[Editors Note: The source article for this story appears to have been extensively edited replacing 'gene line' with 'germ line'. Nevertheless, and bearing that in mind, it is an interesting article.]
Heritable human genetic modifications pose serious risks, and the therapeutic benefits are tenuous, warn Edward Lanphier, Fyodor Urnov and colleagues.
It is thought that studies involving the use of genome-editing tools to modify the DNA of human embryos will be published shortly. There are grave concerns regarding the ethical and safety implications of this research. There is also fear of the negative impact it could have on important work involving the use of genome-editing techniques in somatic (non-reproductive) cells.
In our view, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations. This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable. Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development, namely making genetic changes that cannot be inherited.
http://www.nature.com/news/don-t-edit-the-human-germ-line-1.17111
Would you agree with this assessment? Should this technology be regulated? Once the technique is known, how can we control/monitor what scientists do with this technology?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:25PM
“Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.” -- William Penn
I'm all for improving the human condition by positive eugenics. Unlike the kill-the-weak methods of negative eugenics, this has a great upside with little downside.
As long as the uneducated and uncultured continue to reproduce at faster rates than the educated and cultured classes, the greater good is in doubt.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:33PM
so you're saying that dealing with real people would be so much easier if we were dealing with different real people. i guess it just sucks when the universe refuses to be anything but what it already is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:40PM
> this has a great upside with little downside.
Someone hasn't seen GATTACA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:03PM
> muh hollywood
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:30PM
One thing is true: the writer for GATTACA has spent more effort thinking about this issue than gugnir has.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:38PM
Gattaca shows how there can be a problem with how society deals with genetic selection. Companies ignoring non-discriminatory laws and immense prejudice against people based on their health and genetics.
Scientific problems are often easier to deal with.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:29PM
spoken like someone with a genetic superiority complex. make yourself genetically superior so you can rule over the commoners.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:01PM
If the 'inferior' consistently beat out the 'superior', perhaps the problem is in the grading system.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @10:10PM
There is no problem with the grading system. It has worked for billions of years. If you don't reproduce, you are an inferior loser.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Balderdash on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:36PM
This technology should be regulated heavily, otherwise it may actually provide cures for diseases which currently require expensive medicines for treatment. Those medicines are provided by the companies backing my retirement money. My mutuals rely heavily in pharma stocks.
Think of the elderly!
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:45PM
In reply to your (above) sig--
If you moderate, thanks for being one of the apparently few who deign to look at anonymous user posts.
Maybe you cancel out the one obnoxious frequent poster whose sig says he doesn't bother to even see anonymous posts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:46PM
> otherwise it may actually provide cures for diseases
It also has enormous potential to create new ways to damage people.
It isn't like these traits exist in a vacuum. For example, sickle-cell anaemia is the side effect of a gene that increases malaria resistance. We are just barely beginning to understand these sorts of interactions. It sounds great to say you are going to genetically 'improve' someone but that's easy when you think there is no price to be paid. And it isn't like you can undo it if you find out you've accidentally given your children some other disability.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:01PM
Nature is continually finding new ways to harm people. Would you rather have your random allotment of mutations, or a little intentional engineering?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:27PM
(1) That random allotment doesn't go away because you've deliberately been mutated
(2) When the full impact of a deliberate mutation is not understood, any side-effects are effectively random.
Its great to have such a hopeful attitude about outcomes, but medical history is full of the downside of such things. Those unintentional side-effects are the entire reason the FDA was created in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:32PM
Let's hope the authors of this scare piece are successful in their somatic gene editing efforts, so they can fix such mistakes.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:24PM
One word: Thalidomide.
That is all.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:12PM
The sickle-cell malaria example has been known for years. Probably why you've heard of it.
Any fuck ups can be handled with the somatic treatment. Or we can learn from our mistakes and accept the few deaths/disfigurement. There will never be as many CRISPR disaster babies as there are fetal alcohol syndrome babies or crack babies. The random shuffling of genes and mutations causes plenty of genetic diseases, failed CRISPR et al. will be rare.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:26PM
There are many diseases that people are suffering with right now that everyone can agree is a *disease*, i.e., something that causes them *suffering* and is *maladaptive*. Do you think getting rid of cystic fibrosis, for example, is some bad thing, or a net good? It is a genetic trait that arose to provide some resistance to cholera, much like sickle cell provides some resistance to malaria. But cholera in the West is a thing of the past-- the suffering of having cystic fibrosis is not.
The link below explains many misconceptions people have regarding genetic diseases:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/misconcep_04 [berkeley.edu]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:05PM
Oh, it is super easy to pick some horrible diseases as examples. No argument here.
But again, how do you know that there isn't more to it than just those effects?
It isn't like you can just test it out on a couple of hundreds generations of people like you can with lab rats.
The very first "lab test" is going to be a real person who did not give consent.
The very first bad outcome will also mean crazy ass legislation clamping down on it.
Just imagine the public reaction to a toddler with a condition like elephantiasis that was an unintended side-effect of a procedure like this?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:47PM
how do you know that there isn't more to it than just those effects?
If you revert the mutation that causes disease to a sequence that is normal, as in already "real world tested" by everyone without the genetic disease, then there shouldn't be much to worry about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @11:20PM
Your opinion is based on the premise that there are no secondary interactions with those identified genes. That pulling just those out has no side effects. That other maladaptive genes aren't being held in check by the presence of that first set. The one thing you can count on here is that it ain't simple.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @01:10AM
My opinion is based upon the knowledge that various diseases have a well characterized genetic basis.
Examples included diseases that result from errors in DNA replication of repetitive sequences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinucleotide_repeat_disorder#Polyglutamine_.28PolyQ.29_Diseases) and diseases that result from a mutation that causes a protein to be disfunctional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APECED_syndrome and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysosomal_storage_disease). [wikipedia.org]
There are also diseases that do not have a well characterized mechanism but the genetic association with particular mutations are still strong enough to be worth while to revert the sequence to that of an unaffected family member (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis#Genetics).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @03:11PM
> My opinion is based upon the knowledge that various diseases have a well characterized genetic basis.
Which completely misses the point that those genetic differences may well be interacting with other parts of the genome in non-obvious ways to alter or otherwise prevent harmful expressions.
This isn't about knowing what you know, its about knowing what you don't know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @11:27PM
We know that some of those mutations are sufficient to cause disease in inbred animal models and that those mutations are strongly associated with disease in outbred humans. In the case of the lysosomal storage diseases, injecting the non-mutated protein can alleviate the disease.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:43PM
It isn't like there isn't already a template of "healthy" to copy.
You can easily delete the >100 poly-glutamine expansion in those predisposed to Huntington's disease to that of a normal level.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @10:15PM
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
I think Capt. James T. Kirk addressed this issue most remarkably:
"KAAAAAHHHNNNNN!!!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:38PM
I'm no breeder. May I be edited now?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:40PM
lets rewrite this and expose the hidden reality and see if we still think the same way...
Should this technology be regulated? Once the technique is known, how can we control/monitor what scientists do with this technology?
Should be push this tech underground, where only the megarich will have access to it, conducted in foreign clinics totally outside any review and most likely, even reliable knowledge it is happening and where/who? Should we regulate it a bit less, but still putting scientific development under strong government control, so policy will swing with results of every election? Should we try to get a consensus and ban procedures we can get broad agreement is a bad idea and let the rest sort itself out?
Reality says once we know how to do a thing, if enough people think it is a good idea, it happens. Somewhere. But fluffy phrases like "Should this tech be regulated?" is the sort of pap that pollsters use to create a Narrative. Of course, in our modern era of worship of the State and belief in its superior wisdom, most people will agree that regulation is needed. The Low Infos and Progs think -everything- should be regulated and dictated by the State as a default position. Drill down and ask which of the more specific levels I just described they prefer and you would get a confusing mess.
In our view, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations.
As written that sentence is indisputably correct. Because it is virtually devoid of actual content or a position, although cleverly written to imply one. Until it is actually done and the results carefully studied over multiple generations it is truly unknowable what the effects will be with anything even approaching certainty. Of course the same can be said of ANYTHING new. iPhones -COULD- have an as yet unknown fatal side effect. We don't proactively ban all new products until they have passed extensive product testing extending over multiple human generations. On the other hand we can be pretty certain that there will be obviously positive benefits if people will be spending early adopter money on a procedure that won't be covered by any insurance policy.
So should we instantly jump in and start modifying the genes of every child in an attempt to create a race of Ubermen? No. Should we try to prevent some known horrible genetic diseases? Probably. As for the rest, lets start small and see the results of that, then see what makes sense.
This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable.
This is purely opinion, but written as fact. Bad scientist. No funding for you!
Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications.
Most research can be used for evil. This is mostly worry about the PR angles though so I guess there is some rationale for it since most science is funded by the political process.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:47PM
You should accept that it will be used for non-therapeutic purposes. It will. And so what?
If someone chooses to supplement them melanin with chlorophyll, why should I care? I might thing it irresponsibly dangerous at this point, but at this point it's also extremely unlikely.
When you think about this, think also about the people who want surgery to turn their brown eyes blue. (So far it seems safe. But who knows about later.) Do you want a special law to ban this also?
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with using this technique to "improve" your kids. I doubt that it will ever be common, and some people will do foolish things. So what? That's not sufficient grounds to pass a law. If in some town everyone decided to edit their kids to look identical, that still wouldn't be a reason. (Coercing people who didn't want to participate, however, should be a serious crime. Quite serious. I'm not sure that a felony is the right term, as I think the penalty should be more like confiscation of wealth and being forbidden to ever serve in a position of power again...and I'm not just talking about governmental office.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:06PM
Yeah I dunno. Genetically engineering a kid to have two heads, just because you can, seems pretty messed up. You're consigning that kid to have a miserable life in a world where 99.9% of people will choose kids with 1 head.
If you were able to engineer *yourself* to grow another head, then, sure, knock yourself out. I myself could use another set of arms.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @03:17PM
> You're consigning that kid to have a miserable life
Yep, consent here is a major ethical issue.
> If you were able to engineer *yourself* to grow another head, then, sure, knock yourself out.
What if a huckster was selling that service without disclosing side-effects, like inducing schizophrenia - not because they were lying but simply because they hadn't made the effort to find out? They eventually get sued into bankruptcy, but all those two-headed schizos are now permanently disabled and that bankruptcy settlement isn't even close to paying for the care they need.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:00PM
Anyone that will try to stop this has to face up to people that will be told they may not procreate ie make children. This will be classified as interferring with peoples lives. One could instead make the children infertile to prevent the modified genes from propagating. But then that is really to shuffle the price onto the next generation. So in essence the question is how much fallout from procreation should be allowed?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:05PM
That's Monsanto thinking.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:01PM
Safety case: "CRISPR isn't good enough! The genome edit might fail!" Test the technique then. Sequence the embryos to see what CRISPR did. Or replace CRISPR with something newer and more reliable.
Legal case: "It's banned! It could lead to non-therapeutic genetic enhancement!" Western Europe? Researchers in China won't have to worry about puny ethical concerns. You can't stop the proliferation of biology.
Dialogue needed: "Bring in the international scientific community! Make a clear distinction between somatic and germ cells!" Yes, let dozens of "expert bioethicists" determine policy in an age of cheap DIY biology. Protect the profits of Sangamo BioSciences and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine members by stalling morally inconvenient acts.
Here's a thought: women (ideally) have control of their bodies and unborn blobs, so parents should have control over the germ line of their offspring. Once prospective parents are "adequately informed" of the risks, they should have complete creative control over the unborn spawn. In fact, forget the parenthood aspect once artificial wombs and synthetic DNA become common.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by skullz on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:23PM
The best explanation I heard regarding the absolute terror scientists had about altering inherited information was the concern about these modifications getting injected into the overall population. The moral panic and pearl clutching aside, the concern was that we don't know a lot about genes and any modification today may have serious side effects. If we start modifying embryos do we then force sterilization after the kiddos are viable? What happens if we don't and then, two generations later, we discover the mistake and have to kill all the modified offspring because they have become super flu incubators? How would you track all the transferred genetic material (every one night stand) to ensure it was contained? Inherited information has evolved to our current careful balance and messing with that could be like opening Pandora's box. Nature will correct but the natural corrective process usually involves a LOT of things dying.
The moral panic aside I think it should proceed but it will have to be controlled tighter than anything I have ever heard of.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by jmorris on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:09PM
Sometimes brutal honesty is the best policy. You sir, are a menace to the concept of self government... because you can probably vote.
If we start modifying embryos do we then force sterilization after the kiddos are viable?
So you assert we should make laws to mandate the sterilization of people because they MIGHT, SOMEDAY, be shown to have a genetic defect. So in your world how many known genetic defects that nature has put in the gene pool by random action should also merit mandatory sterilization? Anything else I might say on this topic would almost certainly invoke Godwin's Law so I'll stop here. You probably aren't actually a Nazi in waiting, just an idiot terrified of the unknown and not thinking rationally, for even a few seconds, before posting the most horrifying and dystopic vision for the future.
What happens if we don't and then, two generations later, we discover the mistake and have to kill all the modified offspring because they have become super flu incubators?
What in the bloody Hell are you blabbering incoherently about? What difference would it make if the genetic problem causing extreme 'super flu' contagion were an accidental man caused mutation or a natural one? Is it your position that if such a thing happened naturally that we would exterminate anyone identified with the 'dangerous' genetic mutation? You do seem to imply we would murder them if they were the product of genetic therapy, so unless you think we would also kill them if nature produced them as well I'm left to believe you pushing the position that any child born of any genetic therapy would never be considered as fully human, ethically, politically or legally. So, in your diseased world, do they even get citizenship, can they vote? Or or they mere property, issued a registration certificate instead of a birth certificate? Property of who? The lab that 'made' them, the people who donated their genetic information? The host mother? Bluntly, would they be disposable slaves? How many edits would be required to convert someone from a person to a product? No matter how you slice it: Pretty sick, dude. Again, try thinking of the downside of your own proposals instead of kneejerk unreasoning terror.
(Score: 2) by skullz on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:43PM
...
Anyways, you are right about natural mutations occurring. Can't help that. But these are targeted changes trying to accomplish a specific thing and we have NO CLUE what the repercussions would be 5, 10, 50 years down the road. Your comments about how many edits before society determines someone is not a person are spot on. That is the fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:53PM
super flu incubators
Not going to happen. AIDS patients are not super flu incubators and they are heavily immunosuppressed.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:06PM
Remember the arsenic resistance seen in Argentinian tribes? That would go over well in Bangladesh, where people are dying of arsenic poisoning.
High altitude tolerance from Tibet and Peru (both types!) would be pretty sweet. It probably helps even in less-extreme places like Colorado.
The heart disease resistance found in some Italians would be nice to have. Heart disease is a big killer.
If we don't mind swiping DNA from animals, note that the naked mole rat can heal without scars. Wouldn't that be wonderful to have?
(Score: 2) by TLA on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:43PM
Taking your examples in order:
Arsenic resistance is due to continuous exposure to small amounts of the material. Much smaller amounts than those say in Bangladesh are being exposed to in their drinking water. The body produces proteins called metallothioneins, which are used to remove a variety of metals from your body including lead and arsenic. By slowly introducing arsenic, your body will increase metallothionein production to compensate. There is however not just a fine line between therapeutic dosing and toxicity, there is also the increased risk of cancer with the accumulation of these proteins.
Altitude tolerance is an individual adjustment to the environment, like prebreathing before a deep dive. Endurance athletes have been known to pretrain at altitude to increase the number and concentration of red blood cells in their plasma, extract a litre and refrigerate it, injecting it just before an event to increase performance by increasing their ability to absorb oxygen. While totally illegal, blood doping, as it's known, is extremely difficult to detect.
Heart disease resistance is largely down to diet. Italians from the South of the country are particularly long lived because their staple oil comes from the olive tree - which is almost a symbiotic match for humans, behind hemp.
The best way to keep your body in top shape and to avoid the scarring that goes with paper cuts is to eat right, avoid the shit they put in so-called food (it's not food, it's just a soup of useless and even harmful chemicals! Especially so-called preservatives, mould suppressants, and artificial sweeteners!), and just remember the golden rule about a calorie controlled diet: if you burn more calories than you take in, you WILL lose weight! Simple math!
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:32PM
Altitude tolerance is an individual adjustment to the environment
Not exclusively [wikipedia.org]
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @12:53AM
The arsenic resistance research showed up last week I think, either on soylentnews.org or the other site. There is a 10x difference due to DNA.
People from Peru and Tibet have altitude resistance that the rest of us can never hope to achieve. There are numerous DNA differences that have been associated with this. An interesting fact is that many of them are placenta-related. This isn't about athletes. It's about a community living their lives at high altitude, including reproduction.
The heart disease resistance was covered on the other site some years back. It's not olive oil. It's DNA. The trait can be traced through families, and you either have it or you don't. It can be tested for. If I recall right, these people live in more northern Italy. They eat a horrid diet actually, with lots of cured meat.
(and yes, naked mole rats have non-human DNA)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:49PM
The other responder went into more detail, but the basic problem with these things is that, as with most things, they're compromises (at least in things that are genetically determined). People with these adaptations may have advantages in certain situations, but those adaptations probably come with downsides, such as higher incidences of cancer etc. In short, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:22PM
Who wants a designer baby? I thought the whole point of science was to further our understanding of our place in the universe, not pretty up our public image with a bright blue eyed, blonde haired plastic spray-tanned "Me 2.0"... but shallow is as shallow does, I suppose.
[rest of comment deleted as it runs pretty emotionally charged]
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:09PM
Why stop at eyes and hair? We can further our understanding loads better with extra limbs n stuff
(Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday March 18 2015, @05:38PM
What if we could engineer an aneurism-resistant Einstein, or a bullet proof Ghandi?
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:24PM
Heritable human genetic modifications pose serious risks, and the therapeutic benefits are tenuous,
We've been inheriting genetic modifications for billions of years, and it hasn't done us much harm so far.
</glib response>
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Informative) by gringer on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:30PM
The source article for this story appears to have been extensively edited replacing 'gene line' with 'germ line'.
That is intentional and correct — it's the summary title that is incorrect. A "germ line" is a set of cells following an ancestral lineage that are passed down to the next generation. A "gene line" is... [stretching]... a sequence of DNA that comes from a gene and forms something resembling a line.
Editing non-germ cells has much less impact on the general population than editing germ-line cells, because the modifications are not passed down to the next generation.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:19PM
the technology should only be regulated in the case of use on human DNA. the reason obviously being the legal status of a modified human is significantly greater than that of a more basic animal like a mouse. i would limit it to modifications with known outcomes. in other words, fixing a genetic defect is fine. trying to a set a wings to a kid, not so much. from what i can tell, a genome is a recursive algorithm which means that edits to it have wildly unpredictable and gruesome results.
bottom line: if you own genome is so fucked up that you want to edit what you pass on, you should really just adopt a child.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @09:43PM
you should really just adopt a child
I think this applies to anyone wanting a kid but the reasoning behind why people don't adopt applies equally to those with fucked up genetics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2015, @12:04AM
Just try to stop me from genetically modfiying human embyros.