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Scientists Call For Global Moratorium On Gene Editing of Embryos (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Leading scientists have called for a global moratorium on the use of powerful DNA editing tools to make genetically modified children. The move is intended to send a clear signal to maverick researchers, and the scientific community more broadly, that any attempt to rewrite the DNA of sperm, eggs or embryos destined for live births is not acceptable. Beyond a formal freeze on any such work, the experts want countries to register and declare any plans that scientists may put forward in the future, and have these discussed through an international body, potentially run by the World Health Organization. Alongside technical debates about the possible benefits of creating genetically modified babies, the scientists said no decisions should be made to go ahead without broad public support. Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calls for the moratorium with 16 other experts in the journal Nature. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Feng Zhang, who helped discover and develop the most common gene editing tool, CRISPR, contributed to the article.
The call comes four months after Chinese researcher He Jiankui used human embryos modified with CRISPR to create twin girls resistant to HIV.
The call comes four months after Chinese researcher He Jiankui used human embryos modified with CRISPR to create twin girls resistant to HIV.
Those with the money will do it no matter what. Enhanced humans are a future given.
;)
Just my 2 cents
at least, not unless there's a health issue involved. There's a couple genes that cause childhood leukemia and if that can be edited out go for it. But we're not ready to start making super babies. Not that I don't think we should. Of course we should. But we need a _much_ better understanding of the long term effects before we do. The best way to find that out would be trying to fix the sick.
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I'd mod you up if I could. The individual and collective rewards for gene editing are far too great to ignore. Someone (or likely many someones) will do it, even with the risks.
Anyone who voluntarily follows this moratorium is, by definition, going to fall behind on the genetic arms race. And falling behind means that your society will eventually become the genetically inferior one.
There is one simple fact to consider here; and, it's best to consider its ramifications when or if trying to render something illegal so it won't be done where you control life and liberty of others. "If something is technologically possible to do and there is a market for doing it, then it WILL get done at least one somewhere by at least one somebody." All making it illegal means is that when it is done you end up with a technological deficit, the technological mookie end of the stick.
{^_^}
That is even worse than decision by committee. This is decision by uninformed masses that have no clue how things work and what is and is not important.
While I am all for moving forward with extremely care in this area, letting the public decide about it is the worst idea possible. They will either be panicked irrationally or overoptimistic just as irrationally. Not good at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Imagine how wonderful it would be if a family that had been 100% black for five or six generations could produce a child who physically appeared to be 100% white. It would be fun to watch all the racists try to find some kind of test to figure out who was a "real" white person and who was just a pale imitation.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
We aren't evolving anymore or if we are it is not for the better (see Idiocracy), but god forbid we should try to improve ourselves as a species. Boy wouldn't that be awful. It is too bad that only a tiny percentage of the human population is intelligent and the rest are total retards who are against any sort of change. Just imagine if we could give every baby an IQ of 150 or even 180, but most people would regard that as a horrific dystopia I guess. Totally sad that these people call themselves 'scientists'. This is anti-science.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
scientist i dont give a shit!
my neighbor with PHd med. is abusing her kids. the opinion of those ppl dont matter to me.
Sound logic.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Because for every Bashir, there are a dozen Khans.
So it's ok to gene edit fetuses or zygotes?
I'm curious how the debate will shake out on whether these gene-edited girls should be allowed to reproduce. That debate WILL happen by the time they reach child-bearing age. IIRC it was a germ-line change.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
" We'll have laws instead."
That everyone is breaking anyways, especially if you are wealthy or have power or connections to power. It is always a gas to see folks like you pretend that someone else's idea would never work while looking as your own idea already not working.
There is only 1 law... and that is of the jungle. The rich and powerful just like to hold the threat of anarchy over your head to get you to agree to anarchy anyways. You can be murdered by your government and how many of your fellow citizens will care enough to do anything about that? Not even your own family will do anything, except sue and get some money... your murder would benefit them.
What the poster is really trying to tell you that this just like the war on drugs will set us back more than it would wind up benefiting us. So yes, go ahead and law it all away... you only lose to powerful people getting you to fear your own shadow and preventing you from not being able to do anything while they still get to do everything. Sadly it works all too well.
Nice strawman argument...
Yes, YOU will definitely be having some laws over your head, while those in a position of power still have that low bar for entry you think you are preventing. You have a vast amount of ignorance. Laws are not there to stop or prevent crime. They are there to punish people that violate the law and cannot afford to pay the piper or stupid enough to publicly flaunt their positions of power. Like Shkreli... his only mistake was running his pie hole. Had he only kept a low profile he would still be filthy stinking rich and NOT being punished by your idea of "government". I have personally seen people steal police cars and get less punishment than someone jay-walking. Was in court that day. I think you have no idea of what you are talking about.
Of course, we should be cautious, firstly, because we little understand how most human genes work and interact with each other and thus mistakes can screw up peoples' health. But it's actually a bad idea to rely on incompetent peoples' opinions. Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with the idea of enhancing ourselves in the genetic level. There are numerous diseases/disorders/weaknesses which are at least partially genetic. They have screwed up lives of tens if not hundreds of millions of people and also are burden to our society.Diabetes, autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, ADHD, do i need to say more? And finally, as someone with a neurodevelopmental problem, I consider diversity(pathological)/neurodiversity advocacy a dangerous thing.
And it is being used on individuals but not the germ line.
It needs to move there, though. There are a number of rare genetic conditions we can edit out safely. We should do so.
We don't know the genes for intelligence, it seems more complex than that anyway, so I'm not worried about that.
Therapy should never be at family request but should have agreed life-or-death medical value as understood by genetic experts with no political or commercial links whatsoever.
In other words, pharmaceutical companies, churches and government agencies can bog off. This is for the adults in the room and that lot don't qualify.
Until we've a better understanding of shared genes (genes perform multiple roles and change those roles over a lifetime) and a better understanding of how to leverage genetic conditions advantageously, only things that are almost certain to kill should qualify for treatment.
So hair and eye colour are out.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They make it sound like there will be a strict control of gene editing of embryos, but what they will actually do is control who gets to do it and set up guidelines for actually doing it. Essentially they are just setting up the bureaucracy to do the thing, not forbid it. And scientists will just move out of their purview anyway. And if there is money in it - and of course there is - the whole system will become corrupted. In short, gene editing is here to stay and will grow greatly. So come the mutants.
E Proelio Veritas.
"Creating superior humans" would require being able to execute many gene edits at the same time. Let's start out by knocking out point mutation diseases like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs.
In the US, it will turn into a debate between progress and Congress.
...all you like, but I really find it odd to see âoepowerfulâ and âoeDNA editing toolâ in the same sentence.
You sir, win the tin-foil hat award of the year.
Just another day in Paradise
As someone who actually is Libertarian, I just called him out. You clearly have no idea what the meaning of the word actually is.
Just another day in Paradise
Stop it before we Bashir head in.
Just another day in Paradise
Please describe the abuse. One person's abuse is often another's sound parental discipline.
I've seen too many entitled brats raised by people who let their children do whatever they want.
Just another day in Paradise
All this will do is create a(nother) black market. Just as the "war on drugs" and "war on prostitution" have done, and for exactly the same reasons: This is something people will really want because there are obvious and significant benefits to be had, and in the long run, such a thing won't take significant resources to accomplish.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We are already screwing up our gene pool, sooner or later it will become a necessity to fix it. Consider for example cesarean section, what happened historically when a woman could not give live birth the natural way? Well, as sad as it is Darwin happened and genes that lead to this faulty morphology were removed from gene pool. Now medicine can bypass that particular selection pressure and the genes remain in circulation. That's the same for every life modern medicine saves prior to procreation. Give it enough generations and every life will start in an incubator with constant medical intervention for a lifetime just to not die. If fatal errors do not get removed by natural selection, then we need an artificial method to do it. It may not be an imminent concern, it's fine to wait on it for decades, but it's not wise to put a permanent moratorium on gene editing humans, because eventually we must do it.
Why not edit up some babies that can digest plastic. Then let em loose in all those places that people are complaining about all the plastic pollution. Hell we wouldn't even need to educate them, just let em loose to eat and breed.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.