Will this change potentially be transmitted to his children?
It angers me that a misguided and stringent sense of ethics might slow the deployment of one of the most beneficial technologies ever conceived.
However, any significant lag could spell the end of American economic dominance. For this reason, I intend to start investing more in Korean firms in the next few decades.
The gist of it is, in 1970 someone asked a director of NASA why billions of dollars were being spent on exploring space when millions of children were still dying on Earth. The response in part explained that NASA's R&D was paving the way for satellites with better weather forecasting, better communications, and better equipment that was making its way into people's everyday lives. While a bit morbid to say, the advancements made by NASA have arguably saved many more lives in the long run.
It's hard to see the point in investing in experimental technology whose payoff is unknown, especially when we have definite problems with feasible solutions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The possible payoffs - cancer cures, age prolongation, enhanced food production, disease and sickness prevention - that can come from investing in gene therapies are just too great to ignore.
As a side-thought, the technological singularity is thought of as the point at which we create an AI smarter than us, triggering a run-away effect of self-improvement. What if we end up doing it to our own race first through intelligence-improving gene modification? Can you imagine the implications of applying that intelligence to solving the rest of our problems?
http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/sal...
As to Flint that does seem to be finally over now, though goodness knows it went on for a distressingly long time.
Um, do we know that? Unless I've missed some very interesting research that sounds like an extremely untested hypothesis.
However, there are some pretty strong reasons to think it would work, at least if we're just talking about improving within the typical range of human ability. Going to the extremes of existing ability and beyond is probably possible too, but there are more unexpected problems that could exist.
Shockley only had an IQ of ~125 (even though he became an eugenicist...).
More importantly, Feynman used his low IQ score (124 I think) to show how useless the IQ test was as a predictor of intelligence.
What hasn't been said, but is equally true, is that people as capable in physics as Einstein as currently working as waitresses in No Where, Idahoe. Or they're slaving away as bit-actors in Hollywood because that's what they love.
Or they're sitting behind a computer, typing away on HN, never to know that they're potentially amazing theoretical physicists simply because their 7th grade teacher turned them off to the idea of physics in general so they studied computer science instead.
Until there's some kind of test that tells you your aptitudes at very subject, you'll always have people pick suboptimal paths to excellency and something other than what they absolutely theoretically could have been best at.
We will have super smart burger flippers?
The ethnicity is virtually the same so that is being as close to a controlled parameter as it realistically can be without doing unethical things.
I wonder which types of crime they'll optimize?
Looks at the first Reddit comment on any interesting new technology. There's always someone dismissing the whole idea due to some outlandish risk.
CRISPR is better but not there yet, I believe. Let's get all the way to being able to do the equivalent of sed to our germline cells before we start editing.
Gene transfer can be targeted to somatic (body) or germ (egg and sperm) cells. In somatic gene transfer the recipient's genome is changed, but the change is not passed on to the next generation. In germline gene transfer, the parents' egg and sperm cells are changed with the goal of passing on the changes to their offspring.
Wouldn't you, in order to not destroy the gene pool, want to restrict gene changes to both of those ? Either that or sterilize the patient to prevent transmission of lethal genes ? This treatment is VERY unfair to any children this guy fathers.
Of course I do get that the method used here goes not really support germ transfer (that requires the gene change to happen in vitro)
This is how a trait that is so dangerous when expressed has managed to spread; in regions with endemic malaria, carriers have better survival chances and the difference is sufficient to make up for those who express it and end up dying young.
It is recessive - you need to inherit it from both parents to express it. So it is in fact entirely safe for this man to have children provided he has children with someone who is not a carrier, or ensure appropriate tests are taken during pregnancy.
Most people who carry this trait in developed countries today know about it, because the mechanism is very clear and they will usually know whether or not any of their family expressed the trait, and will have been tested to see if they inherited it. E.g. we had our son tested because his mother is a carrier, but because I am not we knew he could not have sickle cell disease.
My son is a carrier, but all that means is that like the guy in this article, he will want to make sure his partner is tested before having children, and to ensure to decide in advance what to do if both are carriers or if his partner has the disease (such as whether to have an abortion if tests show the child has the disease).
We can expect the number of people with this gene to drop over time because it is now so easy to avoid. But in the meantime a treatment would make a massive difference for those with the disease.
In order to have the disease you need to inherit bad genes from both parents.[1] Consequently there are many more carriers than people who actually have the trait. So any of this guy's children have at most a 50% chance of having the trait if the other parent of the child doesn't have it, and 0% chance if the other parent isn't a carrier.
I'm sure if we sequenced your DNA we would find a number of potentially very problematic diseases for which you are a carrier. That applies to everyone, nobody has perfect DNA.
in order to not destroy the gene pool
There are a lot of morons in this world; many more being born every day. Many of them manage to reproduce before reaching the point where they would be under consideration for a Darwin Award. In the greater scheme of things this one particular genetic defect isn't seriously threatening to "destroy the gene pool".