[HN Gopher] CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treat...
___________________________________________________________________
CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array
of diseases
Author : hassanahmad
Score : 290 points
Date : 2021-06-26 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| dcwardell wrote:
| Crazy genetics ideas I would like explored
|
| A modified tree that drops nuts of (nearly) pure graphite or some
| other form of nondecomposable carbon which we can easily harvest
| and sequester.
|
| Photosynthesis in humans to supplement our energy consumption.
| Shoutout to Knights of Sidonia.
|
| I understand the ethical issues surrounding the second one.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I believe the graphite nut proposal is too inefficient to work.
| A single large tree absorbs around 30 kg of CO2 per year. If it
| was able to put 10% of that into graphite nuts (which would be
| a very good efficiency), you end up with 0.8 kg of graphite
| nuts per tree per year.
|
| To match the IEAs projections for carbon capture (7.5
| gigatonnes CO2 captured per year in 2050) you would need around
| 3*10^12 trees. That's about the same as the total number of
| trees in the world. So you need to replace all of the worlds
| trees, with the corresponding destruction of many of the
| biggest ecosystems on earth.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Thats a pretty solid breakdown, but that 3x10^12 was a little
| more hope-inspiring than I was expecting. Seems like a
| workable part of a larger multi-pronged solution if you
| streamlined the plants metabolism (?). Then again I dont know
| what in the h*ll Im talking about so theres that...
| kaba0 wrote:
| > A modified tree that drops nuts of (nearly) pure
|
| Well, we sort of have that in the form of specifically
| engineering bacteria to create some drugs, notably insulin.
| Though I'm sure graphene require additional biological
| structure and that is a much harder problem them
| adding/removing a few genes.
| DantesKite wrote:
| A lot of times you hear about these breakthroughs in medical
| papers or in mice, but this really feels different.
|
| Like an actual breakthrough with an actual cure for a specific
| disease. It's remarkable.
|
| Here's to more cures.
|
| God bless.
| bawana wrote:
| So the religious right decided that we do not own our bodies, god
| does. Just as software companies issue a EULA, all children born
| since 2032 are required to have their parents sign a EULA.
| Genetic modification is strictly prohibited and punishable by
| reduction of the government stipend that everyone receives in
| fedcoin every month. Underground genetic modification labs are
| run by organized crime but unfortunately those using these labs
| also get an unplanned genetic modification in addition to the one
| they want. They are made dependent on a drug that only those labs
| can provide, for a price. In addition, there are monthly
| vaccination programs for citizens to protect them against genetic
| terrorists, carriers of lethal protoviruses who are engineered to
| carry and disseminate Covid derivatives that target HLA SUBTYPES
| common in Northern European and South American genotypes.
|
| Yes genetic modification is another wonderful technology that
| humans will weaponize....like atomic energy, like the internet...
| calrueb wrote:
| The fact that we can apply these sort of therapies to an adult
| human who consists of millions upon millions of cells blows my
| mind. Having the ability to fix our "buggy" genetic code while we
| are alive is amazing.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Monkey patching in production.
| correcthorse123 wrote:
| I think targetting tbe liver is far easier than most other
| tissues though, unfortunately.
| hhjinks wrote:
| You're off by a _couple_ orders of magnitude. There are
| trillions of cells in a human body.
| zz865 wrote:
| Would CRISPR be the technology people would use to modify a bat
| virus to make it human transmissable? This stuff should stay in
| its box.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It will not stay in the box.
|
| The allure of armies of supersoldiers without sense of
| emotions, conscience, and remorse is irresistible for
| dictators. I bet Chinese, or Russian militaries are already
| working on that.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Humans still have to be fed. Killer robots dont
| koeng wrote:
| They could also use normal editing with PCR since the genomes
| are small. Also CRISPRs are in tons of organisms (I've
| amplified it from yogurt), so the box is already out there.
| stuntkite wrote:
| You would not need CRISPR to do that. If something like that
| ever occurred they would probably use other methods that have
| been very well studied for much longer and are considerably
| easier to apply. Including just taking blood samples from bats
| (or pangolins or whatever) and archiving a great compelling
| virus and culturing it in a lab. If you wanna add CRISPR into
| the mix you could also make a virus like that make someone grow
| some horns and get hiccups that sound like a kazoo though.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Knives can kill and save people. Almost anything can be used
| for bad purposes in the wrong hands.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Not that I agree we should bury our heads in the sand like
| luddites, but to be fair to OP, knives can only hurt or help
| in a tiny human radius. It's hard to make an extinction-level
| weapon (or extension level accident) out of them.
|
| Being able to edit genes at will is a different story.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Viruses are an extinction-level weapon. CRISPR? Not so
| much. (And neither are likely to result in an extinction-
| level accident; you'd have to deliberately deploy potent
| bioweapons in multiple places to extinct us.)
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Yes but the CRISPR engine is passed on to offspring which
| raises massive ethical questions.
|
| As I understand it (and hopefully I'm not way off base
| here) there is a technique that creates a "gene drive"
| which is kinda like an SDK that is inserted into the
| patients genome which improves the efficacy of CRISPR.
|
| This code finds its way into the gametes which is then
| passed on to children. The children did not ask for this
| SDK, but now they have it and it potentially becomes
| immortal in human DNA.
|
| On the one hand, cool: the SDK is there and possibly
| makes it even easier to alter DNA>
|
| On the other hand, holy shit: there's a ticking timebomb
| in the populations DNA now.
|
| It's called CRISPR-cas9:
|
| https://wyss.harvard.edu/media-post/crispr-cas9-gene-
| drives/
|
| https://scicomm2020.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/controversia
| l-g...
| ben_w wrote:
| The really great thing about us knowing how to read and
| edit genes now, is that if that happened we would notice
| and could switch it off. The stuff we want to wipe out
| using gene drives -- e.g. Malaria -- can't.
|
| There are things to worry about with cheap gene
| engineering, but that particular possibility won't affect
| us.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Turning medical science from a technical problem into an ethical
| one would be a massive epoch boundary for humanity, I'd say. More
| so than the Internet.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| So this is editing liver cells, which I read somewhere is the
| easiest to do, since the liver absorbs foreign elements from the
| bloodstream.
|
| The success of this should mean that many genetic liver
| conditions can soon be treated this way.
|
| For other organs, I expect a longer wait.
| codeulike wrote:
| The brain is particularly hard due to blood/brain barrier,
| crispr is too big a molecule to go through. So might need
| injections into cerebral spinal fluid for that
| wgolsen wrote:
| The lung epithelium has also recently been transfected in
| humans (see Translate Bio cf drug; this and similar vehicles
| can deliver editing tools)
| jonplackett wrote:
| Wonder how long it will be until this is used to enhance rather
| than just to cure.
|
| Eg selective fast twitch / slow twitch muscle fibres.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Probably already happening
| jonplackett wrote:
| Presumably it would be damn hard to detect if it was!
| ausbah wrote:
| >Doctors infused billions of microscopic structures known as
| nanoparticles carrying genetic instructions for the CRISPR gene-
| editor into four patients in London and two in New Zealand. The
| nanoparticles were absorbed by their livers, where they unleashed
| armies of CRISPR gene-editors. The CRISPR editor honed in on the
| target gene in the liver and sliced it, disabling production of
| the destructive protein.
|
| this is one of the coolest paragraphs I've read in a while. if
| it's accurate, serves as a great reminder that we're in the
| future as we speak
| skybrian wrote:
| Note that the liver is perhaps the easiest target since it
| filters the blood.
|
| See:
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/05/20/cr...
| DoctorNick wrote:
| The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW
| right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of
| a future, even with all this cool tech.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Everyone will move to Canada and similarly far north places.
| Only the poor will be left behind to die in the heat and most
| of the world won't care and will feel like "good riddance."
| cj wrote:
| It's not impossible to speculate the possibility that in
| 50-100 years, climate change could be reversed through a
| CRISPR-like technology (e.g. something that can be released
| and replicate in the environment, thereby changing it).
|
| Or at the very least, I can see a future where gene editing
| could relieve your suffering from heat by raising the
| threshold your body can tolerate :)
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You want something that replicates in the environment and
| removes carbon? We have those. They're called "plants."
| nr2x wrote:
| Even if we reforested every possible area, the current
| rate of carbon outlay exceeds capacity to absorb.
|
| Well explained in the Economist video:
| https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Does this include ocean farming based carbon capture?
| That sounded like a pretty positive route in terms of
| land use limitations when I heard about it.
| chr1 wrote:
| If we could convert Sahara back into a savannah or farms,
| the amount of carbon required for the new soil and plants
| would exceed the amount of extra carbon we have added to
| the atmosphere so far. And there are many viable routes
| to do that. E.g. building large number of ocean thermal
| energy conversion plants [1] to reduce temperature of the
| north hemisphere, recreating conditions that have caused
| green Sahara in the past. There are numerous
| possibilities to use engineering to revert adverse
| effects of climate change, and to actually improve the
| climate. The only scenario when we are doomed, is if
| population declines significantly so that we get runaway
| effect from carbon we have already produced melting
| permafrost, and not have large enough economy to use
| geoengineering on a large enough scale.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_co
| nversio...
| nobodyknowsyoda wrote:
| > They're called "plants."
|
| Incidentally, CRISPR + plants is one of the most
| promising solutions to climate change: https://www.ted.co
| m/talks/joanne_chory_how_supercharged_plan...
| PixelOfDeath wrote:
| Looking at the world right now, I hope for the best with
| that gene therapy against sociopathic billionaires.
| coliveira wrote:
| Too bad for the millions of people who will die because of
| the changes during these 50 years...
| nr2x wrote:
| At current rates of carbon outlay, there won't be much of a
| world left to save in 100 years.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Not unless we all work our asses off! Engineers can do
| anything :^)
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| ... except politics, engineers are usually not very good
| at politics, and climate change is, in large part, a
| political problem.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Stop with the doom trolling and get busy inventing solutions.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Heck yeah, this why I keep coming back the HN community.
| But if you gotta get that doom trolling out too its all
| good as long as it reminds us all how hard we gotta keep
| workin :^)
| stavros wrote:
| Without doom trolling nobody will vote for the people who
| want to implement the costly solutions.
| tpmx wrote:
| Wow. So direct, constructive and succinct. I'll borrow
| (parts of) that.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| Is this a one-time treatment? Does it remove all of the
| offending genetic material, and then when those cells divide
| they are cured? Or does it require ongoing treatment?
| rolleiflex wrote:
| It's editing the genes of the cells of the liver, so
| presumably when those liver cells divide and multiply, the
| change would also be copied along as well.
|
| What isn't clear to me is that if this is targeted at the
| liver cells in particular, or splicing it for every cell in
| the body. In other words, this could be a germline mutation
| (passed to children) or it could be a somatic mutation (no
| change to future children), it depends on how targeted the
| treatment was.
| wgolsen wrote:
| When administered IV, most LNPs of this type are highly
| selective for hepatocytes. This edit cannot be passed on as
| no germ cells will be transfected.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Even if it is not specific, I would believe gametes are not
| affected/can be easily excludes due to the blood-testis
| barrier.
| myko wrote:
| I'm very hopeful that someday these techniques will cure diseases
| like Huntington's
| xwdv wrote:
| What are the limits of gene editing?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| We're constrained by the subset of physics that can be
| implemented by proteins. Plus, the genetic code can't be too
| big, or it won't fit, but I doubt we'll ever hit that limit
| (provided we don't go the software route and build a giant
| tower of massive abstractions that gets copied everywhere).
| stuntkite wrote:
| I don't think there are any aside from money, time, and
| experience. If you'd like to give yourself glowing purple eyes,
| huge muscles, and make it so you fart clouds of illegal street
| drugs you can but it's much more difficult and messy than
| deleting 'node_modules', rebuilding, and doing a `git push
| --force` into prod at 5PM on a Friday before you take a long
| weekend.
| amelius wrote:
| Before getting too excited, let's not forget the stories where
| gene therapy went horribly wrong.
|
| https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-death-of-je...
|
| > Doudna expressed similar concerns about CRISPR.
|
| > "I hope that we don't get ahead of ourselves with this
| technology. As exciting as it is, I really would like to see .
| . . people take a very measured and responsible path forward,
| where there's careful vetting along the way," she said. "Of
| course, the challenge is that patients are waiting, so you
| don't want to delay unduly. But you also want to be safe."
| xf1cf wrote:
| A better question might be what are the ethical limits of gene
| editing. How long until we stumble over eugenics but with extra
| steps? It seems to me at least to be the natural conclusion of
| advanced gene editing. Law of unintended consequences and all
| that.
| palijer wrote:
| I feel like I missed something, and now everywhere I look we have
| headlines like this.
|
| What's wrong with "CRISPR gene editing shown to cure
| Transthyretin amyloidosis in patient study"
|
| Maybe I'm now one of the old people who doesn't understand new
| usage of language. But I understand that usage dictates grammar
| rules, but I feel I missed something.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I believe the metaphore of the inverted pyramid used in
| journalism plays a part here.
|
| edit: Strike that, hadn't realized that the article title and
| the HN link differed so much.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| NPR isn't a research paper, or a researcher focused website.
| eat_veggies wrote:
| The paper linked in the article is titled "CRISPR-Cas9 In Vivo
| Gene Editing for Transthyretin Amyloidosis." That's close
| enough to your proposed title. If what you're looking for is a
| technical research paper meant for people intimately familiar
| with the field, then that's a great title.
|
| But it's a terrible title for an article meant for laypeople
| like us. The words "transthyretin amyloidosis" are utterly
| meaningless to me and most HN/NPR readers, but "He Inherited A
| Devastating Disease" tells me what kind of disease it is
| (devastating, heritable) and why CRISPR gene editing might be a
| big deal.
|
| It also helps clue me into the contents of the article. Because
| it is as much a summary of a key research result, as it is a
| profile of Patrick Doherty, a man affected by the disease.
| That's entirely missing from your title.
|
| None of this is new. "Write for your audience" is as old as
| writing itself.
| phreack wrote:
| I know what you mean. These headlines read less like titles and
| more like lyrics in a song ("He was a skater boy. She said see
| you later boy."). It feels a bit condescending, as if it was
| aiming at children. I'd much prefer a title with a "person with
| thing does action" style.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think it's just an oddity of newspapers. Even before it was
| called "going viral", they've been a bit like that.
| boublepop wrote:
| > What's wrong with "CRISPR gene editing shown to cure
| Transthyretin amyloidosis in patient study"
|
| I understand your asking a rhetorical question but in the
| interest of having a discussion about this I'll try to give you
| an answer. Imagine a title like "Xonuicfixs shown in
| zenocttkike to cure Xclatngt"
|
| Reading that you might thing "wrf are they talking about?" But
| imagine I just change the title to be more like:
|
| "A breakthrough in Xonuicfixs shows promise as a cure for a
| range of decided."
|
| Have I lowered the information content of the title? Yes,
| certainly. However I have also made it very apparent to you an
| others who don't know the subject matter why this is a
| worthwhile achievement, and this might therefore just become
| the first article that you read and learn about Xonuicfixs.
|
| And really shouldn't that be the job of a title? To convey to
| potential readers why the content might be with their time. And
| I would note that this is entirely different from clickbait
| which tires to lure you into content with no information about
| what the content is.
| wgolsen wrote:
| In my opinion, and it seems in the NPR editor's opinion, the
| most exciting angle to this story isn't the cure of one
| relatively rare disease (TAA), but rather the seemingly
| imminent cure of many/most inherited diseases which affect
| cells of the liver. Indeed, we can even make edits that confer
| protective benefits to people at risk for diseases due to
| mutations OR lifestyle (see a similar approach by Verve
| Therapeutics). This is a big story which deserves the attention
| grabbing headline.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Off topic: are there any central repositories tracking gene
| therapy progress for various genetic conditions, with a similar
| UX to Moderna's mRNA pipeline tracker?
|
| https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline
| t3po7re5 wrote:
| All FDA trials are listed here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/, I
| believe you can search by gene. It's not as nice as the moderna
| pipeline though.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Please do familial hypercholesterolemia soon! I know it would be
| harder but getting started on targeting specific mutations could
| be fruitful.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681164/
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I want the CRISPR research that focuses on CIP accelerated. I
| have a minor chronic pain issue that will get worse over time
| (think sciatica). By the time I'm 60 in 25 years, it'd be great
| if we had that. No more need for opiates or drugs that barely
| make a dent.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_...
| foreigner wrote:
| This is awesome but I'm curious why they tried it first on this
| super-rare disease instead of something more common?
| SoftwareMaven wrote:
| Extremely rare diseases and diseases that have no known
| treatment options are given more lax rules for testing. Without
| that, there would be no way to develop treatments for them, but
| it comes with a side benefit of providing a method to attempt
| new treatment modalities.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| My 2 cents:
|
| a) need to edit liver cells only, not the entire organism, b)
| the disease is deadly, so the patients do not have much to lose
| if anything goes wrong.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Wild guess: it's because he's 65. Many of these severe genetic
| diseases kill their victims at relatively young ages.
|
| Ethical researchers are thus far being super-cautious about
| modifying the genome of someone who's likely to have children.
| While the article doesn't say, I wouldn't be surprised to learn
| that he has explicitly agreed not to have any (more?) children.
| hmmmhmmmhmmm wrote:
| Original paper:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107454?query=fe...
|
| This is the first published IV-administration of a gene-editing
| CRISPR payload. Interesting convergence with the nanoparticles
| used in mRNA vaccines. Sickle-cell and immune reprogramming edits
| have been made on cells removed from the body. Josiah Zayner
| infamously injected himself with CRISPR at a conference years
| back, but (1) unpublished, AFAIK and (2) he had been drinking
| which likely attenuated the payload [and (3) he wanted bigger
| muscles, not to treat a disease]
| gwern wrote:
| Mirror:
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2021-gillmore.pd...
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| Wow, it worked...This uses LNPs similar to the recent Moderna and
| BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines, and N1m-pseudouridine mRNA, just like
| the mRNA vaccines. This is incredible.
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| Cool, we can only show stories where it worked
| carbocation wrote:
| Human clinical trials are pre-registered, in order to prevent
| exactly what you are describing (the 'file drawer problem').
| wesleywt wrote:
| Coming from a genetics background, I can tell you the fact that
| it worked once is a massive achievement in itself. This is
| science fiction.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I must be out of the loop. Last I heard trials with CRISPR were
| making not only the desired genetic changes but also dozens of
| others at random points in the genome. Did they solve that
| problem?
| dsign wrote:
| Humans improve technology all the time, CRISPR gene editing
| would be no exception.
|
| Straight from Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEAPER_gene_editing
|
| I bet a dip into the specialized papers will show a multitude
| of these techniques.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| The period missing from the title makes this very hard to parse
| what is being said.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Agreed. NPR never used to use clickbait titles like this ("He
| ..." is pure clickbait). It's sad to see them doing it
| regularly now. I imagine the latest generation of journalists
| grew up thinking this is normal. I know HN prefers original
| headlines, but I wish these would be edited down when posted
| here.
| mjfl wrote:
| "well then stop clicking on them!"
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Reminds me of this guy that cured himself of lactose intolerance.
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a17804128/sc...
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I think it's annoying people get upset that people who do this
| potentially damage their bodies. First of all, it's that
| individuals body. They can take whatever risks they want. I
| don't see how trying to alter your own DNA is any worse for you
| than skydiving. Both have inherent risks, none of which affect
| others. Secondly, because there is no red tape or ethical
| scientific practices required, this gives us the opportunity to
| study some anecdotal evidence and (hopefully) these people
| donate their bodies for research after death. We can't truly
| know these affects if we constantly just act so tepid about the
| procedures.
|
| Imagine if we had the scientific process about literally every
| aspect in human life since the dawn of civilization? We'd still
| be making bricks with straw, manure, sand, and water because
| there wasn't a government sponsored test of the quality of
| "Roman Cement" therefore we should not use it. Some of these
| people who criticize a lot of science do so just for the sake
| of disputing it. It's a good thing this stuff happens. The more
| anecdotal evidence we have, the more likely it can be subject
| to legitimate scrutiny and understand certain pitfalls that
| these individuals encountered and why. Just telling these
| people "you're stupid, it's bad for you!" is an ultimate waste
| of time and just stagnates data collection.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > Both have inherent risks, none of which affect others.
|
| If you make germline edits, this does potentially impact
| others - you can have children who inherit the edit. They
| don't have any choice about that (depending on the edit they
| might randomly not receive a copy of the edited material, but
| that's luck) and its consequences in them may be undesirable
| even if the outcome for you, an adult, was fine and anyway
| your choice.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| In the particular context of Though Emporium this wasn't
| going to happen. It used an adenovirus that couldn't
| reproduce so it was only going to alter a limited number of
| cells in his intestine.
|
| The technical requirements to this kind of limit the number
| of people that are going to really mess themselves up. I
| would be more worried about people accidentally releasing
| edited bacteria or viruses.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > releasing edited bacteria or viruses.
|
| From what I understand it's hard to order the sequences
| of DNA or RNA you'd need for this without someone
| noticing. It's probably not impossible, but not something
| anyone is going to bungle into.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| That's what is usually said. I don't think I've actually
| heard of this getting triggered. I'd like to think that
| global governments have this totally under control. Maybe
| the US does, but does China? In any case so far it's
| seemed like a whole "this rock keeps away Tigers" sort of
| thing.
| stuntkite wrote:
| I am 100% pro bio hacking, I would go as far as to say
| that I think the bio hacking community might be the only
| place I can see solutions to our largest problems coming
| from. I mean the bio hacking community too, not acedemia.
| Not that acedamia isn't crucial to that process.
|
| Anyway, Maybe a few years ago the barrier to entry was
| too high for most people but that is so not the case
| anymore. Even just this year a friend sent me a link to a
| $2000 gizmo that was about the size of a pack of gum that
| could do desktop sequencing. Generating your own custom
| DNA in your bedroom is considerably harder (but not
| impossible) but it is not at all difficult to order a
| custom sequence from a half dozen different retailers.
| The file you send them is just a big chunk of a few
| letters. It's assembly code with no comments (yes I know
| folks do put in comments in text sometimes and sometimes
| biologically but just like always comments lie more than
| not), they functionally cannot be checking for what it
| could do if what you're working on is even remotely
| novel. For the price of a playstation you can have it
| delivered to your door next day air.
|
| There are very real risks here for our entire planet.
| Possibly one of our largest risks. To hide behind "it's
| too difficult for a malicious actor" is not helpful. I
| think genetic literacy is maybe the only thing we all can
| do as we might be entering very weird territory as a
| closed system that has a bent towards global narcissism
| and self harm.
|
| Something that gives me some comfort is that to be good
| at it you really have to do a gross and difficult deep
| dive into how all life works and I think there are very
| few people that could do that and still feel like it's ok
| to do harm at even a small scale. The things we are going
| to see in the next few years will be pretty fucking
| weird. I guess when you get down to this level, the only
| thing to have is something like faith. Eeeek.
| coryrc wrote:
| That is the line of reasoning that leads to banning
| abortions*. People have a right to alter their bodies.
|
| EDIT: and preventing young women from choosing
| sterilization.
| bobthechef wrote:
| How do you reason that people have the (presumably
| absolute) right to alter than bodies however they please?
| How do you justify that claim? It makes very specific
| assumptions which are very problematic. For example, do
| you have the right to lobotomize a perfectly healthy
| brain? It is immoral? Can you say you have the right to
| do something immoral? How about altering your uterus
| during pregnancy to prevent nutrients from feeding the
| child?
|
| I think it's pretty obvious that right implies morally
| acceptability. You can't claim to have a right to
| something evil. (The reverse is not true. It is morally
| acceptable to own a Tesla, but you don't have the right
| to one.) Alterations can be harmful and any harm that is
| not a justifiable side effect is by definition immoral.
| That it's your body does not somehow negate the
| immorality of self-harm. Indeed, direct self-harm is even
| worse morally than harm of others because it is in direct
| opposition to one's own good (arguably, harm of others is
| also a form of self-harm, specifically harm of one's
| character and will and habitus, of one's intellect
| because of the harm of one's reasoning faculties it
| entails, and harm of the common good). So you cannot say
| you have the right to self-harm. This is just a strange
| consequence of the incoherent ideology of absolute
| autonomy.
|
| Now, if you have, say, a defect in your body that is
| preventing the proper functioning of your body, then we
| may correct this defect through intervention. This is
| restorative, that is, it seeks to restore the function
| due to the body by virtue of how it ought to function.
| This is the basis of medicine.
|
| Another false view that can nudge people toward the view
| that any modification is acceptable is metaphysical
| materialism, also incoherent. In that case, crude
| metaphors between artifacts and living things are
| elevated to the status of the truth and since it doesn't
| matter what we do to an artifact per se. We can modify a
| computer any way we wish because there is no fact of the
| matter about what a computer is or how it should be apart
| from human intent. It is just a collection of things
| arranged in a particular way incidentally that puts them
| in a series of incidental causal relations, but there is
| no inherent tendency for these things to exist in these
| relations and no accounting for one in terms of the
| others except through the lens of human intent. Living
| things aren't like that.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Precisely. Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of
| "well even though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say
| it's bad for you there for you cannot do it" will
| inevitably lead to the logic of dictating abortion rights
| as well. This is exactly the logic conservatives use with
| the Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good
| for everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the
| "my body my choice" when it comes to a vaccine.
| Regardless of who is more logically correct in the
| scenario, the current stance of American liberalism is
| "my body my choice" only applies in terms of abortion.
| Which conservatives when they get in power again, will
| utilize as rationale to make it illegal as many have been
| doing for the past decade.
| coryrc wrote:
| I didn't say you have the right to not alter your body,
| the public health requirements for contagious diseases
| seemed reasonable until people have started lumping gun
| control and "possibly altering your non-existent
| children"... maybe I'll one day feel as you do.
| didibus wrote:
| It isn't about knowing what's best for you, but what's
| best for others. So where ethics come into play is when
| what you're seemingly doing to yourself could actually
| have impact on others as well.
|
| For abortion, you can claim it impacts others both ways,
| are you impacting a new born from having its life, or are
| you preventing a yet to be born child from having a
| troubled life, and saving family, parents and society its
| burden.
|
| For a vaccine, are you putting others at risk of a
| disease by not taking the vaccine?
|
| For bio-hacking, are you possibly creating dangerous
| virus or bacterias that could harm others, are you making
| modifications to yourself which will put a tole on the
| medical system if you later need assistance or special
| treatment if you mess up, etc.
|
| This is the same reasoning with drugs often, will your
| modified behavior cause harm to others if you consume
| them?
|
| Etc.
|
| None of this is black and white, but I think having these
| discussions on "what harm to others it can cause" is
| justified.
| bobthechef wrote:
| "Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of "well even
| though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say it's bad
| for you there for you cannot do it" will inevitably lead
| to the logic of dictating abortion rights as well."
|
| The first problem is that you are claiming that the
| child's body is the woman's body. It isn't and you know
| that. You know that is it an entirely distinct human
| being with it's own DNA, etc, etc. In order to justify
| abortion, you would need to argue that murder (which is
| the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human
| being) is justifiable. The logical consequences are
| devastating. For example, if murder of the most innocent,
| powerless, dependent, and vulnerable, by those with power
| over them no less, becomes justifable, then it becomes
| impossible to argue for the legitimacy any human rights
| whatsoever. You can't just make up moral principles out
| of thin air or assign arbitrary boundaries to them
| according to taste.
|
| The second problem is that this logic seems to put the
| cart before the horse. In other words, you've decided
| that abortion is a right axiomatically and you've decided
| to dismiss anything that would undermine that belief. But
| the moral acceptability of abortion is not axiomatic and
| must be judged according to prior moral principles.
|
| "This is exactly the logic conservatives use with the
| Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good for
| everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the "my
| body my choice" when it comes to a vaccine."
|
| See my first point above. Here conservatives are indeed
| speaking of just their own bodies, so this is a false
| equivalence.
| stuntkite wrote:
| His YouTube channel The Thought Emporium, is amazing. He just
| moved into a new lab and I really appreciate what he's working
| on and how he communicates it. The robot painting fluorescent
| proteins is neat and recently he dropped a video demonstrating
| his adventures making synthetic opal.
|
| Apparently the edit made him totally lactose tolerant for over
| a year and now he has very mild lactose intolerance. He says he
| hasn't redosed because he wants to improve the plasmid (I think
| that's the right term, BUGFIX probably isn't right) before he
| takes another run at it.
|
| Here's his update video from last year on that endeavor.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoczYXJeMY4
| faitswulff wrote:
| Technically a plasmid is kind of like a software patch, but
| generally they're employed by bacteria and not eukaryotes
| like humans.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Interesting. I have watched nearly all of The Thought
| Emporium's videos (so clearly I'm an expert, lol) and I
| think he uses the term plasmid to describe DNA he's working
| on in the crazy bio IDE he uses. I think in this instance
| he applied it to a yeast that he cultured and put into
| pills and swallowed.
|
| He really is doing some neat stuff though. He's inspired me
| to do some small bio hacking experiments and it ALMOST
| makes me want to go back to college.
| shpongled wrote:
| Plasmid is the correct term!
| stuntkite wrote:
| I am not being sarcastic when I say thank you for
| confirming that. If someone didn't confirm it it would
| pop back in my head for days, "maaan, you fucked it up
| and now some other nerds are gonna use the term wrong and
| that's really not helping anyone." heh. Cheers. :)
| jcims wrote:
| Here's his YouTube channel:
| https://youtube.com/c/thethoughtemporium
|
| Amazing and alarming what a smart and dedicated person can do
| with limited funds.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| That's really cool, thanks for sharing! I just watched his
| video on the WiFi camera and I loved his presentation style
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I recently watched the two videos on this (that I'm aware of)
| and it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as
| macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people who
| will say "yes" to all kinds of crazy stuff out of desperation.
|
| Cystic fibrosis significantly impacts gut function and many
| people with it do poorly with dairy products. I could see this
| and/or some variation of this being valuable therapy for the CF
| community while we wait for better answers.
|
| Although best known as a deadly lung disorder, the impact on
| gut function is a major problem that just gets less press but
| is something people with CF and their loved ones fret about a
| whole lot. I think if you could do something to improve gut
| function fairly quickly and semi permanently, you would likely
| reduce a lot of their other issues as well because people with
| CF are typically underweight, sometimes severely underweight,
| and their chronic malnourishment is a major underlying source
| of their inability to fight off infection.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as
| macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people
|
| That's because it has barely begun to become viable IRL while
| science fiction writers have been using it as a convenient
| punching bag for decades -- without ever stopping to ask if
| they should.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| No, that's because I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I
| know what I and others like me have been willing to do in
| the face of that and because I'm aware of real world
| experiments done on people who were seen as _less than
| human_ for some reason, such as the Tuskegee syphilis
| experiments done on Black Americans and horrifying
| experiments done on people in concentration camps in Nazi
| Germany.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
|
| https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-
| medic...
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| This is insane. I love it and it terrifies me at the same time.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Wow...this is a really big deal. Congratulations to this team and
| to the patients who were treated. I hope the treatment continues
| to keep the disease at bay.
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