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The US House of Representatives is wading into the debate over whether human embryos should be modified to introduce heritable changes. Its fiscal year 2016 spending bill for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would prohibit the agency from spending money to evaluate research or clinical applications for such products.
In an unusual twist, the bill—introduced on June 17—would also direct the FDA to create a committee that includes religious experts to review a forthcoming report from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM's analysis, which considers the ethics of creating embryos that have three genetic parents, was commissioned by the FDA.
The House legislation comes during a time of intense debate on such matters, sparked by the announcement in April that researchers in China had edited the genomes of human embryos. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) moved quickly to remind the public that a 1996 law prevents the federal government from funding work that destroys human embryos or creates them for research purposes.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing/
[Source]: http://www.nature.com/news/us-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing-1.17858
We covered a related story, Three-Person Babies Could Be Possible in Two Years just over a year ago.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:30PM
Roping off an entire branch medical science as what man is not meant to know is exactly the sort of playing god that they seek to stop.
They're going to be killing people for the sake of imagined science fiction plots, while medical ethics already forbids unnecessary surgery and treatment. That leaves this law only one target: people with treatable genetic disorders.
And I'm not gonna feign ignorance and pretend this is bipartisan fuckery either.
(Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:58PM
How does it target only people with treatable disorders? If you are meaning creating them to then harvest the stem cells I can sort of understand it, but if you aren't I don't see the connection beyond tweaking an embryo so the then person never the get the disease in the first place. The last I checked the test's aren't 100% on if you will get the disease but more of you have a higher probability to get it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:10PM
In this particular case, we're talking about maternal inherited mitochondrial disorders.
These diseases are 95% or more heritable. And they're treatable by just using a different host egg for the genetic information from the mother and father. No more complicated than standard in vitro fertilization, really.
I dare you to tell one patient suffering from one of these diseases that your moral system demands others suffer like them [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:06PM
It is God's will that you suffer. God made you that way, therefore it is His will and you must suffer, for that is God's Plan™ for you. Similarly, it was God's will that you be raped, and since you were raped you MUST carry the child to term and spend the next 18+ years raising it, for it is God's will, else you would not have been raped and impregnated.
(Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:21PM
If that last link was directed at me and I offended you sorry, I thought I was asking out of ignorance not malice. That's why I listed the things that I could see and asked for you/someone else to fill me in on those I couldn't. Damn it Jim, I'm an IT manager not a doctor... - it's a joke get it... I'm a doctor not a (insert profession here) kind of funny. :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:41PM
I read your tone as harsher than it was. I think my point is still relevant to the larger discussion, but it didn't need to be so pointed in the conversation we were having.
An apology is due. Sorry.
(Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:12PM
No problem. There's no inflection on typed words. I appreciate the apology though. It never hurts to be civil to each other. I appreciate the link to. I always enjoy learning things. I'm actually an odd ball in that I have Ehlers-Danlos and can see some of the benefits of adjusting for if not outright removing it from the genepool. My poor sister has it much worse than I do in that it affects her heart as well as her connective tissue. Mine only really affects my skin and joints. I've already had both knees done twice both shoulders done once each and about ready to get them done again. I bruise easily as it is. I actually have low pressure glaucoma due to it and have minir optic nerve damage as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:10PM
And yet they could also just adopt, rather than having kids when they know the kids will inherit problems like that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:27PM
medical ethics already forbids unnecessary surgery and treatment
Circumcising infants because of the fear of sexually transmitted diseases. We can't even wait until they're 5 or 10 or just leave it be as a decision between a man and his partner.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:34PM
Let's not get into the whole "religious bullshit tends to give exemptions to good ethical practices" and "preventative care is care" squabbles.
Instead, let's say you're approximately right, but also focusing on an extreme red herring.
We can also talk about adult voluntary surgeries, like plastic surgery, because that comes closer to home. But those two adjectives(i.e. adult and voluntary) I've included reflect an important attribute of those technologies.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:24PM
I can see using viable mitochondrial DNA instead of diseased DNA in the 3 parent child approach. Anything more than that gets creepy, and I wasn't confident that TFA or the Chinese research referenced was limited to that.
I think “cosmetic” genetics will be tempting. A guy I know once told me that his parents tried to get their doctor to prescribe him testosterone HRT to make him taller. The doctor was able to talk them out of it.
Now imagine we find a way to guarantee a male child will grow to at least 6'6". We all know that tall is an important skill for a leader, so those parents would have opted for cosmetic genetics if it were available. Now let's say as a child, he dreams of being an air force fighter pilot. I picked 6'6" because that's one inch taller than allowed [afrotc.com]. The example is a bit contrived, but that kid's gonna be ticked at his parents when he finds out why he's too tall to be a fighter pilot.
That's not even talking to the cosmetic arms race that will happen among those who can afford cosmetic genetics. Cosmetic here also including other factors such as intro- or extroversion, intelligence, etc.
All though that leads to another interesting scenario. Say enough people chase that kind of vanity and they find themselves with very little biodiversity. All it would take is the right virus to wipe them out. Another scenario is the fate of Stargate's Asgard [wikia.com] race. It would be funny and ironic as hell if the Masters of the Universe one day just started dying out from having cloned themselves one too many times, but otherwise somewhat far-fetched imo.
Likelier is that cosmetic genetics would be subtler, but it would still give the children of the wealthy elite yet another unfair advantage. I'm guessing that it will not be cheap or covered by insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:14PM
Since when does circumcision have to do with STDs? We have better hygene and medical treatments today, but historically problems like phimosis [wikipedia.org], balanoposthitis [wikipedia.org], and others were best treated with preventative measures like circumcision. I've never heard of circumcision provably leading to lower rates of STD infections.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:48PM
Not to go too far off topic, but provably is the key word there. I think the AAP is using “new math” or something, but here you go [aappublications.org].
(no karma bonus checked)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:36PM
And even if it did, violating someone's fundamental bodily rights would be unethical. The ends don't justify the means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:39PM
while medical ethics already forbids unnecessary surgery and treatment
I have a hard time trusting that:
http://www.surgery.org/sites/default/files/2014-18yearcomparison.pdf [surgery.org]
Too lazy didn't click summary:
In the past 18 years, the number of cosmetic procedures for men has increased more than 273%
and the number of cosmetic procedures for women has increased more than 429%.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:59PM
Ah, but that's necessary from the point of view of the patient.