Outrage Over Human Gene Editing Will Fade Fast
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Unless the change is one that produces greater fitness in individuals but lowers fitness for the species as a whole. e.g. the environment changes (it happens) and all the folks that would've been naturally adapted (via this diversity) to the new environment were edited out.
Humans are great at thinking about individual risks, but not so great at thinking about systemic or ecological risks (climate change, economics)
As for economical risks and the like, we may be poor at dealing with it in the short term but with time humanity can progress and solve most problems.
> Its not like everyone, everywhere will start gene editing at the same time.
When gene editing technology becomes available, it most likely becomes available across the world at the same time. Sure, poor people might not have access to it, but the upper classes in all countries will.
> but with time humanity can progress and solve most problems.
Wishful thinking. We're about 100 years into the era of human development where we can annihilate ourselves through our own action, and plenty of evidence points to our continued survival being caused by sheer luck (just look up Stanislav Petrov) or because the cause-and-effect changes take longer than 100 years (as in climate change).
And the possible avenues for self-annihilation are only expanding. It used to be "only" nuclear war and climate change, soon it's also gene editing, and the robot uprising is already on the horizon for the next 100 years or so.
Who cares about the 1%? It means the majority will not have access to it at first.
I maintained USAF radar mainframe computers during my time in the service, and we knew our equipment inside and out, and had a pretty good idea when things didn't look right. I'm sure the Soviets did the same with their systems.
Even if we can't tell for sure what effect a particular genetic edit will have, telling customers "Yes this should make your baby smarter" is enough to convince a lot of people.
Also, the risks of off-target editing is massively understated - the FDA is reluctant to allow clinical trials for CRISPR-based therapy in consenting adults, requiring thorough evidence that you've catalogued and proved safe all off-target effects.
Here is a better article from actual scientists: https://www.statnews.com/2015/11/17/gene-editing-embryo-cris...
My guess is that, given the ability for quacks and hucksters to outnumber legitimate practitioners, the results of gene editing will suffer a signal-to-noise problem for years if not decades to come. Even if some particular treatment is proven, it will be set aside if someone else offers a better but unproven treatment.
It is interesting that there are both the means and the demand for human cloning. It stands to reason to assume that it has been done.
Cloning is a remarkably simple process from what I have read. Basically all you do is extract an egg from a female doner, take out its dna, insert a skin cell from the animal you want to clone, pull current through the egg to activate it and then place the egg Into a surrogate mother. The extraction and insertion of dna is literally done with a very small needle — no nano-tech or black magic. Just a needle. It really is remarkable.
I fail to see how one could view the exercise of power to achieve an end that many consider both illegal and immoral as inspiring. Am I missing the point here?
I think while you describe the basic technique in practice it's more difficult to do and especially to apply to a new species than you describe. Here's a paper on the first cloning of a monkey https://www.academia.edu/36564149/. Just scroll down to see the full paper. It's not all that short or simple
Although it is true that there is a large failure rate and it is in essence a pretty expensive operation for something people can already do, which is reproduce.
https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/cloningmyths...
Fewer than 10% of cloned animals survive to birth as of below 2016 report. Given human gestation period are much longer as well as far more limited cycles available per female, you are going to have very hard time cloning humans.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/cow-gene-study-shows-why-most-c...
Your point about the gestation length is really good. Do you have a background in biology or cloning?
Also I just read that horses actually have a slightly longer gestation period than humans
While gene edited children aren’t clones, the bioethics aspects aren’t much different. But, this too shall pass. A lot of hand wringing, then a Streisand type will have a gene edited child and all will be forgiven. (I mentioned Streisand because she had her dog cloned not long ago.)[2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/feb/15/genetics.hig...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2018/feb/...
First outrage has huge spike, second exponentially lower and so on. Example net neutrality.
I feel this is population's way of minimizing energy spent but with very small horizon optimization.
Touching the germ line is a hard pass.
Nuclease based editing with CRISPR is only going to be able to disable things in somatic tissues. You need to include exogenous DNA template in order to evoke precise allele changes, and that's really only possible in vitro.
There's a fascinating video that responds to the propaganda put out by the Chinese scientist who performed the gene editing on twins here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ND3_clSPM
And you can read the first chapter of the book that will come out the next month describing the phenomenon here: http://book.jfg.world
The Revolutionary Phenotype describes the transition of life from protein self-replicator (no known current ancestors), to protein-RNA tangos (no known current ancestors), to RNA replicators (current RNA viruses), to RNA-DNA tango (RNA-DNA reverse transcribing viruses), to DNA replicator (biological life).
The next revolutionary phenotype (let's call it RT) would be one that replaces DNA, first via a DNA-RT tango (machines editing our DNA) and eventually with RT (the machines) replacing DNA completely.
The video I linked above goes over the consequences of this. The book will describe it in more detail, and is slated to be released next month.
The hysteria over genetic engineering will last just as long as it takes for the first few successful attempts to show their benefits, and then everyone will promptly forget it was ever an issue at all.
I think we’ve already fell into this type of scenario and I think this is partially why some are so against it. They’re looking at this as an luxury to families but if done right, gene engineering could and should be used solely to protect against inheritable and community spread diseases. This type of engineering can be a massive breakthrough for developing countries and similar areas.
But looking at this from a realistic standpoint: genetic engineering will be a taboo extreme that only a few will ever be successful with—until it is internationally recognized as beneficial and properly regulated.
Inequality is rising, not falling.
For example, any person at all today can easily get their hands on weapon that would win them any fight with a caveman wielding a bone, sure. But today, there's tanks and satellites and whatnot -- the most powerless became WAY more powerless in contras to the most powerful. You don't compare the poor of today with the rich of yesterday, you compare the them with the rich of today. And you compare the poor of tomorrow with the rich of tomorrow.
> Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon - so long as there is no answer to it - gives claws to the weak.
-- George Orwell
Already it's pretty normal for rich people to consider themselves above socializing with poor people. Adding editing of genes on top of that might not just turn that wide gap into a fortified moat, complete with property rights and patents and enforcement of said patents (imagine getting a mutation by chance that you have no license for), it might also mess up the incentives for medical research even more.
Why find a cure for a disease that anyone can get, that is another "equalizer", when you can immunize yourself and your offspring to it? You may say all such things will always be made available to everybody, but how would you know now? What of the current behaviour of the powerful gives you reason to consider that likely? When it comes to biodiversity and the possibility of extinction, not many HN comments mention the people with the biggest footprints, but a lot mention "overpopulation". So how would that mesh with making the unwashed masses more resilient and healthy? Wouldn't it make more sense to go the opposite way? You see, "perhaps" isn't good enough with something like this. At these speeds, "eventually" steering means crashing into a wall.
Are they equalisers though? And what makes you think gene editing won't be available to everyone? It seems like the sort of thing with an exponential cost curve. It will very rapidly become cheap and accessible to all.
In fact, i'd argue it's likely to be more equalizing than inequalizing.
The rich and already disproportionately powerful will get it and use it first (creating barriers to upward mobility and exacerbating class power divides), then will have every incentive (and even more disproportionate power than previously) to create barriers to access.
Similar to the reason that, 70+ years later, there are only a handful of nuclear weapons states.
EDIT: What hysteria were you talking about?
I think the burden of proof is on the person asserting that to say why it is so. We alter ourselves in lots of ways, why is this different?
> EDIT: What hysteria were you talking about?
All the scientists condemning this as terrible, and articles written about the dystopian future it portends.
This is a fair question. And I've had philosophical problems taking psychiatric drugs, for that matter. (I think it's resolved to some extent by considering that lots of substances we ingest all the time are psychoactive. So it's part of the normal human experience.)
I would say this - Whatever modification you make, you have to come up with a line, a standard, for which you argue "this is still a human." I draw that line at deliberate engineering of genetics. What is yours? Are there some genes that still shouldn't be edited? Maybe you could draw some line there?
OR, if you think that's a silly question and don't care about what is or isn't a human, let's revisit the equally silly assumption that we should care about propagating the human race. I personally feel like if you take such a nihilistic approach to the definition of human, you may as well go all the way and adopt an anti-natalist position. It's just not clear any more what game we're playing.
> All the scientists condemning this as terrible, and articles written about the dystopian future it portends.
Interesting, I'd expect scientists to be on the pro-side of this. I don't know have a strong opinion on the consequential outcomes.
(Made some edits above)
I also don't see how this relates to the instinct to procreate. We don't procreate because we think its the "human" thing to do, we do it because we're human and we have an instinct to procreate. If procreation conflicted with some other drive or interest of ours, we might decide to forgo it (and many do). But this doesn't seem out of bounds of what is typically human either.
Given how so many parents are desperate about their kids to succeed in the super-competitive world, this is bound to become a trend - especially in middle class population who have money for the procedure but aren't rich. In China, Japan, there is cutthroat fight for getting in best schools, be the most attractive etc. These parents are also very easy to be mislead with incorrect/incomplete information.
Gene editing and human cloning will happen: only a matter of time. What we can't accept today, someone else will accept tomorrow.
Now, add automation (remember, this is 2100), climate change and resource depletion into the mix and well, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
And "cloning" in a sense. Only a matter of time before someone finds a gene for obedience and decides to edit it to create a workforce. Amazon warehouse conditions and Equifax leaks will seem like child's play compared to that.
Similarly, life extension treatments may double as the cheapest way to prevent chronic health problems such as cancer and heart disease.
Skin whitening is big business in Asia.