Human genetic engineering is coming
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies.
We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.
as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo".
The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.
"The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away.
For example, when I was a child, British tabloids were saying “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-19...
(Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so).
As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.
Of course, it's not like society has any choice - if rival nations are willing to genetically engineer humans, can we afford to fall behind?
I don't see what's so hard about it. When something gets better than it used to be, that's an improvement. Better eyesight, hearing, intelligence, endurance, strength, etc etc - improvements.
I won't get into any argument that "less is more". I don't believe that crap. We shouldn't stop until we find the limits of the universe.
When it comes to differences between people, there are a lot of traits that we should be careful about categorizing as better or worse. Especially if it leads to us essentially eradicating the trait via eugenics.
I don't think we're anywhere near genetic manipulation of human mind, if that's even a real thing. Perhaps we could manipulate behavior driven by hormones, but I don't think we could do too much there without breaking the whole system.
If the negatives subjectively don't outweigh the positives, that's usually considered "deal with the devil" territory and is the kind of thing sci-fi writers love.
My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.
Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.
A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life.
For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell.
These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation.
For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.
You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth.
Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries
Gattaca here we come:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
After that, axlotl tanks.
Humans are natural, we are part of nature
After all, human ingenuity is a result of natural selection that emerged precisely because it works better.
My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided.
My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution.
Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.
The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how life begins and how it ends
We really need to come to terms with equity, privilege (nobody earned their genetics), etc. before this is a reality.
Capital and social capital is already giving their offspring an uncatchable advantage on, or outside of levelled playing fields. Genetic engineering could finally cement them into a biological royalty.
"Surely doing wild west genetic engineering would be bad, right? So let's have oversight and laws around it."
"But our friends advised us to check out that one clinic when we're in Dubai next time, and their kids are really exceptionally pretty and are doing so well in sports. I want to be careful for our baby since my grandfather had that one condition..."
https://www.jscreen.org/learn-more/lifestyle-and-planning/fa...
After reading it I feel like Gattaca barely scratched the surface. It was actually a pretty tame movie.
Some of the points made by the author are far scarier: gene editing startups with VC funding and sociopathic founders or amoral autocratic governments (think N.Korea, Russia, etc)
On the other hand, do we even really know how genes work? I thought I read that what we thought were transcription boundaries are not actually boundaries at all, so that greatly increases the number of possible interactions with the genome. And the "junk" dna actually does something. Also, a great many traits and diseases seem to be associated with many more than one gene, which implies interactions between genes which also makes figuring out what happens when you alter specific genes much more complex. The case where one gene is tied to one trait seems to be the exception rather than the rule. And then there is the question of the influence of mitochondrial DNA from the mother, and the recent research showing that certain chemicals can determine which organ stem cells will turn into (which genes control those chemicals? What happens if they get altered?) I'm not convinced scientists really know what they are doing here, which likely means some rather bad experimental outcomes. We can't predict what small evolutionary changes in the coronavirus do, and we're going to precisely control the process that makes a human? I don't think so.
>I expect that human genetic engineering, both therapeutic and “vanity” applications, will become an unfathomably profitable industry in the coming decades.
The most important application, by far, dwarfing both therapeutic and vanity, is improvements to intelligence.
I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
But I don’t think this is true at all. If it was then smart people would agree, but they don’t.
There is another line of thinking (often seen in science fiction) that suggests all problems are solvable if only you are smart enough. But they are not, some problems simply don’t have a reachable satisfactory solution. There is a reason these science fiction stories often come with a ‘benevolent’ dictator to impose the smart fix on everyone, because taking away free will is the only way to solve some of the hardest problems.
I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
Why not?
>I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
I don't want the next generation to agree with me. I want them to be on the next level.
>I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
If you have a society of monkeys, no matter how worldly, emotionally intelligent they are - they are not creating astrolabes to travel the oceans, they are not domesticating animals, they are not writing plays, they are not building huts, even.
Similarly, if you create a society of humans with a higher average intelligence, we will likewise experience a phase shift and access new wonders of culture and science that are simply inaccessible or extremely impractical right now. I cannot tell you what these wonders will be, but I am certain they exist.
And in my humble opinion, we have already started to hit a wall in terms of what areas of intellectual achievement are possible with our current 'hardware' limitations. There are already areas of math, of physics, of biology that maybe 10-20 people on the whole Earth are capable of working in. We struggle to come up with any satisfying macro economic theory with testable predictions. Religious thought has very obviously stalled as well.
Think about how much different the concept of IQ is if we don't have computers. With computers we just think of IQ as a type of clock speed of the brain. To get "smarter" people then we just need to do some kind of overclocking.
It seems likely to me we are confusing a model for reality. Even worse that in confusing that particular brain/computer model for reality we tend to confuse all models of reality for reality. Simulation theory on down.
Simple example: how many people in the USA understand that inflation / money printing / quantitative easing is a tax and should be avoided at the level it is used to finance the spending? Not many, for sure.
Btw intelligence is not only sheer analytical power, it is also emotional control, selintrospection, focus skill, collaboration and interpersonal skill.
Not hugely surprising to today-me, but I was still young enough that it was a bit disillusioning to see that people couldn't even see (or say out loud) that being more intelligent would help us all.
I thought I was terrified of this shit before, but that phrasing hits like the doorframe of a Crown Victoria.
But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?
It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?
That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model?
Yeah that fucking terrifying.
It's at the intersection of education and healthcare.
Is it so outlandish to think that, in a country where education is so expensive it takes the average college student 20 years to pay off their debt; and medical costs are the cause of more than 60% of bankruptcies; a procedure that combined the two might be expensive?
There is nothing sacred about it. It's just a biological process. The only problem with GM babies are ethical considerations. But given how humanity as a whole could benefit immensely if these tests are successful, I think it's worth the sacrifice. Like even today we brainwash kids into fighting pointless wars where there is literally no benefit to mankind. On the other hand Genetic engineering can literally carve a new race of humanity. I am pretty sure China is already doing it. Unfortunately the west is too weak to take such tough moral decisions which benefit the community at the expense of the individual. Communism will win over here. Hopefully it takes all of mankind with it rather than some super sino master race.
Of course the main drug class for this are peptides.
An example being melatonan 2, which activate melanin in a continuous like, dose dependent manner. so you can progressively darken your skin https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d...
if abused, you can become ultrablack https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/15/04/2B6033FA000005... this change is permanent.
now there are much more useful peptides out there, for example: thymalin, the thymus hormone, is revolutionnary as it reverse thymus involution. Thymus involution is the main programmed aging factor, which leads to your death as an evolutionnary advantage. I have discussed this topic enough the last week so I won't go into details here. just so you know thymalin rejuvenate the thymus and increase lymphocite T naive cells production by up to 680% which totally fix immunodepression in the edlerdly and e.g. fix covid since day 1 (would have avoided 15 million deaths were people litterate) or reduce all cause mortality in humans by 410% when coadministarted with epitalon,
epitalon allow your cells to bypass the hayflick limit (maximum number of divisions). It also rejuvenate the pineal gland and therefore fix age related sleep issues.
BPC-157 significantly accelerate the time it takes for a physical injury to resorb. It is also unique in it's tendon rejenerative properties, its angiogenesis superior to VEGF, neuromodulation and its effect on IBS.
cortexin/cerebrosylin are potently nootropics and neuroprotective. Rethinalamin rejuvenate the eyes which can un-blind people in some conditions, e.g. solve glaucoma and macular degeneration.
PNC-27 is one of the most interesting peptide, since it is basically the best cure against cancer e.g. https://touroscholar.touro.edu/sjlcas/vol13/iss2/7/
there is an unlimited potential for peptides, many "incurable" diseases have seen peptides specifically made for them and acts as effective cures (e.g. multiple sclerosis), however for the most part their potential is untapped, the reason being that this tech is endogenously produced in the human body, which make them unpatentable, which makes them unlucrative and since public research clinical trials are inexistant, you will never see them massively adopted, unless by accident.
So where is the catch? Why more people are not talking about it and money is not puring into that if that's such a game changer? If it's that kind of miracle cure why for example Gates foundation or any other foundations doesn't invest in it ?