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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.
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.
It's still as close as makes any practical difference.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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
Every time a scientist calls another scientist is a secret meeting now? There's a difference between 'private' and 'secret', folks.
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.
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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