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Comment by snitty | Hacker News Reader

I've been working on a piece about how humans effectively have hardened firmware, and gene therapies need to do A LOT to try to get around the various defenses our bodies evolved. I should probably finish that article...

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If the institutions of science and technology lasted thousands of years evolution would prefer people with the less hardened firmware, as in, the ones to survive and pass their genes would be the ones with the most "hackable" genes.

Are we still talking egg and sperm in a human body and everybody consenting? In that case, how would having hackable genes improve your chances of survival? If that was a dating app filter maybe.

If your body doesn't reject gene therapy, you might live longer and reproduce more.

I can see that now, thank you.

Imagine all humans have homogeneous advantageous genetic material. We are all healthy and handsome. And then something random targets one or more of such advantageous genes and we are all wiped because we are very homogeneous.

That happens to anything recombinant we produce: crops, cattle, bacteria. That even applies to dog breeds.

"Advantageous" changes as the environment changes. Being a large long lived strong dinosaur is advantageous until meteorite? Then being a small mammal is advantageous. A population explosion of locusts ravages all plants successfully, until a fungus infects and kills almost all, thankfully for locusts some of them which were not "the best" survived that one infection.

Like covid wiped us all right? A deep understanding of our genes means we are more likely to quickly create successful defenses against future hostile organisms, again, the most "hackable" specimens, those in which we could accurately predict the effects of our changes in their genes (including its interactions with virus and vaccines).

And the same homogeneity means that developing a defense for any future hostile organism is much more straightforward, just like e.g. developing software that works on windows is much easier than developing software that works on windows, Linux and mac.

Sigh. Covid was a serious illness. We were lucky and able to leverage science that had been in development for a long time to vaccinate against it. We have a deep understanding of many immune mechanisms, and can effectively treat people against some diseases. Vaccines are super effective (until the virus evolves and then they aren't).

This is also happening with other types of pathogens - antibiotic resistant illnesses are on the rise because we used quickly created defenses to eliminate all but the strongest versions of them. We have very few effective anti-fungal medications, and most of those are very risky.

If we were good at developing defenses for homogeneity, farmers all over the world wouldn't be fungi destroying the monocultures we depend on for modern agriculture (bananas and corn are really great examples). Estimates are that as much of 30% of global crops are lost to fungal infections; I sincerely doubt that homogeneity is the panacea you assume it is.

From Google:

> Making fungus-resistant agriculture is challenging because fungi share many cellular similarities with humans, making it difficult to develop fungicides that target fungi without harming plants or humans.

we know genetic diversity is beneficial from observing nature (sexual reproduction has clear evolutionary advantages that you can look into yourself if you like). yours is an interesting hypothesis, but "developing a defense" is something that we get for free from genetic diversity. we can improve our odds of survival using technology, but culling genetic diversity in favor of gene hacking compatibility comes with some tough trade-offs since you're choosing to ~always adapt manually. not to mention the ethical concerns depending on how this condition arises.

Not necessarily, because (1) the “wild” viruses would still exist and evolve, competing with treatments and maybe learning to leverage them, and (2) bad people use science too.

yah what? This is like the CIA arguing for insecure algorithms so they can spy on enemies.

Think again about your statement, what you're saying is the fitest is the easiest to manipulate? Thats just mindboggling bad, cause you'd also be a honey pot for all the other bacteria and viruses out there.

Easiest to manipulate by humans, not necessarily by virus and bacteria, believe it or not virus and bacteria don't think the same way than us; there may an overlap but is likely not a full overlap.

Ok, so you want the CIA only backdoor?

CIA-only labeled-schematics of the CPU and GPU that they don't share with the KGB.

I dont think you understand the underlying tech of crispr, which this tech is done with.

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/stanford-explainer...

These tools arn't magic, they use the very thing you'd find a virus or bacteria doing to infect you.

Fair

If "your" genes can be so easily modified (down the line by your children doing gene therapies) there is nothing you are really passing on. In fact you are doing the exact opposite. The best way to pass your genes on is to have them hardened, like they already are and stop any gene editing competition before it begins ;-).

If science and technology last thousands of years, I'm sure it will progress far past the point where the body's natural resistance to change becomes an obstacle to any kind of treatment.

Imagine if random DNA really could just float in and out of the blood streams genetics? We'd be constantly battling random protein production and weird abnormal stuff.

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