Half in UK Back Genome Editing To Prevent Severe Diseases (theguardian.com) 120
More than half the UK backs the idea of rewriting the DNA of human embryos to prevent severe or life-threatening diseases, according to a survey. From a report: Commissioned by the Progress Educational Trust (PET), a fertility and genomics charity, the Ipsos poll found that 53% of people support the use of human genome editing to prevent children from developing serious conditions such as cystic fibrosis. There was less enthusiasm for use of the procedure to prevent milder conditions such as asthma, with only 36% in favour, and to create designer babies, with only a fifth expressing support, but views on the technology differed dramatically with age.
Younger generations were far more in favour of designer babies than older people, with 38% of 16- to 24-year-olds and 31% of 25- to 34-year-olds supporting the use of gene editing to allow parents to choose features such as their child's height and eye and hair colour. In the UK and many other countries it is illegal to perform genome editing on embryos that are intended for pregnancies, but the restrictions could be lifted if research shows the procedure can safely prevent severe diseases. Genome editing has been hailed as a potential gamechanger for dealing with a raft of heritable diseases ranging from cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy to Tay-Sachs, a rare condition that progressively destroys the nervous system. In principle, the faulty genes that cause the diseases can be rewritten in IVF embryos, allowing those embryos to develop into healthy babies.
Younger generations were far more in favour of designer babies than older people, with 38% of 16- to 24-year-olds and 31% of 25- to 34-year-olds supporting the use of gene editing to allow parents to choose features such as their child's height and eye and hair colour. In the UK and many other countries it is illegal to perform genome editing on embryos that are intended for pregnancies, but the restrictions could be lifted if research shows the procedure can safely prevent severe diseases. Genome editing has been hailed as a potential gamechanger for dealing with a raft of heritable diseases ranging from cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy to Tay-Sachs, a rare condition that progressively destroys the nervous system. In principle, the faulty genes that cause the diseases can be rewritten in IVF embryos, allowing those embryos to develop into healthy babies.
What?! (Score:2)
Why are 47% the people in the UK against preventing horrible, lethal, and degenerative diseases?!
Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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So let's take the logical next step, from a nurture class divide to "nature" (let's use the term loosely here) class divide?
Re:What?! (Score:4, Interesting)
So your justification for not allowing a parent to heal their child of a debilitating illness is that you're jealous of the rich?
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So your justification for not allowing a parent to heal their child of a debilitating illness is that you're jealous of the rich?
It's not about being "jealous of the rich".
Right now the children of the rich have the advantage of wealth, social connections, and, on average, some slightly better genes.
Once the tech becomes ubiquitous, the children of the rich will also have much better genes. They'll be naturally smarter, healthier, taller, better looking, etc, etc. The advantage of inter-generational will be that much more significant.
It doesn't mean we should ban the tech, but we need to be aware of the issues it will create.
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Once the tech becomes ubiquitous, the children of the rich will also have much better genes.
Briefly. There's nothing inherently labor-intensive about gene editing, it's very amenable to automation. So it's reasonable to expect the tech will first become ubiquitous, and then it will become cheap. The truly poor who don't have access to basic healthcare services may be excluded, but that's a problem that needs to be addressed completely aside from questions of baby editing.
Right now the children of the rich have the advantage of wealth, social connections, and, on average, some slightly better genes.
And this tech will eventually erase that last advantage.
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Once the tech becomes ubiquitous, the children of the rich will also have much better genes.
Briefly. There's nothing inherently labor-intensive about gene editing, it's very amenable to automation. So it's reasonable to expect the tech will first become ubiquitous, and then it will become cheap. The truly poor who don't have access to basic healthcare services may be excluded, but that's a problem that needs to be addressed completely aside from questions of baby editing.
Right now the children of the rich have the advantage of wealth, social connections, and, on average, some slightly better genes.
And this tech will eventually erase that last advantage.
It's not about the physical manipulation of the genes, it's the IP and customization.
"Want the basic grow to be 6"4 gene? Anyone can get that. But for 10x the cost this fancier version cancels out a couple side effects that go with that extra height!"
"Want the +15 IQ gene? Sure. Oh, you paid extra, we'll do a deep dive into your genome.... hmm, one of our geneticists is concerned about a possible interaction with a couple of your current genes, we can modify those or we can go with the +14 IQ variant that l
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If not wanting them to form even more of an overclass than they already are is jealousy, then colour me green.
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What makes you think it will be expensive? Are antibiotics only available to the rich?
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No. But mostly because if I can make you take the antibiotics and deal with the side effects, you won't infect me with your peasant breath.
What's in it for me when you can design your kids? Actually, it would be quite detrimental, since if only I can afford tailoring them, I can ensure that you plebes will stay off our turf. It's already bad enough that you can get the same kind of education in some of these commie countries.
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Who cares? As long as we can prevent horrible genetic diseases, what does it matter what idiot rich people do?
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Answer here. [wikipedia.org]
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You don't want to prevent incurable illnesses because of a movie? Pathetic.
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Did you read the synopsis? And have you spent more than, say, a month on this planet?
Why do you think it would happen any different?
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Did you read the synopsis?
I saw the movie.
Why do you think it would happen any different?
For one, genetic sequencing is going to take more than a few seconds for a very long time. Secondly, we're not talking about elective edits, we're talking about preventing massively debilitating disorders.
What you are doing is presenting a false dilemma as reason to not help those who need the most help.
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Sequencing is not a matter of months anymore. We can quickly multiply the snippets we have (please don't ask me what that process was called, I didn't have my coffee yet) and most of the things in the process can be parallelized really well.
The question is how you plan to keep elective alteration of the genome at bay. A legal barrier comes to mind, but enforcing that might be pretty hard to do. We're not talking about a ban on abortions that hit mostly poor people who can't just board a plane to fly to a co
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The question is how you plan to keep elective alteration of the genome at bay.
Why does that matter? Seriously, we know very little about all the functions of our DNA. It will be a very long time before we understand anything beyond the superficial.
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And when has only having a haphazard understanding of something ever kept humans from fucking with it?
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Finding out what an edit does on the macro level requires long gestational times, have varying results (unless you're making clones), and requires extensive observation and likely dissection just to understand the effect of the edit. You can find people unscrupulous enough to do these things but it's going to take years to understand the effect which may not even show up until full human maturity. Also, it's side effects may only present later in life, which could be disastrously fatal.
This is analogous t
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Maybe you could find somebody who understood it and get them to explain it to you.
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No, I understand the movie just fine. I also understand it's a work of fiction. Using it for a basis for not allowing genetic fixes to genetic defects is like forbidding the use of robots because you saw Terminator.
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Probably the religious objecting to tampering with God's faulty work
Yet these same people will gladly wear glasses, take medications or have surgery to relieve them of their ills.
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because god wills it..
i mean the god only sanctioned certain tech advances, just loo at gamorah, all green and shit
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Probably the religious objecting to tampering with God's faulty work
There aren't many religious people in the UK. You are seeing the issue through American eyes.
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And we laugh at them as we usually do.
This is Europe, not US. We treat our mental patients, we don't make them our leaders.
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It says UK, not US.
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Why are 47% the people in the UK against preventing horrible, lethal, and degenerative diseases?!
Because they have some diffuse fears, which are not entirely unfounded. Now, it will be done and it will get abused. It may, for a long time, only be available to the rich, making the gap between them and the rest of the world even larger. On the other hand, it is just medical progress, so it should be done and we just need to find a way to limit abuse. There are examples where this works. For example, being rich does not usually get you a transplant that much faster. So there is precedent that abuse can be
Money and transplants? (Score:1)
Why is this a good thing? A rich person can afford better doctors (and nurses), better diets — and healthier lifestyle in general. Why not transplants?
The purpose for bans on selling one's own organs, as far as I know, is to prevent people from being compelled into such transactions (such as to pay off debts). That's a questionable justification too, in my opinion, but yours seems different.
Why would the ability to buy a tra
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You do not seem to be conversant with even the basics of modern ethics. I suggest you fix that.
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So, your argument is a personal attack... Figures...
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It may, for a long time, only be available to the rich, making the gap between them and the rest of the world even larger.
This is the UK, we're talking about, not the US. Heathcare is public which means everyone gets it.
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It may, for a long time, only be available to the rich, making the gap between them and the rest of the world even larger.
This is the UK, we're talking about, not the US. Heathcare is public which means everyone gets it.
Not quite. Everyone gets the things that are agreed to be available to everyone. There are already things the NHS will not get you. The important thing is to keep what is generally available reasonable and this stuff will not be generally available for a long time, due to cost.
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They don't all get the same though. Private healthcare still exists.
You don't know what you're talking about.
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It's like editing a running program that you only partially understand, and if you get it wrong there are lives at stake.
Their lives are already at stake, you buffoon! They are objecting to altering very specific genes that have well documented illnesses attached to them. "We could have prevented your neurodegenerative disease but there is a chance it might not have worked, so enjoy your slow death" is a really shitty answer.
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Because they'll never go beyond that, will they? Certainly we can be sure money won't be an influence at all.
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Finding out what an edit does on the macro level requires long gestational times, have varying results (unless you're making clones), and requires extensive observation and likely dissection just to understand the effect of the edit. You can find people unscrupulous enough to do these things but it's going to take years to understand the effect which may not even show up until full human maturity. Also, it's side effects may only present later in life, which could be disastrously fatal.
This is analogous to
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Because they don't have them.
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They aren't. They don't trust that it be [exclusively] used for that.
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Why would that matter? It's not like we can make anything beyond the most superficial edits (colors or things like hair and skin). Hell, we don't even know how to change someone's height.
Hypocrites (Score:2)
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You are aware that "the younger generation" is not comprised of a single individual but of a wide range of individuals with diverse backgrounds and opinions, arent you?
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Well, for one thing, unlike you, I understand how gender is manifested. And that is, by genetics. Of course, it would require about a semester of knowledge of protein chemistry and genetics for you to even know what I am talking about .. but I will try to waste my time here dumbing it down to your level and trying to explain it anyway in a few lines. The features of a human being are defined by a blueprint encoded in DNA. Within that DNA code, are segments called "genes." The genetic code .. which looks lik
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If you have a dick, you're a guy (male).
If you have a pussy, you're a chick (female)
If you have both, a chromosome defect....you're a hermaphrodite.
99% of the world at least is one of the 1st two...those in the mutated category are in such small numbers as to be difficult to find statistical meaning in them.
Everything else is TikTok bullshit.
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Those outlier cases are so statically insignificant that I really don't care about them.
I guess they'll deal with it best they
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Haha, I'm supposed to believe people who can't understand basic science and facts of reality are going to win the ultra-long game? Oh please.
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I mostly don't give a fuck about whether someone is a man or a woman, unless I plan to have an intimate relationship with them? And there my rule is "don't stick your dick in crazy".
Why can't the right do that?
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Low-brow afternoon TV shows and "talent" TV shows are now leftist? Who knew!
Like it or not...it's coming (Score:4, Informative)
Eventually this technology will become easy and ubiquitous and then there will be no way to stuff that genie back in the bottle.
I can't control people wanting to exploit the tech for less noble reasons any more than I can control people who use common hand tools to pick locks and commit robbery. Go after the "bad people," not the tools.
Best,
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Here's the thing with tech like this. It will be used for nefarious purposes, most likely by those being less than transparent about what it is they are doing or perhaps even that they are capable of it at all. The world will find out when some country starts sweeping the Olympics a few times in a row or something equally unthreatening looking on the surface.
On the bright side, maybe they can enhance babies to withstand the effects of man-made climate change? See, always an upside.
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Exactly. In the end, this is just medical progress, nothing else. Making access to that progress available to everybody is a political problem, not a medical one.
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It's pretty easy and ubiquitous right now.
Faster than evolution! (Score:2)
Half in UK Back Genome Editing To Prevent Severe Diseases
Goodbye, maligned teeth! Sayonara, melted face, shnozzriffic visages of nobility! And leave the pendulous breasts alone! On the chicks, that is.
There are easier approaches (Score:5, Insightful)
To do the editing, you first have to test. Then you really want to edit the DNA in *all* the cells. Even if you can get a virus or something to infect the embryo and place your edits, 100% distribution seems...unlikely at best. And you will almost certainly be doing this outside the womb, i.e., IVF.
So why make things complicated? IVF normally produces several embryos. Just test them, and implant the one that doesn't have any identifiable diseases.
If you have parents who are 100% going to pass on some disease, then edit the egg or sperm to eliminate it before starting an embryo. That way, you only have to edit half-a-cell, instead of the whole embryo.
Finally, although eugenics has a bad rep from actions in the early 20th century, there really is nothing wrong with the concept. Why shouldn't we eliminate type-1 diabetes? Heritable cancer risks? Why shouldn't we choose to have healthy, intelligent children? Honestly, this is inevitable. We just as well accept it and clarity the ethical aspects ahead of time...
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Eugenics got at bad rep because it was being practiced on the living. Editing the genes in an embryo is, for some people, less controversial.
But if you get good at eugenics it starts to throw up other ethical issues. Curing diseases like diabetes is great, but how about curing autism? Is autism actually something bad that we want to get rid of? Many people who have it would argue that it's not, and the editing needs to be done to the way society treats them.
Then you get into selecting for intelligence, and
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Curing diseases like diabetes is great, but how about curing autism? Is autism actually something bad that we want to get rid of?
Yes
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But what will happen to /. then?
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I really wish you'd written less.
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Gene editing is extremely cheap btw. The whole point of CRISPR was that it made gene editing dirt cheap. What previously cost a few thousand bucks using ZFN or TALENs is well under $100 now. The knowledge of how to do it can be found in many books. High school kids and biohackers have been using CRISPR on various cells and non-human organisms for a while now in their garage labs. Heck at least one biohacker famously CRISPR'd himself LIVE online. Google it. The only biggest difficulties of CRISPR'ing human e
Is passive eugenics bad? (Score:2)
So you're the brave soul who first brought the E-word into the conversation? (Actually, you might not be first, but it's too much hassle to figure out... There are several comments with the E-word, but yours came first as displayed.)
I would reword the problem a bit:
"Do parents have the right to have genetically better children? Or do they just have to take the random luck?"
Before you say "No" and "Yes", let me remind you of Ma Nature's path to equilibrium: Average of four children, with two dying before rep
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It would be nice if we could, but this won't be the way. Type I diabetes isn't a genetic disorder, it's an autoimmune disorder, that gets triggered by some serious childhood illness. Somehow, your immune system starts treating the Islets of Langerham as foreign bodies and attacks them, killing the only internal source of insulin you have.
intelligence? Re:There are easier approaches (Score:1)
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Speaking of "ignoramusses" - the less educated a person was the more they were likely to vote "leave" -> https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Khaaaaan? (Score:2)
Star Trek already warned us about this, we're just behind on the timline; Eugenics Wars [fandom.com]
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Star Trek had to ban genetic engineering because they'd have to explain why the cast is so weak.
Half the UK backed Brexit once (Score:4, Informative)
Ask below-average people difficult questions, get below-average answers, that should be ignored and not, for example, exploited for political reasons.
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No, I am not.
I am one of the many intelligent people in the middle, between the right-wing idiots like you and the left-wing idiots.
You both think your hateful views are sane because you are both stupid.
It won't be cheap, not for a long time. (Score:2)
Fiction and reality blur (Score:4, Insightful)
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Gattaca yeah. And it was bad, we don't need a world like that.
If people can detect they have a terrible gene that will pass on then... crazy idea... they shouldn't have kids.
Besides, genes are way to complex and interlinking. A gene you think only makes your kid smarter or stronger might make your kid a psycho or prone to a disease or early death.
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I saw how this works in Gattaca.
Huh? Gattaca was about government-mandated eugenics that attempted to forcibly prevent the existence of people with bad genes. That's the polar opposite of individual choice-driven gene modification.
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Ran into a guy like the 47% (Score:2)
At a con, I mentioned genengineering, and he started ranting about look at the people in the room, and who decides what's normal, and on for another minute or two, then stormed out.
I didn't get to ask him why he was so for people to have diabetes, or MS, or fibro, or MLS, or....
Same timeline as practical nuclear fusion: (Score:3, Interesting)
Screwing around with the DNA of a fetus makes Murphy come to full attention, readying his Weapon of Unintended Consequences. Seriously, folks, I don't think we're ready to start monkeying with people's genes before they're even born. Also, it opens the door to all sorts of unethical 'editing' of people.
Sorry, that's just how I feel about this, I don't think we're mature enough or responsible enough, as a species, to be doing this yet.
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Blah blah blah
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Well, except that it's already been done.
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You stretched that metaphor until it confessed to trying to kill Nero.
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Tell me you're retarded without saying you are retarded. But hey I can't wait to read your sig in 2023.
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Anonymous Cowards are all a bunch of fucking pole smokers, as we've all known for years and years now, and deserve to be not only banhammered permanently, but exterminated. As for you: I completely agree and wish I'd never been born, it would have improved the human race measurably. Erradicating Anonymous Coward cancer 2022
While your post was quite amusing you managed to misspell a number of words. I fixed these as well as well as fixing some other issues to make it more truthful to reality. I'm sure it's closer to what you are actually meant to say.
You're welcome.
Expect benefits for the poor, and for all humanity (Score:2)
Of all living things, only humans have self-selected a 'survival of the least fit' reproductive plan. While the intelligent educated segment of society has chosen fewer children, the ignorant less intelligent masses continue to have more children. And it is easy to see that the children of these defective adults are often defective and further disadvantaged by poverty. It is a process that snowballs to the point where a huge percentage of the world population is simply unfit to function in our evolving way
Magical thinking (Score:2)
Magical thinking by stupid people.
Can't speak for the U.K, but... (Score:2)
In the USA, I'd question the legal situation with regards to companies trying to patent their custom genetic programming to fix these health issues?
After all, Monsanto was able to claim it holds the exclusive rights to its modified GMO corn. So extending that concept to human gene editing; what happens if you pay a company their fee to customize your kid's DNA, and then they have kids? They're passing along part of that patented DNA code, so do they now owe the company licensing fees for each kid?
Age-Old Question (Score:2)
I remember decades ago someone posed a similar question along the lines of, "if you could identify a gene for alcoholism, would you remove it?" Most people would answer in the affirmative. Then the follow-up question, "knowing a significant number of the best poets, authors, and musicians have been alcoholics, would you still risk it?"
I think there's an assumption here that I find disturbing, namely that people with undesirable traits (that we call defects) don't have value and will be altered by those who
Half in UK Back ... (Score:2)
How many in UK front?