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Baby With DNA From Three People Born In Greece (theguardian.com)
A baby with DNA from three people has been born in Greece following a controversial fertility treatment. "The doctors behind the treatment, from Greece and Spain, say it marks a historic advance -- it is the first time an in vitro fertilization (IVF) technique involving DNA from three people has been used with the aim of addressing fertility problems," reports The Guardian. From the report: The experimental IVF treatment, known as mitochondrial donation, involves using an egg from the mother, sperm from the father and another egg from a female donor. The vast majority of a person's genes -- about 99.8% -- are found on the 23 pairs of chromosomes that sit inside the nucleus in each cell in the body, and in the IVF procedure this DNA comes from the two parents. However, a tiny proportion of genetic material also resides in a cell's mitochondria, small structures that act as the cell's batteries and float around freely in the cell body. In mitochondrial donation, the mother's mitochondria are removed from her egg and replaced by a donor's.
The treatment was originally developed as a treatment that could prevent women with debilitating or even fatal mitochondrial diseases from passing them on to their children. The doctors behind the latest treatment claim that mitochondria also play a role in successful pregnancy and suggest that the technique could be applied more broadly as a fertility treatment. The 32-year old woman in the latest case had previously undergone four unsuccessful rounds of IVF.
The treatment was originally developed as a treatment that could prevent women with debilitating or even fatal mitochondrial diseases from passing them on to their children. The doctors behind the latest treatment claim that mitochondria also play a role in successful pregnancy and suggest that the technique could be applied more broadly as a fertility treatment. The 32-year old woman in the latest case had previously undergone four unsuccessful rounds of IVF.
I say keep it that way.
Natural selection must run it's course.
Yeah, overpopulation is a real problem, it creates more problems than solving. But we are getting closer and closer to creating humans with improved genome. More and more new babies will have enhanced intelligence, immunity to many diseases, long live, etc. Such thing already done in China.
Well they NEED to genetically engineer a working class that can survive a 996 workweek.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I think only people who never leave huge metropolitan areas believe in some general overpopulation. Visit Wyoming some time, or Patagonia.
sadly, there are reasons why some couples cannot have children: i know of a couple that had infertility treatment, and the result was that their child was born severely handicapped.
i suspect that nature has some form of "checksum" that detects if there is damage to the DNA. in speaking with an expert from the Cambridge Genome Project over ten years ago, what they described to me was that human DNA expresses something very close to a Turing Machine, *including* a byte-code-like "machine language".
when i showed this same person the beautiful pictures of 3D mandelbrot sets that were discovered several years ago and published here on slashdot, he responded, "but those are exactly like the pictures i see under my microscope, every day!"
so it is not outside the realm of possibility that DNA expresses a fully-functioning biological computer, complete with checksum capability. this is why messing with that - trying to bypass the safeguards - through any kind of genetic manipulation - is so incredibly dangerous.
There is no general fertility problem with human beings at this time.
There is in Europe
Finally, a real-live chimera!
The main problem is waiting until you're 40 before deciding to make babies.
No sig today...
No problem. The immigrants have no fertility problem. I can't wait for them to take over, blow up all their monuments, burn their museums and wipe their asses with their books. Euro culture will be utterly and irrevocably destroyed and we can all have a big laugh.
There is no general fertility problem with human beings at this time.
You're right, but unless you want to deal with a planet full of autistic humans in 20 years, we better start doing what we can to improve the next generation instead of breaking it.
In less than 15 years, we've gone from 1 in 150 to 1 in 50 with regards to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). And sadly, the rate of kids being medicated (to include the infamous ADD/ADHD) is likely much higher simply due to greed, which also damages our kids (read your warning labels).
And yeah, I know we've gotten better at detecting autism. And cancer, Alzheimers, and a host of other diseases crippling our citizens . The bullshit "detection" excuse isn't helping, and it's certainly not an excuse to dismiss the rate at which these conditions are consuming our population.
And if you're still in disbelief as to how bad it's gotten, go ask 10 parents with children. See how many have kids that have been diagnosed with ASD or are being medicated for ADD/ADHD.
Well they NEED to genetically engineer a working class that can survive a 996 workweek.
Uh, no. We need to genetically engineer out the immoral and unethical mentality that believes that shit is viable or sustainable for any human.
Logic dictates that as the population grows, so will the demand for people to work. You can only have so much demand before you're going to be forced to share that 996 with three other people.
We have no "general problem" with rare diseases, either. Still we try to find cures. Go figure.
And then there is also no general problem with overpopulation. In developed countries we sometimes even find a demographic decline, coincidentally Greece is one of them, and the problems the world population growth poses can hardly counteracted by denying individuals reproduction in regions which don't even contribute to it.
I think only people who never leave huge metropolitan areas believe in some general overpopulation. Visit Wyoming some time, or Patagonia.
You heard it here first kids. China/India/New York/LA, you don't have an overpopulation problem. You just need to learn to spread out. Apparently you suck at it.
You can't genetically engineer certain aspects of mentality that are a byproduct of creativity without erasing creativity and the underlying system which makes it possible. That's a one-way ticket to stopping advancement in any field of thought.
For creativity to exist you are just going to have to accept the negative and other relative byproducts of the underlying system and the concept itself, as just like anything in nature everything comes with both benefits and cost, and fucking with either only makes the costs worse without you even noticing it due to hubris and self-righteous shortsightedness.
In addition, we are a long long long way from having population problems on this planet. What we have are urban planning problems and distribution problems.
Rather than trying to stop Humans from reproducing which will grant you a civil war which you would deserve honestly speaking and which you can only achieve by becoming a genocider yourself, focus on setting a urban circumference limit for cities/hives, establishing a vertical planning rule which goes both upwards and downwards. 320 million people can fit shoulder-by-shoulder onto one horizontal plane of 5.7km. If we add a vertical to that then you can see that the Earth's crust and digging in can pretty much free up over 99% of the entire planet for wilderness to take it over without erasing Humans, or let's say Humans living in the urban area for one part of a year and then being sent to agrarian zones outside to revitalize their Vitamin D and other requirements in shifts, establishing a tiny part of the planet as the Urban zone and the vast majority of it as an Agrarian zone. Plenty of methods are available and technology makes it more and more possible and sustainable each day. In addition to that is of course the space aspect too.
What? If you genetically engineer out immoral and unethical mentality, how do you plan to fill the C-Levels of corporations?
Won't somebody please think of the corporations!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem is that Europe introduced American economic conditions without first replacing the European mentality of a need for financial security with the "what could go wrong" happy-go-lucky mentality of the Americans.
We only reproduce when we can afford it, ya know...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I bet you would have held your marshmellows into the fire of the library of Alexandria...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's easier to use new RNA but I wonder why they just couldn't fix the mRNA of the mother.
If this becomes a commonplace fertility treatment in the future this will screw up mRNA ancestry tracing.
Sorry, but improved detection isn't just an excuse. It's the reason. I'm reasonably old and remember my childhood, and back then I went to school with quite a few kids that would be diagnosed with certain mental conditions today, from ADHD to autism. Not the case back then. ADHD was "cured" by smacking the kids 'til they would sit still and autism was just shyness and being weird.
Maybe you're not old enough to actually know that yes, these kids existed back then, too. The difference is just that nobody gave a fuck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's one of those jokes that end in "Oh dear kid, just be happy that you don't bark".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A healthy baby was born and he has people who love him. I don't really see a problem here. It's nice when technology does good things instead of bad.
I only know of two couples who had trouble getting pregnant, who then went through IVF in their early 30s. Each couple got pregnant with twins. One woman had a stillbirth after nine months; the other baby was born normally, but now has learning difficulties. The other couple had a normal child, but her twin brother has a learning disorder too. I've been curious about that process ever since.
With all their debt, they still have the best orgies.
Tell that to Japan. Russia. Even Germany.
Well, the new crop of people in USA have not problems blowing (tearing down) monuments, "cleansing" museums. Banning words and thoughts that are not "correct". Why shouldn't we expect the same in Europe?
Sorry, but improved detection isn't just an excuse. It's the reason. I'm reasonably old and remember my childhood, and back then I went to school with quite a few kids that would be diagnosed with certain mental conditions today, from ADHD to autism. Not the case back then. ADHD was "cured" by smacking the kids 'til they would sit still and autism was just shyness and being weird.
Maybe you're not old enough to actually know that yes, these kids existed back then, too. The difference is just that nobody gave a fuck.
The only thing higher detection did was maximize revenue streams. The only "cure" capitalism will ever legalize is perpetual prescriptions for however long your body can endure them.
That is what I mean by detection not helping matters. It's not reducing the rate of autism or even remotely attempting to find a cure. Who gives a shit if we can eventually detect autism at birth? Detection is only half of the problem here, and it might in fact be making things worse by becoming a more efficient money maker. Oh, did I say 1 in 50? Yeah, it's now 1 in 10. Line up for your lifetime supply of pills, kids. Let's cheer on another round of bonuses for Big Pharma execs!
With shareholders demanding infinite growth these days no matter how nonsensical that is, why would you ever assume that revenue stream wouldn't be abused? It can, and it will.
I had a friend die from MELAS over a decade back. It was not a clean death, either. She faded away slowly and then suddenly. That shit was tough to watch and there was nothing that could have been done to stop it.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
We have them. They are called "robots".
Learn to love Alaska
Care to inform me what medication would help with Asperger's? Wouldn't it be more profitable for pharma corporations if doctors came to other conclusions?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's a social problem, not an infertility problem.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Care to inform me what medication would help with Asperger's?
There are no FDA-approved ones, but that certainly doesn't stop doctors from prescribing meds (SSRIs), particularly for related symptoms such as depression or anxiety.
Wouldn't it be more profitable for pharma corporations if doctors came to other conclusions?
And take a risk that their $1000/pill brand name drug might be eclipsed by a $5 generic solution?
There's a reason drug pimps are highly paid to push specific solutions to those writing prescriptions.