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Genome-edited baby claim provokes international outcry
A Chinese scientist claims that he has helped make the world's first genome-edited babies — twin girls who were born this month. The announcement has provoked shock, and some outrage, among scientists around the world.
He Jiankui, a genome-editing researcher from the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, says that he implanted into a woman an embryo that had been edited to disable the genetic pathway that allows a cell to be infected with HIV.
In a video posted to YouTube, He says the girls are healthy and now at home with their parents. Genome sequencing of their DNA has shown that the editing worked, and only altered the gene they targeted, he says.
The scientist's claims have not been verified through independent genome testing or published in a peer-reviewed journal. But, if true, the birth would represent a significant — and controversial — leap in the use of genome-editing. So far these tools have only be used in embryos for research, often to investigate the benefit of using them to eliminate disease-causing mutations from the human germline. But reports of off-target effects in some studies have raised significant safety concerns.
Documents posted on China's clinical trial registry show that He used the ubiquitous CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing tool to disable a gene called CCR5, which forms a protein that allows HIV to enter a cell. Genome-editing scientist Fyodor Urnov was asked to review documents that described DNA sequence analysis of human embryos and fetuses gene-edited at the CCR5 locus for an article in MIT Technology Review. "The data I reviewed are consistent with the fact that the editing has, in fact, taken place," says Urnov, from the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle. But he says the only way to tell if the children's genomes have been edited is to independently test their DNA.
Also at STAT News:
The Chinese university where He is an associate professor issued a statement saying that it had been unaware of his research project and that He had been on leave without pay since February, Reuters reported. The work is a "serious violation of academic ethics and standards," Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen said in the statement. The university said it would immediately launch an investigation.
(Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 26 2018, @04:56PM
I see what you did there.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @04:59PM (8 children)
Quartz had a good article on the ethics:
https://qz.com/1474384/chinas-gene-edited-crispr-babies-push-bioethics-into-a-dark-new-era/ [qz.com]
Life is starting to resemble a science fiction novel. Expect designer babies in a year or two. Who knows, we may even need smarter people to complete with the robots for jobs.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 26 2018, @05:09PM (7 children)
If we end up going down that path, expect the robots to win very quickly. That is, unless those "smarter people" are also altered to reach productive maturity in a vastly accelerated time-frame - hard to compete with a robot that's available NOW when your superbaby is still 17 years from entering the workforce. Well, unless this genetic meddling allows us to skip all that tedious mucking about with childhood and cultivate full-grown adult humans, Blade Runner style. But then you get into the "other than the chemistry that runs them, what's the difference between this robot slave and that meat-slave?" territory. Which then leads us back to "if we can get robot slaves to do all this damn work for us, why are we competing for their jobs rather than simply enjoying the fruits of their labour?" At which point somebody posts a link to Manny.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @05:18PM (5 children)
Or are engineered to be able to actually foresee and care about the consequences of such technological advances.
It's a scary time now when there's so little control over technological advances that may not be undoable if something goes wrong. We've already got GMOs spreading in the wild because the corporations that paid for the research were too cheap to use proper containment strategies. Also, because the legal system allows them to claim infringement when the genes migrate into nearby fields.
It's a shame that so many of these people didn't seen Jurassic Park. The question shouldn't be whether or not we can do some of these things, it should be whether or not we should. There's an enormous amount of responsibility that comes from being able to purposefully design organisms in ways that aren't natural.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @05:43PM (4 children)
It would be plenty enough if the edited genome makes humans immune to many, if not all, diseases1. This hand-wringing of "ethicists" is similar to earlier prohibition to learn human body, then the mass refusal to vaccinate... when one man invents a better human, can you imagine how many medical specialists would love to have him hanged and quartered? Their welfare depends on having a steady stream of patients, after all. Just as an example, how much would you pay for a feature to grow your own replacement teeth? This already works in humans - but only once, and then some switch flips and the process stops.
[1] A. Strugatsky, B. Strugatsky, Inhabited Island [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday November 26 2018, @05:55PM (3 children)
The problem with patching vulnerabilities is that those same capabilities are often used by other features. With evolution expect this to be a *LOT* worse. But if the features are late developing, or subtle, it may be hard to tell what is broken.
E.g., one problem with iron is that there's no excretion mechanism, so it's easy to overdose. The obvious fix is to excrete it into the intestines, possibly in the bile fluids. Unfortunately, removing iron from an area is one way the body controls growth of microorganisms. Whoops! There was a reason there was no way to excrete it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:07PM
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @07:35PM
Bleeding.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday November 27 2018, @11:15PM
Another good example would be the natural genetic immunity to malaria caused by a minor alteration to the shape of a red blood cell, which seems like a wonderful development until you consider that inheriting the immunity from both parents causes sickle cell disease [wikipedia.org].
There's also the many inherited genetic immune disorders that we still don't fully understand and still can't cure. Anyone with an urge to fuck with the genetics behind the human immune system (or who doesn't see why it's an ethical minefield) should spend some time assisting a variety of people who have developed multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, or the many other severe genetic immune disorders.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 27 2018, @02:43AM
The plan is to eventually alter the genome of living organisms. In fact most of the "bosses" plan to be around forever. That's probably where Mask's plans to go to Mars himself come from.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday November 26 2018, @05:18PM (14 children)
On the one hand: If this is true, it might not be a bad idea to spread this practice to near-ubiquity in countries that have more people with aids than with indoor plumbing or electricity.
On the other hand: Perhaps in theory this little change does nothing but make the resulting embryo immune to HIV, but in practice it actually does many things, the cumulative effects of which are to provide HIV immunity and also a host of other unknown things, some of which might bring about the extinction of mankind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @05:56PM (12 children)
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 26 2018, @06:35PM (11 children)
Well. Unless instead of "might", they "do." Then it does matter. Hence, caution is called for.
And of course, the potential for an edit at this stage to have further reaching consequence than those intended is also a concern.
OTOH, if you might have a stupid child, and a genetic edit would see to it that you would have a brilliant child... would it be abuse to not do the edit? "I'm sorry, Timmy, yes, you're stupid, and we could have fixed that, but you'll just have to cope." Hmmm. :)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @07:24PM (10 children)
There is always "don't" as the other possibility.
What's the cost/benefit? If it costs a billion dollars to get a moderately smarter kid, then it's not worth it except possibly for the most wealthy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @08:04PM
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 26 2018, @08:09PM (8 children)
Well, since we don't know the cost, and it's impossible to measure the benefit until the prospective resulting edited person does something (or not) with said smarts, seems to me that you're hand-waving about my hand-waving WRT any hand-waving the resulting person might engage in, and that's way too far down the rabbit hole for me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @08:26PM (5 children)
Doesn't seem that way over here. Being unable to afford the process is a great reason for having a "stupid" child instead of a "brilliant" child.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday November 26 2018, @08:50PM
Seems like a great reason not to have a child at all to me. But again, no idea of the cost(s), so... meh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:59PM (3 children)
It might be the state who monopolizes production of new humans, as documented in a well known book. There, however, the state intentionally reduced the intelligence of some workers, so that they can be unthinking slaves. But now we know better - the state is richer not when it has a million slaves, but when it has a million of geniuses. (In earlier centuries being genius was no fun.)
We truly need very smart people right now to just be a worker, for FSM's sake, just to program the fine CNC lathes and mills. It's hard. I have decent education, so additional coordinate systems that you define in multiple places is something that I can algebraically accept and set aside. If you have poor education or low intelligence, you will not be able to run the machines [youtube.com] - a robot will take your job at a mass production facility, and a specialist of a genius level [youtube.com] will take your job in a small machining business.
Note also that humans simply cannot provide replacement if the population in developed countries. People do not want children at all, or a woman wants a token single child, and that's it. Children are more and more expensive with every passing day, considering the required helicopter parenting. Who has time for that? Who has money for that? Here comes the state - softly and without much opposition. Maybe it will be better this way? Most children are cared for in schools anyway. Most parents are not specialists in child care, they are not available full time...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:16AM (2 children)
And that book would be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @01:44AM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @02:13AM
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday November 26 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
Queue jazz hands.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Funny) by fyngyrz on Monday November 26 2018, @09:25PM
(imagines a line of dancers, all waving hands)
...or perhaps you meant cue jazz hands?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @07:13PM
In the absence of any mechanism by which one could do that, what would be the point of the observation? Getting out of bed might cause the extinction of mankind too.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RamiK on Monday November 26 2018, @05:19PM (5 children)
1 baby $40k
3 baby 5% off
5 baby 7% off
9 baby 10% off
20 baby 15% off
>100 baby Please contact sales for bulk orders
Shipping and VAT not included.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @05:28PM (3 children)
This is racist and offensive. Also, it was much funnier the first time I read it on QQ.
XD
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 26 2018, @06:16PM (2 children)
I get the offensive, but the racist bit? The article is about a Chinese scientist genetically altering children . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:22PM
It's both offensive and racists to assume the people of Guangdong have a sense of humor.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday November 26 2018, @10:03PM
You'd think after Gangnam style this sort of jokes wouldn't even bat an eyelid...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 26 2018, @10:18PM
Link, please, highly interested.
I'm a little bit behind on my world domination plans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:14PM
well i guesz it's time to dump those shares in the rubber plantation business ... or is it?
maybe the well to do that can afford to make beauty surgery last past the initial operation will charge their beta class workers extra for STD control:
"i am sorry worker number 4992, i dont get aids. it is YOU who is defective and if you want to fuck around and not be a liability to the company you will pay the 10% wage deduction from your salary for condoms"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:20PM (3 children)
I love how people will just begin wildly speculting and feeling like they live in the future as if this isnt a bs press release. There are so many ways to misinterpret data like produced by these gene "editing" procedures either on pupose or accident. When will people learn to wait for independent replication?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:42PM (2 children)
Number of points
1) no ethnical scientist can replicate because to do so would be unethical
2) ever since CRSPR, scientists have worried about something like this because gene editing became almost too easy
3) it was in Nature which is a 'respectable' source, you can bet they double checked a few things before publishing
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)
1) How convenient for any scammers. Anyway, doesnt mean the methods and results cant be published.
2) Did it beckme so easy? I havent seen that its become any easier than before, just a lot of hype that dropped off once crsp, ntla, and edit stocks started dumping.
3) Nature (along with Science, Cell, PNAS, etc) is a tabloid that loves to publish exciting sounding stuff with worthless methods sections. The respectable sources are all field specific. To be fair Nature is 100x better now than 20 years ago though, mostly just because people can put stuff in an appendix.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:27AM
... unless they've had an appendectomy.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday November 26 2018, @07:26PM (12 children)
> He Jiankui, a genome-editing researcher from the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, says that he implanted into a woman an embryo that had been edited to disable the genetic pathway that allows a cell to be infected with HIV.
And then what, jab one of them with an HIV-infected syringe and see what happens? I mean, if we're already climbing out onto the amoral branch of the bioethics tree, with an eye on that juicy apple growing off the "mad science" twig....
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @08:26PM (2 children)
I found this article in a medical magazine [nih.gov]:
Seems straightforward to perform the test in-vitro. You only need a small test tube with the blood.
In other words, the chinese researcher did not create a monster - he only created a mutation that occurs in humans and naturally blocks the CCR5 entry.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 26 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
That was the intention, but CRISPR isn't perfect or exact. It might have worked, or they might have a fascinating novel genetic disease that will manifest in years to come.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @09:37PM
Or, its just a random mutation to the ccr5 gene.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday November 26 2018, @10:06PM (8 children)
I wonder how the anti-vaxxer crowd will feel about their new uber-babies who come out of the womb pre-edited to nominally be disease-proof.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @10:23PM (7 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @03:29AM (6 children)
I just made a sub the other day about a senator who got vaccinated and died, not news I guess.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 27 2018, @03:40AM (5 children)
The crap headline on it doesn't help.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=30289&title=47+year+old+NY+Senator+dies+after+flu+shot [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:16AM (2 children)
What is crap?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:30AM (1 child)
The stuff spewing from Trump's mouth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:57AM
Yucky stuff?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:30AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:50AM
Yep, its impossible to ever know... what makes you say that?
Guy was apparently healthy. Guy got a flu shot. Guy developed symptoms he attributed to a reaction to the shot. Guy eventually sees a doctor and gets told he is having a septic reaction (overreaction to infection) to something. Guy dies of sepsis. Pretty sure we know what happened here as well as any other cause of death besides trauma.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 26 2018, @10:28PM
An example of amorality, this one. Sorta not surprised to see it coming from China.
----
Other quotes from the game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford