First 'three person baby' born using new method
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Here are some references:
Lightowlers, R. N., Taylor, R. W., & Turnbull, D. M. (2015). Mutations causing mitochondrial disease: What is new and what challenges remain? Science, 349(6255), 1494–1499. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac7516
Taylor, R. W., & Turnbull, D. M. (2005). Mitochondrial DNA mutations in human disease. Nature Reviews Genetics, 6(5), 389–402. http://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1606
Smeets, H. J. M., Sallevelt, S. C. E. H., Dreesen, J. C. F. M., Die Smulders, C. E. M., & Coo, I. F. M. (2015). Preventing the transmission of mitochondrial DNA disorders using prenatal or preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1350(1), 29–36. http://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12866
I wonder: How is an embryo dealing with missing a cell at this early? Does this error compound after a few doublings (embryo is smaller)?
There's probably a higher chance of blood type incompatibilities, but that isn't a lifetime genetic disorder for the child, it just needs to be accounted for during the pregnancy.
Suppose that it is possible to make genetic alterations that cause 1) rapid aging, and 2) unavoidable self-induced death at some specific age well before the organism becomes old.
Now you can make clones of yourself, add these alterations, and harvest them for organs when they die. Since they die naturally by themselves, no murder is committed.
I also think it isn't a very likely scenario, engineered organs would probably be enabled by the level of knowledge required to accelerate maturation and death and have the advantage of being faster and cheaper. Doctor's have already figured out how to make simple organs like bladders (that group is close to testing engineered livers in animals http://www.wakehealth.edu/Research/WFIRM/Projects/Human-Live... ).
In our case, the resources were a good health care package from my work, but it's not very far from there to designer-by-selection. I'm perfectly comfortable with our path, even though we didn't have to take any action, but would have been equally comfortable (though disappointed) had we had to intervene.
Except not evolved at all, just genetically engineered by humans. Unless evolved now means semi-intelligently designed by someone with half the necessary information?
[1] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_0...
In that sense, laws regulating how parents may or may not change the genome of their kids are closer to the concept of eugenics than laissez-faire.
Note, I'm not saying that laissez-faire here is the right approach, necessarily. Some amount of regulation is necessary, at least, to prevent parents from knowingly imposing debilitating choices on their children. Which, again, is very reminiscent of eugenics, actually, except that they got carried away with what exactly was supposed to be undesirable, and eventually made it into all-encompassing social engineering approach.
Either way, this is yet another reason as to why healthcare should be publicly funded (or at least have a public insurance option)...
Sometimes here in HN you will hear about how things like name,age, etc are bias for who gets hired, and people being rejected based on those things. So just add "method of conception" to that.
So perhaps they were not so much genetically superior? Maybe motivation can be passed through DNA?
In reality, what I think might happen is some people would choose the genes they want, but others won't. At the end, people will mix, so the whole population will benefit.
But this has nothing to do with the moral issue. Maybe it was the fact that "in-valids" had to struggle and deal with discrimination which caused the character to give his most, given that he knew where he standed while the 'valids' are in a place of comfort.
It wasn't meritocratic except within its two communities, and the one (in-valids) were denied access to the upper levels as a matter of policy.
One thing he had over most of the "valids" was the opportunity to choose his path. The valids' parents made choices for them (Jerome was made to be a swimmer, the 12-fingered pianist, etc.). It's not wholly different than seeing a child prodigy fail as a functioning adult. They don't all, but many times when someone excels in youth in some activity and is pushed into it by the adults in their lives, a failure later leads to an inability to redirect their energy and lives (for extended periods, they become depressed). They existed for a singular purpose for so long and aren't capable (emotionally, mentally) of dealing with the freedom to choose what to do next.
Vincent's character possessed drive for several reasons: 1) he was better than his brother as a swimmer/athlete, and so knew that his in-valid status was nonsense; 2) he was resentful of being shunned by both his parents and society, and motivated by that; 3) as an in-valid, he had no purpose in life, so once he chose one, he put everything into it. The valids who still possessed their potential were similarly motivated with regard to their goals.
For me the message seemed to be "don't do generic engineering because it cannot beat motivation" which discounts the potential overlap between the two and also undersells the potential gains of genetic engineering.
What if his competitors were 10x smarter and 10x faster swimmers than he was as well as being equally motivated?
Something which would make them swim a lot faster and the point of the movie would be lost.
Liz: Wesley Snipes:A few ideas that come to mind are having children with ridiculously amped loyalty, so I can condition them during their early years and then put them to work making money and simply use them as my retirement fund. I could also ensure they're suitable organ donors, and make use of their organs as my own fail.
As with every ethical question, that's only a problem if you think new humans shouldn't be explicitly created for the benefit of the creators.
What if the design starts with the parents' DNA, but makes one change to prevent a disease? Seems like that parent wouldn't be adopting a genetic orphan, and would have the right to take the newborn home. What about two changes? 50? It's one of those "where do we draw the line?" issues.
That'd probably get you 60% of the way to full on designer babies anyway, unless you're going for a trait that's not at all in your gene pool.
I have yet to hear any loud controversy regarding PDG IVF so I think it's one of those situations where genetic engineering will slowly creep up on society and by the time we have a public debate about the ethics it'll be way too late.
Generally speaking, genetics only comes into the picture if someone launches a court case to dispute parentage – e.g. if the mother says X is the father but he refuses to accept that status. But, if a man signs the birth papers for the child, he is legally the father, even if it isn't genetically his offspring. And likewise, if the mother gives birth to the child, she is legally the mother even if the egg came from someone else.
Genetic parenthood by itself doesn't automatically make you a legal parent. At best, it creates the possibility for you to claim parenthood (if you want to), or for someone else to impose it on you (if they want to).
An interesting court case - http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FamCA/2009/691.html - found that the birth mother's cohabiting partner was legally the father, even though the genetic father was listed on the birth certificate. This wasn't what any of the people involved wanted – the birth mother was acting as surrogate for her daughter and son-in-law, who were the genetic parents – but was an undesired to all parties side effect of the lack of legal recognition of surrogacy at the time in that part of Australia. The remedy was the genetic parents had to legally adopt the child, even though they had been raising him as their child from the time of birth.
The poor can't afford this, so fall further and further behind, perhaps eventually humanity splits into subspecies.
This is very well trod ground. See The time machine by H G Wells with the Morlocs and Eloi, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with the Alphas and Betas, etc, etc...
There was a time in which only rich people had toilets and in-house showers, now many extremely poor people have access to those; the same thing will happen with "design babies", there will be a time where only rich people can do it, but as time goes it will become a commodity and making sure you are as healthy as possible even before born will be a human rights issue.
I'm not arguing on the validity of this world view, but it does seems very negative to me, since it can be applied to any powerful technology (that isn't free of charge).
I mean, computers and internet access also costs money, so does this mean that the introduction of these technologies presents an ethical problem, because the poorer part of the population may not be able to afford it, thus increasing inequality?
some folks argue yes, that internet access should be a basic human right.
And this is insensitive to say, but at least it was just the enslaved minority denied basic rights, rather than every single human on the face of the earth.
My first thought was "not everyone has Internet access" -- especially in this relatively small city -- and the possible ramifications of that.
Will those parents have to request a paper copy every time a report card is issued (four times per school year)? Will they eventually stop doing so? Will they stop paying attention to their child's academic progress and will the child's academic performance then suffer? Will the child slowly begin to perform worse and worse (academically) over time?
Will this "digital divide" simply continue to worsen?
I even wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in a net economic benefit, because the reduced overhead of new tech is less than amount of money you need to spend to make sure that everyone has access to it.
Having the kid bring the paper home can be a good reminder. Even my own quite devoted mother would occasionally forget it was grade time until I'd show her the report card.
Damn it, in most parts of the world these days healthcare handled as a public utility.
Actually, yes, there are inherent ethical problems here. In this case (computers/internet), the divide it causes is not so large that it cannot be overcome by training, savings, charitable donations, etc. However, "designer baby" technology, if not available to whomever wants it, results in an increase in feudalism to society.
With a computer, anyone can become a programmer as the technology gets cheaper and more widely adopted. Designer babies and similar technologies may not have the same increasing efficiencies with adoption; such considerations should be made.
Were they bestowed at birth by your parents and could be acquired no other way, then you may have a case.
> the poorer part of the
> population may not be able
> to afford it, thus
> increasing inequality?
And crucially, so are all of those babies' children and their children, because they will inherit some or all of the genetic changes.
Since we're talking about general human morality, I wouldn't put much weight on the particulars of this region in 2016.
On a healthy job market, you get paid about as much as you produce. Regardless of what others produce. You also get to benefit from whatever inventions any new super talented people come up with.
Finally, the more intelligent a population is in general, the more peaceful it is.
Don't use this as part of an argument. Some stories made up based on assumptions of writers not backed by any evidence have little to do with the ethical implications of actual technology.
What? I'm talking about performance-enhancing drugs here because they enhance performance. So everyone else operating in the same space as you will need to also use performance-enhancing drugs if they want to compete. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept to grasp.
If there were a pill you could take to turn you into the mythical "10x programmer," the implication of industry-wide usage would be that you would have to start taking that pill to participate in the industry or else you wouldn't be able to keep up.
Come to think of it, this goes for a lot of other things. Having a car is better than not having one, if only because you shorten commute times, and so have more free time - which translates to better rest and therefore higher productivity, or you could spend it learning new things, again, for higher productivity.
So basically anything that improves your quality of life in exchange for money is "performance enhancing" directly or indirectly.
This outlook basically presupposes that society is a competition of everyone against everyone. Does it have to be? If it does, what does "losing" mean, and can we reduce its impact to the point where it stops mattering?
Not society. The universe. Ressource ownership is exclusive. If I own something, no one else can own the very same thing at the same time.
The other thing is, coming from a "well, something must be done about it" perspective, fixing these aspects of human society strikes me as the least intrusive and harmful side-effect-free approach, compared to all the other alternatives (which are mostly about tightly regulating the tech and its use). Heavy handed regulation, in particular, will just produce a black market with no regulation at all, which is likely to result in more problems in the end.
What you 're more likely to have a is clash of generations where the brave new generation will consider their fathers (rich or not) as parasites.
Instead, the rich all got dumb old-fashioned helicopters.
There is no "dumb", "weak" or "ugly" in Nature. These are not objective measurements. They are all judgements passed comparatively to the rest of humanity.
- Someone who can lift 100 kg is stronger than someone who can only lift 80 kg.
- Someone who understand that is smarter than someone who doesn't.
You could possibly have an argument about "ugly".
If I can lift 10 kg this week, and 20 kg next week, am I strong, or ("just") stronger than before?
That someone can lift 100 kg is an objective attribute of that person.
You talked about "dumb", "weak" or "ugly" instead, and have stuck to it.
So I suppose you're right within your changed phrasing, because you chose to talk about something different than my point.
My point being that the words you used were all comparisons, made in relation to a norm. That's the whole point of the thread. That it was actually impossible to use the nouns themselves ("dumb", "weak", "ugly"), exactly because there cannot be any objective measure of it in nature.
Yes, you lift Nkg. You weight Mkg. You measure Xcm. That does not tell whether you are strong, heavy or tall. These are all meaningless in a vacuum. More importantly, it does not tell whether you are stronger, heavier, taller. Stronger, heavier, taller than what, than whom?
You were excluding this context in you analysis, telling that the poors would not lose anything as they would not be worse off from their former self. The context here is that they are not measured against humanity decades, centuries earlier, but to their contemporaries, the elites that would design their babies.
It is impossible to abstract this context from the comparison, precisely because it is a comparison, and because the only meaningful comparison is that which concerns contemporaries.
It seems like you honestly can't tell the difference. Thanks for the chat!
It's new technology. There are bound to be mistakes. There is so much we don't know about how genes work.
Those mistakes will affect a human being's life permanently.
For one, you'll have more male babies, as that's a cultural advantage in many cases. There are people who abort for sec selection.
You open to door to the types of "breeding" experiments that slaveholders have historically engaged in.
You create the foundation for a situation similar to what Asimov depicted in his Robot series.
You create a situation where genetic discrimination becomes a thing with broad economic and social impact.
If this happens, you'd imagine a cottage industry of gene-drive-removers... and then genetic DRM mechanisms in turn. Not a good time for anyone.
He makes a distinction between "negative" eugenics (removing genetic disorders & decreasing mutational load) and "positive" eugenics (selecting for intelligence, appearance, personality, and other desired traits), and considers what will happen if either of those is adopted by either a minority or a majority of the populace.
At a high level, the biggest concern is if you have a minority of the population practicing positive eugenics, because it leads to a runaway "rich get richer" situation. If you think income inequality is bad now - it will only get worse.
back of the envelope:
- each gamete has 1 of 2 choices for 23 chromosomes.
- you need to find any two non-overlapping
- probability of non-overlap is 0.5^23 for any pair
- number of pairs equals (n choose 2) where n is number of gametes = n!/ (2 * (n - 2)!) = 0.5 * n * (n-1) = 0.5 * (n^2 - n)
- to get a 50/50 chance of finding the right gametes: 0.5 = 0.5^23 * 0.5 * (n^2 - n), which is equivalent to: 0 = 0.5^23 * (n^2 -n) - 1
- solved via wolfram alpha, you would need to screen 2897 nuclei non-destructively to get a 50% chance of being able to generate a clone.
I'm not aware if this is possible or not. But obviously if you can just replace chromosomes in-nucleus that is easier than screening, but if you can do that you don't really need this whole process since you can just replace the nucleus after IVF. If you could harvest a sex cell and do meiosis in a test tube, that would also get you your nuclei right away as well -- from 10 seconds of googling, I don't think we have this yet.
I think when they screen zygotes they do it after some replication has happened, so the math really works against you if you need to combine sperm+egg pre-screen because you don't get the birthday paradox effect if you have to commit to your pairings beforehand, you'd need to huge egg supply as well.
>Neither method has been approved in the US, so Zhang went to Mexico instead, where he says “there are no rules”.
[0]https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107219-exclusive-world...
That's not an ethical problem. Also, not a problem since, it's not any kind of problem to consider how kids might like PB&J sandwiches either.
Some of them arise sporadically [1]
In chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO) — a myopathy with the defining features of ophthalmoplegia and ptosis — Δ-mtDNAs are found only in muscle (implying that the deletion event occurred after fertilization in the muscle lineage of mesoderm).
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meanin...
What today we are pleased to panic about in the "Holocene extinction" may in fact just be the opening act to an explosion of diversity, and the two events would not be distinguishable in the historical record.
We have pretty good Trilobite fossils from 400+ million years ago. Why would they leave a trace and humanity not? (given all the stuff we produce: cities, cars, etc.)
If humanity were wiped out tomorrow, I think it would leave plenty of traces that could be found and understood in millions of years by a later civilization with paleontologists are as active as ours. It's just that those traces would be relatively small and/or buried, like human fossils with jewelry and caissons (with geometric iron oxide deposits from the rebar!) from the foundations of large buildings. No monuments or cities, but enough to indicate that we were here and had technology.
Also probably all the plastic in the oceans, until something evolves that eats it all.
Having a child is a very personal decision. There are many factors, and for some, they may not feel adoption is right for them.
It doesn't mean "fuck adoption," and it certainly doesn't give you the moral high ground to judge those who decide that having their own child is the right decision for them.
And I'd add that three people having one child is a better ratio than two people having one for purposes of population control if you extrapolate out the math.
Totally worth peeking into, it's interesting what many countries have considered, have attempted, and are continuing to ruminate on.