Comment by jddj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jddj | Hacker News Reader

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There are a lot of comments here declaring various versions of "slippery slope!".

Looking at history, one would have to conclude that employing science-based methods to improve the natural environment by reversing problems which we have unintelligently created in the past (mosquitoes, rodents, antibiotic resistant bacteria, etc) through our own carelessness isn't necessarily directly linked by a slippery slope to something like eugenics or ecosystem collapse.

We have the potential to do good as well as evil, even capable of implementing laws and international treaties which (for example) prohibit CRISPRing embryos.

Many ideas are worthy of at least being assessed on their merits and not being discarded purely because they belong to a certain class. If there is a genuine slippery slope (which is somewhat ironically claimed with some measure of certainty in the same breath that says we're incapable of foreseeing consequences), but the idea is good, perhaps we could leverage our legal frameworks and social structures to limit that.

It seems crazy that we should be expected to accept the consequences of any negative effects which we have had on the planet to date through our carelessness because approaching them with a scientific method and anything but the crudest tools (pesticides, etc) is labelled "playing god" and totally off limits.

Why do you think CRISPRing embryos is a bad thing?

Eugenics in 20th century was evil because government was trying to decide which people could have children together. The normal eugenics where people decide for themselves, worked well for all species so far. So with CRISPR a law that prohibits using it, dooming people to have ill, or not very smart children is the same kind of evil, as the laws prohibiting interracial marriage in 20th century.

If that was your interpretation, maybe I could have been more clear.

I don't think gene editing of embryos is necessarily a bad thing (nor are there any international treaties as far as I'm aware), I was simply throwing it out there as an obvious example of something we're likely capable of in this space since many countries, including the US, already have laws which prohibit it.

My personal opinion leans more towards a moratorium while the issues with the technology and ethics are ironed out, because of the inherent complexity in that domain.

The linked article touches on the difficulties in achieving gene drives in mammals, and it would be easy to demonstrate that the scale of ethical concerns dwarfs those for attempting to eliminate malaria over a few mosquito generations and only after careful consideration of the consequences and implementation of failsafes. Nobody is concerned that CRISPR will only be available to socioeconomically advantaged mosquitos, for example.

Edit: trying to use fewer parentheses

My point is that "ethics issues" with things like CRISPR and cloning are not real issues, and people talking about them do more harm than good.

For instance if not for multiple countries banning human cloning, we could already have human clones, which would have been very useful in studying how much of human behavior is determined by genes. There already should have been multiple clones of prominent scientists like Feynman, Gell-Mann, Penrose.

As great as it might be to snap our fingers and arrive at that reality, between here and there there's a big dirty transition period riddled with potential human suffering.

Given that a significant number of people identify many ethical and technological issues with human CRISPR, and that public opinion is far from reaching a consensus (if anything, my intuition tells me that in the West your stance is in the minority for people who are thinking about the problem), I'd say that talking about it is actually likely to do more good than harm.

The ethical issue has to do with medical consent. It terrifies me that so many here on HN think it’s ok to experiment on an unborn human being. “Hey, I just gave you cancer before you were born, but hey, it’s all in the name of science, so it’s all good.”

The decision on risk/benefit can be handled only by parents and doctors, not some bureaucrats or hn commenters who do not know enough about the context. "Hey, you are going to be deaf, because someone decided that 10% increased chance of cancer in 50 years is too serious" is not much better than your example, especially considering that in 50 years cancer will most likely be treatable anyway. (for context https://futurism.com/five-couples-crispr-babies-avoid-deafne...)

Except we don't know exactly how these things work yet. It's not like CRISPR or even our understanding of the genome is very good. (Except a few mutations we know are very bad.)

So I can agree to a certain point, but it's not like we are at "sure, fire away" levels like in Star Trek.

I agree that as with any new and powerful tool, caution is required, and it is important to make sure that parents fully understand the risks and are not misled to believe that CRISPR is the only solution when it isn't. But i think it is important to remember that we do not use it because it is not ready yet, not because it is somehow inherently evil.

Theoreteically the capacity to have smart, healthier, longer living children is amazing and a victory for all mankind.

But it won't be for all mankind, just those in wealthy nations and even then only to those who can afford it similar to In Vitro fertilization. The worry becomes further inequality but at a genetic level over just wealth.

If we can eradicate a genetic disease in a few generations, we probably should. But if only the wealthy and powerful are able to then we head toward even more ethical and moral questions.

The world where some people are smarter or healthier is always better than the world where everyone is in equally bad state. Inequality by itself is not a bad thing, it's like climbing over a high wall, one needs to push the the other, then the other will pull the first up.

By the time treatments like this are tested and proven to work, everyone will get them for free, because it will be much cheaper to apply required treatments, and not deal with unproductive member of society later.

If you vote it illegal here, I will just fly to Singapore. You will only make things more unequal.

Whoa whoa whoa, how did we create or contribute to the mosquito problem?

Of the ~100 genus (around 3500 species) of mosquitos, only a fraction bite humans and only 3 genus are responsible for most disease spread: Aedes mosquitoes (yellow fever, dengue, and encephalitis), Anopheles mosquitoes (malaria, filariasis, elephantiasis), and Culex mosquitoes (encephalitis, filariasis, West Nile virus). All of these are invasive species to much of the world, they're only there because they were brought in by humans in the first place just like other invasives, and often fairly recently. Their spread has been further heavily facilitated by human altered environments, not just in the big picture like global warming but also more standing water, disruption of predators, and so on.

And the death toll is actually quite remarkable, around 700,000 people a year die directly due to mosquito transmitted diseases.

Creating predator free breeding environments for them (any place that can hold stagnant water in an urban environment). And feeding them (by being there).

> how did we create

spreading the mosquito species in all sort of vehicles. Killing birds, spiders, bats, fishes and everything except pokemons

> or contribute to the mosquito problem?

Having babies. Lots and lots of human babies full of delicious blood. More humans than ever, mean more mosquito restaurants than ever.

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