Gene Editing in Human Embryos

[peter]

I see from a Nature report that Japan has taken the first steps down the path that could lead to the dreaded situation of 'desighner babies' by issuing guidelines on the use of gene editing in embryonic research. The practice, currently forbidden in many countries, will be used - if the guidelines are adopted - for research into human development and genetic diseases, but while the deliberate tinkering with genes in order to alter foetal development will not be advised or condoned, neither will it be legally forbidden.

I myself think it would be naive to believe than anything other than a legal prohibition could prevent such research - but am not quite sure what the actual objection to it is anyway. I can appreciate the potential hazards in artificially manipulating the human gene-pool from the aspect of introduction of unrealised, but latent 'weaknesses' into a system that in many respects is balanced like a house of cards, one genes expression much depending on the others it is intimately bound to - but I'd imagine that use of the process would be limited to such a small proportion of humanity as a whole that any such failings would fizzle out very quickly as they became manifest and were selected against in the 'big wide world' of nature red in tooth and claw. A second point is that clearly such technology would be used to correct/alleviate the terrible scourge of genetic disease - it would be wrong for it not to be - but surely once this situation pertained it would be but a small step into the use of it to positively enhance a developing embryo........and why would this be so bad? If this is the means by which we achieve apotheosis - then so be it (surely?) There will be no clear line between the black area of alleviation of genetic impairment and the white area of positive genetic enhancement, but rather when the chips are down and we are in amongst it a million grey areas will manifest that will make the distinction meaningless. In such circumstances it would seem to me that the best course is to simultaneously study why it is that we have this sort of reflex default position that 'this must be a bad thing' and perhaps just get over it.

[High Lord Tolkien]

I found this on Scientific American regarding the same story: "But the editing of genes in human embryos, even for research, has been controversial. Ethicists and many researchers worry that the technique could be used to alter DNA in embryos for non-medical reasons."

What are some non-medical reasons?
So we're not fully studying with this how to eliminate cystic fibrosis, for example, because people are worried parent might want blue eyed babies?

[wayfriend]

It's hard to fathom how altering your genes could not be medical, in that it affects your physiology. But I think that here SciAm means "medically necessary" vs "cosmetic". That is, removing a cancer-causing gene is medically necessary, adding gene to make you taller is not.

So there are cosmetic reasons - determining what a child looks like. And there are also other reasons which are hard to categorize, like improving intelligence, athleticism, metabolism, tolerance, outlook, etc. They aren't medically necessary, but they are not quite 'cosmetic' either. What term applies?

Ethical arguments are largely irrelevant, because money trumps everything. As long as people feel like there may be a way to get rich doing this, it will happen.

I happen to be on the side of it being a bad thing, peter, despite all the potential medical advances that could be achieved. The reason is simple: people on this planet cannot tolerate each other, and respond with various levels of aggression, because of differences in skin color, religion, tribal affiliation, sexual preference, psychological need, and economic status. The addition of people who are arguably "superior" to other people is only going to make the oppression happening on this planet worse. We are not all equal by virtue of our natures, but by virtue of (if anything) our common origin, and when you destroy that foundation all havoc will be let loose. But that's just my opinion.

In other words, I don't fear for the people whose genes are modified; I fear for those whose aren't.

[Fist and Faith]

You're right, wf. But we should also fear for those whose genes are modified. Someone will make strong, stupid people, and use them for slave labor. Someone will make people without pain perception, and test different ways of inflicting damage on them. Someone will make harems. And on and on.

[wayfriend]

Quite correct. Of course.

[peter]

At the end of the day this has always been the logical end point of medical research. Once the last germ is beaten into submission, the last malignant cell rooted out and destroyed, where did we think it was going? Medicine has always been about vanquishing death; it doesn't just stop at defeating the pathologies that afflict us, because once the rest are gone it is death and the limitations of our frail bodies that become the 'new pathologies'. We have been slaves under the merciless hammer of blind evolution for three and a half billion years; now it's our turn. We take up the mantle of determining our own destiny. Yes, there will be casualties along the way; there always have been. We are not where we are today without the ultimate sacrifice of many on the anvil of our progress and why would this next step be different. Yes, it's unpalatable, it's hard - but it remains true. There is nothing that will prevent this work from taking it's course; first as noted above it will be the money that the 'haves' of the world will pay for the ability to extend their own lives and enhance the prospects of their 'get' that will drive it, then the realisation that the lives of all can be improved may kick in .......... or something else, I don't know. Ultimately it will become the norm and people will accept it as just being how things are. We can't predict a future of uber-soldiers and lumpen-worker any more than a nirvana of milk and nectar quaffing aesthetes. Besides - we already have our tech to enhance our abilities. A car gets us from a to b faster than we could on foot. One man has a Porsche, another a transit van full of tools; do we wring our hands over the unfairness of this. No - it's just how it is. This tech will be no different in the end.

[Skyweir]

It is true .. and this is about taking the control out of evolution and putting it in the hands of science.

Alterations for medical reasons seems great .. but to craft an edge .. seems far less defensible, I agree.

I think youre probably right sadly .. it is the way of progress. Though there are more compelling arguments to restricting certain progress than there would have been to the developing of human transport systems.

[Avatar]

Yeah, it's going to be inevitable.

I always enjoyed Black Milk by Robert Reed...



--A

[wayfriend]

Don't get me wrong, peter. I am a firm believer that mankind will take the reins of his own destiny. We will control our own evolution. We will free ourselves from the vicissitudes of time and disease. Etc. etc.

But it's going to go all horribly wrong until we've straightened out our moral compasses. The question is, how deep into hell will we go before we come out the other side.

Many have called slavery and penury "the anvil of progress". That's what the people who get all of the benefits and paid none of the cost call it, anyway. The rest of us just call it "pain and suffering". You can always judge the degree that greed is steamrolling over ethics by how much we put lipstick on others' pain and call it sacrifice.

[Fist and Faith]

We've gone pretty deep already, and still don't see they other side. I wonder if we can change our moral compasses with gene editing.

[wayfriend]

You know, I thought of that, too. Trouble is, no one ever would. It's the last thing that the people who are pursuing this at the expense of others would want.

In other words, if we were ever at a point where we would do that, we wouldn't really need it.

[peter]

Of course I'm playing devils advocate here; I absolutely have exactly the same concerns as you guys about this - but then I think, do we really always have to predict the worst here? Why do we have to assume that it will be the Dr Frankenstein's that will make the running rather than the scientists who will bend the ends toward the benefit of humanity. And many times in arguments over the ethics of this or that research I've been flooded by the argument that science is not in and of itself a moral (or otherwise) pursuit. The ends to which we might put the knowledge might be good - or they might be bad - but this is not a judgement that should be the deciding factor as to whether we pursue the knowledge in the first place. (Badly put, but I hope you get my drift. I'm not even sure I agree with this argument myself, even if I have got my meaning across.)

[wayfriend]

do we really always have to predict the worst here?

The people who would want to do this ethically wouldn't rush to do it immediately. The people doing it for money will do it as soon as possible, before regulations or evidence can intervene, in order to claim the patents, gain the monopolies, and control the process. They are doing it to profit themselves, not save humanity.

[peter]

Absolutely the case Wayfriend - but is it possible that even in spite of these mercenary enticements, after the Dr Frankenstein stuff has been generated (which it will be as a result of said greed for both money {the people} and power {the State}) and run it's course, some real progress in terms of advancement of the human condition might result. Absolutely we must tread with caution here - but equally we must be carefull not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Vraith]

We've gone pretty deep already, and still don't see they other side. I wonder if we can change our moral compasses with gene editing.

Well, we can change a persons moral compass with just a few millivolts of electricity.
Or by teaching them a couple of the most rudimentary games in economics.
So that seems easy to do---though predictability of outcomes seems extremely risky. [[any idiot can fuck up an existing machine's function...building the machine so it works in the first place is a totally different beast]].
Because while a fair number of obvious illnesses are caused by single genes, or a small number of genes, other illnesses are complex and highly environment-sensitive.
Still other things...and anything involving the brain...are massively complex.
Moral decisions recruit at least half a dozen distinct brain regions.
Last I recall, something over 1000 different genes have some impact on intelligence, for instance.
There's a core set of about a dozen or so IIRC, that are associated with the largest difference in PROBABLE higher intelligence---a huge, massive, 6 points of so.
But they don't ALWAYS mean greater intelligence. They just mean those people, on average, are ever so slightly more intelligent.
And all of them are also involved in multiple other effects/alterations on other things [at least two of them that seem associated with higher intelligence are also in the large group associated with several vascular problems---blood pressure, heart disease and such]
So it looks like the 3-body problem to the power of at least 5, maybe higher. Insoluble/unpredictable even in principle...cuz even if you use brute force [which you might not be able to...if my off-the-cuff guestimate is at all relevant, the number of combinations is billions of trillions times greater than all the atoms in the universe] the perfect hardware STILL isn't a guarantee of intelligence. And, as noted, the effect is minimal.
[[[that's all possibly subject to change. Maybe somewhere there's a particular cluster or set/combinations that is a master key that, once in place, makes all the other things straighten up and fly right.]]]

Cyborg is way the fuck easier, and way the hell more effective.

So, a reasonable number [and maybe a great number] of illness/ailments/imperfections are probably pretty easy and should be pursued.
Other things---not so much [[it's easy to make people dumber and duller, massively harder to make smarter/creative/talented]]
And, overall, people might be more careful about some choices one would hope...I mean, what if you choose a design for your son or daughter...and by the time they hit adult-hood, that design is laughed about like the Edsel, 80's shoulder pads and big hair, 70's disco-boys in leisure suits??

And SOME person[s] are gonna get rich as hell for a design...
And some OTHER person[s] are gonna get even richer [[and piss off the first bunch]] by doing cheap knock-offs that are really just as good.
Like handbags. Or power tools.

[wayfriend]

Absolutely the case Wayfriend - but is it possible that even in spite of these mercenary enticements, after the Dr Frankenstein stuff has been generated (which it will be as a result of said greed for both money {the people} and power {the State}) and run it's course, some real progress in terms of advancement of the human condition might result.

Yes, they certainly might try to improve the health of their slaves. But the cost analysis doesn't work out for me.

[Cord Hurn]

Absolutely the case Wayfriend - but is it possible that even in spite of these mercenary enticements, after the Dr Frankenstein stuff has been generated (which it will be as a result of said greed for both money {the people} and power {the State}) and run it's course, some real progress in terms of advancement of the human condition might result. Absolutely we must tread with caution here - but equally we must be carefull not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The resistance will be great, I think, just as SRD has predicted--despite any promised benefits.

[quote="In the ninth chapter of Forbidden Knowledge, entitled "Ancillary Documentation / Intertech", was"]The Humanity Riots themselves were an interesting demonstration of genophobia. That humankind distrusted anything different from itself had always been common knowledge. As a species--as a biological product of its own planet--humankind apparently considered itself sacred.

In this, Earth's dominant religions were only more vocal than other groups. No other fundamental distinction prevailed. Life had evolved on Earth as it was supposed to evolve: the forms of life provided by this developmental process were right and good; any alteration was morally repugnant and personally offensive. On this point, conservationists and environmentalists and animal rights activists were at one with Moslems and Hindus and Christians. Prosthetic surgery in all its guises, to correct physical problems or limitations, was acceptable: genetic alteration to solve the same problems was not.

As one crude example, humankind had no objection to soldiers with laser-cutters built into their fingers or infrared scanners embedded in their skulls. On the other hand, humankind objected strenuously to soldiers genetically engineered for faster reflexes, greater strength, or improved loyalty. After all, infrared scanners and laser-cutters were mere artifacts, tools; but faster reflexes, greater strength, and improved loyalty were crimes against nature.

For this reason, genetic research was routinely conducted in secret: in part to cloak it from commercial espionage; but primarily to protect the researchers from public vilification.
[/quote]

[Ur Dead]

Gene modification..
May be a good thing in the short term.
But when you throw human elements into the equation then
who knows what will popup several generations down the line.
Remember people with blue eye can have their line go back to Asia.

[peter]

But leaving aside the ethical issues (and I keep remembering the animal in Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy that, in an effort to assuage the guilt of meat eaters was genetically bred to tell you how much it desired to be served up - thinking down this route takes you to dark places, I tell you), is there any realistic prospect of stopping this research anyway. It seems to me a real possibility is that blanket banning could push the work to areas of the world where such prohibitions would be meaningless and it would simply carry on in a clandestine and more extreme (and dangerous by virtue of unregulation) fashion. Might it not be more realistic to bring the work into the fold by worldwide agreement upon a cautious and regulated program of commonly agreed protocols by which it could advance?

[Vraith]

Might it not be more realistic to bring the work into the fold by worldwide agreement upon a cautious and regulated program of commonly agreed protocols by which it could advance?

Yes, but that would only be a start. In this field [[and quite a large number or other fields, IMO]] the proposed experiments, methods, and all data/results should be required to be public. Because the potential of trade secrets/patents, manipulated and hidden data/results, and scale and variety of genetic weapons and warfare are outrageously dangerous....
Because pretty much every splice that could create a benefit could ALSO create a vulnerability/weakness/backdoor/trigger/booby-trap, or be an actual assault/act of violence/harm.
And a number of the splice methods could fairly easily be modified for or mounted on or adapted to delivery vehicles/launch platforms.