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Chinese Scientists Become First To Use CRISPR Gene-Editing On Humans (popularmechanics.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: A team of Chinese scientists from Sichuan University in Chengdu have become the first to inject a person with cells modified with the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. The trial involved modifying a patient's own immune system cells to make them more effective at combating cancer cells and then injecting them back into the patient. The Chinese trial was approved back in July, and United States medical scientists also plan to use CRISPR as an experimental treatment for cancer patients in early 2017. The CRISPR-Cas9 "tool" is a DNA construct that can be injected into any organism -- in this case, human immune system T cells -- to modify the genome of that organism. It works in three steps: an RNA sequence guides the CRISPR construct to the correct part of the organism's DNA, the Cas9 enzyme "cuts out" that segment of DNA, and then, as an optional third step, a new DNA sequence can be inserted to replace the deleted segment of the genome. In the case of the Chinese trial, conducted October 28 at the West China Hospital in Chengdu, only the first two steps of the CRISPR-Cas9 process were carried out. Immune system cells were extracted from a patient with metastatic lung cancer, and then the gene code that produces a protein called PD-1 was deleted by the Cas9 enzyme. PD-1 instructs T cells to stop or slow an immune system response, and cancer cells can take advantage of this protein to trick the body into responding to the ailment with less than full force. Once the PD-1 protein was removed with CRISPR, the edited cells were cultivated to increase their numbers and then injected back into the patient. This is the first of two injections for the patient, and an additional nine patients in the trial will receive between two and four injections of edited cells, depending on their individual conditions. Carl June, scientific advisor for the planned U.S. trial, told Nature: "I think this is going to trigger 'Sputnik 2.0,' a biomedical duel in progress between China and the United States, which is important since competition usually improves the end product."
Nope. It won't be an extinction virus. China will create one to wipe out the U.S., the U.S. will create one to wipe out the Middle East, the Middle East will create one to wipe out Israel, Israel will create one to wipe out Koreans (North Korea, in particular), which will end up also wiping out the Chinese, and the North Koreans will create one to wipe out western Europe, who will wipe out Russia. The good news is that Madagascar will survive.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Israel will create one to wipe out Palestinians, and boy, will they be in for a surprise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What could go wrong?
Cancer. Death. Disease. Things we already have and could potentially cure with this.
People could die. People will die, with or without this. Maybe, just maybe, this could mean fewer people dying unnecessary deaths.
Is this a moon shot? No. This has the possibility of saving millions of lives. Millions of people who have the potential to make the world better, for all of humanity, for the species. Most importantly, this has the potential to make the world better for the people who don't die and for the people they don't leave behind. Soon, and it cannot happen soon enough!
The good news is that Madagascar will survive.
They always do.
Doesn't take much to be superhuman, mind you. Immunity to a particular evolutionary pathway of metastatic lung cancer isn't exactly power armour and man-portable grenade rifles.
It is hard to keep a singing dancing lemur down...
If he didn't have that funny accent he would be running the planet already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecSCaZ_XPlo
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
read this as: A team of Chinese scientists from Sichuan University in Chengdu have become the first to infect a person with ...
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
The good news is that Madagascar will survive.
They always do.
Not always.
I saw the ugly truth of biomedical research when I was in grad school. TLDR, while every last stinking one of us has every possible motivation to spend EVERY spare penny not keeping us alive in the near term on the research (since it's the only thing that has the slightest chance of making sure we continue living past a mere 7-10 decades), there are 2 nasty problems :
1. Due to extreme amounts of government and institutional red tape, nothing gets done. Nothing. All those stories you read of brain implants? Basically never going to happen. That's because the way the legal system works is, institution administrators always have to ask "can WE be blamed if this goes wrong?" Basically, if the research kills someone but ultimately saves 1000 lives, our courts won't give any credit to the 1000 lives saved, it's all about slamming the institution for making an error. Also, the government has a very poor model for assessing results. If a drug works on cancer that has failed every other treatment, you don't need a trial with 1000+ participants. Cancers that reach that stage don't just disappear for no reason. A trial with 20 people is enough if 10 of them get up and leave with their tumors destroyed. This is a very strong effect and one that shouldn't require the one size fits all approach the FDA demands.
2. Most medical spending is on overpriced procedures and drugs and equipment that all suck.
If we don't advance science, we all die for sure.
And if we do advance science, we all die for sure.
Old as I am, I still haven't figured out why death is such a big deal to so many people. It's not something anyone will suffer.
"I think this is going to trigger 'Sputnik 2.0,' a biomedical duel in progress between China and the United States, which is important since competition usually improves the end product."
this guy might disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't fear death. Rather, I find the world very interesting, pleasant, and beautiful. I would prefer to continue experiencing it.
Israel could wipe out the Palestinians any time they want.
What about being able to photosynthesize :D
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Elephant birds
Jesus christ how horrifying
Negligible on a mammal of human size/surface area.
Chinese science runs the gamut from "top notch and comparable to the West" all the way down to "my bottle of mystery formula will cure all cancer give me money now".
So, it runs Exactly the Same Gamut as the west then. Only we call our Mystery Formula "Homeopathy", and get insurance to pay for it.
eating is far better than having to lay in the sun all day every day all day every day.
anyways - did it even work? sounds like a lot of "Ladder to heaven" stuff before that... especially the us advisors comment. does it work- is it a cure for cancer or not?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Elephant birds
Jesus christ how horrifying
. . . and when one of these critters would decide to take a dump on your car windshield . . . ?
Definitely worth a "Mythbusters" episode.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"We'll probably figure out how to cure cancer shortly before someone unleashes an extinction virus on the world. "
The technology to create something like an extinction virus is also the technology to knock out viruses.
There will only be an extinction virus if every country recuses from using tools like CRISPR, because that would leave us vulnerable to the first extinction virus developed through hybridization.
Could be interesting in countries where interpreters of an old holy text have a significant influence on government policy and usually say that Deity would not approve of such technology.
Well, if the 'Space Race' comparison holds, a non-weaponization treaty isn't far off. I hope.
Just semantics.
Do they want zombies? Because I'm pretty sure this is how you get zombies. :)
I find the world ugly, horrifying and doomed; yet I too wish to carry on living. Baked in survival instincts are funny like that.
That's being pretty blind to the miracle cure fake stuff and programs sold in the western world. Homeopathy, vitamin supplements, etc .. it's all the same crap, just named and marketed in culturally compatible ways.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Israel will create one to wipe out Palestinians, and boy, will they be in for a surprise.
Well played sir - well played indeed!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Could be interesting in countries where interpreters of an old holy text have a significant influence on government policy and usually say that Deity would not approve of such technology.
My first thought. A case study might be Lysenkoism. It wasn't based on religion, but of ideology. And ideals, religion or otherwise, can trump truth - for a short time.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Old as I am, I still haven't figured out why death is such a big deal to so many people. It's not something anyone will suffer.
Isn't that a bit like saying "I don't know why jumping out of an airplane without a parachute is such a big deal. It's not something anyone will suffer", just flipped a bit? Yes, the instant of death / falling may not hurt, but it's the dying / sudden stop at the end that I think most people are worried about how much suffering they will endure from that.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
The thing is, we don't necessarily have to understand things to splice them in, just identify the cause. There are plenty of mutants walking around with all sorts of "superpowers". Immunity to high blood cholesterol. Especially high intelligence. Superstrength (doubled muscle production). And many, many more where the gene responsible has already been identified. Some come at a cost, either as a direct side effect, or as a risk factor for descendants who get two copies of the gene, but others don't seem to. And splicing in a whole bunch of "superpowers" that already exist in the wild into a single individual could well result in someone substantially superhuman. Assuming there's minimal negative interactions between mutations at least.
Essentially, it could deliver the benefits of hundreds of generations of selective breeding in a single generation, while retaining virtually all of the genetics of the "primary parents" - i.e. it would still be "your" child, just... better.
Dramatic chimeras will of course require far better understanding, but there's actually a surprising amount of variation already in the gene pool - for your furry example, features like tails, dramatically mobile ears, and exceptionally heavy body hair already exist in the population and have probably been isolated to certain genes as well. Just think of every freak show oddity that has wandered the fringes of society - any oddity that can be traced to a particular gene can be added to the genetic engineer's palette while the results remain 100% human. Bringing them together in an aesthetically pleasing fashion... that's probably going to be more of a challenge.
And of course there's the other elephant in the room: CRISPR isn't 100% accurate, and if you're making a lot of edits you're liable to introduce a few errors as well. Not a big deal if you're making research animals... more so if you're making people.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yeah, CRISPR has issues that would make me leery of editing the human germ line, but this sort of thing actually seems pretty viable - isolate a bunch of cells, modify them, and then cultivate them into a much larger population. Any serious errors are likely to interfere with the cultivation stage, so the vast majority of the cells reintroduced to the patient are liable to be successful edits. If the edit actually makes them substantially more effective at attacking some cancers, then it seems like this should work wonderfull, assuming none of the surviving errors lead them to attack healthy tissue. For example, supercharged T cells with a taste for nerve tissue could be horrifying. But if you're dying of metastasized cancer, the tiny risk is probably worth it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Because of Grammar Nazis.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Just have to add leaves and supporting structures too then. It would be a whole new branch of humanity.
And then we'll get Miranda and reavers.
Isn't that a bit like saying "I don't know why jumping out of an airplane without a parachute is such a big deal. It's not something anyone will suffer", just flipped a bit? Yes, the instant of death / falling may not hurt, but it's the dying / sudden stop at the end that I think most people are worried about how much suffering they will endure from that.
It seems to me that a lot of people are willing, if not say desperate, to prolong life despite suffering.
Part of it is surely self-preservation instincts, but it goes much further than what makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, where it makes sense to die when you no longer can provide a net benefit to your descendants, so you don't compete with them for resources.
But I think a large part of it is cultural too - we're taught that life is "sacred", and to be afraid and treat death as something horrible that must be avoided at all costs. To what extent seems to differ between cultures, and our western one is probably the one that goes the farthest.
Most other animals seem to have a more balanced self-preservation instinct than humans, and don't seem to sport the same obsession with and irrational fear of death. Our human ability to mull it over appears to be a problem, causing us to go to extraordinary lengths in attempts to prolong life, including spending up to a 17.5% of all our societies' resources on health care, and inventing religions to fool ourselves into thinking it is possible to buy an opt-out through supernatural means, even though that expends even more resources.
Best "Mr. Sandman" rewrite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
CRISPR-Cas9 ....
Bring me a gene
Encoding for a specific protein
Make a few snips at this coded locus
You work so well inside a streptococcus
Cas9
I'm so alone
Without your scissors in my chromosome
Cut me up and do it clean
CRISPR-Cas9 bring me a gene
CRISPeR, tastier, zestier, crunchier!
I am just fishing for points, so sue me, or mod me
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Of course not. That's part of what makes the joke funny. It's sort of a meta-joke.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
sociopathic, genocidal murderers and their heirs will be all that is left
Even IF such a thing were technically feasible or to become so. There are still two really big problems that the hate groups never seem to even realize, let alone admit to anyone.
1) Who decides who is desirable vs undesirable? White supremacists would chose blacks, browns and yellows, pretty much in that order. There are elements in militant ethnic or religious groups who would happily eliminate whites from the world in turn. What you end up with is a MAD situation, with everyone (hopefully!!) being too sane to be the first to pull the trigger and making side deals with others in the room to gang up on the first one who does so.
2) There are many post apocalyptic stories and movies out there which can give us at least a passing notion of what a truly depopulated world would look like. None of the bigoted nutjobs seem to really think that through. At best, some seem to think this means law and order collapse and they get to take what they please at the point of the gun they've been hugging and whispering to. More likely, it means the utter collapse and likely extinction of the human race. ONE PLAGUE wiped out as much as 50% of the human race. We survived because a) People tended not to travel as much or as far/fast as they do today. The disease spread slower than it would today. b) Something like 80% of the population was involved in food production and nobody utterly relied on preserved and/or widely transported foodstuffs. c) The disease struck mainly the poorest and the ones living in the most crowded conditions the hardest. Most monasteries, for example, were almost or completely unscathed. Which also meant that the accumulated knowledge of the human race also survived. (and even if the librarian monk dies, the books are still on the shelves. If our electrical grid goes down permanently, everything stored electronically will be essentially GONE.) Because our civilization is so interconnected and interdependent, what *I* think the result would be:
A) Death tolls easily matching the First, Second and Third pandemics put together. It will happen within weeks, perhaps even days, compared to the months and years of the earlier plagues. That would eliminate 80+% of the human race.
B)There will be warfare as nations blame each other. Warfare that is quite likely to include nuclear weapons. That right there accounts of ~80-90 % of the human race. FOLLOWED BY
C) Wide spread and immediate Great Famine which accounts for 50-60% of who ever is left. FOLLOWED BY
D) Rampant dysentery and other diseases, caused by being surrounded by seemingly endless dead bodies and no access to clean drinking water. (many people in the west don't even know where their water comes from, let alone have the means to get there and extract it without power during a pandemic. FOLLOWED BY
E) A loss of human knowledge and know-how akin to the Viking sacks of the Irish monasteries, but occurring WORLD-WIDE. FOLLOWED BY
F) A drastic crash in world wide climate, perhaps even another Little Ice Age as we had in the medieval period. This may well account for the 5-10% of
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Nah, boring. What I want is the ability to breathe underwater, see clearly underwater without a mask, not get the bends, and better thermoregulation. Man, just imagine being able to free dive in (the rapidly dying) coral reefs.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
The good news is that Madagascar will survive.
I like to move it, move it ...