> If children like the twins who have been reportedly modified are born and live healthy, normal lives, then scientific worries about off-target effects will begin to recede.
Unless the change is one that produces greater fitness in individuals but lowers fitness for the species as a whole. e.g. the environment changes (it happens) and all the folks that would've been naturally adapted (via this diversity) to the new environment were edited out.
Humans are great at thinking about individual risks, but not so great at thinking about systemic or ecological risks (climate change, economics)
Nothing prevents humanity from experimenting. Its not like everyone, everywhere will start gene editing at the same time. Let people experiment and see where the chips fall.
As for economical risks and the like, we may be poor at dealing with it in the short term but with time humanity can progress and solve most problems.
> Its not like everyone, everywhere will start gene editing at the same time.
When gene editing technology becomes available, it most likely becomes available across the world at the same time. Sure, poor people might not have access to it, but the upper classes in all countries will.
> but with time humanity can progress and solve most problems.
Wishful thinking. We're about 100 years into the era of human development where we can annihilate ourselves through our own action, and plenty of evidence points to our continued survival being caused by sheer luck (just look up Stanislav Petrov) or because the cause-and-effect changes take longer than 100 years (as in climate change).
And the possible avenues for self-annihilation are only expanding. It used to be "only" nuclear war and climate change, soon it's also gene editing, and the robot uprising is already on the horizon for the next 100 years or so.
Your point about Stanislav Petrov being sheer luck is questionable.
I maintained USAF radar mainframe computers during my time in the service, and we knew our equipment inside and out, and had a pretty good idea when things didn't look right. I'm sure the Soviets did the same with their systems.
This paragraph rings hollow:
"Other examples of human variability, such as intelligence, would be even harder to change with current editing techniques. We can’t even produce a consistent definition of intelligence, much less identify its genetic determinants."
Even if we can't tell for sure what effect a particular genetic edit will have, telling customers "Yes this should make your baby smarter" is enough to convince a lot of people.
Also, the risks of off-target editing is massively understated - the FDA is reluctant to allow clinical trials for CRISPR-based therapy in consenting adults, requiring thorough evidence that you've catalogued and proved safe all off-target effects.
Likewise "yes this investment should beat the market."
My guess is that, given the ability for quacks and hucksters to outnumber legitimate practitioners, the results of gene editing will suffer a signal-to-noise problem for years if not decades to come. Even if some particular treatment is proven, it will be set aside if someone else offers a better but unproven treatment.
Human beings become like nature, get ready for potential failures similar to hereditary defects affecting millions of people. Biology is a kluge, and humans trying to mess with biology is a much bigger kluge as we are like hackers messing with a very complicated machine by screwing with a few of its transistors to affect how the code that runs on it functions. We don't know wtf we are doing.
I watched a 60 minutes segment about horse cloning. An oil heir from Texas became very interested in polo, a sport where horses are rode and where the genetics of the horses are what decide the winner more or less. So instead of starting his own breeding program, this guy started a horse cloning operation in Argentina — its absolutely fascinating. When asked how different horse cloning would be from human cloning, he shook his head slowly and said that horse cloning is probably extremely similar to human cloning and that human cloning could be done very, very easily. When asked if he would ever consider cloning humans he gave an emphatic “no” and said that he had been asked by “some of the wealthiest people in the world” to clone humans in some capacity, and that he refused every time. Gives me shivers :P
It is interesting that there are both the means and the demand for human cloning. It stands to reason to assume that it has been done.
Cloning is a remarkably simple process from what I have read. Basically all you do is extract an egg from a female doner, take out its dna, insert a skin cell from the animal you want to clone, pull current through the egg to activate it and then place the egg Into a surrogate mother. The extraction and insertion of dna is literally done with a very small needle — no nano-tech or black magic. Just a needle. It really is remarkable.
> Cloning is a remarkably simple process from what I have read
Fewer than 10% of cloned animals survive to birth as of below 2016 report. Given human gestation period are much longer as well as far more limited cycles available per female, you are going to have very hard time cloning humans.
My understanding is that though there is reason to think it wouldn't be any more difficult in principle than cloning horses there would inevitably be a great deal of failure on the way to perfecting the techniques. For example cloning Dolly required 434 failed attempts. Three of those made it to term but died very soon after birth. Those are pretty poor odds to put a child through.
I think while you describe the basic technique in practice it's more difficult to do and especially to apply to a new species than you describe. Here's a paper on the first cloning of a monkey https://www.academia.edu/36564149/. Just scroll down to see the full paper. It's not all that short or simple
Dolly was born 22 years ago and was the first mammal cloned with this process. While there might be some failures for an organization attempting to clone a human I suspect an organization with prior cloning experience could reduce the failure rate by an order of magnitude.
Cloning isn't really an unnatural process per se, apples and bananas are grown through cloning. The majority of people see it as unethical or whatnot but if you're being born from a mother, grown up like a normal child, are you really unnatural?
Although it is true that there is a large failure rate and it is in essence a pretty expensive operation for something people can already do, which is reproduce.
Maybe I'm just in cynical dystopian mode, but when I hear of the extreme wealthy wanting clones, I think "guaranteed compatible living organ bank for me to harvest as needed"
It’s inspiring to think that somewhere there may already be living human clones created by someone paid a lot of money by a wealthy individual who won’t take no for an answer.
I fail to see how one could view the exercise of power to achieve an end that many consider both illegal and immoral as inspiring. Am I missing the point here?
I was a research fellow part of the Missiplicity project and I worked on the feline cloning part of it.[1] I still remember protesters at Texas A&M and how our lab was in an anonymous outbuilding near the vet school and we had occasional threats from various groups and various talking heads pontificated as they were prone to do.
While gene edited children aren’t clones, the bioethics aspects aren’t much different. But, this too shall pass. A lot of hand wringing, then a Streisand type will have a gene edited child and all will be forgiven. (I mentioned Streisand because she had her dog cloned not long ago.)[2]
> CRISPR in individual humans sounds potentially great
Nuclease based editing with CRISPR is only going to be able to disable things in somatic tissues. You need to include exogenous DNA template in order to evoke precise allele changes, and that's really only possible in vitro.
What, you don't want to wipe out half the planet's ability to procreate in a single generation? (the genocidal maniacs and overpopulation buffs are going to be all over this, maybe, if one of them has the guts and the brains)
If a change to the gene line prevented procreation it would eliminate itself pretty quickly. Unless we changed half of the already born world's genes all at once.
I think the fears might be underblown, not overblown. Not enough people are paying attention to the Revolutionary Phenotype hypothesis and how it relates to gene editing. The moral fears are less scary than the existential ones.
There's a fascinating video that responds to the propaganda put out by the Chinese scientist who performed the gene editing on twins here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ND3_clSPM
And you can read the first chapter of the book that will come out the next month describing the phenomenon here: http://book.jfg.world
It's the conclusion of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype.
The Revolutionary Phenotype describes the transition of life from protein self-replicator (no known current ancestors), to protein-RNA tangos (no known current ancestors), to RNA replicators (current RNA viruses), to RNA-DNA tango (RNA-DNA reverse transcribing viruses), to DNA replicator (biological life).
The next revolutionary phenotype (let's call it RT) would be one that replaces DNA, first via a DNA-RT tango (machines editing our DNA) and eventually with RT (the machines) replacing DNA completely.
The video I linked above goes over the consequences of this. The book will describe it in more detail, and is slated to be released next month.
I gave the first chapter a quick read. It didn’t really seem that well thought out. He uses an example about finding out humanity disappears in the next 100 million years and then hand waves it as overblown, but it wasn’t really clear on what timescale he was talking about. It also seemed like he was broadly describing transhumanism and then calling it a bad thing, as though humanity evolving through means beyond DNA are not humans at all.
Completely agree. This has always been a fabricated issue anyway. People enhance themselves all sorts of ways, diet exercise, tutoring, etc.
The hysteria over genetic engineering will last just as long as it takes for the first few successful attempts to show their benefits, and then everyone will promptly forget it was ever an issue at all.
Yes, but genes are one of the last equalisers out there. To an extent, obviously - your genes come from your parents - but rich and poor alike have both benefitted and suffered from their genetic makeups. Before long genetic engineering will be commonplace but almost exclusively among the rich. Arguably, much like dieting, exercise and tutoring.
Perhaps. And like salt in ancient times, there are luxuries of the rich that eventually, become less expensive and more accessible to people of more modest means. I can see that being the case for genetic engineering too. Consider that the first genome sequencing (the human genome project) cost around $2.7 billion dollars in the 90s (https://www.genome.gov/11006943/human-genome-project-complet...). These days, you can do a full sequenincing of your DNA (not like the 23andme style) for around $1,400 (https://www.genome.gov/11006943/human-genome-project-complet...).
> there are luxuries of the rich that eventually, become less expensive and more accessible to people of more modest means
Inequality is rising, not falling.
For example, any person at all today can easily get their hands on weapon that would win them any fight with a caveman wielding a bone, sure. But today, there's tanks and satellites and whatnot -- the most powerless became WAY more powerless in contras to the most powerful. You don't compare the poor of today with the rich of yesterday, you compare the them with the rich of today. And you compare the poor of tomorrow with the rich of tomorrow.
> Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon - so long as there is no answer to it - gives claws to the weak.
-- George Orwell
Already it's pretty normal for rich people to consider themselves above socializing with poor people. Adding editing of genes on top of that might not just turn that wide gap into a fortified moat, complete with property rights and patents and enforcement of said patents (imagine getting a mutation by chance that you have no license for), it might also mess up the incentives for medical research even more.
Why find a cure for a disease that anyone can get, that is another "equalizer", when you can immunize yourself and your offspring to it? You may say all such things will always be made available to everybody, but how would you know now? What of the current behaviour of the powerful gives you reason to consider that likely? When it comes to biodiversity and the possibility of extinction, not many HN comments mention the people with the biggest footprints, but a lot mention "overpopulation". So how would that mesh with making the unwashed masses more resilient and healthy? Wouldn't it make more sense to go the opposite way? You see, "perhaps" isn't good enough with something like this. At these speeds, "eventually" steering means crashing into a wall.
>Before long genetic engineering will be commonplace but almost exclusively among the rich.
I think we’ve already fell into this type of scenario and I think this is partially why some are so against it. They’re looking at this as an luxury to families but if done right, gene engineering could and should be used solely to protect against inheritable and community spread diseases. This type of engineering can be a massive breakthrough for developing countries and similar areas.
But looking at this from a realistic standpoint: genetic engineering will be a taboo extreme that only a few will ever be successful with—until it is internationally recognized as beneficial and properly regulated.
True, but my point is that banning genetic engineering will seem as silly as banning tutoring. You don't ban the ability to improve yourself because some people might use it to be better than others.
> Yes, but genes are one of the last equalisers out there.
Are they equalisers though? And what makes you think gene editing won't be available to everyone? It seems like the sort of thing with an exponential cost curve. It will very rapidly become cheap and accessible to all.
In fact, i'd argue it's likely to be more equalizing than inequalizing.
> And what makes you think gene editing won't be available to everyone? It seems like the sort of thing with an exponential cost curve. It will very rapidly become cheap and accessible to all.
The rich and already disproportionately powerful will get it and use it first (creating barriers to upward mobility and exacerbating class power divides), then will have every incentive (and even more disproportionate power than previously) to create barriers to access.
Similar to the reason that, 70+ years later, there are only a handful of nuclear weapons states.
You mean like how they did with the iPhone? Where exactly has that ever happened for any nontrivial period of time? Technology gets pushed to the masses. The rich will get richer by selling it to them not keeping it for themselves.
The rich will always have advantages. Technology just gives them more. But it's up to the state to level the field if and where appropriate. Currently the US is dead last among developed nations in doing this.
Yes, but the field shouldn't be leveled by holding all of humanity back. That's silly. It should be leveled by giving everyone access to the technology.
Gene modifications slips in to rest of the population, other changes don't. You can think of every human being as virus out to infect others with its genes ;).
Given how so many parents are desperate about their kids to succeed in the super-competitive world, this is bound to become a trend - especially in middle class population who have money for the procedure but aren't rich. In China, Japan, there is cutthroat fight for getting in best schools, be the most attractive etc. These parents are also very easy to be mislead with incorrect/incomplete information.
When will the hysteria over the "hysteria" end, and the actual discussion begin? If one side leads into it with just smearing the other as "hysteric", they don't win, they forfeit.
I agree with the fabricated outrage but there is an interesting difference between diet, exercise, tutoring. Your descendents also get your enhancement for free. (Or at least 50% off)
Since you're so certain all of these philosophical issues are silly, could you explain why we care to propagate our species (and not some other species) to begin with?
> We alter ourselves in lots of ways, why is this different?
This is a fair question. And I've had philosophical problems taking psychiatric drugs, for that matter. (I think it's resolved to some extent by considering that lots of substances we ingest all the time are psychoactive. So it's part of the normal human experience.)
I would say this - Whatever modification you make, you have to come up with a line, a standard, for which you argue "this is still a human." I draw that line at deliberate engineering of genetics. What is yours? Are there some genes that still shouldn't be edited? Maybe you could draw some line there?
OR, if you think that's a silly question and don't care about what is or isn't a human, let's revisit the equally silly assumption that we should care about propagating the human race. I personally feel like if you take such a nihilistic approach to the definition of human, you may as well go all the way and adopt an anti-natalist position. It's just not clear any more what game we're playing.
> All the scientists condemning this as terrible, and articles written about the dystopian future it portends.
Interesting, I'd expect scientists to be on the pro-side of this. I don't know have a strong opinion on the consequential outcomes.
I just don't see the value in staying within some arbitrarily defined bound of "human". If anything, humanity is exemplified by our ability to manipulate nature to our benefit. Genetic engineering doesn't seem substantively different to me.
I also don't see how this relates to the instinct to procreate. We don't procreate because we think its the "human" thing to do, we do it because we're human and we have an instinct to procreate. If procreation conflicted with some other drive or interest of ours, we might decide to forgo it (and many do). But this doesn't seem out of bounds of what is typically human either.
It's not that it's a human thing to do. It's that we're generally interested in producing more humans. More particularly, more members our our own family. In that sense, a sense of humanity matters.
Probably much sooner than 2100. Blade runner 2049 seemed fairly on point with the erratic climate, rising sea levels, hyper-urbanization and mass extinction of both animal and plant life.
And "cloning" in a sense. Only a matter of time before someone finds a gene for obedience and decides to edit it to create a workforce. Amazon warehouse conditions and Equifax leaks will seem like child's play compared to that.
If IQ varies inversely with overall mutational load, intelligence-enhancing edits to the genome exist on the same continuum as fixing things like Tay-Sachs and Huntington's disease. Therefore, yes, they may well be inevitable.
Similarly, life extension treatments may double as the cheapest way to prevent chronic health problems such as cancer and heart disease.
I genuinely doubt that any amount of hand wringing or letter writing will slow the pace of this research. It's too enticing. The potential benefits are so overwhelming. I'm not even convinced outlawing it will stop its march. If I were a billionaire I would happily fund research in whatever country allowed it. We're looking at a development that could be equal or greater than the invention of the vaccine, and it's not worth taking it slowly
Unless the change is one that produces greater fitness in individuals but lowers fitness for the species as a whole. e.g. the environment changes (it happens) and all the folks that would've been naturally adapted (via this diversity) to the new environment were edited out.
Humans are great at thinking about individual risks, but not so great at thinking about systemic or ecological risks (climate change, economics)