First Human Embryos Edited In US (technologyreview.com) 140
randomErr shares a report from MIT Technology Review: The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, MIT Technology Review has learned. The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR. Until now, American scientists have watched as scientists elsewhere were first to explore the controversial practice. To date, three previous reports of editing human embryos were all published by scientists in China. Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases. In altering the DNA code of human embryos, the objective of scientists is to show that they can eradicate or correct genes that cause inherited disease, like the blood condition beta-thalassemia. The process is termed "germline engineering" because any genetically modified child would then pass the changes on to subsequent generations via their own germ cells -- the egg and sperm. Reached by Skype, Mitalipov declined to comment on the results, which he said are pending publication. But other scientists confirmed the editing of embryos using CRISPR.
Gattaca predicted the outcome in 1997 (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01... [imdb.com]
This is heading us into a scary and evil world. Not to mention all the screw-ups that will happen. Edit gene blah to fix pimples... whoops that gives you an automatic heart attack at age 30.
A few years back I remember seeing all the Chinese scientists talking about editing human genes so that they would not crave meat. It'd be cheaper to feed them that way. GREAT IDEA, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!!!!
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Not even remotely close. This is more like the development of the atomic bomb. Nice to see that this group isn't any smarter than anyone else and doesn't have to sense to have some apprehension about this.
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The atomic bomb killed a lot of people.
And ended a terrible worldwide war that would have otherwise gone on to kill WAY MORE people.
It has also, so far, prevented a third such war.
Yes, tech like this must be taken seriously. But it must not be flatly rejected out of fear.
We need it.
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Re:Gattaca predicted the outcome in 1997 (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, gene editing has zero useful social functions like curing congenital heart defects, or adding aids resistance or any of the thousand of benefits? You are a moron.
You have to admit that this new ability to edit human genes does have the potential to be used in some pretty damned creepy and dangerous ways. Couple that with human nature and you're almost assured it will be, at some point. Do you believe someone like Kim Jong Un and N. Korea would hesitate to create "super-soldiers" and more with this?
An abundance of caution going forward is not uncalled-for considering the possible uses and results along with their depth, scope, and implications for humanity's future.
Strat
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You have to admit that this new ability to edit human genes does have the potential to be used in some pretty damned creepy and dangerous ways. Couple that with human nature and you're almost assured it will be, at some point.
But if we refuse to use it for good, we're not putting the GMO toothpaste back in the tube. We would be leaving the field wide open for North Korea and ISIS.
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But if we refuse to use it for good,...
My exact words were; "An abundance of caution going forward is not uncalled-for..."
Nowhere did I state nor imply that I thought a ban was a solution. In fact I did not offer any solutions, as quite frankly, it's a damned difficult question with many very fundamental principles involved, many in possible opposition to one another. There are no simple solutions here, particularly as the CRISPR-cat is out of the bag and already used on human embryos, and most Western governments as yet have near-zero policy st
Universal Soldier (Score:2)
Meh. I'm not too worried about "Super-Soldiers". Even were you to edit things to make you the most optimal human being, you are still a human being, and are going to be limited by basic biology. Outside of science fiction there are much better ways to kill people and wage wars. A simple bullet will still kill a soldier. Though I guess probably the biggest improvement would be to increase resistance against biological weapons... then again that might have the positive spin off that people stop bothering to m
Re:Gattaca predicted the outcome in 1997 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well in this case, the claim "by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes", is a bit fat lie. The only way that it is possible to demonstrate that is to allow the experiment to reach maturity. You might have managed your change but it is extremely hard to tell how much damage you have down especially to what they used to call junk genes, which in reality are a complex set of interrelated genes that don't turn stuff on or off but adjust how much they are turned off or on. Do not claim value or safety until the experimental subject has achieved maturity, else it is a lie.
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Well in this case, the claim "by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes", is a bit fat lie. The only way that it is possible to demonstrate that is to allow the experiment to reach maturity. You might have managed your change but it is extremely hard to tell how much damage you have down especially to what they used to call junk genes, which in reality are a complex set of interrelated genes that don't turn stuff on or off but adjust how much they are turned off or on. Do not claim value or safety until the experimental subject has achieved maturity, else it is a lie.
I completely agree. Though, scientists nowadays like advertising so that they can get more grants to do things they want to do. I am not saying it is a bad thing, but many of them are abusing the Internet to make fame before the real result from their researches are in...
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Gattaca was more about reading the genes and discriminating based on it. (there are plenty of other films that talk about what could go wrong by making edits that result in unforeseen complications) Refusing to hire someone because their genes say their life expectancy isn't long enough to be worth training them, or who is expected to have more sick days than you want, or who has a condition that will be expensive for the corporate health plan to treat.
Gattaca predicted that we'd be able to read more in to
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Gattaca predicted that we'd be able to read more in to the results of a genetic test than we currently can, but it may still happen. It also predicted that genetic testing would be cheap and easy for corporations to do.
Well I don't know about corporations, but I think we're nearing the point where it ought to be a no-brainer for medicine. Your DNA doesn't change, that means if we sequence a newborn today it's good for ~80 years of treatments and 80 years of accumulating knowledge and the cost is now around $1000. So like $12.50 a year to know your current and future risk factors, even if it's almost useless the amortized cost is trivial. Of course that's assuming we stick this result in a database somewhere... a lot of pe
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The other no brainer is saving stem cells from the umbilical cords of newborns. These cells can be stored in liquid N2 at negligible cost, and used to treat all sorts of disorders later in the kid's life, as well as used for anti-ageing and life extension. Yet it is almost never done.
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this option was presented but had a price tag of several thousand dollars.
It is expensive because almost no one does it. If it was routine, it would be cheap. Definitely less than $1000. That cost would be recouped many times over in savings later in life. Got liver cancer? Just grow a new one from your own stem cells.
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"I make well above the medium family income by myself, but there is nothing reasonable about the cost of harvesting and saving those stem cells."
You're confusing cost with price.
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Gattaca was more about reading the genes and discriminating based on it.
Gattaca was a stupid movie. They were screening people to ensure they were qualified to be astronauts. This is something WE ALREADY DO. No one with a defective heart should be sent into space at taxpayer expense. If genetic testing can streamline and improve the screening then of course we should be doing it.
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The whole reason the protagonist was shat on was because he was a naturally conceived baby. It was not clear if babies were engineered or merely selected but the same level of genetic understanding was implied.
I think the real problem with this is that we're not nearly as smart as we think we are and this is tinkering with people. With people that are dying, this kind of thing makes more sense from the risk/reward perspective.
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The whole reason the protagonist was shat on was because he was a naturally conceived baby.
He had a defective heart, as well as other health problems that made him completely unqualified to be an astronaut. Since the genetic testing would have found these problems, it actually made a lot of sense to use it.
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It could have changed a fair bit since then.
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Perhaps it has been re-edited...
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but those who choose wisely tend to end up ahead of the curve and humanity advances
So you're saying the wise normal humans will be running in front of the horde of 3 headed zombies, all chanting "brains, Brains, BRAINS"?
It's just another tool, neither good or bad. It's how it's used by it's wielder is what actually counts. Hopefully they experiment on themselves first.
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Edit gene blah to fix pimples... whoops that gives you an automatic heart attack at age 30.
TLDR: it will be illegal to perform the type of edits you're worried about.
Doctors doing this to people would be legally required to follow ethics guidelines. Researchers in lab don't have to since they're not doing research on people*.
Those ethical guidelines were already being debated heavily when it was even more hypothetical than it is now. [nature.com] Steven Pinker is probably the most gung ho guy for "do germline editing" [ipscell.com] and even he seems to suggest no edits for purely cosmetic reasons. The guidelines wi
Re:Gattaca predicted the outcome in 1997 (Score:4, Insightful)
even he seems to suggest no edits for purely cosmetic reasons. The safe money is that they specifically ban any edits that aren't correcting life-threatening conditions
And even safer money says a huge industry of cosmetic edits will pop up before life-threatening conditions even start regulatory approval trials. You'll just need to fly out of the country to do so.
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Ugly truth of Germany was that a good number of Germans were totally in favor of genocide at that time. I don't see that level of support for making designer babies here in the US now. And, if most people are convinced designer babies are a good thing, it's going to happen anyway. What's the alternative? Burning all knowledge of CRISPR? Little late for that.
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Doctors wouldn't be able to advertise superhuman babies services and keep their licenses and access to the facilities they'd need to do this work. It's much more regulated than using a knife and gloves like OJ did, and can't be done in as much secret or quickly.
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TLDR: it will be illegal to perform the type of edits you're worried about.
It is unlikely to be illegal everywhere. Medical tourism is already a big business.
What is wrong with gene editing to fix pimples, if the treatment is proven safe and effective? Severe acne can be emotionally devastating, and have physical consequences such as secondary infections. Why should the government be making that decision instead of leaving it to informed individuals and their doctors?
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It is unlikely to be illegal everywhere. Medical tourism is already a big business.
Sure, but we were talking specifically within the US here. CRISPR clinics elsewhere may pop up, but that was going to be true no matter what we did in the US, and would have been true even if the current study hadn't been done.
Why should the government be making that decision instead of leaving it to informed individuals and their doctors?
The ethics discussion panels I was talking about are being done by scientists and doctors, not the government. I believe medical boards which issue and can revoke medical licenses are made up of doctors, the ones making the medical guidelines too. So "the government" in this case WOUL
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So "the government" in this case WOULD be the informed individuals and doctors.
You seem to be confused about what "individual choice" means. When someone says that decisions about, say, medical procedures, speech, and property should be left up to "individuals", they mean the individual who actually inhabits the body affected, is voicing the opinion, or owns the relevant property. They do NOT mean just ANY individuals, such as the police, or an "ethics panel", or even the voting public, even though these are indeed made up of "individuals".
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Well, I think the immediate application will be to be able to have children who won't have to worry about developing Huntington's and other genetic diseases where we can zero in on a single gene, or perhaps several genes.
But the things that make a human admirable or superior are nigh-imperfect aren't going to translate into genes in any way we will be able to figure out anytime soon.
One of the big surprises when the human genome was decoded is that it is far, far smaller than anyone had suspected. We expec
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Man we should fix that last metabolic pathway in the Vitamin C cycle. Vitamin C is awesome. Mega-dosing Vitamin C won't cure your cold or flu; but high doses (like, 500mg/day) will remove mercury and lead from your body.
Vitamin C regulates prolactin, helps generate Dopamine and Norepinephrine, donates two electrons to act as a powerful anti-oxidant while itself not radicalizing, helps with cell wall building, helps to counter damage and stress caused by cortisol release, and generally does a whole lot
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There is no technology that mankind has so far invented that can do as much for individuals or mankind as a whole as CRISPR.
Here we have news of a huge breakthrough in human genetic engineering, and someone's deferring to a second rate sci fi fantasy hollywood movie for guidance.
Makes me wonder why we even bothered separating church from state so long ago.
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Who's hands is it going to be in?? The Good? or The Bad?
Nope, the Ugly.
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the land of breast augmentation and facelifts and pec & butt implants is going to use genetic engineering only to make people healthier. yeah right, anon.
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Wrong, India and China are fine with abuse of women and children, and they have practiced editing of human genome of embryos. Therefore GP is wrong.
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Religious extremism has been linked to several genes [thedailybeast.com]. So the GMO corporations could surreptitiously edit those genes to eliminate resistance to their other products.
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Funny thing is that the part of the world that thinks abuse and pedophilia are OK is also the part of the world that opposes genetic engineering.
You mean Hollywood and Berkeley?
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China and India have done genetic engineering on embryos. They are fine with abuse of children and women. Therefore, your first sentence is ignorant and wrong.
The U.S. has large corporations that will use genetic engineering to make designer humans including for military purposes, because there is a market for it. They already have committed all possible crimes to the present date for power and money including making drugs that maim and kill, nothing will stop them from doing evil in the realm of geneti
better than /. editors (Score:2)
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You know science has gone too far.... (Score:5, Funny)
....when even the cannibals have to start worrying about GMOs.
Its dangerous, but so are all important advaces (Score:2)
Technological and scientific advances have the potential to drastically change the world. That's why they are valuable. That's why they are dangerous.
I don't want to stop or even slow genetic research BUT, I would like to see real work put into developing rules to try to prevent some of the possible nightmare futures it could create.
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I would like to see real work put into developing rules
How are you going to enforce these rules? You can already buy CRISPR kits on eBay.
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I've never thought of keeping embryos in the crisper.
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You won't always be able to enforce them but if, for example, home DNA hacking is seen as a major threat you could probably restrict and track technologies the way it is done for nuclear technology. (if there were no restrictions, a homemade nuclear bomb is not impossible).
You can also arrest and imprison people when they are caught doing illegal mods.
It may not be necessary. The technology to effectively modify humans may require a large infrastracture. Or maybe not?
I agree with your general point thoug
They edited the first human embryos? (Score:1)
They edited the first human embryos? Can you believe that? The first human embryos ever and they went and edited them rather than keep them in their original state.
Come to think about it, I'm surprised that they managed to find the first human embryos. Also that they still exist, and are still embryos.
Confirmed... I read the article (Score:5, Funny)
They edited some embryos to remove defective genetic defects. Two healthy white babies were successfully delivered 9 months later. Parents Tyvek and Ledasha Washington were happy with the outcome since it allowed them to have children who are more likely to succeed despite their parents' elevated melanin levels.
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since it allowed them to have children who are more likely to succeed despite their parents' elevated melanin levels.
And much less likely to be shot by a cop.
Both Sides? (Score:3, Interesting)
On one hand, we're creating genetically modified super-humans. On the other hand, we're also creating AI fueled human killing drones.
World War III sure is looking to be pretty freggin awesome!
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Certainly worth getting a popcorn machine. Do you think neutrality will be an option?
Edit? (Score:3)
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So 'edit' is the euphemism we're using for genetic engineering now?
No. It refers to a specific technique of genetic engineering.
What part of "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" don't you understand?
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Just Wondering (Score:1)
Is it too late to fix Trump?
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How sad to be you
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Well, for starters: I don't abuse women; I don't cheat on my wife; I am not a narcissistic asshole; I am concerned about the welfare of others; I am concerned about the health of our planet; I know science from fiction; and I don't lie.
And yes, I have a successful career.
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So... (Score:1)
How long until real-life catgirls? Or all women with a C-cup chest size as the minimum?
Or all blondes with blue eyes? I think someone was fixated on that a few decades ago and it didn't turn out very well.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
How long until real-life catgirls? Or all women with a C-cup chest size as the minimum?
Or all blondes with blue eyes? I think someone was fixated on that a few decades ago and it didn't turn out very well.
Why does it have to be about gratuitous cosmetic crap? People can already get plastic surgery, they don't need genetic modifications to look good if so inclined.
But what about no sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis? What about improving the human genome in a voluntary way without committing genocide?
Dream a little bigger than chest size! Not everyone like C-cups and catgirls, but no one likes to die young.
And given that some people won't even take vaccines, which have been around for at least 200 years (?), I think it's safe to say that there is no danger or the whole population immediately undergoing genetic modifications.
But.. (Score:1)
Are they really defects or stages in evolution? Who decides when a mutation may or may not eventually evolve into a meaningful advance for a species?
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Are they really defects or stages in evolution? Who decides when a mutation may or may not eventually evolve into a meaningful advance for a species?
Survival and propagation of species drives selection. Something humans are really good at disrupting "naturally" these days.
"Edited" with... (Score:1)
... vi, emacs, dd or notepad?
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vim and emacs likely both have CRISPR plugins.
Obligatory SMBC reference (Score:2)
Maybe we should walk before we run... (Score:2)
Cant we start with sheep, chimpanzees or something before doing this with human embryos?
LK
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Don't we already know how this is going to turn ou (Score:1)
Have a bun in the oven? Put it thru the CRISPR (Score:3)
n/t
My first though was, If it was edited on Slashdot (Score:2)
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*chortle* Uh, that's 'confidante'.
Gotta love those Mondegreens.
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Not sad at all, I get a genuine giggle out of them. Really. I wasn't being sarcastic with my previous comment, I'm not being sarcastic now. They're fun!
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