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Scientists Hold A Secret Meeting To Consider Creating A Synthetic Human Genome (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The New York Times, summarized by Gizmodo: Earlier this week, over a hundred scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs held a secret meeting to discuss the possibility of creating a synthetic human genome. Creating a synthetic human genome differs from gene editing as scientists would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes, instead of patching a gene here and there. Synthetic genomics, unlike genetic modifications, in that it doesn't use naturally occurring genes. Instead, it relies on the custom-designed base pair series. Currently, customers view synthetic genomics as a way to build novel microbes and animals, but with humans it raises the prospect of custom-designed humans, without any parents. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, says the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that the project was aimed to generally improve the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes. "They're painting a picture which I don't think represents the project," Dr. Church said in an interview. The project was initially called "HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project." However, the name was later changed to "HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes In Cells." Why the change? Because the original headline was suppose to be headline-grabbing, or so they say.
It's not a secret anymore.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sounds like adding "secret", "confidential" , "undisclosed" to [insert story or device here] is the trendy way to get something reaching the largest public..
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Their kind hates science.
That's why all the people protesting nuclear projects, genetic engineering, and mountaintop telescopes are wearing business suits.
The plot of Weird Science comes to mind. Bad dick; go to sleep!
Table-ized A.I.
Looks like Hillary's paid internet trolls are still at it.
Why not start small like with a squirrel? or anything else that won't be able to sue after it grows up...
Or we're they just talking about trying to get the DNA to assemble?
Either way are they planning to make use of the new letters?
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
So if we make a Claude Van Damme to belt ISIS, they're okay with it, but not if it's gay, brown, Muslim, from NY, and/or has no birth certificate?
Table-ized A.I.
I'll be done soon enough, might as well get it over with.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It even appeared on /.
They don't protest, they just block it with lawsuits. Suts block with lawsuits. Seems obvious, right?
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Sounds like fun. Build the ideal human, including genetic resistance to all known diseases, building in an ideal weight, and heart rate that's lower, and eliminating as many issues of aging as possible. Maximum intellect, earliest possible puberty, and maximize the utility of the person. The design goals are obvious enough.
But building a person one molecule at a time in committee? If it took them one minute per molecule, and they worked 8 hour days, 5 days a week, it's take them 24,000 years to assemble a human. If they worked 24/7, it'd take them only 6000 years. So they'd only need 24,000 committees working in parallel to complete this in one year (8 by 5) So far, leaking at 100% from meetings, it'd likely not be secret for long.
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The Right To Life types will go absolutely berserk over this. The whole religious underpinning of the movement...the one they never like to talk about...will have to decide whether a human created by man should enjoy the same protection as a human created by their god.
And when there's no sperm and egg union to enshrine as the moment when life begins, where will they draw the line? At what point during the assembly process does the thing in the dish deserve to be called human? A chimp shares all but 4% of our DNA, after all.
This should be fun!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The best thing about synthetic genes is that they're patentable, unlike naturally occurring genes. I, for one, welcome our gene synthesizing corporate overlords.
They are going to create The Emperor Of Mankind. It's about time.was
THE INSTRUMENTALITY BEGINS http://evangelion.wikia.com/wi...
of 9 women
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If we could engineer humans, we could make them disease resistant. HIV attacks certain cells in certain ways. We could engineer a human that's incompatible with it. A couple generations of that, and we've wiped out that disease. Tweaks like that for all targeted diseases, and we'd eliminate many of the vulnerabilities. They may mutate, but we can engineer around mutations. It takes longer, as the human generation is longer than a vrius's, but it can be done.
It wouldn't be hard to engineer night vision. The hardest part to that is engineeerin the changes to the lense to allow in UV. We've evolved to block UV in the lense, so as to protect our cornea, but engineering humans to be penta-chromats (we already have tetra-chromats, just rare), and have the 5th be in the UV spectrum. You'd need to have sunglasses, or UV blocking contact lenses, but at night, the glow in the atmosphere would give a pretty reasonable night vision.
Hundreds of small changes like that would be what makes a super soldier. Not the sci-fi ideas of super strong, invulnerable soldiers, but increased senses, tweaks to strength, and perhaps re-deisgn of weaknesses (especially in the joints). My orthopedic surgeon said he has proof we weren't "intelligently designed". You couldn't make a worse joint than the human knee. If we were designed, it wasn't by anything with intelligence.
We'll start with tweaks to the brain. Intelligence, screening out brain defects, and a uniformity to intelligence that will leave humans soulless. That's my prediction when we actually start playing with the genome beyond looking for know errors and aborting them. Remove dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, autism, and everything else that's a "learning" disorder linked to higher intelligence will kill some types of creativity. The ability to build a better human doesn't mean we ever will.
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and I can confirm the meeting was held at a secret base, located underneath a volcano.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Fifth Element did it! /SouthParkReference
It's everywhere in the press and the news. We call it "the Pulcinella Secret". Ah!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Scientists Hold A Secret Meeting
This is the first hint that perhaps your research will not pass the ethics committee review.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Poor A/C, 2 things you haven't grasped. 1, what makes you think RINO's weren't directly involved in this trillion dollar scheme, and 2. Synthetic humans are people to.
Every time a scientist calls another scientist is a secret meeting now? There's a difference between 'private' and 'secret', folks.
Because, after all, we could do a much better job of designing a human than evolution did. I mean, what's 100KY+ of field experience when compared to SCIENCE! ?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What could possible go wrong? Oh, wait...
KHAAAAAAAAN!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
They're always up to something weird!
I'm going to tell my kid to stay away from science and become a lawyer.
Na, all you would would make is a gooey mess. The reason that we aren't seven feet tall, have proportions of a Greek god(dess)**, live forever, are immune to radiation, disease, pop under ads and Internet Trolls is because life is a compromise. What works in one environment doesn't work in others.
You might get an ADD, autism, depression and psychosis resistant brain and find you ended up with a clone of Pee Wee Herman.
Careful what you ask for, you might get it.
** Or whatever your ideal body form might be. And no, we don't really want the specifics.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why would you give your meeting a "headline grabbing" (but supposedly inaccurate) title, and then ban the press from attending? Why manipulate the title for the sake of sensationalism, and then keep it all secret?
Someone is lying about something, I just can't tell which part is the lie. Are they lying about the title change? Are they lying about the true purpose of the meeting? Did the press lie about not being invited? When you have multiple "facts" that contradict each other, it's a sure sign that something is being covered up.
There must have been one of their kind in the group since this secret meeting was exposed.
Sure. The "secret" meeting that was designed to be "headline-grabbing". Whatever.
Well, the closest thing to it that Wikipedia is that he's bi-polar. Does that count?
Ezekiel 23:20
(Huh, "that Wikipedia mentions"... Damn fast fingers.)
Ezekiel 23:20
It's basically a fight against entropy, but we still take advantage of cultivated varieties of plants, for example.
Ezekiel 23:20
The 6 day time frame was just to restore Earth to a habitable state again and repopulate it after He wiped out Lucifer's kingdom by a flood. That said, not having a committee to deal with or regulations to adhere to was probably a time saver. The next judgment is also going to be apocalyptic.
Right, like we shouldn't shield ourselves from the elements with things like clothes and houses. After all, if evolution couldn't solve the problem, it'd be pure hubris for us to address it directly ourselves.
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The assumption was a rational populous, not just unleashing the new people into the current society. If the "mature enough to drink" line were reached 10 years earlier, then move the drinking age to 11. Puberty being earlier wasn't just for procreation, but to reach peak physical condition as quickly as practical, so we can lower the age of manual labor to 10. Not to promote child labor, but to eliminate it by making them un-child sooner.
We have a teen pregnancy problem because we have extended "childhood" long past the age when children are adults. Why is a 19 year old having a child a "problem"? After all, that's a (literal) teen pregnancy
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Ah, but which version? My favorite, I must admit, is C'Mell.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Because, after all, we could do a much better job of designing a human than evolution did.
Of course, we could. The obvious rebuttal here is twofold: evolution is vastly slower than human efforts and we're not solving the same problems. Evolution solved the problem of human survival in a world of virtually no technology or human organization beyond the small tribe. Meanwhile, we are willing to compromise on human survival in a pre-civilization environment in exchange for significant advantages in our current anad future civilization environment.
As to the first point, how will we expect evolution to keep up with the next century of change? At best, there will be only 5 human generations. That's just not enough time for any significant survival adaptation to take root, especially in the absence of significant selection pressure.
But human bioengineering doesn't have that restriction and can adapt as fast as humanity and its civilizations change.
"Secret" here has a different meaning. Geochurch is fond of media attention, he's been on Colbert, does big interviews, he promotes himself. I wouldn't be surprised if he contacted news himself afterward. Not knocking him here, this stuff isn't like a sex scandal, it doesn't exactly promote itself without effort, and I think people should be informed about this stuff.
I do doubt that he made it "secret" though specifically to make it more headline grabbing. I expect he made it closed so it woudln't be public disclosure and wouldn't prevent him from patenting stuff. IIRC, he's peripherally involved in the CRISPR patent that will likely generate billions. The technology reported here undoubtedly has a giant amount of potential if patented as well.
I have also heard statements that they made it closed so when published it would get into better journals and be more novel. I'm skeptical about this, as the top journals are still going to gobble it up, and also Church could practically record himself farting and it would be considered for "Science."
You'd make a really poor god and a very bad dictator.
We already have enough problems caused by puberty coming before emotional maturity.
Utility --- UTILITY!!! Utility to whom? To you, the big boss, who decides how people should be? A person's sole reason for existence is his own well-being, not utility. Go hold Jeremy Bentham's hand on the way to hell.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The primary UV blocking element of the eye is the lens. Some people who have had their lenses replaced (due to cataracts) with a plastic that doesn't block UV suddenly are able to see in the UV range http://petapixel.com/2012/04/17/the-human-eye-can-see-in-ultraviolet-when-the-lens-is-removed/.
The lens cuts off at about 350 nm (although that varies a great deal with age). The cornea cuts off at about 280 nm.
Near UV (350-400 nm) for normal people is sensed as violet, and it's hard to focus.
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I've read that the reason most people aren't 7 feet tall is that when a person that tall slips and hits his head, he gets brain damage. It is an evolutionary disadvantage in most circumstances.
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summer humans
Oh, my sweet summer child...
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Creating a human from all synthetic DNA would be a certain failure.
There are huge parts of the genome we do not fully understand. For instance we have ancient viruses incorporated in an harmless form. Removing that sequences cause vulnerability more diseases.
The synthetic human will quickly die from a random disease that everyone else can cope with.
Sounds like fun. Build the ideal human, including genetic resistance to all known diseases, building in an ideal weight, and heart rate that's lower, and eliminating as many issues of aging as possible. Maximum intellect, earliest possible puberty, and maximize the utility of the person. The design goals are obvious enough. But building a person one molecule at a time in committee? If it took them one minute per molecule, and they worked 8 hour days, 5 days a week, it's take them 24,000 years to assemble a human. If they worked 24/7, it'd take them only 6000 years. So they'd only need 24,000 committees working in parallel to complete this in one year (8 by 5) So far, leaking at 100% from meetings, it'd likely not be secret for long.
And when it's done..... it turns out to be Donald Trump! AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The 6 day time frame was just to restore Earth to a habitable state again and repopulate it after He wiped out Lucifer's kingdom by a flood. That said, not having a committee to deal with or regulations to adhere to was probably a time saver. The next judgment is also going to be apocalyptic.
Pretty clear when He was getting towards the end, creating humans, He was pretty much just cutting corners and trying to get it wrapped up before the weekend.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Right, like we shouldn't shield ourselves from the elements with things like clothes and houses. After all, if evolution couldn't solve the problem, it'd be pure hubris for us to address it directly ourselves.
Fix all evolution's mistakes. Give us a furry coat to shield us from the elements. Have us use all 4 limbs to reduce the strain on our spines. Eliminate the modifications to our throat which allow us to modify our vocalizations, but at the cost of higher rate of choking on food. Reduce the size of the brain so that cranial size can be smaller and all that trouble with giving birth is eliminated. Maybe add a tail for counterbalancing to improve our rapid mobility.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It wouldn't be hard to engineer night vision. The hardest part to that is engineeerin the changes to the lense to allow in UV. We've evolved to block UV in the lense, so as to protect our cornea, but engineering humans to be penta-chromats (we already have tetra-chromats, just rare), and have the 5th be in the UV spectrum. You'd need to have sunglasses, or UV blocking contact lenses, but at night, the glow in the atmosphere would give a pretty reasonable night vision.
Night vision has nothing to do with UV light perception. (UV comes from the sun, just like most of the rest of light. There isn't an atmospheric night-glow of UV, but there might be some UV from starlight.) Our cornea is on the outside and blocks UV, so that it isn't absorbed in the lens (which makes it become cloudy and you blind).
As a side note, you can already see UV light. You just see it as an uncolored brightness instead of a specific color.
wouldn't IR be better?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Why is this being done in secret? Why not be open about your plans? What is there to hide about science?
They were meeting with the Climatologists' Cartel.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It's often (especially in controversial cases like this) easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
That's how religion works.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Take note of it.
YOU live in the age that will see the first bronie fuck a lab created MLP life form.
and it will be an artificial white rat.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Republicans hate science unless it can be used as a weapon.
Corollary: you can use anything as a weapon if you try hard enough.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Well, the closest thing to it that Wikipedia is that he's bi-polar. Does that count?
Even better; imagine a genetically engineered Jean Claude Van Damme bipolar bear! Awesome!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You want to turn us into pangolins?
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