Unnatural Selection: the Eye-Opening Netflix Docuseries On Gene Editing

Dream McClinton from The Guardian writes about a new Netflix docuseries, called Unnatural Selection, that "explores the various forms of genetic engineering, as well as the societal and environmental implications of its research and use." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Today, we are learning the language in which God created life," said then-president Bill Clinton, alongside the British prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2000. In the grainy archival clip, scientists and dignitaries had just mapped out the human genome, dissecting the complex science of biological being to code sequences of A, C, G and T in a style similar to binary computer code. But almost 20 years later, science has surpassed this once-unimaginable feat with the discovery of technology which can alter that genetic code. This zeitgeist-y innovation is the subject of a new Netflix series, Unnatural Selection, from film-makers Joe Egender and Leeor Kaufman, and explores the various forms of genetic engineering, as well as the societal and environmental implications of its research and use.

The four-part docuseries delves into the burgeoning field of gene technology, made possible by the aforementioned human genome project and the discovery of the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or Crispr. Co-discovered by Dr Jennifer Doudna, the gene serves a bit like "a molecular scalpel", she says, essentially removing and replacing gene material in a DNA strand. The technology makes it possible to modify genetics, giving it near unlimited biological potential, or as Salk Institute developmental biologist Professor Juan Izpuisua Belmonte puts it, "... rewriting the book of life." For Egender and Kaufman, the series had to tell the broader, more intricate story of genetic engineering, a story filled with great risk, benefits, consequences, emotions, sentiments and future, to better illuminate the field and further the discussion on the technology. "[M]any are depending on gene therapy treatment to change and possibly save lives," writes McClinton. "But, the series shows, the treatments are expensive, with some emerging drugs costing over $500,000, and patients are often at the mercy of startup genetic therapy companies who choose to weigh the 'meaning' of the treatment versus the cost for the patient, leaving many to fight their insurance companies for the cost of treatment."

Don’t buy it

[Cylix]

Whatever the nonsense narrative is...

If you are buying 500k gene therapy you are well outside of what us normies with insurance are getting.

Re:

[Ryzilynt]

Whatever the nonsense narrative is...

If you are buying 500k gene therapy you are well outside of what us normies with insurance are getting.

The Insurance is paying , that's the point.

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[dargaud]

I can't even get my insurance to pay repairs on a violin bow, so getting a 500k$ gene therapy...

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The costs will come down. At least the treatment exists.

The fraud politicians lay on you is pretending that, by forcing the costs down, the inventions will continue to pour in.

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[angel'o'sphere]

Why would your health insurance pay your violine bow?

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[dargaud]

Because the violin is insured. But in the fine prints it says that the bow isn't, and in even finer prints it says that the violin is insured only DURING the lessons...

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[angel'o'sphere]

And why did you buy such an insurance?

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[ChromeAeonuim]

That's why we need to have a massive public investment in the topic. Not just to advance development of the technology, but to also ensure that it is available to the general public. These sorts of things have a lot of potential, and that's why society needs to get social progress ahead of scientific progress so that no one is relying on pirated gene therapy [technologyreview.com] or something like that.

Patents and Lobbying..

[thesupraman]

Or just set a ceiling on pricing for medical treatments covered by patent.
Or even better, remove the ability to patent both the content and modifications to human DNA.

The patent system is innately broken for medical purposes anyway, and was never designed for such purposes, it was designed to protect mechanical inventions against trivial replication.

But sensibility is never going to win against the $150 million a year (visible) spend on lobbying from big pharma, and thats just the US.
https://www.opensecrets

Re:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

If we set a ceiling on prices for iPhone innovation, would that increase the rate of innovation?

Would it stay the same?

Or would innovation drop like a rock?

Here, we are not talking about the latest cool phone, but about saved lives.

Slowed innovation means millions of deaths, mounting year after year, like compound interest.

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[angel'o'sphere]

In gods own country ...

This was expected.

[Gravis Zero]

Modifying humans has long been predicted and dreamed of even longer. As a race of explorers, we will need to modify ourselves to withstand some harsh environmental factors like heavy radiation exposure. As being with a sense of self-preservation, we will do everything we can to extend our lifetimes indefinately. We have so very much to learn when it comes to the basics of our own biology that these goals will not be realized for centuries if not longer.

Honestly, we're monkeys who discovered fire and with

That's where we draw the line?

[morgenSt3rn]

Really, we draw the line at gene editing? The world had an unnatural selection since the invention of the modern medicine. We live longer than ever and we keep mothers and children, who would never survive a childbirth withouth modern medicine, alive. We have two choices, either fix the damage, we already did with the previous unnatural selection, with gene editing, or stop saving lives that couldn't live by itself, for the next few generations. We could of course leave everythink like it it. Because the

Re:That's where we draw the line?

[ChromeAeonuim]

Gene editing is new, and people are skittish and easily spooked. When vaccines were first invented, some people thought that they upset the natural order of God's punishments, but today everyone...okay, that might be a bad example. Point is, while reasoned concerns always merit consideration, at a certain point it's just caveman science fiction [dresdencodak.com]. So many people are so eager to fall over themselves doing their best Ian Malcolm impression that we miss that there is also an ethical dilemma to hindering this technology: if you have the power to stop something and you do not, that's just as much a choice as anything. The opportunity cost of stalling progress is that problems go unsolved, and in this case, those are potentially problems of life & death.

Again, there's nothing wrong with raising valid concerns when and where they can be scientifically demonstrated or logically presented, but at a certain point it goes beyond that and becomes regressive contrarianism posing as enlightened wisdom. Biotech opposition continually crosses that threshold. Anyone who wants to die an all-natural death is of course more than free to do so, but if there's something that can help the rest of us live longer or healthier, no one has any right to hinder that just because they disagree.

That said, there is the social necessity of ensuring equality of access; this business of half million dollar treatments is unjust and unacceptable, and speaks to a need for greater public investment.

Re: That's where we draw the line?

[chvyrcng20]

I agree with most of the above post and want to add that i see the work the "biohackers" are doing is also very important in making the therapies democratize so that Big Pharma doesn't get their grubby, greedy hands on it exclusively. At the moment patients have little to no recourse when it comes to their meds. Boycotting is out of the question if your life depends on a certain med. I don't know what the public can do when the pharmaceutical companies are so deeply entrenched in politics. How do we turn th

Crank the wank!

[Tablizer]

I want two dicks.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I want two dicks.

I bet you can get two dicks right now if you put "spit roast me" in your grindr profile.

appeal to nature fallacy

[juan_two]

Look it up. It debunks this sort of article.

How about no?

[ChromeAeonuim]

But I think what is certain is that, as a society, we need to better understand the technology and start discussing it so that we collectively can make some of these decisions, rather than leaving it up to only the people in the know, only the people in the lab, only the people with the power.

Brilliant idea, let's start by putting surgical techniques & regulations on the next election ballot, just to test if putting technological/medical matters to a public vote is a sound decision.

We have become more precise,

[Aviation Pete]

but gene editing has started when the first organisms started to choose their mating partner. By showing preference for the expression of certain genetic variations, they actively changed the genome of the next generation. First those variations were left to chance, then the green revolution used a radioactive shotgun and now we use the CRISPR scalpel. But it is still the same preferential selection.

All that irrational nonsense about "gene-manipulated" food is just that, right along those beliefs around k

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

right along those beliefs around kosher or halal food.
Are you an idiot or what?
Living in a hot desert eating halal or kosher is a live safer ... morons on the internet, I hare them.
Do you actually know that western meat is halal by default? You eat halal and don't even know it.

Patents and communal health insurance lead here

[Pinky's Brain]

As long as one of these two exists they will always conspire to push up prices for new treatments to incredible heights. The patents remove competition, the communal health insurance lets the medical sector play chicken to maximize profits at the detriment to all the healthy people ... and those healthy people can be bled quite significantly, especially if insurance is mandatory.

What's the solution? I'm not sure. We tried communism, it didn't work so well. Single payer helps, but doesn't completely solve th

Re:

[tombeard]

OS medical. Money isn't the only motivator. For that, the people actually *doing it* today are just paid a nice salary, they don't get rich.

Paywalled source

[bill_mcgonigle]

This Netflix documentary seems to be behind a paywall.