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United Nations Considers a Test Ban on Evolution-Warping Gene Drives (technologyreview.com)
Bill Gates wants to end malaria, and so he's particularly "energized" about gene drives, a technology that could wipe out the mosquitoes that spread the disease. Gates calls the new approach a "breakthrough," but some environmental groups say gene drives are too dangerous to ever use. From a report: Now the sides are headed for a showdown. In a letter circulated this week, scientists funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others are raising the alarm over what they say is an attempt to use a United Nations biodiversity meeting this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to introduce a global ban on field tests of the technology. At issue is a draft resolution by diplomats updating the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which -- if adopted -- would call on governments to "refrain from" any release of organisms containing engineered gene drives, even as part of experiments. The proposal for a global gene-drive moratorium has been pushed by environmental groups that are also opposed to genetically modified soybeans and corn. They have likened the gene-drive technique to the atom bomb.
In response, the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, has been funding a counter-campaign, hiring public relations agencies to preempt restrictive legislation and to distribute today's letter. Many of its signatories are directly funded by the foundation. "This is a lobbying game on both sides, to put it bluntly," says Todd Kuiken, who studies gene-drive policy at North Carolina State University. (He says he was asked to sign the Gates letter but declined because he is a technical advisor to the UN.) New technology The gene-drive technique involves modifying a mosquito's DNA so that, when the insect breeds, it spreads a specific genetic change -- one that's bad for its survival.
In response, the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, has been funding a counter-campaign, hiring public relations agencies to preempt restrictive legislation and to distribute today's letter. Many of its signatories are directly funded by the foundation. "This is a lobbying game on both sides, to put it bluntly," says Todd Kuiken, who studies gene-drive policy at North Carolina State University. (He says he was asked to sign the Gates letter but declined because he is a technical advisor to the UN.) New technology The gene-drive technique involves modifying a mosquito's DNA so that, when the insect breeds, it spreads a specific genetic change -- one that's bad for its survival.
Just a bunch of politicians playing pretend. Ignore them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I for one am looking forward to the coming mosquito genocide.
"Life finds a way..."
No one needs to make up stories about Dow.
According to Kuiken, the UN is unlikely to endorse a ban, because that requires consensus, and some countries with biotech industries are expected to oppose the measure.
It's not even worth discussing here.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ticks should be next. First we get rid of deer ticks (Lyme disease), and maybe a few others that spread serious illnesses.
some environmental groups say gene drives are too dangerous to ever use.
Sure, and some "environmental groups" are staffed by people who firmly believe that Atlantean DNA has 12 strands.
No sig today...
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I am almost always shouted down for it, but I agree that we're forging ahead with genetic modifications without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be, and it's a one-way street, once it's done you can't take it back, and we won't know what the ultimate consequences will be for decades or centuries -- or maybe a matter of just years, if we're really unlucky. Worse, there could be consequences we'll never even realize are due to something we've modifed genetically; imagine our species dying out and never even understanding why it's happening?
Ironically I'm not even worried about this on an emotional basis. There's already enough GMO that's been released into the wild that it's already too late to do anything about it, and countries like China are even less cautious about doing it than anyone else. One way or another our fate is already sealed. Odds are about even that those of us alive right now won't live to see any possible negative consequences; it might take several generations before anything shows up.
Perhaps. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. There's no putting the nuclear weapon genie back in it's bottle either - but that doesn't mean we should stand back and let every arms dealer with the resources make and sell nukes to any wacko with the money.
As someone who tentatively approves of responsible genetic engineering (tentatively, because I see precious little evidence of responsible behavior among GMO creators), I'm still strongly opposed to employing gene drives.
Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose). And evolution does so love to find creative ways to put useful genes to work.
There's also the fact that we pretty much have to go on faith that gene drives will remain in the target species - the barriers between species are not nearly as absolute as we often imagine, with occasional individuals successfully cross-breeding with similar species. It's very uncommon, but it happens, and it only takes one such hybridization to spread the gene drive into new species, where its effects will be unpredictable.
And that's before even considering the modification payload itself, which may or may not succeed in its intended goals. Extinction drives are perhaps one of the safer gene drives possible, provided they don't jump species, as they eliminate themselves from the gene pool going forward, assuming the species doesn't evolve immunity, which there's already some evidence can occur. I trust I'm not alone in being concerned about those qualifiers. It only takes one individual among countless trillions with a mutation that neutralizes the gene drive (or its effect) to spread the neutered gene drive throughout the now rapidly rebounding species.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You mean, people from the lost city of Atlanta?
#DeleteFacebook
RUFR GTFO MOFO
#DeleteFacebook
You know how many viruses are around you right now? Trillions and trillions. Each one a message to rewrite the DNA of something in your body (mostly of bacteria), each one indirectly competing with eachother to carve a larger niche out of our existences.
We took a couple of those and use them in the safest way we can to fight against a small number of pathogens.
I understand the fear - that of Andromeda strains, grey goo, and other explicitly fictional thought experiment scenarios.
Someone, somewhere is going to use this tool, and the environment is going to adapt to it - I'd rather use it at least as well as we've used penicillin, and push diseases back for a while, rather than hold it back until it is used in some predictably irresponsible group. in the ironic name of bottomless responsibility.
Mosquitoes aren't a vital part of any food chain. We can keep their DNA in archives. It's a genuine health benefit to limiting the species to non-mammal-biting varieties.
We're already living with a giant experiment in mass animal extinction through mass irresponsibility. This is an action that at least helps many of the most vulnerable species (land mammals) have a better chance, and increases our own quality of life at the same time.
Mosquitoes won't be extinct - but the varieties that bite mammals are worth the effort to select against..
This technology clearly needs an international regulatory framework, since in principle its possible to exterminate a species in another country with it - country A could decide to wipe out a species it shares with country B, without the consent of country B; I mean: could mexico decide which species should life in the US? Can think of many many nasty scenarios that go beyond the "lets kill these obnoxious mosquitos" type...
Gene drives are a powerful new technology which needs to be deployed with caution and respect, with review by peer biologists who are as fully informed as possible about the effect they are having on ecosystems. But when "environmental groups" get involved, the usual suspects will insist on banning any tech that didn't exist in their great-grammaw's time.
Furthermore, note the shift going on here from opposing an implementation of technology to opposing basic scientific research in a field. When we look more closely into who's behind this, we will undoubtedly find the grimy fingerprints of the same thugs who tried to kill off research astronomy, a pure science, in Arizona during the Nineties and today in Hawaii.
That's a lot of humans.
We should stop them from doing that.
See how STUPID "ZIP" (Zach Patterson) the CHIMP is (tried to take credit for what I solved before him) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he needs to LEARN TO READ)!
I even SHOW ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he couldn't).
Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no issue w/ null-term'd string bufferoverflows - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st loser.
Tell us about CODE SIGNING (which has been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...
"I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... yet nothing to show in programs. I can from registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work (& 100k users worldwide too). He can't.
LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
APK
P.S.=> KEEP PLAYING PUSSY GAMES IMPERSONATING ME YOU CHIMP - this comes out every time, lol!... apk
Where the hell did you get that nonsense from? Literally none of that is in any way correct.
The reason they're profitable is because they are better at feeding the planet. The "it's all about the profit" objection is just blatant propaganda; if you're going to object to efficiency based on the fact that it's more profitable than inefficiency, I really hope you enjoy being a cave dwelling hunter-gatherer.
That would be hideously unlikely. Horizontal gene transmission, and fertile hybrid species are both rare. Even if that did happen, the gene drive won't work in a non-target species, because the CAS9 protein in the gene drive is sequence specific. You typically set the gene drive to target a gene critical for reproduction in a target species, something like a protein involved in eggs for a mosquito. If the gene drive ends up in a different species, the nontarget will have similar and related genes, but the CAS9 won't modify it because the gene's sequence will be different. There are at least two exceedingly improbable barriers to the gene drive spreading to nontarget species.
Comparing atomic weapons to genetics is misleading, you can control the production of nukes as you need enriched fissionable material and its very hard to make that. But with genetics all the tools and source materials are really all around. Life would not work if it didn't had the tools ...
Theres a lot of fear of genetic modification, but humankind has modified genes since longer than there are written records. The beef and pork and also the bread you eat all would not exist had we not. Things became more precise with fewer random and unpredictable modifications as modern methods are used. But somehow peoples logic seems to have a overflow there as people seem to jump from what is more precise and more human controlled to being less so and more random and more unpredictable.
Gene drives, i must admit i have only heard of variants that intend to wipe out very specific disease spreading species. For example theres one that makes all offspring male in some very specific human disease spreading mosquito species.Now in this case where exactly do we have the danger ? Either it works all, as in a local population just are all male and die out or it doesn't and somehow theres female offspring which means the change stopped working which would not be worse than not having tried in the first place. This is not really different from using an antibiotic to kill off a disease causing bacteria in a patient. Or a anti viral drug. And that arguing that it would be terrible if that unintentionally wiped out HIV globally. Or maybe also wiped out a very closely related virus. Sure theres always some risk that something completely unexpected could happen yes, but that risk equally exists if you spray toxic chemicals widely in an not so successful attempt to control these mosquitoes. Genes are not static they change naturally and anything you do evolution will react to. The risk for a carefully engineered and intentional modification which then also is carefully tested, honestly seems less than what we do currently. Which is spraying toxic chemicals in an attempt to control disease spreading species. The species evolves as a result some resistance to the chemical (that is its genetics change), why this totally unpredictable change is seen less dangerous or unpredictable than an intentional carefully engeneered change is something i fail to understand
I personally find it sad that people want to ban something which could save millions of human lifes. (wikipedia says 438,000 people died on malaria in 2015).
I'm pretty sure humans are genetically one species, even on Santorini.
I know the place feels magical, but still!
You can't stop us from using the Warp Drive to kill mosquitos, I don't care how many subspace cultures we destroy. Do we live in subspace? No. So do we care? No.
Back off the gene warp, cowherd.
Tristan is an island a good thousand miles away from anyplace else and rats are not native there. They cause all kinds of grief and there is no normal way to get rid of them. Try a "death gene" drive with them. They are not likely to breed with anything from off island, and if it somehow goes bad you are naturally isolated from, well, everything else in the world.
Rare, but not unheard of - it often comes down to the genetic compatibility of the specific individuals involved - and when you're talking about species who number in the trillions, and have 3000 related species, rare events aren't quite so hideously unlikely as you might expect.
Meanwhile, if a species is similar enough to allow fertile hybrids, it seems to me quite likely that the gene drive would work on them as well (also note that I'm not talking just about extinction drives that would interfere with something reproduction related - it holds true for *any* gene drive). Unless it's targetting something species specific - which seems unlikely considering that the vast bulk of DNA will be identical between closely related species. Especially around something as fundamental as reproductive processes.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nowhere did I object to genetic engineering, just to one specific, exceptionally dangerous technology that's completely unrelated to curing genetic-based diseases.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We're screwed! We "eliminate" mosquitoes. Then, the species that only survive on mosquitoes or their larvae die off. Then the species that only exist on those die off and so on and so on and so on. Or, the species that mosquitoes "kill off" overpopulate and kill off something else and so on. It's called a balance of nature. LEAVE IT ALONE
Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose).
The upside is we get rid of mosquitoes. The downside is a few non-target species might die slightly earlier than when the sun goes red giant and fries every living thing on the Earth.
Sounds like an acceptable risk, IMHO.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
As I said, I approve of responsible genetic engineering.
Gene drives specifically are something else though, and they are being investigated for many non-extinction applications as well - one of the proposed mosquito "low impact" solutions being developed for example is a gene drive that simply makes them immune to the malaria parasite, which actually gives the modified individuals a survival advantage.
As for gene drives that "stop working" being harmless - not so much. Just because the payload stops being delivered, or even if the "target" mutates so that the drive stops spreading except by normal inheritance mechanisms, doesn't mean the drive ceases to exist. It will continue to spread throughout the species, and potentially across species through the occasional hybrid. And every individual with that "harmless" gene drive now has all the genetic tools necessary to perform arbitrary genetic engineering on itself, and potentially its hosts - just waiting for evolution to find a way to put those idle genes to work.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not quite.
We *might* get rid of mosquitoes. There've already been a few lab tests in which species have evolved an immunity to "extinction drives", and the odds of that happening go up dramatically when the population numbers in the trillions. In which case we're back to square one, except that now the mosquitoes are all carrying powerful DNA-editing tools in their genes, just waiting for further evolution to put them to use.
I'm sure there's no way that could possibly go badly with a species of blood-feeders that already routinely inject their DNA into their host's bloodstream.
And we risk wiping out vast swaths of harmless nectar feeders (the other 3,000 species of mosquito that *don't* bite humans), with potentially catastrophic domino effects among the plants that rely on them as primary pollinators, the animals and other species that rely on those plants, etc.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
How do you figure? Offhand I can't think of any viruses that splice DNA-editing tools into their hosts reproductive cells in such a way that they're all but guaranteed to spread throughout the entire species.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'm against Gates because he's trying to artificially change the natural course of life in Africa with outside resources. If he artificially stops the mortality rate of babies and adults, that means Africa is set for a population explosion. Where are they going to go? They're certainly not going to stay in Africa. They become everybody's problem as we're seeing with the current migrant crisis in Spain, France and England.
What is missing from your comment is a single defined negative outcome. When millions of people die each year from mosquito born diseases, vague insinuations that something bad you can't articulate could happen is not a sufficient rebuttal to saving them. What are you proposing could happen that would make us long for the days when we only had malaria and dengue to worry about?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Adapt or die, as the saying goes.
Environmental protection argument stands on very shaky ground if you consider 200 million malaria cases and near half a million malaria deaths per year as the cost of your caution. I'd like to see greenpeace address grieving mothers and explain why deaths of their children were not prevented because it would have been a risk to the environment.
Considering how we're talking about a method where we release individuals of a particular species with sabotaged genes into the wild so that they then breed with the the wild population and spread these sabotaged genes across the population trough natural procreation I don't think this has much of a risk of jumping across species.
Worst case scenario is that this spreads beyond the intended target population and you end up exterminating additional populations of the same species.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Put the old biddy out to pasture and let the experts take over.
Even if some hypothetical species jump were to occur, at the most it could effect one or a few individuals. For a gene drive to work, you need to release a large number of the target species so that a significant fraction of the breeding population will have the modification.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
No, you really don't. That makes it more likely to be successful, as it's more likely that at least one of your individuals manage to reproduce before dying in every generation, and that their offspring manage to do so as well, until such time as they have enough descendants that it would be virtually impossible to eliminate them all. But it's not required.
You may be thinking of "traditional GMO" mosquito control strategies, where you're relying on normal genetic dispersion to spread your modifications, but the big difference with gene drives is that 100% of the offspring inherit the drive.
So, a single female mosquito lays 100-300 eggs at a time. If she or her inter-species mate has a gene drive, then 100% of her offspring will as well, lets call it 200 eggs. If 5% of those offspring survive to reproduce, then that one successful hybridization has resulted in 10 hybrids going on to reproduce. After another generation, 100, then 1000, etc. And of course, males have potentially much greater generational fan-out than females, so it would actually happen much faster than that. So long as the drive doesn't impose an individual survival disadvantage, it can spread through the population like wildfire. As is the case, for example, in the gene drive that makes all offspring male - it maximizes generational fan-out, while imposing no individual disadvantages. Spreads like wildfire until virtually everyone has it, and then in the course of a single generation all the females vanish and the species goes extinct.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'm sure there's no way that could possibly go badly with a species of blood-feeders that already routinely inject their DNA into their host's bloodstream.
This was my first thought after reading the article. Mosquitos are particularly risky to genetically modify due to how they interact with other species. What are the chances that they might bite and exchange the gene drive DNA with another species with a similar enough gene sequence to the target of the gene drive? And what if the gene drive mutates within the mosquito population in a way that better targets other species?
Hopefully one stage of lab testing involves a massive hermetically sealed warehouse full of millions of mosquitoes and a wide variety of their prey.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Actually, not really. It's conceptually horrifying, but would be relatively easy to control. I mean, the original race-targeting virus would not be, but that has nothing to do with gene-drives, and there's not a whole lot of motive to insert a gene-drive rather than just killing or modifying the targeted individuals outright, which is considerably faster and easier. Gene drives only affect your children.
Also, there are no gene sequences present in all members of one race but none of another - the reason scientists say there is no genetic basis for race. Though for such a hypothetical monster, killing 10% of their own race might be an acceptable price to pay to kill 90% of another.
The biggest factors controlling the spread of a gene drive is the speed that the species reproduces, and the generational fan-out. Infect one male corn stalk with a gene drive, and it can have thousands of offspring, including many wild hybrids, and those offspring can have thousands more next season - With a good growing year you could easily be looking at millions, even billions of carriers within a single year. You'll never get that under control again. Infect one mosquito, it can have hundreds of offspring, and with a lifecycle of around 10 days even if only 5 offspring of each clutch survive to reproduce it could easily spread throughout the population in a single year. Humans though - you've got 15-30 years per generation, and only 2-3 offspring. It'd take over 20 generations (300-600 years) to infect half the global population. And we're mostly intelligent beings who would be reasonably easy to screen for treatment or quarantine.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That is a decent argument, but I disagree.
I know it sounds callous, but several tens of millions of people die every year, and nothing we do will ever change that (well, we might invent immortality, but that would likely soon result in billions of people dying). People dying is the natural course of events. Jeopardizing the future viability of the global biosphere to save the lives of a few percent of those is hopelessly reckless.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.