Chinese scientists admit to tweaking the genes of human embryos | Hacker News Reader

Chinese scientists admit to tweaking the genes of human embryos

finance.yahoo.com

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Regardless of how we feel about genetic engineering, is anyone else tired of seeing manipulative headlines in regards to any news that comes out of China? Every-time I see a story about China, it has a negative connotation. In this case, "Chinese scientists just admitted to tweaking the genes of human embryos for the first time in history" is purposefully inflamatory. They didn't "admit" it, they actually tried to get it published in some major science publications. Use of the word Admission implies they were trying to be sneaky and hide the results. Thats not the case at all.

Journalists of the world, have you no idea what you are doing? Purposefully causing misunderstanding between nations is the path by which wars are paved.

This is a sore subject for me because while Im American, my wife is Chinese, and therefore half my family is Chinese and lives in China. I do work with Chinese developers everyday, but to hear the world news pundits put it, those developers are by default criminals. This needs to stop.

Personally, I don't feel it's necessarily unethical to perform experiments on human embryos to begin with. Embryos are not conscious beings, nor do they feel pain (although fetuses do, at around the 5th-6th month). To me it is not much different from experiments involving stems cells, human tissue, or what have you.

But even if you did object to the idea, the embryos in this experiment were non-viable, meaning that they were never going to become human beings. I think omitting that word from the headline made it that much more inflammatory.

Is it "journalists of the world?" It just sounds like American propaganda to me, I haven't noticed a similar sentiment towards China in Greek news, for example.

I think Russia and China get the "criminals by default" attitude in the US.

Out of curiosity, I looked up recent China headlines in some UK papers. Method: Google News, search the newspaper's domain for China and list the first three. Includes opinion pieces, and also syndicated ones (though I think even for syndicated editors will usually write the headline). I also included evaluations of positivity and negativity, but of course YMMV.

UK (total: 4 positive, 2 neutral, 3 negative)

The Guardian: "China warns North Korea's nuclear arsenal is expanding"; "How China's Macau crackdown threatens big US casino moguls"; "Chinese school bars windows and balconies to stop pupil suicides"

2 positive, 1 negative

The Daily Mail: "Japan ministers go to Yasukuni a day after China talks"; "Volvo prepares to send 'Made in China' cars to US"; "Host Malaysia avoids Chinese ire over disputed sea at ASEAN summit"

1 neutral, 2 negative

The Financial Times: "China spells out cost of meeting pollution targets"; "Made-in-China cars steer course abroad"; "Mercedes-Benz fined over China price-fixing"

2 positive, 1 neutral

USA (total: 2 positive, 3 neutral, 4 negative)

NYT: "China's Big Plunge in Pakistan"; "Xi Jinping of China and Shinzo Abe of Japan Meet Amid Slight Thaw in Ties"; "Chinese Regulators Fine Mercedes-Benz Over Price Fixing"

1 positive, 2 neutral

WSJ: "Executive Shows China’s First Home-Grown Electric Sports Car"; "China Says Please Stop Hiring Funeral Strippers"; "Debt Builds in China Stock Rally"

1 positive, 2 negative

WaPo: "What China's and Pakistan's special friendship means"; "China's pathetic crackdown on civil society"; "This Chinese feminist wants to be the country’s first openly lesbian lawyer, and police harassment won’t stop her"

1 neutral, 2 negative

USA papers do appear to be more negative, but another trend is right-leaningness being predictive of Sino-negativity. So the apparent country connection may just be a side effect of that.

I am pleased to see that they are at least being open about the fact that things aren't quite working as they expect:

They also found a "surprising number of ‘off-target’ mutations," according to Nature News.

This is the thing which scares the daylights out of me around genetic engineering generally. While some genes expressing differently will present clear dysgenic properties, others may not evince until much later in life - or perhaps even in subsequent generations, by altering gametes or epigenetic in-utero signalling or whatnot in unanticipated ways.

Yes, we can do epidemiological statistical studies to understand what individual genes affect, yes, we can do this for combinations of genes - but we can't study the affect of genes on subsequent generations, apart from in drosophila studies and what-not - which frequently end up demonstrating that yes, these edits do have unanticipated affects a dozen generations down the line, particularly when multiply crossed with other variants, and random mutations.

If human genome tinkering ends up common place, we will end up either with strict reproductive controls, or we will end up reproducing through cloning, and our evolution becomes entirely self-driven. The alternatives are likely just too dangerous.

Edit: sorry, forgot one of my points. Right now, we rely on statistical studies to understand what parts of the genome do. This could be remedied by having adequate computational power and models to actually simulate an organism from the molecular level up. Only then will we actually have some degree of control, and true understanding of what we are doing.

As I posted earlier:

> there did not seem to be much/any effort to design their plasmid to minimise these off target mutations.

It's important to note that the off-target actions are a known problem, and that there are methods to minimise them. Much effort is needed to study and optimise this, of course!

Speaking of genetic engineering, I can foresee the moment when human genetic engineering turns into a profitable activity, and hence another desperately needed innovation for dealing with global warming, malnutrition, poverty, etc. that only Luddites and liberal anti-science anti-third-world-peasant elitists dare object to.

UPDATE: I should say capital-intensive profitable activity.

If you are worried about off-target mutations, you sequence a cell and see if any showed up compared to the parents' genomes + intended edits, and if they did, you toss that embryo.

You may only be able to sequence 30% of a single cell's exome (not even its entire genome), so you will not have that level of certainty.

So grow the embryo further and sequence more of it, or draw upon the prior information about off-target rates to make the best use of 30% coverage and pick ones with inferred rates which are acceptably low. Or use even more CRISPR to get rid of existing mutations to maintain total mutation load at normal rates... Many options.

(Really, all these comments sound like people trying to find an excuse for why it doesn't work, rather than consider how it could work.)

"Admit" is a pretty loaded word. The results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal by the scientists.

To clarify the ethical problem in this research: It's not the same as in stem cell research. When just using stem cells for research, and not "growing them out" to a human being, the main ethical issue is "messing" with creation, however you believe creation happened or what it means for your religion or morality.

But in this research, the intent is to let the embryos develop into full human beings. It would be unethical to edit such a genome if it is uncertain whether or not the individual will suffer due to these changes.

The problem they talk about is that you trade one deadly or very damaging mutation with a couple dozen other mutations with unknown consequences. These are almost certainly harmless, but the risk of introducing another catastrophic defect is still too big.

To make this tradeoff more secure you would need to sequence the embryo's genome at a certain state in its development (after gene editing, but before transplantation) and check it for errors. But we neither have the technology to get accurate genomes from a few (or just one) cell, nor do we have the genetic maps required to tell if mutations have consequences or not.

you obviously didn't read the article. They are using embryoes to be diacarded with defects that would never be able to develop into human beings.

The technique is useless if it is not applied to embryoes which can develop. Sure they may be doing it to nonviable embryoes currently, but that's not the goal.

>however you believe creation happened... There is one accepted path of how we currently think we came to be and a make believe story of how it was created.

Religion and morality do not come into it

>But in this research, the intent is to let the embryos develop into full human beings

As clearly stated in the article, they used embryos with too many chromosomes to be viable.

>the main ethical issue is "messing" with creation, however you believe creation happened

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

The technique is useless if not applied to embryos which don't develop. What the article is talking about is foundational research, not an attempt to actually apply the technique, and I was referring to the eventual application.

I read the article that was kindly submitted here to open the thread. I read all the comments that were posted here before this comment. I read the underlying Nature News article that the submission was based on. Reading that, I discovered that the underlying research paper, "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes,"[1] is open-access, so we can all read it for ourselves to see how what is reported by the study authors compares to what is reported by the thread-opening news story.

[1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13238-015-0153-5

"In the west, we have debates about whether we should intervene to prevent disease or use stem cells, while the Chinese just do it on a massive scale. When I was in China, some researchers showed me a document from their Academy of Sciences which says openly that the goal of their biogenetic research is to enable large-scale medical procedures which will "rectify" the physical and physiological weaknesses of the Chinese people."

--Slavoj Zizek

Where is this quote from?

http://io9.com/5627925/slavoj-iek-wake-up-and-smell-the-apoc...

Someone has to step up and evolve. Once the Chinese are being born smarter, stronger, and defect-free other countries will be sure to follow. (We must not allow a mine shaft gap!)

Strangely, I think this is a case of "this is something that is going to be done eventually by someone somewhere, so it might as well us". US religious "morality" that dictates we shouldn't "play god" is going to cost the US the leadership position in genetics science and research. It's already code the US in terms of stem cell research.

The religious mantra seems to say that people should not play god using scientific instruments in laboratories. Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective breeding through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and potentially adding "good" ones.

Don't forget using prayer as an alternative to medicine and vaccines.

It's like the way the ancient Greeks practised exposure on infants.

What does that have to do with "playing god"? That's asking for the actual one to intervene.

For the sentence about prayer, he may have meant, that those people might also consider using of modern medicine a form of playing god. Because prayer could have cured the illness.

For the second line about Greeks, it's more about Spartans. See http://www.historywiz.com/didyouknow/spartanfamily.htm

I would say even that may be somewhat controversial in some circles. One way of playing god almost nobody will argue with is selective breeding of crops and livestock, a practice that has been well established for millenia.

It's like god didn't give men an extendable genetic material injection tool and women a self-contained incubator...

Women are recursive in a way men can never be.

This is funny because it demonstrates a truly child-like understanding of genetics and the reproductive process, as well as expressing some sort of freudian longing to be a woman perhaps? Why not say something equally dumb, "Men are penis-havers in a way women can never be."

This comment could be shorten to

    Why not say, "Men are penis-havers in a way women can never be."

but even then, it baffles me.

Does it? It's an exact mirror of your previous inanity (except mine is actually logical).

Western religions (various forms of Christianity) formed under hundreds of years of virtual and real slavery conditions. The Roman empire wasn't exactly the friendliest place to live if you were an outsider. Therefore a big part of the belief system is the value of the individual. IIRC, Christianity was one of the first belief systems to suggest that all people _were_ actually people: up until then, "people" was just part of whichever clan you were in. Other folks were sub-human.

So the real question in regards to both abortion and embryo hacking is how much value we place on other humans -- humans of a different color, humans that are babies, humans that disagree with us. Do we treat them as we would want to be treated? Or are they basically disposable?

I'm not a religious person, and the theology gets very complicated, but it's not simply a matter of "religion says this must be bad, so I will reject all science and progress!" Folks on both sides of this discussion tend to over-simplify the positions of the others. Didn't believe you were doing that, but I felt the discussion could use a little more clarification.

Sometimes Hacker News feels like a really cold place. Today is one of those days - and the tone of this discussion is why I'm shuddering.

Please tell me that you at least so much as hesitated an instant before you typed "embryo hacking", please?

My purpose was to draw the contrast between what we do as technologists and what kinds of people we are.

"Embryo hacking" did that quite nicely. It was jarring, and it was supposed to be jarring.

It's jarring because it's wrong. Hacking DNA is nothing like hacking code.

Genes are not code. Genes are visible elements in a much larger system that is horribly complicated, and which no one fully understands.

So by hacking embryos you're guaranteeing there will be unexpected results and outright defects.

Does anyone have the right to create embryos that are defective? I don't think they do, and I don't think the ethical issues are particularly fuzzy.

I agree with your last sentence, but:

Any particular bit of code is a visible element in a much larger system that is horribly complicated, and which no one fully understands.

The issue with hacking human embryos is that it's like working on a four billion year old legacy code base, written by toddlers smashing keys on a keyboard, in a language with no abstraction and where all variables are globally scoped. And the only testing you can do is to watch embryos die quickly or develop into people to die new and uniquely grisly deaths.

>unexpected results and outright defects.

This seems pretty close to the original meaning of "hacking," before "hacker" became a synonym for "Dilbert with VC funding"

This gets particularly interesting when we consider that most people would be absolutely horrified at the idea of killing humans which are "imperfect" in some way, yet as one of the sibling comments says:

Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective breeding through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and potentially adding "good" ones.

Presumably the creation of the embryo would've involved some degree of selection already, so "embryo hacking" seems more like patching bugs before birth... and this process is basically on the border between controversial abortion and widely-accepted selection before conception. I suppose your opinion on it rests on some deep notion of what you think humans and life is/should be.

Also non-religious and ambivalent about this - if only for the fact that governments and corporations are likely going to eventually figure out how to use this tech to their own advantage...

> This gets particularly interesting when we consider that most people would be absolutely horrified at the idea of killing humans which are "imperfect" in some way, yet as one of the sibling comments says:

>> Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective breeding through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and potentially adding "good" ones.

Eugenics got itself a bad name early in the 20th century, but if you discard that cultural meme, the basic idea of purposefully improving genetic traits does make quite a lot of sense. It's that meme that makes people discard the concept wholesale.

Eugenics got a bad name because they've tried to play god by sterilizing people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization . There is no cultural meme here.

There was also the socially-constructed "ideal" human that eugenics strived for, or how it designated non-white races as "inferior" genetically, or the subjugation of the individual's fitness to society's "needs". My feeling is that these ideas are "not even wrong" enough that they'll incrementally come right back if you don't place a moral firewall around the entire concept.

> My feeling is that these ideas are "not even wrong" enough that they'll incrementally come right back if you don't place a moral firewall around the entire concept.

Interesting concept, I haven't thought about that this way before. Thanks!

Sure there is, as you've just demonstrated. Compulsory sterilization is one of many ways to implement eugenics, and the fact that it is so closely associated with the general concept is the cultural meme TeMPOraL was referring to. Other more benign forms of eugenics like incest taboo or selecting your sexual partners are not just acceptable, they are often not even seen as eugenics, because eugenics is "that bad thing the Nazis did".

> IIRC, Christianity was one of the first belief systems to suggest that all people _were_ actually people

Do you mean that literally or was it intended to describe Abrahamic religion ? No flame bait here, genuine question.

I'm probably not the right person to answer this

but it seems that Christianity distinctly less tribal than Judism

its seems that the Old Testament, is essentially the story of 'God's people'

in contrast, especially the stuff concerning Paul, alot of the New Testament is about the Gentile's relation to God

again, I'm not the right expert to answer this question

Buddhism is older than Christianity. It (as far as I'm aware) isn't tribalistic and espouses benevolent treatment for all other humans.

> Christianity was one of the first belief systems to suggest that all people _were_ actually people: up until then, "people" was just part of whichever clan you were in. Other folks were sub-human.

I disagree:

Many people, including Christians, have used religion to justify treating others as sub-human. Consider slavery in the United States, often justified by religion, and treatment of people of different sexual orientations today. Many other horrible things have been done in Christianity's name (which again is true of all religions).

Many religions emphasize treatment of strangers (and guests). I would bet all religions say that, and in other places all religions justify killing the sub-human, apostate 'other'. Religious scriptures (at least those I've read) are self-contradictory, vague documents; subject to wide ranges of interpretations; written by many people over long periods of time. Often people interpret whatever they want to see; perhaps that's necessary if your religion is going to appeal to millions or billions of people, across cultures and eras.

> Many people, including Christians, have used religion to justify treating others as sub-human

I assume Daniel was talking about the early days of Christianity, when Jesus and the Apostles were alive. At that time, they actually meant the whole concept of "God loves everyone individually". Eventually, and especially when Christianity became the official religion of Rome, that changed, but during the early days, that tenet made Christianity revolutionary and dangerous to the Roman elite.

It's already code the US in terms of stem cell research.

Do you have something to back up that statement?

The only US restriction on stem cells is the federal funding of new, embryo-derived stem cell lines. Existing lines can still be used as can stem cells that aren't derived from embryos. Also, private funds can be used for whatever they choose.

I think you're overstating the restrictions in the US.

China can be the lead in this crazy sh*t

One of my friends runs one of the largest water districts in Australia. Upon learning I went to Singapore for a business trip, he told me a funny story about the lack of concern for anything but progress in areas with large Chinese populations. He was being given a tour of the Marina Bay, which is the central bay in Singapore, by the Chinese developers leading the project. They bragged how they dredged the entire bay, reinforced the walls with concrete, and so forth. Basically, they took a natural bay that had existed for thousands of years, and enhanced it to be more stable and sterile. In noting their progress, the Chinese developers stated that they had to move the fisherman to a part of the city that was not so clean, shiny, and modern. My friend, being Western, asked them what they did with all the fish. The Chinese laughed and laughed. They thought he was joking.

> asked them what they did with all the fish

The same thing they did at places like Sydney Harbour, I presume :)

That aside, the double standards present in this comment is breathtaking.

I don't get the joke, what did they do with the fish? Did they just migrate away?

Well, what do you think? Do people "relocate" fish when they develop a coastline? The joke here is that his "Western friend" actually took himself seriously.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I don't see where the double standards apply. Are you referring to the Chinese, or the Aussie?

Why the surprise? This is a logical next step to the Chinese Eugenics program that has been going on for decades.

https://edge.org/response-detail/23838

Welcome to the brave new world, whether you like it or not, it is here and it will only expand.

"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?"

Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, "Dynamics of Mind"

"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?"

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter

How long before someone the EPOR gene and creates a set of unbeatable endurance athletes, ala Eero Mäntyranta (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Mäntyranta#Genetics )?

I'm ambivalent about this. For one, like I've mentioned before¹, I'd like to have humanity in one piece, for as long as possible, and the genome meddling cuts dangerously close in this regard. For another, this is progress and although I don't take pleasure admitting it, setting limits to R&D effort in this direction comes plain and simple out of fear and nothing else. I don't like thinking of myself to be some kind of zealot fighting for religious dogmas. Humanity may not be "ready" only in our perception.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253039

One of the main findings of this work is that within the exome (coding part of the genome) they found many off target mutations. However, there did not seem to be much/any effort to design their plasmid to minimise these off target mutations.

It's a brave new world.

Yes, a brave new world. http://www.vice.com/read/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a...

I don’t think ....

'they have any imperial ambitions to spread China’s borders—they’re not going to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th century—but they do want respect and they do want influence and they don’t trust America or Europe to run the world in the right way, in terms of issues like global warming or equality or economic stability.'

Well, that's alright then.

I have a firm suspicion that most geo-politics are a farce; that the same money that runs the West, runs the East.

That's because - if you always want to win, you play both sides.

Nah, that assumes the East doesn't have its own money.

Win what?

Mainly control or leverage over people. It's quite easy to create your own order out of chaos if you're the one who is providing the chaotic events. The British Empire conquered the East a long time ago.

Well, now we can all go home and watch Gattaca (1997) smugly.

Contrast this (Chinese eugenics) with our dysgenic system of subsidizing defective genetics for the profit of the medical industry, and, well, the obvious result is that western civilization is in big trouble!

More info from this link that shiven shared below: https://edge.org/response-detail/23838

Reply on news.ycombinator.com