[HN Gopher] Babies made using three people's DNA are born free o...
___________________________________________________________________
Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of mitochondrial
disease
Author : 1659447091
Score : 217 points
Date : 2025-07-16 21:43 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| foxyv wrote:
| In vivo zygote mitochonrial transplantation. Neat! This is going
| to add an interesting exception to matrilineal DNA testing in the
| future.
|
| Another thought, what about three parent households engaging in
| IVF? Will this be an option to have 3 biological parents
| regardless of disease? How will we keep records properly? What
| are the legal consequences? Do mitochondrial parents need to pay
| child support?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In vivo zygote mitochonrial transplantation. Neat!
|
| Absolutely not. This is in vitro:
|
| >> The eggs from both the mother and the donor are fertilised
| in the lab with the dad's sperm.
|
| In vivo would make no sense.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| >In vivo would make no sense.
|
| It would certainly be one of the more stranger ways to
| explain the birds and the bees
| perilunar wrote:
| The amount of mitochondrial DNA is tiny though (~0.1%,
| according to the article), and not particularly unique to any
| individual, since it is passed down lately unchanged apart from
| the occasional mutation. There's no point having 3 biological
| parents unless there's a bad mutation in the mother's
| mitochondrial DNA.
| JLemay wrote:
| This is such an incredible breakthrough and a huge win for
| science and families alike, however its sad that despite decades
| of work there is still no cure for mitochondrial disease. But the
| chance to preventing it being passed on is still such a major
| improvement. Also it's sad that only the uk is capable of doing
| this atm bc it was the first country in the world to introduce
| laws to allow their creation after a vote in Parliament in 2015,
| while other countries were debating that it would open the doors
| to genetically-modified "designer" babies
| im3w1l wrote:
| Cells can exchange mitochondria so in theory it might be
| possible to flood the body with healthy mitochondria and get
| them to slowly take over.
| yorwba wrote:
| I would expect that to activate the immune system. "the
| unique components of mitochondria, when exposed, reveal their
| prokaryotic history and are recognized as foreign by innate
| immune receptors triggering an inflammatory response."
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6218307/
|
| Maybe if you suppress the immune system, introduce working
| mitochondria, and then stop taking the immunosuppressants,
| any mitochondria that are still outside cells get cleaned up
| and the ones that got absorbed are shielded and can do their
| job.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Maybe we can find some way to deliver mitochondria right
| into the cells.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Mitochondrial health is definitely going to be a big theme in
| the coming years.
| FerretFred wrote:
| It _is_ an incredible breakthrough and if it prevents disease
| then all well and good, but are our Administrative Systems set
| up to handle such an arrangement?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Sure. The mitochondrial donor can be treated as a source of
| tissue and you are all done.
| isodev wrote:
| I really struggle why we keep maintaining some archaic
| definitions around the "family unit" anyway. So someone has
| 3 parents instead of 2 - nothing wrong with that.
| drekipus wrote:
| It's ok to not know why something is.
|
| My daughter doesn't know why we have archaic laws around
| seatbelts either, but she's 3.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| The UK leads in this space as a previous PM had his newborn die
| of a genetic disease.
|
| Amazing the domino effect.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Huge win for science ...big loss for evolution.
|
| I am by no means a callous person, in fact, my therapist tells me
| I have a problem with too much empathy, and in no way do I wish
| parents to loose their children so young.
|
| But what I am also not is a eugenicist, which is what this is,
| eugenics.
|
| "Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices
| that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population."
|
| Now remember, first they are only preventing the _chance_ of a
| baby being born with mitochondrial disease. But more importantly,
| these mitochondrial diseases are still evident in the human
| population because there is some survival advantage. This is what
| happens with sickle cell disease [1]. The sacrifices these babies
| make, dying so young, is a sacrifice for the survival of a
| genetic population. In the case of mitochondrial diseases, this
| favors the survival of female babies over male babies, or even
| the benefit of higher amounts of oxidative stess in the mother to
| fight off infection.
|
| So by this method, even the female baby will be born without the
| Mitochondrial mutation. What will this mean for her?
|
| https://www.vanderbilt.edu/evolution/mitochondrial-dna-evolu...
|
| "Accordingly, their model revealed that some mutations confer a
| net replicative advantage over unmutated (wildtype) mtDNA,
| causing the mutant mtDNA to proliferate within individual
| organisms."
|
| We know so little and we are acting like we know everything.
| Humanity needs to stop thinking we are gods and accept our fates.
| Eugenicists thought they knew what the best genes were to
| survive, and this is no different.
|
| [1] https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-06/how-sickle-cell-
| disease-...
| hobs wrote:
| Generally the reason we think of Eugenicists as "bad guys" is
| because they've been characterized by being happy to sterilize
| or kill people to prevent their "subhuman genes" from being
| passed down to the next generations.
|
| This is different, another step in the erasure of genes that
| harm humans. This is not a genocide.
|
| It seems like your argument boils down to we should continue to
| have horrible suffering and early death because diversity of
| DNA is good and we shouldn't edit out potentially helpful
| mutations (that also cause horrible suffering) - if we can beat
| malaria, why would we need sickle cell?
| MostlyStable wrote:
| So I think this person is wrong, but the one little nugget in
| there that is partially right is that I _do_ think it 's
| important that, before we start modifying genomes on a wide
| scale, we should have a pretty comprehensive database (100's
| of thousands to millions) of whole-genome sequences
| (alongside mitochondrial DNA) stored.
| tomrod wrote:
| To my understanding that's still super expensive. We can do
| short SNPs (snippets? Not my field, I'm armchairing) for
| cheap like good ole 23andme but not full genome cheaply.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| As of 2023, it was apparently <$1000/sequence [0], which
| means it would be a few hundred million to maybe a
| billion dollars. Which is a lot, but it really only needs
| to be done once, and is a global project. That seems
| pretty reasonable all things considered. But also, we can
| probably wait a little while since it's not super crucial
| until artificial genetic modification starts to get
| widespread, which is still probably a decade off or so.
| We could probably start just collecting samples now, and
| as long as they are appropriately preserved, the actual
| sequencing could be done later when it gets even cheaper.
|
| [0] https://3billion.io/blog/whole-genome-sequencing-
| cost-2023
| perching_aix wrote:
| > we are acting like we know everything. Humanity needs to stop
| thinking we are god
|
| These activities are in no way evidence for people thinking
| (too?) highly of themselves or "as gods". Just a completely
| made up accusation.
|
| I also don't see why the _scary labels_ are relevant
| necessarily. To be afraid of whether this qualifies as eugenics
| or if you qualify as an eugenicist is sitting backwards on the
| horse completely. But maybe I just misinterpreted your catious
| wording and there 's no being afraid here - in other comments
| you outright state you consider this eugenics, for example.
|
| > [As] Humanity[, we need to] accept our fates.
|
| No, we really don't. Though if _you_ and people of the same
| opinion just accept fate, you also accept this research and
| similar continuing on, so maybe this is not even a point of
| debate in practice.
| stefan_ wrote:
| By this logic all gene therapy is eugenics.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Presumably all of medicine too since it keeps us from
| "accepting our fates" and lets us procreate worse genes
| instead of letting billions of people die sacrificially due
| to their genes which is a "huge loss for evolution".
|
| Kinda funny to attack TFA by associating it with a naughty
| word while tracking in such awful ideas as if we're unable to
| evaluate the ideas ourselves.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| No, it is only eugenics when it when gene therapy controls
| the genetic makeup of a child before it is born. Gene therapy
| for cancer is not eugenics.
| quesera wrote:
| > _controls the genetic makeup of a child before it is
| born_
|
| Selective breeding in livestock, mate selection in wild
| animals and humans...
|
| I do understand your point. I struggle with whether it is
| cause for (more than theoretical) concern.
|
| The ethical quandaries don't seem that important when it's
| isolated to expression of personal choice.
|
| State-driven decisions are ugly of course. And perhaps the
| insanity that we see in dog breeding is very bad.
|
| But we don't see the dog breeding problems in human parents
| (aside from the initial mate selection, which can be
| vicious!).
|
| So where does that leave us? Using blunt tools is OK but
| precise tools are bad?
| stefan_ wrote:
| But gene therapy can fix the genetic makeup of the living
| child, then enable it to pass on its defective material.
| That seems patently worse for evolution?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| If you take the case of sickle cell anemia, you'll find
| this is not the case. You need to understand more about
| genetics and why these mutation survive over generations.
| They don't survive by accident they survive because when
| they are heterogeneous, they are beneficial to the
| population. It's only the unlucky child that ends
| homozygous that will suffer from illness. But that is the
| balance and sacrifice nature makes to keep a population
| alive. It's indifferent and amoral, it's utilitarian. And
| it's way beyond the comprehension of human knowledge.
| monetus wrote:
| > _And it's way beyond the comprehension of human
| knowledge._
|
| Are you fairly religious, if you don't mind my asking?
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed. My understanding is that eugenics is typically
| something where the choice is not allowed by the person or,
| before birth, parents of the person affected by the
| procedure.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think your argument is "we're screwing with nature in big
| ways and we have a demonstrated history of being so confidently
| wrong. This is dangerous." Which I think is a deeply important
| discussion to be able to comfortably have without the layers of
| disclaimers.
|
| I think a lot of these biotechs that raise alarms are pretty
| safe, and the problem is that we're _really bad_ at explaining
| in lay terms how it all works, and people naturally assume the
| worst.
|
| I think it's also an issue of practicality (and this is where
| it flirts with being eugenics). What's the alternative? To tell
| people not to reproduce if they have known disease prone genes?
| To make them not reproduce? To tell them they don't get
| universal healthcare if they do?
|
| I think mucking about with our building blocks is the least bad
| option we have.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Thanks for not being reactionary. You are in the minority so
| I figured I would disclaim.
|
| > What's the alternative?
|
| Acceptance. These parents can still reproduce. A female child
| will most likely be healthy, like the mother. And the male
| child will not always be born with a mitochondrial disease.
| People do not realize that father's can also pass
| mitochondrial genetics to their children.
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/6639/)
|
| In trying to remove all risk from our lives we are making it
| inherently risky in other, usually unknown, ways.
|
| All the spiritual practices talk about acceptance, so just
| pick one.
|
| But my bigger point is that it is still eugenics. And that is
| bad no matter what the goal is.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > But my bigger point is that it is still eugenics. And
| that is bad no matter what the goal is.
|
| You're literally advocating for letting genetic diseases
| cull the afflicted populations, "selecting for the better
| genes" that way. Seemingly the exact opposite of your
| claimed position, I hope you appreciate.
|
| Or you have no problem with selection as long as "nature
| does it"? That's the best idea I have for reconciling this
| at least. Are we humans not part of nature though? Is you
| preferring what nature does not just a preference still?
|
| If we figure out that some specific genetic difference
| results in people eventually dying before they reproduce,
| what's the difference between editing that out vs. letting
| nature do its thing?
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > If we figure out that some specific genetic difference
| results in people eventually dying before they reproduce,
| what's the difference between editing that out vs.
| letting nature do its thing?
|
| We're not that smart. Everything has unintended
| consequences. One example some people have studied is
| sickle-cell anemia. It's a recessive trait so if you get
| two copies of the gene you get sickle-cell which is a
| horrible disease. However, if you only get one copy of
| the gene it provides substantial immunity against
| malaria.
|
| Now, maybe in this case you could say, okay, we will cure
| malaria somehow, not worth sickle-cell existing. But the
| thing is that gene isn't "the gene for sickle-cell
| anemia," nor is it even "the gene for malaria resistance
| and sickle-cell anemia." It affects hundreds, thousands,
| maybe millions of different things.
|
| I think there are some conditions where I don't have a
| problem doing that, and sickle-cell, mitochondrial
| disease, these things do seem "bad enough" to be worth
| putting our fingers on the scale. But I am not sure it's
| so clear-cut, and I think it's right to say that eugenics
| are categorically suspect.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > We're not that smart.
|
| How do you determine that? We've come far enough to see
| and manipulate individual atoms, emit and count
| individual photons, and build machines that understand
| human language (if ever so fleetingly). Unless how we
| work is fundamentally betraying how we can reason about
| the world, and we find that that's intrinsically linked
| to our genetics, I really don't see us not cracking it
| eventually proper.
|
| > Everything has unintended consequences.
|
| People use medications every single day that are
| effective for what they are taking it for, yet have
| "unintended consequences" that are consciously ignored or
| are found otherwise negligible by them. Seems like
| unintended consequences are not a blocker. The criteria
| hasn't been perfection even up to this point, it's always
| been a desperation-driven best-effort. Much like life and
| civilization as a whole.
|
| I can appreciate e.g. hesitance in taking on the
| responsibility of possibly being wrong about how
| something like this works - nature cannot be blamed, but
| humans can and that feels bad. But the alternative is
| pretty clear and is not going away on its own. I'm pretty
| sure at least that just like how genetic traits can be
| evolved multiple times independently, genetic defects can
| be too. This is also why I think to characterize this as
| eugenics is extremely and fundamentally wrong. Eugenics
| was about leveraging population control to ensure only
| the "good" genes get passed on - a concept that
| flagrantly flies in the face of this independent
| recurrence effect, for one.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > We've come far enough to see and manipulate individual
| atoms, emit and count individual photons
|
| The fact that you don't see the downsides of manipulating
| atoms, and the trouble is causing in this very day with
| the risk of nuclear war, literally proves that we are not
| that smart.
|
| > Eugenics was about leveraging population control to
| ensure only the "good" genes get passed on
|
| Everyone's assumption are that these genes that are
| killing these children are "bad". They know these jeans
| survived thousands of years of evolution for a reason.
| And that's because on Balance. They are not bad, but for
| some they are very bad. Human genetics cares about our
| survival, it is totally a moral. It would rather a few
| babies die so that hundreds could live.
| perching_aix wrote:
| I've posted a reply to this in haste, but it was a bit
| more emotionally charged than ideal. This is a reworded
| version that I believe reflects my thoughts more
| accurately.
|
| > The fact that you don't see the downsides of
| manipulating atoms, and the trouble is causing in this
| very day with the risk of nuclear war, literally proves
| that we are not that smart.
|
| That is a _very_ far removed interpretation of what I
| wrote. As I 'm sure you're aware, nuclear bombs operate
| on fission (or in rarer cases, fission and fusion). These
| are atomic-scale processes, but do not involve atomic-
| scale control (or in some cases, even control at all -
| natural fission sites exist). A more faithful example for
| what I said would be semiconductor manufacturing, where
| the state of the art is 40-atoms wide tracks of
| patterning resolution. The atomic pick-and-place I
| describe was demonstrated, but has no practical
| implementations that I'm aware of (would be way too
| slow). But even if we go back to fission, nuclear plants
| are providing stable, relatively clean baseline power at
| reasonable costs, and for better or for worse, the world
| didn't yet descend into WW3 either, and it's more than
| fair to speculate that this is due to the temporary
| checkmate nuclear bombs provide us. So as far as I'm
| concerned, no, I think we're pretty alright still.
|
| > Everyone's assumption are that these genes that are
| killing these children are "bad".
|
| But your position doesn't seem to care much for if this
| assumption is correct or not. Even if it's bang-on
| perfectly correct, you stated that this is eugenics
| period, therefore it's bad. Was that not what you meant
| to suggest then?
|
| > They know these jeans survived thousands of years of
| evolution for a reason.
|
| How would you know? What if I disagree that reason and
| purpose are ontologically real?
|
| > Human genetics cares about our survival, it is totally
| a moral.
|
| I disagree that human genetics would be a conscious
| process, and that it can thus care about things. I also
| disagree that it can know anything about morals - morals
| are a human concept, and they're not even universally
| shared across us. Very clearly just the two of us seem to
| hold ourselves to very different definitions of what's
| moral, for example.
|
| > It would rather a few babies die so that hundreds could
| live.
|
| I don't suppose you're claiming that this treatment (or
| other genetic treatments) result(s) in the vast majority
| of the patients dying?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > remove all risk from our lives
|
| As a parent of young kids, this is a core issue I grapple
| with. I want my kids to have fun and take risks and learn
| how to handle the bumpiness of life. But I don't want my
| kids being maimed or killed.
|
| I think the argument could be simplified to "we're
| collectively better off if we live in a manner where one
| consequence is that x% of us will get badly hurt." And I
| personally believe that's a true statement.
|
| My youngest was one of the x%. He played in a risky way
| (that was entirely normal when I was a kid) and later that
| night a team of orthopedic pediatric surgeons had to put
| his body back together.
|
| The hardest thing for me is not to be constantly saying
| "that's too high; get down from there; don't go too far;
| slow down" because that trauma lives with his mom and I far
| more than it does with him. But I believe it's important
| for him to keep taking risks.
|
| I also believe it's up to each parent to decide how they
| want to raise their kids. We don't get to collectively
| decide for the parents.
|
| Which relates back to the topic: I think it's collectivism
| vs. individualism. I believe we cannot decide for people
| that they don't get a choice in the matter. Even if one
| might argue that this poses a collective risk to the
| population.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm so sorry that happened. As a parent, stories of
| injured children get that bad-news stomach drop to me,
| and I both empathize and sympathize. We are dealing with
| a similar (but older child) issue now and it is just
| heartbreaking to see them hurt.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > I think it's collectivism vs. individualism
|
| The idea of individualism is a hard one for me. Are we
| really individuals? I mean, we get half our genetics from
| each parent, so where is the individual? Can any of you
| live as a total individual, without the assistance of
| even a small group? When in human history, even primate
| history, have you seen our species survive without a
| community?
|
| When a parent makes this decision for gene therapy, that
| does not just affect the parents, it affects the child
| (the outcome of which is still not understood) and it
| affects those child's children.
|
| Natural selection exists for a reason, but the
| eugenicists think they can control it.
|
| Comparing gene therapy to cognitive therapy (telling your
| kids to not be stupid), is in no way comparable. Doing
| gene therapy is not "raising your kids", it is creating
| your kids.
|
| I am saying this as someone who lives with THREE genetic
| disorders. von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (Father and Mother,
| hemangioblastomas), Cystathionine beta-synthase
| deficiency (Mother, homocystinuria), and a DNM1L
| Deficiency that leads to mitochondrial fission
| dysfunction (myoptahy, ME/CFS, OCD, Anxiety, Asperger's).
| tomrod wrote:
| When applied to non-human life, the alleged benefits of
| eugenics goes by the names domestication, husbandry, and
| similar.
|
| Correct me if I am wrong because I am absolutely not a
| historian. Eugenics was horrible not because we understand
| Mendellian genetics but because it was forced on people in
| the intent to allegedly "improve" a (political boundary
| placeholder)'s population in some way that was outright
| obscene, including use by Nazi Germany and many other
| places and regimes. US courts, etc.
|
| I think the difference here is that the technology is not
| forced to be used.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Not all eugenicists had what they thought were Negative
| intentions. In the 30s the plan was to send Native
| Americans to the cities to to interbreed breed with white
| people to make white people more communal.
|
| And besides, aren't we forcing these genetic changes onto
| the children without their consent?
| jjcob wrote:
| So as someone who spent the last few years caring for a kid
| with a genetic defect.... I really don't wish that on
| anyone.
|
| If there is a way to detect or prevent genetic defects
| before the kids are born, we should really allow people to
| make a choice.
|
| And I really don't care if doctors mix genetic material
| from 3 people to make a healthy baby. It's still a form of
| evolution. I'd think we should really try to give two
| people who really want to have a kid a chance to have a
| healthy kid...
| nick__m wrote:
| But my bigger point is that it is still eugenics. And that
| is bad no matter what the goal is.
|
| That's a thought terminating cliche for the ages ! The
| problem with eugenics is the noneconsensual, racist,
| ignorant ways and ideas of the early egenists. But the idea
| of editing out genetic mutation that purely detrimental
| (like the COMT-Val158Met polymorphism that make people
| prone to psychosis and schizophrenia, or one of the
| defective variants of the many genes that cause hereditary
| blindness or deafnessl would be a net positive for
| everyone. How can you argue otherwise?
|
| They should not mess with genes where the sciences is not
| 100% settled but that still leaves a lot's of mutations
| known to be 100% deleterious. There are no benefits in
| having hereditary blindness, deafness or schizophrenia!
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > How can you argue otherwise?
|
| Because I know more about how integrated and complicated
| genetics is than you?
|
| Now you're talking about editing out polymorphisms, not
| even mutations? Did you know the COMT is only a minor
| risk for schizophrenia, right? And that it not only
| metabolize is catecholamines, but also estrogens? How did
| you know the COMT enzyme is stimulated by magnesium and
| SAMe? Maybe the person needs just more of those than
| needing to have genetic therapy.
| nick__m wrote:
| You didn't argue for anything! Assuming science had the
| ability to cleanly edit that variant (which is not the
| case today), the ethical choice is to remove that small
| risk factor.
|
| That variant of the COMT gene have a mountain of evidence
| against it and no evidence showing any benefit
| whatsoever. The fact that the COMT enzyme is also
| implicated in estrogen metabolism is not an argument for
| or against editing out the known defective variant of the
| COMT gene.
|
| There is an argument to be made that we should wait until
| medical science has the means to cleanly and reliably do
| a single gene edit but I don't buy the argument that
| removing a gene variant from the humans genes pool is
| eugenics therefore it's bad and should be forever
| forbidden.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > That variant of the COMT gene have a mountain of
| evidence against it and no evidence showing any benefit
| whatsoever
|
| When you look at a single gene, you can see there's no
| benefit. But when you look at the gene in contacts of the
| whole genome, there could certainly be a benefit to
| having a slower COMT enzyme.
|
| For example, in someone with higher homocysteine, this
| would be an advantage.
|
| So you see the problem, you see the gene is bad because
| of looking at the gene as an individual, but I see it as
| probably beneficial when I look at the whole genome. And
| this is why I am against gene editing. Unless you take
| the gene, you wanna edit in the full context of the whole
| genome you don't see the bad effects it might have in the
| long run. And who is doing that? nobody.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| This is just the beginning of all that. "Designer babies" will
| obviously be a big business in the future, and one can take
| that logic VERY far, even for an entire nation where all babies
| will be mandated to have certain genes or characteristics... or
| worst, mandated specializations...
|
| Of course, science fictions authors,scientists and philosophers
| have written plenty of material on the matter and the danger of
| such societies... and it might blow up in our face one way or
| another, but nothing aside of our demise can stop scientific
| progress...
| jl6 wrote:
| Eugenics is any choice that influences the genetic makeup of
| your descendants in a way that you believe to be desirable.
| Choosing a tall partner because you want your kids to be tall
| is eugenics. Eugenics happens every day, in every country. The
| bad rap comes from historical attempts to apply it coercively.
| Parents choosing to eliminate their genetic diseases is _not_
| the same.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Improving the genetic quality of a human population seems like
| a good cause.
|
| What got"eugenics" in disrepute was the evil things done to
| people with "bad" traits:
|
| - Killing them
|
| - Forced sterilizing of them
|
| - Forced abortion of their fetuses
|
| That's awful, but because of the means, not because the goal of
| a healthier population.
| le-mark wrote:
| Clever. So they fertilize an egg from the mother and another egg
| from a donor with the fathers sperm. Then they yank out the
| donor/father "pro nuclei" and replace it with the pro nuclei from
| mother/father egg. Thus the child ends up with the donor's
| mitochondria.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be significantly easier to just use the donor's egg
| here ?
|
| Or adopt?
|
| This feels a bit narcissistic. If you and your partner determine
| you have genetic traits you'd rather not have, you have the
| option of not having biological children.
|
| This just feels like it's going to open Pandora's box. You and
| your partner are short and near sighted, edit in some height and
| vision.
|
| You're partner has ethnic traits they don't want to pass on ?
| Just edit those out.
|
| This feels like something that's going to start well intentioned,
| but snowball into very strange outcomes.
|
| God forbid this ever comes to America's profit driven health
| system. The rich would have the option to edit in "better"
| traits. Gattica here we come
| gedy wrote:
| I doubt problems would be unique to America, many parts Asia
| are more aggressive with selective births and distorting sex
| ratios already, I suspect this will be readily embraced and
| with the much larger populations will be more an impact.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think Fisher's Principle will assert itself in those cases
| where the balance is disturbed currently. People will see how
| "excess males" don't have as good outcomes as "scarce
| females".
| morkalork wrote:
| It's definitely not unique to America, in fact America is in
| some ways only catching up to other countries. What is
| considered legal and ethical in say Mexico or Brazil if you
| have money is a lot looser than in the USA. IVF clinics
| happily advertise that they let you do sex selection.
| laurent_du wrote:
| Why is any of that a bad thing?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Mate selection is, consciously or otherwise, based on these
| considerations already.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "near sighted, edit in some vision"
|
| And? I suspect that when the first glasses were made, someone
| complained about people playing God, too: why do you want to
| correct your eyesight when you were not intended to see well by
| the Almighty?
|
| Correction of genetic problems early on seems a lot better than
| various complicated treatments down the line.
|
| "Strange" often means just "we are not used to it", but the
| next generations will take such things for absolutely granted.
|
| It is no less strange that I, a Central European, am talking to
| an American in almost real time and free of charge, and can
| read his replies. That would be indeed very strange to anyone
| prior to 1995 or so.
|
| And yeah, this connectedness has downsides as well, but we may
| work on them.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What's a genetic "problem" ?
|
| In some Asian countries modifying your eyes to look white is
| a common practice. You could easily end up with biracial
| people editing out some of their more ethnic features for the
| next generation.
|
| Not to mention their might be some mistakes along the way.
| You can't git reset --hard a human.
|
| As imperfect as humans are, that's what makes us human.
|
| Now if as a consenting adult you want to modify yourself,
| laser eye surgery, etc, go ahead.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| What about leaving this to the parents? Does the rest of
| the society (in practice: busibodies who have enough time
| to care) have a standing to stop them? Why should anyone
| worship their ethnic features? That strikes me as extra
| dystopian.
|
| Obviously there are degrees to what is considered a
| problem.
|
| Few people would argue for leaving Huntington's or ALS-
| related code in. That is just cruel.
|
| There are deaf activists who protest any attempts to cure
| deafness, but I would say most people won't agree with them
| either.
|
| Eye color may not be a problem per se, but does not strike
| me as particularly important either - unless the state is
| based on some neo-racist ideology, it probably should not
| regulate this.
|
| IMHO the real zone of shadows begins at outright
| enhancements, especially those that will have downsides.
| Maybe a certain gene sequence taken from bats or whales
| will confer high resistance to cancer, but at the cost of
| XXX or YYY. This is the sort of decision that will be
| really hard.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Honestly it's probably a better idea to ban this before
| it becomes a problem.
|
| You're talking about experimenting on non consenting
| subjects. Why stop at 3 parents. Why not 300. Splice in
| all the DNA you want.
|
| Then 20 years later when the test subject has horrific
| side effects due to processes we don't understand, ohh
| well that's the cost of progress.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Or adopt?
|
| Adopt who? There is almost no children available for adoption,
| only highly handicapped children who needs an auxiliary family.
|
| Might be easier with a donor egg, but where are you going to
| get that? Egg donation is highly regulated and many would find
| it hard to get a donor. Of course this solution also requires a
| donor egg, so you'd already need to have that available.
| stephendause wrote:
| > There is almost no children available for adoption
|
| This is not true, at least in the United States. For one
| thing, there are many children in foster care who want to be
| adopted. It is also possible, though difficult and expensive,
| to adopt infants from mothers giving up their children for
| adoption as well. I am not saying it's an easy option or that
| everyone should do it, but it is an option.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Humanity has discarded natural selection thanks to modern
| medicine. Gene mutations that would have meant someone didn't
| survive now can be treated.
|
| The cold truth is that it is thus inevitable that in the future
| humanity will need gene modification to avoid the spreading of
| harmful mutations. This is what they are doing here, especially
| since mitochondrial DNA is inherited directly from the mother
| means that any problems will be propagated to all future
| generation unlike normal genes.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's not really a "cold" truth: eugenics isn't _inherently_
| bad, it 's just us humans have an annoying cultural problem
| where we do horrible horrible things (including, but not
| limited to, genocide) whenever anyone tries to attempt
| eugenics. (It _might_ be "human nature" preventing us from
| ever doing eugenics ethically, but all the evil eugenicists
| have a shared cultural background, so it's hard to tell.)
|
| From this perspective, techniques that are _technically_
| eugenics, but can 't feasibly be used in evil ways, are
| unambiguous progress. I'm wary of gene editing, but the
| technique described in the article doesn't seem like a
| slippery slope to me.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I just think people are going to heavily disagree what is
| moral and immoral eugenics. Like there was an article here
| recently about how there was drama with gene editing to
| remove blindness in one's children in the blind community
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| When I've investigated _why_ there 's drama (though there
| isn't actually _much_ for blindness, afaik: HN comments
| by sighted people are not primary sources), I 've found
| that it's mainly concerns about the eradication of
| culture - which are understandable: the way the world's
| currently organised, _all_ non-normative cultural
| expression is penalised.
| squigz wrote:
| Can you link to that? This is particularly interesting to
| me because, as I've commented in the past, I've never
| encountered this feeling in the blind community, while
| it's relatively common in the deaf community,
| martin-t wrote:
| There is no _we_.
|
| There are people who have a deep emotional need to control
| other people's lives and use all available tools to do
| that.
|
| There are also people who don't have that need at all and
| would very much like to use the same tools to improve
| themselves or their children.
|
| These are two separate groups but "we" are limiting the
| second group's access to tools in order to prevent the
| first group from misusing it.
|
| In fact, some people tabooize the tools and intentionally
| attack even the second group for using them because they
| either afraid of the first group or, more often, because
| they are not even aware there are different types of people
| with different motivations and driving needs.
| attemptone wrote:
| >Humanity has discarded natural selection thanks to modern
| medicine. Gene mutations that would have meant someone didn't
| survive now can be treated.
|
| There is still selection going on and it is difficult to
| argue that it is not natural. The pressures we are exposed to
| are just not consistent with some idealized natural state and
| thus seem "unnatural".
|
| Be careful, "natural selection" is a specific descriptor that
| describes a selection process that is contrasted by
| "artificial selection". The second one comes up from time to
| time in human context; we call it "eugenics".
| mpalmer wrote:
| This feels like something that's going to start well
| intentioned, but snowball into very strange outcomes.
|
| So it's like most technology, then.
| kenjackson wrote:
| In the US would this be considered abortion by pro-life
| activists?
| blargthorwars wrote:
| I'm prolife. Perhaps. You're destroying one human in this
| process.
|
| Some of us are a bit more comfortable with IVF-like processes
| because the intent is to foster human life rather than take it,
| just as it's acceptable to cause an abortion in the process of
| saving a mother.
| hylaride wrote:
| > Some of us are a bit more comfortable with IVF-like
| processes because the intent is to foster human life rather
| than take it, just as it's acceptable to cause an abortion in
| the process of saving a mother.
|
| But that (fostering human life) is also not a settled debate
| if the laws in some states are any indication. But debate is
| hard in jurisdictions where minority opinion can hold sway
| (like in Florida where a referendum hit 57% for enshrining a
| right to abortion).
|
| While I'm resolutely pro-choice and don't consider a
| fertilized cell to be "human", (before I continue I want to
| be clear, I 100% support these types of procedures in the
| article) there is eventually going to be a grey area where
| debate needs to happen before we hit Gattaca-style dystopian
| editing.
|
| PS This is not meant to argue against your view per se, which
| I disagree with but respect. I mean to illustrate how very
| quickly this gets messy and rational debate flies out the
| window. But that's the same with anything political in
| today's climate... :-/
| N1ckFG wrote:
| Afaik it's a misconception that MRT necessarily involves the
| destruction of an embryo. The spindle transfer method
| transplants the mother's egg's DNA into the donor's egg
| before fertilization, so only one embryo is ever created. The
| UK trials exclusively used the older pronuclear transfer
| method, where two embryos are created and the donor's is
| destroyed, because the journey to full regulatory approval
| took about a decade and embryos are currently safer to freeze
| and thaw than eggs. In a hypothetical scenario where MRT
| became as widely available as IVF, this would not need to be
| the case for new patients.
| sneak wrote:
| Being anti-abortion (what you call pro-life) doesn't also
| automatically mean that you share the belief that human life
| and the associated rights thereof begin at the instant of
| fertilization.
|
| It seems you mean to imply that you are against the
| destruction of a fertilized viable embryo, but then the rest
| of your message seems to suggest that it isn't that
| important.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > You're destroying one human in this process.
|
| How so? They're removing the pro-nuclei before they fuse
| (which is when a new human, specifically their first
| sovereign cell and their DNA, would be formed). So even if
| you consider life to start at conception, this is precisely
| just before that still, meaning there's no human being
| destroyed here - unless I misunderstand the biology going on
| (or the article is not correct).
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Only the extreme fringe is willing to go to bat against IVF.
| Maybe 10%.
| basisword wrote:
| I think it's higher than that. The Catholic Church is against
| IVF. Although not all its followers will stick to all its
| teachings a significant number will.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| It's not dogma, it's just advice. And I think the vast
| majority of people would just ignore it.
|
| Frankly, advice on having children from celibate men
| doesn't need special consideration from women.
|
| I say this as someone who was at least raised Catholic and
| still has an affection for the faith.
| svieira wrote:
| It is in fact _dogma_ that IVF is forbidden to Catholics
| (see Humanae Vitae #12 and the Catechism #2376)
|
| https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-
| vi/en/encyclicals/docume...
|
| https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/se
| cti...
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Neither of those are dogma.
| msgodel wrote:
| Where I came from (rural and very conservative) everyone is
| 100% against IVF and frankly, religion aside, I'm not sure
| it's good. There are certainly ways to abuse it and there's a
| certain kind of person it's popular with.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > there's a certain kind of person it's popular with.
|
| People who have trouble naturally conceiving a child?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't believe you.
|
| Where did you come from?
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| Like what and like who? You don't think people who cannot
| naturally conceive deserve to have kids? Or something else?
| karel-3d wrote:
| There is a gamut of what is pro-life, pro-lifers themselves
| don't agree with each other on IVF.
|
| (the same as with pro-choicers and third trimester abortions
| for example)
| MrDrDr wrote:
| I think it would be better to describe this as an 'organelle'
| transplant as it would be easier for people to understand and
| discuss. Yes there is a donor (egg) and yes the new child will
| pass on the mitochondria to her children. But calling it a 3
| person baby is unhelpful and misleading as IMO mitochondria DNA
| is of a different category to chromosomal DNA.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's inheritable so it's more than a liver transplant.
|
| I agree that DNA in mitochondria is much smaller than DNA in
| the nucleus. But in each person there are many mitochondria and
| they nay have slightly different DNA. And the DNA in
| mitochondria has a different variation than the DNA in the
| nucleus. So it's difficult to weight both.
|
| Can we say 2.1 parents? A long time ago I read that most binary
| classifications are not completely binaries, it's just that 2
| options cover almost all the cases. (Are virus alive?) I guess
| integer classifications also have hidden corner cases.
|
| I also remember from a biology book that in a lab they mixed
| two blastula(?) of small lizards(?) or something like that.
| They had different skin color and the baby had patches of both
| colors. Does that count as 2 or 4 parents?
| tialaramex wrote:
| Certainly Mother Nature is not obliged to have simple easy to
| understand binaries where it would be convenient for us and
| so if we think we see such a binary we should keep in mind
| that maybe we hallucinated it into existence because it was
| convenient and that's all.
| jungturk wrote:
| DNA can migrate between the nucleus and the mitochondria (and
| vice versa) so its not entirely black & white.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| While it is a different category that chromosomal DNA, it is
| still an essential part of mammalian life. None of use would
| exist in our current forms without mitochondria
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This will run into objections from those who believe that life
| begins at conception. I can imagine this procedure being illegal
| in many jurisdictions.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| This procedure is already banned in the US, despite the fact
| that it was pioneered in New York.
| tripplyons wrote:
| Couldn't patients have the procedure performed elsewhere as
| medical tourists? I don't see a viable way to prevent it.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Yes, that's my understanding as well. Those who can afford
| it, can travel to a different country and try. But I assume
| it's so expensive that only a select few can go through
| this process.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Some states have tried to make it illegal to travel to
| another state to have a banned procedure such as an
| elective abortion. I don't know how that has held up in
| court in practice.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I heard from the news in the UK that it's currently only
| allowed in the UK and one other country, which I think might
| have been Australia.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Which is strange because I spoke with God last week and he told
| me he is ok with this procedure.
| Smar wrote:
| Lies, I haven't talked with anyone yesterday.
| globular-toast wrote:
| You should publish your findings in a bestselling book.
| svieira wrote:
| I am pretty sure _most_ people would not be all right with
| organ donation _a la_ The Island. The fact that the person is
| vulnerable and invisible doesn 't make it better.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| When is it a person?
|
| Are women carrying partial people in their eggs?
|
| If most fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant then should
| we monitor urine and arrange funerals for those lost?
| throwpoaster wrote:
| > Are women carrying partial people in their eggs?
|
| Yes.
|
| > If most fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant then
| should we monitor urine and arrange funerals for those
| lost?
|
| Weird strawman.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Not that weird of a strawman:
|
| > According to the Metro, several states have prosecuted
| women for miscarriages or stillbirths. They include South
| Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, California,
| Mississippi, and Ohio. It appears West Virginia has
| joined the ranks as well.
|
| > Though California has since passed laws banning
| criminal charges and investigations of pregnancy loss, it
| previously jailed two women for stillbirths.
|
| Also:
|
| > Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Tom Truman told
| WVNS 59News that a number of criminal charges under state
| code, including felonies, could be levied against a woman
| who flushes fetal remains, buries them, or otherwise
| disposes of remains following an involuntary abortion,
| also called a miscarriage.
|
| We've established arbitrary lines on when the embryo
| progresses to the point of having a legally mandated
| funeral in some parts of the US.
|
| https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/new-law-in-us-state-
| could-le...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > Weird strawman
|
| Comparing abortions to harvesting organs from cloned
| humans? I agree, definitely a weird strawman.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Meh, those "personhood at conception" [0] folks will always be
| whining at reality anyway, since what they imagine to be "plain
| common sense" is actually crazy. To wit:
|
| 1. Identical twins from one conception are _not_ a single
| person.
|
| 2. An entity with chimerism (two conceptions) is one person,
| _not_ two people simultaneously.
|
| 3. If I make an SCNT clone [1] of someone, that's another
| person, not property or a mobile body part.
|
| 4. They aren't freaking out about zillions of regular
| miscarriages, because they don't _actually_ believe those are
| people-deaths.
|
| _________
|
| [0] They _say_ life, but it really helps to nail them down to a
| much more specific definition ASAP, because they often to
| retreat into fallacies of equivocation. HeLa cells are not a
| person.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_nuclear_transfer
| grosswait wrote:
| Many families have private ceremonies for miscarriages
| Terr_ wrote:
| I am personally aware. Yet why do you believe people
| declaring chanting "life begins at conception" _do not_
| make preventing miscarriages into a part of their national
| political platform the same way as criminalizing abortion?
|
| That's like someone who says "cows are people" and wants
| the death penalty for hamburgers, but they're a-OK with
| dairy farms and leather.
|
| It shows that even the proponents of the slogan don't
| actually believe it.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| So much straw here I'm looking for Rumpelstiltskin.
| Terr_ wrote:
| What are you claiming the phrase actually means then?
| w10-1 wrote:
| So mother and father contribute the nucleus, and donor egg has
| everything else-- which is a lot more than mitochondria.
|
| DNA required by mitochondria are both in the mitochondria and in
| the nucleus. This seems to show there is no co-evolution of the
| two; or the genetic distance of the donor might matter.
|
| Still TBD whether other problems arise. If they do, I wonder if
| the affected person has any ability to get medical records of the
| other subjects, to compare diagnoses or treatments,
| notwithstanding privacy protections.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > DNA required by mitochondria
|
| DNA _that codes for proteins that are_ required by the
| mitochondria...
|
| The DNA in the nucleus itself does not make its way to the
| mitochondria.
|
| > This seems to show there is no co-evolution of the two
|
| There is plenty of co-evolution between the two. But the idea
| that the genetic distance between donors doesn't matter is
| pretty substantiated by the fact that people of two races can
| have children.
| amriksohata wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: we unbanned you because you promised you wouldn't do this
| kind of thing, and your account seems to have reverted to the
| earlier pattern. I'm not just talking about the current comment
| --I mean the pattern of using HN primarily to comment on
| political/national/religious/ideological topics. If you would
| please fix this so we don't have to ban you again, that would
| be good.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35505325
| paxcoder wrote:
| But this is fine:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44619241
| dang wrote:
| Of course it's not fine.
|
| If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but
| hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't
| see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at
| hn@ycombinator.com.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&q
| u...
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| Who has to pay child support?
| eddie_catflap wrote:
| My son Oliver was born with mitochondrial disease and was killed
| by conditions associated with it at the age of 19. Some of the
| people mentioned in the report here were involved in his
| diagnosis and care.
|
| His life deteriorated from that of a normal, fun loving
| intelligent kid to an isolated bed-bound disabled teenager, fed
| by total parenteral nutrition and suffering a variety of awful
| complications. His eventual passing was cruel and brutal. I'm not
| sure we will ever get over it as a family.
|
| This treatment does now at least offer me a glimmer of
| grandchildren (my daughter having decided she would not risk
| children of her own until now). It's a remarkable achievement.
| jayski wrote:
| I'm very sorry that happened to your son, and that you and your
| family had to endure it.
| codedokode wrote:
| If most diseases are caused by errors in DNA, cannot we make
| mandatory DNA screening, detect such errors, and warn potential
| parents not to make children? Eventually this could lead to these
| diseases simply disappearing, and studying invalid DNA sequences
| seems to be much cheaper than researching the treatment for the
| disease.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The mapping from DNA to health outcome is unbelievably
| chaotic/high-cardinality, then mixed in with various
| environmental/social/cultural factors that don't show up in DNA
| at all.
|
| Drugs are in fact _how we come to understand_ this chain of
| causality, piece by piece.
|
| So yeah, what you describe is obviously the dream (hand waving
| through some ethical considerations) but we just don't know
| anywhere close to enough about the biology.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I guess you've never met teenagers.
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