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I guess it is! That said, I don't think the 'slippery slope' arguments made in parliament are valid, precisely because this is a very specific kind of genetic modification:

> "But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorise today go ahead, there will be no going back for society."

Replacing mitochondria is very different to designing genetic traits, either through careful selection of eggs and embryos, or splicing, and I think that conflating the two is silly.

If laws were introduced that would allow modification of the primary genetic material that debate would be had then. This law will not shoo-in laws that provide for that kind of genetic modification.

The 'slippery slope' argument also seems easy to fix in this case.

Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.

> Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.

Cue people shouting about how politics are slow and killing people while also forcing politicians into making medical judgements that they may not be qualified for, further increasing the chance that they become the playthings of lobbyists who "do their homework for them".

I'm utterly divided on this issue by the way, just noting the inevitable discussion that follows your logic.

You could equally apply the slippery slope argument to regular medicine.

> If the NHS starts giving out vaccines today they'll be giving out botox in a few years time, right!?

People can already (though perhaps to a lesser extent) have designer bodies, if they can afford it, thanks to modern medicine. Genetic medicine doesn't seem to introduce a fundamentally new problem.

> invasive genetic modification of humans

Besides safety, are there any issues with that?

There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today. The film imagined a future in which genetic superiority could be measured by percentile and that job eligibility was based almost exclusively on your genetic score.

The implication is that the widespread but costly availability of genetic modification in tandem with free market capitalism would necessarily form such an enormous social wedge.

I haven't thought about the issue enough to agree or disagree with the theory, but I am stating it here as a potential answer to your question.

> There is the GATTACA argument that unequal access to genetic modification will foster even greater socioeconomic inequality than we already face today.

Absolutely nothing we can do artificially will have as great of an impact than genetically gifted individuals having children together ... which is already happening and has been happening for eons ... I mean, that's what evolution is. The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool.

If anything, genetic modification will allow the less gifted to pool funds and improve their own gene pool in a way that was simply not possible before.

Now, I think all of this is futile, for reasons touched in GATTACA. It is my absolute most favorite movie. Watch it again =)

    > Absolutely nothing we can do artificially
    > will have as great of an impact than
    > genetically gifted individuals having
    > children together.

When those two individuals have children their genes are fused together by random chance. Do you really think gene technology won't get better than random chance?

We already have technology that's good enough to improve on that, e.g. splicing out a gene known to cause a disease from one of those parents.

> When those two individuals have children their genes are fused together by random chance. Do you really think gene technology won't get better than random chance?

Yes. Because what really matters is the restriction of the pool from which those random genes are chosen through mate choice. The overwhelming majority of the time you're randomly choosing between identical genes.

When you start playing with genetic engineering, the whole world is your oyster and your choices are liable to be far worse than random chance among a carefully curated pool. I think genetic engineering will be fantastic for curing specific ailments, but will be a total flop when it comes to creating super humans. Natural selection will always do it better.

> The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool.

That stopped some time ago for humans, at least in industralized countries. Modern medicine, long periods of peace and (eventually) welfare provisions have taken care of that. This is a further step in that direction.

Evolution works over huge numbers, both in life and death; by effectively reducing the death-count around the globe, we're progressively abolishing it for humans.

> If anything, genetic modification will allow the less gifted to pool funds and improve their own gene pool in a way that was simply not possible before.

I fear that "pooling funds" could signal a mischaracterization of poor people as "less gifted", which is absolutely not the case. "The poor" are the ones who have historically improved our genepool, by constantly churning huge numbers of children who would then proceed to fight to death (often literally) for survival and success. "The rich" have always opted for in-breeding, low numbers and social welfare among their peers, resulting in weak genes and lots of hereditary diseases surviving the centuries. In this sense, "the poor" have absolutely nothing to gain from genetic manipulation: children are their only resource and they will continue to produce as many as they can, resulting in a stronger and more variegated gene pool without having to add anything to the process.

The GATTACA scenario is real in the sense that a certain mindset is common around modern elites, a view that the rich must be somehow superior to the poor (smarter, healthier, harder-working, etc) otherwise they wouldn't be where they are. Policies like Tony Blair's suggestion that "fat people should pay more for healthcare" are appallingly neo-darwinistic, but they've also been mostly rejected out of a sense of human decency. I expect this will continue to be the case; as a lot of modern history reminds us, it takes very little to send entire populations back to the Middle Ages, and genetic discrimination would light a very powerful fuse.

This treatment doesn't do anything to reward the mutated mitochondrial genes (your 'step in a direction'), it eliminates them from the population.

If you were saying that the mutated mitochondrial genes were a sign of otherwise inferior genetics, gross.

That stopped some time ago for humans, at least in industralized countries. Modern medicine, long periods of peace and (eventually) welfare provisions have taken care of that. This is a further step in that direction.

Evolution works over huge numbers, both in life and death; by effectively reducing the death-count around the globe, we're progressively abolishing it for humans.

That's a common argument, but isn't it putting too much emphasis on death as a driver of natural selection? I mean, a person who lives 80 years without ever having children is as much an evolutionary dead end as a bird who dies before he gets to reproduce.

As long as there are genetic factors that lead to some people have more or less children, evolution is still at work, even if they both live to be the same age.

"I mean, that's what evolution is. The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool."

That's not "what evolution is". See [1] for why this is a fundamentally wrong way to think about it.

[1] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq....

Thanks for mis-quoting me.

This is the actual quote:

> genetically gifted individuals having children together ... which is already happening and has been happening for eons ... I mean, that's what evolution is.

That is exactly what evolution is. The fit only mate with other fit individuals, accelerating the spread of traits which make them fit.

With regard to my other statement:

> The smart get smarter, the fast get faster, the strong get stronger, and the inferior disappear from the gene pool.

The burden is on you to prove that intelligence, speed, and strength aren't being heavily selected upon in the human population. I made it as an off-hand comment, but I think it's pretty spot on regardless.

I didn't mis-quote you. I quoted verbatim two linked and adjacent sentences from your comment. What you claim to be the "actual quote" was the second sentence (which I quoted) and the one that followed it (which I didn't). I didn't misrepresent what you wrote.

I'll say it again: "...genetically gifted individuals having children together" and "The fit only mate with other fit individuals" is not what evolution is. Forms of life (including humans) have sometimes evolved strategies that try to allow them to select mates based on fitness, but the emergence of these strategies also allows those that use bluff and deception to gain an advantage by deceiving fitter mates into mating with them. "Fitness" here isn't some linear value, its multi-dimensional.

Also, the very idea of individuals being "genetically gifted" is fairly meaningless. In a sense, every living human is genetically gifted because we possess genes that allowed every one of our ancestors over the last 2.4 million years to survive long enough to successfully reproduce. Most of the ones that tried didn't manage that.

Survival of genes (not individuals) is what counts. Evolution doesn't have a purpose and it doesn't result in progress ("accelerating the spread of traits which make them fit", as you put it). I just tried to point that out.

GATTACA was a film about a society that only thought they were measuring genetic superiority.

Which is still a great warning to heed, but the hero of the film is the hero because he proves that the genetic screening was wrong about him.

I think that we shouldn't generally take Hollywood movies too seriously when thinking about public policy. It's heartwarming to think that the will can triumph over heart disease but in things don't usually work that way in real life.

The current lottery in genetic endowment that nature provides us is horrendously unfair. I expect that fixing problems is going to be a lot easier than creating super-human abilities so I expect that genetic modification will tend to make life much fairer for the foreseeable future.

But no DNA is being modified.

Technically you are correct, no DNA is being modified. However, the mix of genetic material is being altered.

The mix of genetic material gets altered every time an egg is fertilised. In humans, across the planet, this happens several hundred thousand times each day. It's not something that we should be afraid of.

Not really. Nobody calls it genetic modification when you change your gut flora.

No genome has changed at all.

My concern about this isn't the specific procedure, it is the moving of the line of what is allowed. What will happen next? I am sure there will be an illness where just a tiny bit of gene splicing could improve the lives of x amount of babies.

You look the blocking of websites.. It started with child porn which everyone thought was acceptable but then the same legislation was used against piracy websites. Now Britain has an internet filter...

Before there was a red line in genetics. Allowing this procedure really blurs that line and I worry this is just the start of a slippery slope..

As for how much it helps parents. It doesn't help many with their first child as the parents are often not aware they are carriers of conditions. For subsequent children adoption was always available.

How is different than giving antibiotics to somebody ill? You are preventing the natural outcome, with something artificially created. I think many people when the topic is "DNA" simply over-react.

The argument is that changes to genetics bridge generations. If you kill someone with medicine they die. If you give someone a faulty gene, it could affect exponential number of people with each generation.

Unless it affects reproduction ;)

It is the same with antibiotics, people that naturally would not be able to reproduce, will, so the global genetic outcome will change, and possibly something making a given person susceptible to a given infection will be passed to the next generation. But nobody, fortunately, pretends that it is a bad idea to give antibiotics to patients.

What's wrong with "designer babies".

I think it would be cool if you could clean up your DNA removing all the nasty genetic diseases you could pass on to your children.

I wouldn't really change the appearance of my child though.

Plus I would keep most of the original genetic material just fix the bits that are detrimental to a long and healthy life.

You end up with an aristocracy that can afford to have better superhuman children meanwhile the plebs can't afford it. And it would perpetuate itself. Bye tabula rasa in birth and death.

We already have an aristocracy that can afford better schools, better neighborhoods, and the like. If designer babies one day leads to no more birth defects or unwanted children it is not a future to be feared.

there will always be people who have an advantage over others, the majority simply comes from where you were born followed to whom to you were born too.

The real fear is likely that some will make choices that are not politically correct, it is certain this would happen in non Western countries.

We computer professionals think we'll be or are part of that aristocracy, so it's okay.

We will probably become collared pets once "gene hacking" becomes a thing. The real aristocracy will use the law to make unauthorized genetic modifications a crime punished more harshly than unauthorized computer access, which is already sometimes punished more harshly than crimes like armed robbery.

Consider the ethical implications of the job they pay you to do. Always. Who will be benefiting from my work? Who might be harmed by it? Can I trust my employer to protect--or even just accurately represent--my own interests?

Do not take jobs that grant more power to the powerful at the expense of the weak.

My litmus test for human gene-mod technology will be whether I will ever be able to repair my phi-GULO pseudogene, to restore the mammalian ability to synthesize ascorbates (vitamin C) in the liver, without needing to get permission from anyone to do it, and without paying more than a year's salary or using more than one garage of space on the equipment. If I can do that, this particular genie cannot be re-bottled.

And you can bet I'd be selling CKGGRAKDC-GG-D(KLAKLAK)2 under the table, too.

Taking the most obvious example from India: You end up with lots of boys. They'd just be legally designed instead of backstreet-aborted girls. That kind of gender imbalance and bogus value on the favoured gender makes for trouble down the line: demographic lulz and a miserable time for second-class undesigned/undesired citizens.

Wouldn't this quickly flip the desire to want boys?

If a girl has 1000s of male suitors perhaps they would need to start paying a dowry...

Not that I agree with choosing the sex of your child for non medical reasons.

> What's wrong with "designer babies".

It destroys our existing concept of the human experience. Is it silly to want to live among "natural" children? Then explain me why it's not silly to want to continue the species at all?

I can just imagine our distant descendants reading through this thread, thinking how horrible we are for condemning our children to genetic diseases and inequality.

Just like we look down at the people who fought against the smallpox vaccine because it was unnatural.

> our children

What does this phrase mean?

Children? As in the next generation, descendants, kids, etc? What do you think it means?

Well, I'm trying to highlight the "our" part. Does it matter to you how much the kids have to do with "us"? If so, why?

As I was trying to express above, it seems strange to me to imply somebody is irrational for wanting "natural" kids, but not likewise call someone out for caring about creating "their" progeny at all.

I'm confused about your confusion. All I meant was that future generations will probably think it's weird and immoral that we allow children to have genetic diseases, when we have the technology to stop it.

I'm trying to ask a deeper question in response. Asking what "our children" means was an attempt to get there with a somewhat Socratic method.

What I'm trying to do is get you to consider the full implications of not caring about whether things are "natural". What if we not only swapped around genes, but edited genes directly to cure things? What if we added enhancements? What if we completely genetically engineered babies from scratch and called them "our children", would that be okay with you? What if we made AI enabled robots and called them "our children"? Why not... just not have children at all anyway? At what point do you draw the line, and by what principle? To say that "natural" humans doesn't matter raises the question of why "humans" matter at all in the first place.

I raise the issue of the "human experience" because that's the paradigm I live in, and I wonder what I'm going to do without it. I suspect that anybody who cares about "the next generation" but doesn't care if babies are "natural" also thinks they're living within the "human experience" but they haven't thought it through. I think that if you don't care about "natural" babies, you might as well go all the way and be an anti-natalist. I'm actually quite open to that as well, at least it's consistent.

BTW one way of avoiding genetic diseases without genetic engineering would be genetic screening. Such things exist as I understand, I met a guy who said he worked for a company that did this sort of thing. Certain couples just avoid having children. Maybe they can adopt. Is that unfair to them that they don't get to have "their" children? Again, why does that even matter if you don't care about things being "natural"?

Thank you for continuing this conversation so late after the article was posted, btw. Now that I've laid it all out I wonder what ideas you have in response.

> What if we not only swapped around genes, but edited genes directly to cure things? What if we added enhancements? What if we completely genetically engineered babies from scratch and called them "our children", would that be okay with you? What if we made AI enabled robots and called them "our children"?

All of these things will happen in the (potentially near) future. The world will be much weirder, but also better.

I mean you can argue that people shouldn't reproduce at all, but good luck convincing everyone of that any time soon. A significant percentage of people believe even having such a view is horribly immoral (it's associated with eugenics and other bad things) and that reproduction is a basic human right.

So if we are going to be reproducing, there is nothing wrong with removing genetic diseases.

> good luck convincing everyone of that any time soon

I wonder why people's willingness to accept is your standard for what is acceptable. I would think convincing people of having designer babies, while less extreme, has the same hurdle.

> we are going to be reproducing

And again, "we ... reproducing" seems a little strange here if you're willing to accept a future with robotic "offspring" as an extension of your view. It's more like "we are creating new life and bestowing our culture onto it". Is that what people really want? Is there any point to it?

Congratulations, you were born with Monsanto mDNA Correction! Due to intellectual property restrictions, you must attain a license to activate your reproductive system and pass on our genetic code.

I wish people wouldn't conflate those promoting GMOs with copyright/patent maximialists - the two issues are orthogonal.

Monsanto are an awful company, and a very large part of that is down to their maximalism, rather than the GMO part.

Continuing to conflate the two issues just does one's own argument a disservice (it's a strawman) while also reinforcing the maximalists' position that GMOs have to be patentable.

It is for saving lives, not making people prettier.

One day, in a decade, a century, a millennium, it will be used to make kids prettier.

I don't think it will make them happier though.

There's a genetic modification for that.