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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't it be significantly easier to just use the donor's egg here ?

Or adopt?

This feels a bit narcissistic. If you and your partner determine you have genetic traits you'd rather not have, you have the option of not having biological children.

This just feels like it's going to open Pandora's box. You and your partner are short and near sighted, edit in some height and vision.

You're partner has ethnic traits they don't want to pass on ? Just edit those out.

This feels like something that's going to start well intentioned, but snowball into very strange outcomes.

God forbid this ever comes to America's profit driven health system. The rich would have the option to edit in "better" traits. Gattica here we come

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Humanity has discarded natural selection thanks to modern medicine. Gene mutations that would have meant someone didn't survive now can be treated.

The cold truth is that it is thus inevitable that in the future humanity will need gene modification to avoid the spreading of harmful mutations. This is what they are doing here, especially since mitochondrial DNA is inherited directly from the mother means that any problems will be propagated to all future generation unlike normal genes.

>Humanity has discarded natural selection thanks to modern medicine. Gene mutations that would have meant someone didn't survive now can be treated.

There is still selection going on and it is difficult to argue that it is not natural. The pressures we are exposed to are just not consistent with some idealized natural state and thus seem "unnatural".

Be careful, "natural selection" is a specific descriptor that describes a selection process that is contrasted by "artificial selection". The second one comes up from time to time in human context; we call it "eugenics".

It's not really a "cold" truth: eugenics isn't inherently bad, it's just us humans have an annoying cultural problem where we do horrible horrible things (including, but not limited to, genocide) whenever anyone tries to attempt eugenics. (It might be "human nature" preventing us from ever doing eugenics ethically, but all the evil eugenicists have a shared cultural background, so it's hard to tell.)

From this perspective, techniques that are technically eugenics, but can't feasibly be used in evil ways, are unambiguous progress. I'm wary of gene editing, but the technique described in the article doesn't seem like a slippery slope to me.

There is no _we_.

There are people who have a deep emotional need to control other people's lives and use all available tools to do that.

There are also people who don't have that need at all and would very much like to use the same tools to improve themselves or their children.

These are two separate groups but "we" are limiting the second group's access to tools in order to prevent the first group from misusing it.

In fact, some people tabooize the tools and intentionally attack even the second group for using them because they either afraid of the first group or, more often, because they are not even aware there are different types of people with different motivations and driving needs.

I just think people are going to heavily disagree what is moral and immoral eugenics. Like there was an article here recently about how there was drama with gene editing to remove blindness in one's children in the blind community

Can you link to that? This is particularly interesting to me because, as I've commented in the past, I've never encountered this feeling in the blind community, while it's relatively common in the deaf community,

When I've investigated why there's drama (though there isn't actually much for blindness, afaik: HN comments by sighted people are not primary sources), I've found that it's mainly concerns about the eradication of culture – which are understandable: the way the world's currently organised, all non-normative cultural expression is penalised.

Mate selection is, consciously or otherwise, based on these considerations already.

I doubt problems would be unique to America, many parts Asia are more aggressive with selective births and distorting sex ratios already, I suspect this will be readily embraced and with the much larger populations will be more an impact.

I think Fisher's Principle will assert itself in those cases where the balance is disturbed currently. People will see how "excess males" don't have as good outcomes as "scarce females".

It's definitely not unique to America, in fact America is in some ways only catching up to other countries. What is considered legal and ethical in say Mexico or Brazil if you have money is a lot looser than in the USA. IVF clinics happily advertise that they let you do sex selection.

"near sighted, edit in some vision"

And? I suspect that when the first glasses were made, someone complained about people playing God, too: why do you want to correct your eyesight when you were not intended to see well by the Almighty?

Correction of genetic problems early on seems a lot better than various complicated treatments down the line.

"Strange" often means just "we are not used to it", but the next generations will take such things for absolutely granted.

It is no less strange that I, a Central European, am talking to an American in almost real time and free of charge, and can read his replies. That would be indeed very strange to anyone prior to 1995 or so.

And yeah, this connectedness has downsides as well, but we may work on them.

What's a genetic "problem" ?

In some Asian countries modifying your eyes to look white is a common practice. You could easily end up with biracial people editing out some of their more ethnic features for the next generation.

Not to mention their might be some mistakes along the way. You can't git reset --hard a human.

As imperfect as humans are, that's what makes us human.

Now if as a consenting adult you want to modify yourself, laser eye surgery, etc, go ahead.

What about leaving this to the parents? Does the rest of the society (in practice: busibodies who have enough time to care) have a standing to stop them? Why should anyone worship their ethnic features? That strikes me as extra dystopian.

Obviously there are degrees to what is considered a problem.

Few people would argue for leaving Huntington's or ALS-related code in. That is just cruel.

There are deaf activists who protest any attempts to cure deafness, but I would say most people won't agree with them either.

Eye color may not be a problem per se, but does not strike me as particularly important either - unless the state is based on some neo-racist ideology, it probably should not regulate this.

IMHO the real zone of shadows begins at outright enhancements, especially those that will have downsides. Maybe a certain gene sequence taken from bats or whales will confer high resistance to cancer, but at the cost of XXX or YYY. This is the sort of decision that will be really hard.

Honestly it's probably a better idea to ban this before it becomes a problem.

You're talking about experimenting on non consenting subjects. Why stop at 3 parents. Why not 300. Splice in all the DNA you want.

Then 20 years later when the test subject has horrific side effects due to processes we don't understand, ohh well that's the cost of progress.

This is too much safetyism for me.

Very young kids cannot consent to any treatment, and if we said "no treatments without personal consent of the patient", we wouldn't be able to treat sick newborns at all.

"ohh well that's the cost of progress"

Yes, it is. We can be a bit more careful, but progress is ultimately risky, because you are entering an unknown terrain. A lot of modern products that you now safely use, including electricity, air travel and banal over-the-counter medications, has a nontrivial body count. If your attitudes prevailed, we would have none of those.

Experimental procedures to save those already here != Experimental reproductive technology.

Before trying to play God and manipulating the very fabric of life itself you can be a foster parent or have a very frank conversation with your partner on your options.

No one’s going to know the long term effects of this until 20 or 30 years later.

“Sorry Billy , you have painful incurable diseases because we created you with experimental procedures that required merging multiple embryos together, good luck.”

What if this creates completely new genetic illnesses? Might not happen this generation, might happen 2 or 3 generations down to the line.

Why is any of that a bad thing?

    This feels like something that's going to start well intentioned, but snowball into very strange outcomes.

So it's like most technology, then.

> Or adopt?

Adopt who? There is almost no children available for adoption, only highly handicapped children who needs an auxiliary family.

Might be easier with a donor egg, but where are you going to get that? Egg donation is highly regulated and many would find it hard to get a donor. Of course this solution also requires a donor egg, so you'd already need to have that available.

> There is almost no children available for adoption

This is not true, at least in the United States. For one thing, there are many children in foster care who want to be adopted. It is also possible, though difficult and expensive, to adopt infants from mothers giving up their children for adoption as well. I am not saying it's an easy option or that everyone should do it, but it is an option.

Sick kids need parents too.

And there's plenty of foster kids, like Dave Thomas who was adopted as a foster kid.

So was my friend D. D's adopted parents asked the state of NJ for the kid that needed parents the most. And boy did the state of NJ deliver.

D had a foster home raided by the FBI. Another foster house beat him. He didn't know how to read until grade 5.

Now he has masters in microbiology from a top 20 program, a job as a data scientist and he's making the better part of $200k to take care of his wife and three kids.

As annoying as he is (he is from Jersey), I know he's a guy I can call who will show up to help.

All because a couple of God fearing parents asked NJ for the most messed up kid in the system. For me, D's parents are saints.

It's sick that our society thinks people deserve children instead of the other way around.

One of my uncles adopted a kid.

He's now a well paid classical musician. He's just like any other cousin. If anything he's MORE successful than the rest of us!

Once I spoke with a woman who was annoyed she wasn't able to adopt a child from a specific country that matches her ethic/cultural background.

Like she's shopping or something.

She's too good to adopt from the community she actually lives in.

>It's sick that our society thinks people deserve children instead of the other way around.

My feelings exactly. Their are absolutely no shortage of kids who very much need good homes.

They aren't perfect, a lot of them are going to need a bit of help like your friend.

The issue where I am is that all adoption agencies facilitating adoptions from other countries have shutdown. All of them because of massive scandals where the adopted children was more or less sold or the parents where lied to. Adoption from abroad is tricky at best, and now it's no longer possible.

As for children within the country, the majority is multi-handicapped children, most of which cannot say at a normal home full time. So the adopted family basically become a place to put the children during the odd weekend or vacations. This isn't a family life, this is you helping the government at your own cost with no benefit to you. As harsh as that sounds, it's not something most people can do. It's incredibly taxing mentally, and you're still not getting your wish of a family.

That's not to say that there aren't children being adopted, but the waiting list is 10+ years. Most children are placed in foster care, which is very different.

"The issue where I am is that all adoption agencies facilitating adoptions from other countries have shutdown. All of them because of massive scandals where the adopted children was more or less sold or the parents where lied to."

Specifically, American parents tried to return to sender a kid they didnt like. Ie they thought they deserved a kid.

"Adoption from abroad is tricky at best, and now it's no longer possible. [...] That's not to say that there aren't children being adopted, but the waiting list is 10+ years."

Being a parent is a about giving yourself away. If you cant do that you're not ready or suitable for a kid.

"Most children are placed in foster care, which is very different."

Who deserve loving families.

Look, I haven't adopted a foster kid: because Im scared Im not good enough; I admit it. But let's not pretend that there aren't a plethora of kids in need of families that we must have IVF for those who are not capable of conceiving their own.

Oh, sorry if that wasn't clear. Foster children here aren't up for adoption, only in very rare cases. The two systems are for different purposes. The foster children typically have needs that require foster parents with special training. Often the foster children still have some contact with their biological parents, so again, specifically not up for adoption. Adopting is difficult, you'd have more success as a foster parent, but it's harder to be approved as a foster family, e.g. you need special training.

I get that systems are different around the world, but solutions like this is still required or at least wanted in countries where adoption is pretty much not an option. It is a pretty fortunate situation to have a society where adoption is so rarely needed, but it's also massively hurtful to would be parents to suggest that they should simply adopt, when they want to, but does have that option.

And yet my friend's parents managed to pick three up.

Btw, his birth mother was alive until five years ago. He found her through 23 and me just months after she'd passed.

That's beautiful about your uncle. Becoming a well paid classical musician is very rare, he must be very good; your grandparents did well.

When I was in undergrad there was this 16 year old street urchin (for that's what he'd become) who'd hang out with us. He was a foster kid, and his was a life long story of abuse and neglect.

He was a nice kid too and, despite all the drugs he took, he could have been very smart.

What contrast good parents make.

My cousin started as a foster kid, which there are no shortage of.

Most foster kids have complicated situations, which I suspect a lot of people wish to avoid. But ultimately it’s going to be work either way.

I’m not opposed to IVF, but this story is just strange. They have to create a healthy embryo from the donor egg, instead of just using that healthy embryo, they rip its DNA out to shove into another embryo.

Feels like a story of just because you could doesn’t mean you should. I’ll take all the downvotes, I’d wholeheartedly vote to ban splicing multiple embryos together like this.

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