Hacker News Reader

Comment by drilldrive | Hacker News Reader

I am genuinely curious why anybody would think Crispr has any potential in mass-usage. We as a society already determined the highly-less invasive tactics of mass-Eugenics to be highly unethical, why would a clinical/basal attempt at the same idea resolve differently?

View on HN

I’m not sure what you’re picturing it’s used for. It’s not to create genetic super heroes, it’s to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell.

Now. There is nothing stopping a rogue country or person from using it to develop super soldiers. Or better bio weapons.

Nothing except biology, chemistry, and physics.

I don’t think that we can produce a Homelander. We could have people that start producing designer babies. With enough time and low regard for collateral damage, we could have people designed to be highly intelligent. We could have children edited to be male or female. We could have children edited to not manifest African phenotypes regardless of parentage. The sky is the limit.

You don’t need CRISPR for sex selection—-it can already be done as part of the preimplantation screening for IVF.

For the other things, the best editing technique in the world is useless without a known and well-defined target. Intelligence is certainly partly heritable, but it’s not like there’s a single switch that needs to be toggled: genome-wide association studies find hundreds or thousands of linked genes—-and many of them likely have multiple functions. I would bet over-expressing any single one of them leads to many, many more problems than it solves.

Very possible in the early stages. Given time we can probably improve. The only way to know is to experiment.

Super soldiers? Were that the issue, we could take LeBron James, Brian Shaw, or any number of intelligent athletes with various advantages and ask for sperm samples. You could have a couple thousand kids to mold from birth.

It turns out, as a society we haven't done that already, and neither has any other society. Conceptually, it's interesting to think an adult could have their genetics changed, but we have cheaper ways and we haven't even exploited those.

Even if it could be used to create genetic super heroes, there's nothing inherently compulsory about it, in contrast to eugenics.

what if everyone uses it (or other genetic treatments) for augmentation or design? there is a critical mass when compulsory loses its meaning, I think. you don't have to eliminate cash by law for example if no business will take it.

I think there is an essential difference between "you have to do X because it is mandated" and "you practically have to do X in order to keep up". For one, the latter scenario is essentially more democratic than the former, it first requires some critical mass of people voluntarily (in the strongest sense of the word) deciding that they are better off with X, whereas the former may only require a decision from a relatively small number of authorities. This puts strong restrictions on what X could possibly be: for example, you would never have people sterilizing themselves because some critical mass of other people are sterilizing themselves. I will also point out that your argument applies to technological progress in general and is not specific to gene editing.

EDIT: I may have misunderstood you, I interpreted your comment to be about the hypothetical scenario where most people have genetically modified themselves into being "super heroes" and now the people who haven't can't keep up with the rest of society, so it becomes a practical necessity without being legally required. On second reading though I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

A "non-binding eugenics guideline" has been considered highly unethical regardless, so no a non-compulsory solution here fails as well.

Could you please clarify what you are referring to by "non-binding eugenics guideline" and whom you are quoting? Also, could you explain directly why gene editing is unethical without making a vague analogy to eugenics? If the analogy is sound then you should be able to.

Eugenics literally means "well-bred" so any attempts to re-encode ourselves has a direct involvement of Eugenics, so I am not performing analogy here but invoking the principle of a fortiori. Particularly I am not claiming ethics of gene-editing or Eugenics in general, but that the public has no appetite for this as seen with the strong ethical claims against Eugenics.

By a "non-binding eugenics guideline" I mean something akin to "ex-convicts should not produce" or something, I mean there is absolutely zero state or national guideline that I know of that invokes arguments of eugenics, if you know of one then I am mistaken.

Ok, I think you are just playing word games here, using one very broad interpretation of the word eugenics when you say that gene editing is eugenics, and then a narrower interpretation of the word when you say that there are strong ethical claims against it. Things like forced sterilization are obviously unethical but the reasons have absolutely nothing to do with gene editing. Maybe we could make this more concrete if you gave some specific examples of the ethical claims against eugenics that you are referring to, which you think also apply to gene editing. Also, if you are talking about public appetite, I think it's worth observing that this is the first time I've heard someone compare gene editing to eugenics (I'm sure it's been done before, but it certainly doesn't seem common), and your comment is at the very bottom of the page.

I have friends who are not having children despite wanting them because of a genetic defect. That is eugenics, and most would consider it the ethical choice for them.

Perhaps, but as time progresses such methods meet more resistance/grey areas. For instance there are gene sequences that have strong correlation with intelligence, and taking the same schema to avoid having a (nearly assured) kid of low intelligence would be more controversial obviously, or well similar cases 100 years ago of rapists and scum of the earth looking to have kids yes? Look not debating eugenics here, just pointing to any mass involvement of Crispr on child-rearing will meet to the same fate I am sure.

society has no problem with mass-eugenics? see: abortion. or transgenderism. when you grow up in a digital world where everything can be manipulated effortlessly bringing that human agency and engineering into the real world is rather predictable. add the substantial profit motive in there and there is no end to what we might see.

How are abortion or "transgenderism" examples of "mass-eugenics"?

fetuses with down's syndrome are routinely aborted.

And if not for our medical system people with Down syndrome would die to natural selection.

> And if not for our medical system people with Down syndrome would die to natural selection.

I guess I don't understand your comment; what does natural selection have to do with it?

I'm making no statements here except that the abortion of Down-positive children is in fact eugenics. Parent's comment was asking specifically how abortion is "mass eugenics." Maybe saying abortion in toto is "mass eugenics" is overly broad, but certainly it's used for eugenic purposes--Down Syndrome being one such case.

Having an abortion after a prenatal diagnosis isn't the same as eugenics. Obviously, eugenicist or ableist beliefs could motivate an abortion after a prenatal diagnosis, but choosing to have an abortion is primarily a decision about you and your family.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with the transgender reference—any medical interventions trans people have are initiated by the trans person, making it completely unlike eugenics.

Edit: I should probably add that eugenics was widely popular less than a century ago in the U.S. and hasn't gone away completely. I think these examples are poor, however.

For me the motivation is rather important. A women terminating a pregnancy that's an obvious developmental train wreck is different than a political movement with some esthetic it wants to violently force onto society.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com