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Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

I watched a special on this and all interviewed scientists were drastically against any germ line edits (as in something that would then be passed to offspring) as we simply don't understand things well enough yet. Some groups will eventually do this in a less regulated nation, but for now we have to be very careful.

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"Eventually" already passsed five years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair

I remembered that, but since it was an isolated incident chose to ignore it. I meant at some point China or some other country is going to just give a blanket approval or just not enforce any restrictions and then the game is on.

It seems like we should collectively decide on a reasonable pathway to germ line edits for single gene disorders. If we don’t and keep waiting, someone will do it somewhere. And once the taboo is broken things might get weird in a hurry of the global scientific and medical communities aren’t prepared.

> seems like we should collectively decide on a reasonable pathway to germ line edits for single gene disorders

Genuine question: why? Isn't the argument against germ-line editing one for diversity? If so, it seems fine to have some populations who ban it while others experiment with it.

The argument I have heard for CRISPR are if I recall correctly more about avoiding mutations from "accidental matches" and what that would do to patients and possible descendants.

I imagine this wouldn't be a huge issue with women since they don't produce eggs after birth, but men continue to produce gametes for life. Is there a way to prevent the introduction of the CRISPR edits to spermatocytes? Or do you just have to bank sperm and sterilize as a condition for the treatment?

They’re targeting specialized cells that make blood cells outside of the body. Once they’re reimplemented they don’t move around.

Okay, so they modify outside of the body and then transplant. So that's why it's sickle cell first, because they can do self-transplantation with bone marrow.

Speaking generally, I think you could perform something like this on sperm stem cells. Sperm turn over (the full population dies and is replaced) fairly quickly, but the stem cells last a long time.

It seems more likely they would just, uh, collect a sample of a single sperm cell and treat that, then use it with a treated egg using IVF.

These scientists could not publicly and unambiguously condone this for the fear of being singled out and picked out as "playing god" extremists.So they have to say the platitudes about "being careful" and ethical concerns.

However, when you suffer all your life from a genetic disease such as, say, the sickle cell or diabetes type 1, it is very obvious that it is any delay or hinderance in this direction that is deeply unethical, not the practice. Your germ line gets hundreds of random mutations at every conception, and your gamets get tons more mutations and errors as you age. It's not a dynasty hairloom.

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