinosaurs, and suddenly they look kinda pretty.I'm certain the artist took some liberty with the colors, but that's an intriguing painting.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>Evolution is far far from perfect. Nothing wrong with tighening up a few parameters here and there.
That's because you're mistaking evolution as something that happens to a species. It is much more accurate to say that evolution is something species do to each other and one of it's most IMPORTANT outcomes is to ensure that no species is ever perfect.
Perfection is more guaranteed extinction than any flaw could be.
The perfect predator goes extinct, because none of his prey survives to produce a next generation that can feed his babies.
The perfect predator-evader also goes extinct, because nobody keeps his numbers down so very soon there are too many of them for the food supply to sustain.
That applies at every level .Evolution doesn't happen in isolation, every living organism alive at any given moment is doing it to every other living organism and they all had it done to them already by every organism that ever lived before - yes even the ones who have no genetic descendents to day, because their very existence altered the genes of the ones who do have descendents today.
You can't evolve to eat eggs until something evolves that lays eggs, When you do, you can't be *too* good at finding them or your children don't have food. Perfect creatures cannot survive because everything must coexist.
Evolutionary history is generally divided into two types of events. Parochials are rare one-time events, this trait evolved in something somewhere and survived for a while, but nothing else has it who didn't inherit it from there. Feathers are a parochial, the birds got it from the dinosaurs but nothing else has feathers. There are no feathered mammals or feathered reptiles or feathered fish. Only in that one line did they ever evolve.. Universals happen over and over in different lineages with no shared ancestors that had the trait at different times and places, they happen because they universally benefit the species. Eyes are a universal, insects and fish and moluscs all evolved them independently (with very different designs) and passed them on to their young. Wings are a universal too - birds, insects and mammals (bats) all evolved them independently.
And the extinction of perfection is a definite universal. In fact, even "near perfect" is doomed. There is a classic example: herbivores develop bigger horns and thicker, bony plates to make themselves harder to hunt. In turn predators developer bigger teeth to overcome these defenses. So the herbivores get even bigger armor. Repeat through a few evolutionary generations and you end up with herbivores covered in so much tank-like armor they can barely move and carnivores with teeth so gigantic they actually cannot close their mouths anymore. Both species promptly go extinct. This arms-race-to-mutual-destruction has happened in the known evolutionary record hundreds of times, to everything from insects and spiders up to dinosaurs and the giant mammals.
Just being sufficiently better than your predators that you force them evolve a major change to keep up - can doom you both to extinction.
It is only complete anthrocentric-arrogance that could make anybody think humans are immune to the process of evolution or that every other species is *not* still doing it to us. As it stands our biggest risk to survival probably is being almost too perfect at intelligence, luckily we got a fair number of stupid humans to balance that out a bit. We may not survive another too-perfect trait.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *