First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists
cen.acs.org
cen.acs.org
The article just brushes aside that incident and seems to assume that because China is doing this experimentation, it's ahead in regards to gene therapy targeting the brain.
> Several people died recently in early-stage gene therapy trials in China.
The big question seems to be, how specific is the targeting of these designer retroviruses to the desired cell types and tissues and how is that achieved?
I'm confused what you think the lede for this story should be?
What if this sort of research leads to some prion like disease that either works like a slow acting (fast to spread) neuro-toxin, or a scenario like the Children of Men movie?
Containment and risks need to be considered.
The most concerning part of this story isn't that there's nothing to prevent any of these or worse, it's the push to paint bio-concerns as a ridiculous caricature. Especially in the light of international bio-treaties being a bad joke and the suppression of protective bio-information by the big AI labs.
Fortunately for China they have the luxury of killing people, pretending it never happened, and replacing them from its never-ending pipeline.
China's population is sufficient that no one will notice a few scientists missing. Definitely not beyond their borders. They'll make sure of it.
If this experiment was unsuccessful we'd never know about it and everyone involved would be incinerated.
I don't think you could pull that off in India, population or not. For all their corruption I want to believe they frown on disappearing people if anything for religious reasons.
No I didn't mean anything quite that fanciful, I'm referring to net migration between China and the US. Are more people leaving the US for China, or are more people leaving China for the US? It's a crude measurement, but it beats online doomerism.
They are definitely getting immigrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
High quality scientists leaving UK and US: https://www.nationpress.com/sciencetech/10-scientists-quit-u...
You'll need to clarify what you value about the immigration arguement.
That's what's confusing. Right, your pov is about body count as opposed to any other useful metric. You want to change it? Are you being racist or what.
What exactly is the argument "a bunch of poor people want to come here, even when we're giant fascists, #winning"
See, I don't know if you're actually making an argument from the absurd, but if you're trying to win the America is actually desireable, you might want to gauge what exactly is being desired.
I also have to say that in trying to find hard numbers for any of this I was struck by how little is available beyond early claims in late 2025, plans to "welcome" US scientists in various countries, and other projects that haven't been extensively reported on since. If you can find better hard data on the topic I'd welcome it.
Why? China could do their own thing, and your country can do yours.
1. Fixed number of Senate spots, regardless of State population.
2. First past the post voting everywhere leading to 2 party system.
3. Broken electoral college voting system for presidential elections.
4. Legalized gerrymandering.
5. Legalized bribes, sorry lobbying.
Their democratic system is stuck in the 1870s and they can't reform it. And on top of that they have outsized corporate political power.
It's really hard even for masses of determined inviduals to reform anything.
There is probably a lot I don't know so please ask and I'll do my best to explain my knowledge on the topic to the best of my abilities.
1. This was done intentionally, with great care, by people far smarter than a ragebait post on HN
2. There are two houses of Congress (the second of which is allocated by population).
3. It was done for balance of power
4. The EU has literally emulated this model (see European Commission allocating one per member state).
5. Imagine if Germany was allowed to overrule every law and decision in EU because of population alone. EU would cease to exist.
2. The House's size is also capped, and not directly based on population, which is completely unnecessary in this age of digital communication. There is no reason why we couldn't return the number of representatives to being explicitly population-based—say, 1 representative per 50k constituents, or the like. That would increase the size of the House by about 15-fold, make every representative much more dependent on the votes of their particular district, make gerrymandering much harder (as districts will be smaller and there will be more of them), and make the electoral college much more representative and harder to game.
3. See #1.
4. The European Commission is widely criticized as being the least democratic, most unresponsive, most oligarch-friendly body in Europe.
5. "Representative government" does not have to mean "tyranny of the majority". There are plenty of checks and balances even in the current system that would prevent that sort of thing, provided the enforcement mechanisms weren't entirely operated by and for Trump.
> This was done intentionally, with great care, by people far smarter than a ragebait post on HN.
Ad-hominem, you're assuming things without knowing me.
Those people had no prior art except for the Athenian democracy and a handful of other partial examples. They were not gods. They lived in an age without the telegraph, the telephone, TV, the internet, and many other force multipliers for intelligence, communication and country level organization.
They did all right for their time but every garden needs... periodic gardening.
> There are two houses of Congress (the second of which is allocated by population).
Again with the assumptions. I know about the House of Representatives.
> It was done for balance of power
Back in the day when there was no American nation. There are other ways to protect state rights these days, for example by adding more explicit state rights in constitutions.
> The EU has literally emulated this model (see European Commission allocating one per member state).
LOL. Are you comparing the EU, a loose confederation of nation states, with a full-blown federal states? The EU starts from a VERY different historical context (Latvians, Portuguese and Austrians have far less in common than Oregonians, Virginians and Texans). The EU is also hobbled by this system and the US and China constantly mop the floor with the EU in geopolitical terms. Required reading: history of the Articles of Confederation and its outcome.
> Imagine if Germany was allowed to overrule every law and decision in EU because of population alone. EU would cease to exist.
Again, totally different starting position. Also, there are ways to avoid this. The EU uses some for Parliament voting.
Oh, the US badly needs to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that would help with lots of things.
* * *
Any way, the worst part of this discussion is: the US has such outsized international impact that its shortcomings inflict pain on people around the world, otherwise I would not care.
China basically experienced this last century, collectively asking themselves "maybe we shouldn't suck this bad??"
China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment.
The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts.
I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.
What’s up with whitewashing China on all online platforms these days? You, on hacker news, should know better.
Have you been paying attention? At all?
The US is really trying to cut off its own legs and branding it as removing unnecessary weight. Give it time, we'll get there.
And second, I don't think I said "at the same level as China". It can be the case that both countries are authoritarian and punishing dissidents. And still be the case that China is worse.
Also
https://www.google.com/search?q=china+execution+van
is pure dystipia.
What's going on is PRC sea turtles are returning in record numbers, while no one particularly thinks about diaspora who fled decades ago stuck in their time capsule of what PRC was. 40 years ago, when PRC didn't have riot police and slapped some comprador with lethal prejudice with only means a developing country had, now it's light touch, polite invite to drink tea and self criticism essays while Americans still getting executed on the street without the dignity of van (pure dystopia etc etc) at ~2x the per capita while getting locked up at ~4x per capita.
What's going on is some people can't do math nor accept times change. Democracy may just be the worse form of government vs whatever modern system PRC is trying. It sucks LIO experiment failed, but it's time appreciate history = national power being by weeding dissidents - Patriots certainly don't seem to be getting the hint and refreshing that liberty tree from time to time.
The United States very much started trying to invest seriously for the future in the Biden years, and as it turns out, people associated that with consumer inflation and chucked it out in 2024 for another round of the Republican "wrecking crew" dismantling and demolishing the federal agencies that the USA has historically used to Get Stuff Done in the long term.
At this point it's hard to point to a major country or bloc that isn't shooting itself in the foot.
Congress, but President signed. And it was broadly bipartisan!
The House voted 290–137, and the Senate voted 80–15 to pass the measure, which was then signed into law.
The entire US government looked at working people and said, basically: "No, you are not allowed to take time off work for cancer treatments".
Kidding aside, it is very normal for a huge populous country to dominate once they get their shit together. Europeans mostly made peace with the fact that they no longer have empires, Turks and Brits a bit less so I guess but you will be fine. US is a great country, expect China be greater simply because of its sheer size.
Time to make peace with the fact that the exceptional situation was a phase, not an inherent result of the superiority of the people.
Basically the entire industrial base in Eurasia had been destroyed during WW2. Unsurprisingly the only unscathed industrialized country in the world entered an unprecedented boom. Assuming that everyone else would revert to the Stone Age forever was unrealistic.
Honestly, apart from big ego guys who make things hard, I think the world is actually set to a new united phase. The issues are %100 local, apart from climate change I guess.
That being said, I would still definitely want to live in the US compared to China.
USGOV disemboweled itself, telling its citizens that they'd be better off without all those gross innards. Womp womp, no do-overs on the global stage, sorry.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/donald-trump-us-navy-...
It’s not necessarily that China is “better”, but they clearly have an intentionality to the directions they are pursuing. Sadly, it seems so does the US.
Similarly, letting pilots skip the security check is no big deal. Just check the id_hash of their _pilot_struct against the ids in the day's flight manifest for the current frame being evaluated in the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
If people are really that worried about "exploits" they're free to set a save point before arriving to the airport that morning.
Edit: important clarification wrt the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.