I genuinely wonder where the line is between curing defects and eugenics. It seems razor thin how it can swing easiy into dark territory.
Isn’t eugenics more about choosing who can reproduce for the best outcome? Curing after the facts doesn’t seem to fit that.
There will be no line for anyone who can afford it. Morality will not be in question. It’s basic human nature. To believe anything else is crazy
This isn’t eugenics or close to it, it’s fixing actual problems before someone is born, not choosing who has rights to breed. If they announced a therapy to guarantee a child will grow up immune to corporate propaganda or be able to use their brain in a rational, well-planned and thoughtful way, and have exceptional language skills, we should voluntarily hand the world over to them. Because what’s happening right now is the opposite of that.
Right now capitalism is imposing eugenics on us. The system and the cost of life has created a very real system deciding who can have families. If tools emerged that could guarantee the kids we DO have aren’t subject to the same weaknesses and limitations, we need to capitalize on every advantage we can.
I agree. Eugenics is about harming the rights of the would-be parents. It means telling them, “You have traits we consider undesirable, so we will forcibly prevent you from having any child whatsoever.”
To me, that’s different from parents choosing to avoid having a child with certain traits. Or not having children at all.
If parents decide to cure a disorder in their future child, or decide to abort a pregnancy, nobody is stopping those parents from trying again. The parents themselves have not been deemed undesirable and unworthy to pass on their genes.
You’re definitely right how this without proper regulation could get out of hand with unethical individuals trying to edit genes. I’d say from my non-geneticist perspective the line would be “would editing this gene improve the individual’s quality of life or improve their life expectancy”. Operationalizing"quality of life" is obviously crucial here and can’t be defined socially but medically such as “no debilitating pain”.
I do wonder how things like this will impact existing communities of individuals with disabilities. I’d expect it would probably increase discrimination as it will increase the perception of people with disabilities as being “curable” which isn’t always possible or even desirable.
Yeah this is scary. Down syndrome is definitely in the gray area too where it can be viewed negatively but plenty of people have it and lead fulfilling lives. Wipe cystic fibrosis out of a fetus and all but the most staunch biological purists would agree it was a good thing. Make your fetus white, blonde, and blue eyed and it’s obviously eugenics. I don’t know how I feel about this.
Completely apart from the ethics, I think this technology is really cool though.
They live fulfilling lives at the detriment of others who have to live less fulfilling lives, maybe they don’t see it that way, but its added responsibility
Actual Nazi rhetoric btw
this is killing no one, its the same person tho
https://lithub.com/how-americas-concepts-of-disability-and-family-were-created-by-fascism/
Don’t think too much about how close you were to calling them “useless eaters,” you might learn something about yourself you don’t like.
There are a lot of reports and interviews with ppl who have down syndrome that are not happy at all with their situation. Ie. Unable to have a driving licence, go to university, huge disadvantage on the dating market… the list goes on. I’m not saying they can’t have fulfilling moments but we also shouldn’t kid ourselves and look at down syndrome with rosy eyes. If it could be cured everyone would do it instantly.
I’m not looking at it with “rosy eyes”, I’m just explaining that to me it’s not nearly as cut and dry as something like cystic fibrosis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability
Notice how everything you listed is a result of society’s treatment of them and not necessarily their learning disability itself?
Cognitive impairment isn’t a social construct.
Doesn’t stop you.
Gattaca is the semi-dystopian vision of our future if we just walk blindly down this path without legislating it properly in advance.
For those who haven’t seen the movie: Rich people start paying for perfect “designer babies”. A person’s genetic information becomes their whole identity; businesses only hire employees with the most genetic predisposition towards being good at the job, while regular people conceived “the old-fashioned way” get McJobs. Even wearing glasses is treated like a crippling disability that immediately and visibly marks someone as “inferior”.
It is extremely important that we pass laws to ensure that genetic engineering doesn’t create a new caste system.
I’m fine with it at this point.
they should poll people with down syndrome. not carers, not family, no people who work with them.
if they consider they idea obscene, them or should be considered obscene, of they consider it a must, then it’s ok.
I think a fair line is removing debilitating genetic conditions, but not for cosmetic uses.
If the person grows old enough that they have dysphoria for some reason then cosmetic surgeries are pretty routine these days.
I did not realize CRISPR was so powerful as to remove chromosomes entirely. Can CRISPR be used to change someone’s genetic sex? Republicans would freak out.
RED ALERT! WOKE LIBERAL COMMUNISTS ARE USING CRISPR BEAMS FROM LOW IRBITING SATTELITES TO FORCIBLY CHANGE OUR GENDERS! BUY MY ANTI-WOKE SUPPLIMENTS TO PROTECT YOUR MANLINESS.
By my limited understanding that might be feasible right now in utero, which obviously is not exactly what we want.
I think that maybe in the future we could change someone’s sex when they’re older. Honestly I think it’s maybe just the matter of research on this not being focused on genetic changes after the womb.
The article was not clear about what stage in someone’s life the CRISPR treatment can be applied. I would have assumed early in gestation. But this raises questions such as how down syndrome would be detected at that stage. If in vitro is the method, then why not simply filter out down syndrome at that stage?
People are already doing that. But if it can be removed instead then you could increase the viable number of embryos for IVF and decrease how many rounds you have to go through. Edit: not to mention that sometimes the baby is naturally conceived and then if this issue is found during testing, it means you have to choose whether or not to abort and start over. Being able to use CRISPR at that point reduces abortions.
I’m fully expecting in our lifetimes for CRISPR to be able to flip the genome or whatever in the body that produces sex hormones such that testes and ovaries could swap functions and produce the opposite sex hormone.
Between this and using your own DNA to apply to scaffolding to grow an organ, the future is bright. I also expect to see sex organs of the opposite sex grown in a lab from your own DNA and then transplanted into you, and the body wouldn’t reject them.
I also expect to see sex organs of the opposite sex grown in a lab from your own DNA and then…
I’m kinda glad that didn’t go where I thought it was gonna go but you know it will.
it’s basically just masturbation.
The latter technology exists, but nobody seems to be interested in expanding it past this pilot.
CRISPR on our gonads to produce estrogen instead of testosterone?
🤔 It’s pretty tempting, and as long as it’s not hereditary, I’m all up for it. 🏳️⚧️
Or testosterone instead of estrogen. Though I’m doubtful that exchanging X and Y chromosomes will change the physiological function of your existing organs that much.
I honestly just meant to do this for no other reasons than to flip the bird to conservatives who arbitrarily define sex chromosomally.
This is the beginning of countless sci-fi stories. According to the TV and movies I’ve seen, this will lead to customizing fetuses, mostly for intelligence, and then the question becomes does society accept those people as their leaders (Brave New World) or criminalize their gene-enhanced intellect (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)?
Or enforce social hierarchies based on genetic traits? (Gattaca)
I was thinking red rising, but that sounds similar. Hadn’t heard about this, gotta watch this, thanks :D
Hm, well red rising was more about specialization and exploitation. While they were some great books, automation and AI should have made reds unnecessary. But pinks, they may not be covered enough by robots and AI and would be the first thing I bet the rich would go for.
As I recall, the reason the Federation outlawed genetic manipulation is due to what happened with the Eugenics Wars, the details of which are murky due to temporal interference, but one of the root causes was clear. While the end results of genetic engineering (Khan Noonien-Singh and his Augments) were undoubtedly superior to normal humans in every way, they also incredibly aggressive and arrogant, a flaw their creators could not correct, as the science was still in its infancy. One of the scientists remarked that “Superior ability breeds superior ambition”.
Being raised in labs by dickheads may have also been a contributing factor in their personality flaws.
Homelander says hi.
checks correlation of education to voting outcomes
Checks news
It will be seen as an anti-control danger and banned entirely by the nearly single-circle Venn diagram of government officials, oligarchs, and religious figures.
They will be quiet about the true nature of their decision. Instead, it will be called a danger to society, ungodly, and unnatural. Rumors will be started that it creates autistic psychopaths, and that anyone in any country that touches the technology will need to be permanently ostracized.
I believe this will happen, only slowly enough that it will feel normal. First genetic diseases for a generation. As our understanding and editing improve, humans will start to edit for benefits, maybe something small like eyesight, so kids don’t need glasses. Eventually, it will just be a part of our medical culture. If everyone is edited, it won’t be taboo to keep going, after all, who wouldn’t want their kids to be better off than they are? 1000 years from now, our species won’t be recognizable to us today. Slightly related, have you seen what they’re doing with lab grown human brain cell organoids connected to microchips? 1000 years (or significantly less!), unrecognizable.
I have not seen this but would very much like to. Do you have a link?
You can rent one today for $500 a month here:
https://finalspark.com/neuroplatform/
Here is the wiki on the organoids themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_organoid
Here is a 2021 med journal publication on potential uses:
https://jbiomedsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12929-021-00728-4
Here is a nature article on their use in AI:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-023-01069-w
And finally a Bloomberg video report:
One of my favorite details is that they sometimes grow little eyes. 👀 🧠
Pleasant dreams!
Those are several, excellent links! Thank you so much!
While this is fabulous news I do worry that there could be similar done for other genetic conditions that are far more contentious as to whether they’re a disability not.
Neurodivergence is the one that springs to mind right away. The majority of people on the autism spectrum are at level 1. While it has negatives there are positives into thinking and seeing the world differently.
How many of those would have been ‘curered’ in the womb by scared parents who’ve just been told that their child will be born autistic? Scared parents who’s fear will mean when hearing that they think of someone at the far end of level 3.
Then what about for ADHD and dyslexia.
What about other physical conditions like dwarfism etc.
I don’t know if you personally have any disabilities, but generally, when I see this take, the person doesn’t.
I’d take a crispr treatment without hesitation. And everyone I know would do the same. My partner and I are doing IVF not for fertility reasons but to ensure certain genes don’t get passed down to our kids.
That whole disability-is-a-positive view is a very privileged thing to say.
So…Remember the X-Men series of movies? I forget which of the films it was, I stopped giving a shit about superhero movies a decade before it was cool, but one of them involved a “mutant cure.” Most of Professor X’s mutants saw it as an existential threat, but Rogue–whose ‘powers’ utterly sucked–saw it as something she wanted to do.
Ultimately I think the key here is individual consent. Yes and No need to be equally valid answers otherwise it gets pretty fucked up.
Some folks make a pretty good living for themselves looking at the world slightly differently than everyone else, other folks would like to do something with their life other than drool. Surely we the civilization that can split the atom and splice the genome can help both of these people live their best lives? Otherwise what the fuck are we even doing here?
other folks would like to do something with their life other than drool
Not trying to be an ass, but how would you know that? How could you get consent from someone in that state?
Okay I suppose force vegetables to be vegetables. I’m honestly to burned out to give the first two half-flaccid thrusts of a reluctant pity fuck about basically anyone.
I also meant more like, even if they “come back,” would they even be able to integrate? Can they (re)learn language and motor skills? Sorry to bother you.
I’m not like the other girls, I stopped caring about superhero movies long before others
No seriously, why did any of you continue to give a shit about Marvel after, like, 2006? That was about the time I realized I lost track of how many Incredible Hulk movies they made, and I would learn later that’s when my interest in movies overall died because that’s all they would ever make ever again
Son you sound young, there’s a lot more to cinema than popcorn flicks like marvel movies, they didn’t stop making good movies, it’s just harder to find and requires people put their money and time to go watch something other than summer blockbusters, expand your taste and maybe also watch older movies, many local theatre’s do reruns of older classics
What this guy said. Or, even better, why doesn’t Captain Aggravated just go make their own movie? It’s not super complicated to do, but it does require getting others involved, since nobody can do everything.
I’m 38 years old. The last time I remember having a good time at a movie theatre was Inglourious Basterds, and if the movies require effort to glean enjoyment out of it I hope I never see a movie again in my life. Used to be you could look up what’s playing at the 4-plex and there’d usually be something fun on. That hasn’t been the case since the last time I felt an emotion and I don’t think either thing is ever going to happen again so fuck it.
See that’s the thing, you want an amusement ride that’s fun, but movies can be more than that, if you can’t have fun anymore, try watching something that’s not trying to be fun, and maybe something clicks, I recently watched 12 Angry Men on a whim, it’s about 12 jurors discussing on a virdict for a man accused of killing his father, this movie came out in 1957, it’s black and white, I didn’t think I could even sit through such a old movie let alone like it, but it was one of the most engaging movies I’ve ever seen and the plot felt so relevant to the current times.
Some other stuff I saw recently that I liked : Predator Killler of Killers
Sinners
Warfare
The Rule of Jenny Pen
Friendship
The Life of ChuckIf you want to watch some old movies that are genuinely special, look up the movies that Alfred Hitchcock made in the 40s and 50s, both color and B&W. I’m especially fond of the bunch he did at the end of the 50s - The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho, and my favorite movie of all time, Rear Window. A few other really interesting ones are Strangers On A Train, Lifeboat, Dial M for Murder, Notorious, Rebecca, etc.
Absolutely mind-blowing, they’re so good. His stuff from the 30s and the 60s is okay, but his middle period was incredible.
Yeah, on the one hand it isn’t fair to let someone be born with a condition that negatively effects their life when there’s a treatment to prevent it happening. On the other hand, as you say it’s good to have divergent people in society - there really is strength in diversity.
If the world would accomidate for Neurodivergent people more they wouldnt have a problem
In a way, accommodations can erase disabilities.
I’m still waiting to be tested but I swear if we were still hunters and gatherers in a small tribe then my suspected ADHD would be irrelevant.
Can it remove my depression and make me love myself?
Yes but you will get that extra chromosome back
I see no downsides.
I don’t think I understand. Are you saying i’d be mentally challenged?
Yes it was a joke because there is a prejudice that mentally handicapped people are always happy
Here I am! What’s the squared root of 27,545,987531,885578,5884789.0644789* 367464787644.654224577!^675434784321347998900974376789.753345!
Don’t use a calculator.
At least 3
gonna be bold and say: more than 4, even.
Okay, look, exponents are okay, but when you start using factorials with decimals in the exponents? You’re just a jerk.
Holy crap. The obvious use for this would be in vitro. However, I cannot wait to see how this affects those already born. Could it be used on someone who is a 7 year old to rid them of this? What if they’re 50? So cool. Can’t wait to see where this goes.
And in the US, religious assholes want to ban IVF for exactly this reason, because it’s “playing God”.
“if your god wasn’t such a loser fuckup, we wouldn’t need to fix this mess”
Until someone who knows more tells me otherwise, no. It would have to be applied to a human at the stage of a single cell
The article mentions the technique worked on most (differentiated) skin cells they tested on, in addition to working on (undifferentiated) stem cells.
But, there’s a lot of steps between this article and any sort of treatment, if I understand correctly.
It might be easier to just edit the gametes before they form a zygote at all. That would also make consent for treatment much clearer.
Could it be used on someone who is a 7 year old to rid them of this?
No. Gene editing works in this case since they’re just working with a few cells. But a whole human is way more cells. Not only that, but the cells have already developed into structures that are much harder to access, and difficult to change. Any gene therapy may only affect a few cells.
On top of that, there’s also a bunch of ethical issues around altering a human when they’ve already formed, and we don’t really know if it would be possible to do so, or if it would make things worse.
Hard to say at this point. This early testing was on cells in a petri dish. It will take a lot of study to convert this to a treatment on living humans and determine the best time to intervene.
i can’t tell if you’re serious.
“Gattaca” and “Brave new world” are becoming reality.
CRISPR is the uranium of biology. Could use it to make cheap, reliable, clean energy, or could use it to make nukes.
Too bad history has showed us that when a new technology appears, bad uses of it tends to become the norm.
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It’s a metaphor.
Make an air transmitted virus, extremely contagious but with a long dormancy period, that causes a rabies-like incurable and 100% deadly neurological disease on individuals with a certain genetic marker, and is asymptomatic in everyone else.
Hate to break it to you, but nuclear power isn’t cheap, that crown goes to the renewables (unfortunately even fossils are cheaper than nuclear). Arguably rather reliable and ‘acceptably’ clean though (if used in good locations with sufficient cold water and with modern technology & proper recycling concept).
Edit: After looking up the most current studies regarding nuclear power I found out that by now fossils are indeed more expensive than nuclear (although nuclear usually gets calculated without the costs of permanent waste storage, so… who knows). So disregard what I said about that. 🙃
That’s not even really accurate. Over the long term of you’re 100% looking at price, nuclear can be cheaper. It’s more expensive because it’s more regulated than fossil fuels. Remove a lot of the regulation and the initial investment is expensive, but you’ll make more money over time.
- renewable energy is still cheaper
- nuclear also comes with other risks, such as geopolitical dependency for many countries, and the exploitation of resources in other countries (consider the recent France - Niger conflict as an example)
- the reason why so many regulations for nuclear are in place is because they make sense. they’re not going to disappear anytime soon, so your argument is irrelevant
Nuclear fusion has made great strides. There currently an experimental Tokamak in China that set a new record for sustained fusion in 2023, then earlier this year broke that record again.
Still far away from commercial viability though, nothing we can count on right now.
To be clear, nuclear isn’t inherently bad. Indeed it will most likely be very important to massively reduce CO² emissions quickly and cover bigger chunks of the base-load of our energy infrastructures. However to argue that nuclear could be cheaper or even a replacement for renewables is just completely and utterly wrong. Neither can it be less expensive in any universe, nor is it able to replace renewables since nuclear reactors are very slow regulators (indeed the slowest - they’re best at delivering a lot of power constantly). Meanwhile solar can literally be simply switched off, and “rotating” renewables be turned into or out of wind / water flow / whatever else.
To quote some studies, this one from the Deutsche Bank has the following to say:
For nuclear power plants, different statements on the LCOE can be found in the existing literature. The U.S. investment bank Lazard estimates it at about 14 to 21 US cents per kWh for new nuclear power plants (in the US; for comparison, onshore wind power: 2.4 to 7.5 US cents per kWh). The cost of treating radioactive waste is explicitly not included here. In its latest Word Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) put the LCOE for nuclear power plants in 2030 at 10 US cents per kWh in the US, 12 US cents per kWh in the EU, and 6.5 US cents per kWh in China. Wind and solar power are cheaper in all three countries/regions. For the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant that is under construction in the UK, the operator has agreed a guaranteed power purchase price of 10.7 pence per kWh. The LCOE of investments in extending the operating lives of existing nuclear power plants is significantly lower than that for new nuclear power plants. According to an IEA study from 2020, they ranged from less than 3 to less than 5 US cents per kWh.
Meanwhile the World Nuclear Report focuses on the LCOE which might be better suited for comparison (and even that says nuclear is 2 to 3 times more expensive) and points out massive delays and problems with nuclear reactor projects.
All of this doesn’t include the dependency problems (only very few countries can produce refined uranium rods), and even specifically excludes the long-term costs. And “It’s cheaper if you remove lots of the regulation on the most powerful and dangerous technology humanity ever developed” is probably the worst take one can have. Just as a reminder, the very reason for the almost total blackout on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal) recently was due to miscommunication and a lack of proper regulation. It wasn’t the renewables (the power stations that started the cascade were mostly fossils, and the energy companies didn’t care enough to keep sufficient reserves that day), no matter how much right-wing media wants you to believe that. Enormous, continental grids would become unstable if we build it upon badly regulated nuclear reactors.
Dark Angel doesn’t seem too far fetched now, but seemed impossible in my lifetime when it aired.
My uninformed guess is that even if you edit chromosomes it won’t change someone. Like if you edit someone’s DNA to give them DNA that makes blue eyes, their eyes won’t turn blue. I think they are just like turn signals that direct growth of a being during development.
Humanity, one step closer to get rid of all of the genetic defects that we have accumulated because of our own reproductive stupidity.
I wish for a future in which genetic diseases do not exist. 👐
I wish for a future in which genetic diseases do not exist. 👐
That’s nice, but unambitious. Be bolder, think where we’ll be able to take this after that.
Me, I’m thinking catgirls.
We can solve the Fermi paradox by uplifting our animal friends
We can also solve the risk of Kessler syndrome. Send catgirls / -boys to space, they’ll push every object out of orbit.
Kinetic kill catgirls?
Seems like very basic research - I wonder how far in the future it might turn into a human treatment, and what improvements people would see?
deleted by creator
Official confirmation that Reddit liberals have arrived.
The account was since banned, but looking into it, it appeared to be an impersonator account that existed to assassinate the character of an actual person named Danica Jefferies and in reality had nothing to do with her.
I’m guessing some virulent fascist with an ax to grind regarding some of the actual person’s journalism-adjacent work.
I’ll comment about the inevitable result of neoliberalism all day but I think we both know that loser doesn’t count as a liberal by any standard.
Yeah pretty sure he meant to say feral nutjob meth head
How many generations of inbreeding would be necessary before it returns again?
Down syndrome is a result of errors in DNA replication during the formation of gametes or early development. While there are genetic risk factors they’re not particularly linked to inbreeding.
By far the largest risk factor is the age of the parents.
You are the genetics they want to remove.
This seems good initially.
I just really really hope they won’t try to “cure autism” with this next.
Autism is an important and fundamental part of me. The fact that it’s often classified as a disease is understandable, but nevertheless sickens me.
They don’t even know what autism is. Genetics play a role, but most likely they simply affect the chances of developing autism. And really autism is a spectrum, so think like a clock. If the minute hand is between 10 and 2, it is autism, the rest isn’t. So it is less a thing you “have” and more about being in a range from thing that ends up causing a snowball effect. My kid is autistic. It is like there is a missing feedback channel that would cause a typical kid to modify there behavior. All that really translates to is a lower sensitivity to a specific feedback. Typical people will have a range, he is just very low on that range.
Please straight up cure my ADHD. I do NOT want it!
double it and give it to the next person
I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Don’t worry. Autism is more complicated.
I don’t want them to “cure autism” by erasing it, either. I’d rather they try to “cure autism” by improving on what it can help a human be capable of doing. That way, if we have a real-life “Butlerian Jihad” like from the lore of Dune, we have Mentats (human computers) to replace “thinking machines”(AI and computers).
Wasn’t CRISPR used to clone Dolly the sheep that had a very short lifespan? Aren’t there better editing techniques than it? Didn’t we learn that there seems to be a huge checksum in the DNA and if something changes somewhere, the checksum doesn’t add up and things go… well, dead.
No, CRISPR has little to do with Dolly the sheep. Dolly was born in 1996. While CRISPR saw some fundamental research from 1993-2005 it wasn’t used for gene editing untill 2012 and was named breakthrough of the year in 2015.
Dolly did not have a very short lifespan. She lived for six years and was eventually put down to a lung disease that has no connection to her cloning.
The wikipedia page has details and citations, I will only quote the relevant paragraph here:
Dolly lived at the Roslin Institute throughout her life and produced several lambs.[5] She was euthanized at the age of six years due to a progressive lung disease. No cause which linked the disease to her cloning was found.[6]
It is better to either do some basic research before making direct claims or ask more open questions. Stating wildly erroneous things is sowing disinformation, and putting a question mark at the end is not a very good loophole. You are actively spreading misinformation.
Dolly happened long before CRISPR was a thing.
No. An entirely different technique was used for Dolly.
