[HN Gopher] CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treat... ___________________________________________________________________ CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases Author : hassanahmad Score : 290 points Date : 2021-06-26 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | dcwardell wrote: | Crazy genetics ideas I would like explored | | A modified tree that drops nuts of (nearly) pure graphite or some | other form of nondecomposable carbon which we can easily harvest | and sequester. | | Photosynthesis in humans to supplement our energy consumption. | Shoutout to Knights of Sidonia. | | I understand the ethical issues surrounding the second one. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | I believe the graphite nut proposal is too inefficient to work. | A single large tree absorbs around 30 kg of CO2 per year. If it | was able to put 10% of that into graphite nuts (which would be | a very good efficiency), you end up with 0.8 kg of graphite | nuts per tree per year. | | To match the IEAs projections for carbon capture (7.5 | gigatonnes CO2 captured per year in 2050) you would need around | 3*10^12 trees. That's about the same as the total number of | trees in the world. So you need to replace all of the worlds | trees, with the corresponding destruction of many of the | biggest ecosystems on earth. | pkdpic_y9k wrote: | Thats a pretty solid breakdown, but that 3x10^12 was a little | more hope-inspiring than I was expecting. Seems like a | workable part of a larger multi-pronged solution if you | streamlined the plants metabolism (?). Then again I dont know | what in the h*ll Im talking about so theres that... | kaba0 wrote: | > A modified tree that drops nuts of (nearly) pure | | Well, we sort of have that in the form of specifically | engineering bacteria to create some drugs, notably insulin. | Though I'm sure graphene require additional biological | structure and that is a much harder problem them | adding/removing a few genes. | DantesKite wrote: | A lot of times you hear about these breakthroughs in medical | papers or in mice, but this really feels different. | | Like an actual breakthrough with an actual cure for a specific | disease. It's remarkable. | | Here's to more cures. | | God bless. | bawana wrote: | So the religious right decided that we do not own our bodies, god | does. Just as software companies issue a EULA, all children born | since 2032 are required to have their parents sign a EULA. | Genetic modification is strictly prohibited and punishable by | reduction of the government stipend that everyone receives in | fedcoin every month. Underground genetic modification labs are | run by organized crime but unfortunately those using these labs | also get an unplanned genetic modification in addition to the one | they want. They are made dependent on a drug that only those labs | can provide, for a price. In addition, there are monthly | vaccination programs for citizens to protect them against genetic | terrorists, carriers of lethal protoviruses who are engineered to | carry and disseminate Covid derivatives that target HLA SUBTYPES | common in Northern European and South American genotypes. | | Yes genetic modification is another wonderful technology that | humans will weaponize....like atomic energy, like the internet... | calrueb wrote: | The fact that we can apply these sort of therapies to an adult | human who consists of millions upon millions of cells blows my | mind. Having the ability to fix our "buggy" genetic code while we | are alive is amazing. | rorykoehler wrote: | Monkey patching in production. | correcthorse123 wrote: | I think targetting tbe liver is far easier than most other | tissues though, unfortunately. | hhjinks wrote: | You're off by a _couple_ orders of magnitude. There are | trillions of cells in a human body. | zz865 wrote: | Would CRISPR be the technology people would use to modify a bat | virus to make it human transmissable? This stuff should stay in | its box. | baybal2 wrote: | It will not stay in the box. | | The allure of armies of supersoldiers without sense of | emotions, conscience, and remorse is irresistible for | dictators. I bet Chinese, or Russian militaries are already | working on that. | aussieguy1234 wrote: | Humans still have to be fed. Killer robots dont | koeng wrote: | They could also use normal editing with PCR since the genomes | are small. Also CRISPRs are in tons of organisms (I've | amplified it from yogurt), so the box is already out there. | stuntkite wrote: | You would not need CRISPR to do that. If something like that | ever occurred they would probably use other methods that have | been very well studied for much longer and are considerably | easier to apply. Including just taking blood samples from bats | (or pangolins or whatever) and archiving a great compelling | virus and culturing it in a lab. If you wanna add CRISPR into | the mix you could also make a virus like that make someone grow | some horns and get hiccups that sound like a kazoo though. | kyriakos wrote: | Knives can kill and save people. Almost anything can be used | for bad purposes in the wrong hands. | newsbinator wrote: | Not that I agree we should bury our heads in the sand like | luddites, but to be fair to OP, knives can only hurt or help | in a tiny human radius. It's hard to make an extinction-level | weapon (or extension level accident) out of them. | | Being able to edit genes at will is a different story. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Viruses are an extinction-level weapon. CRISPR? Not so | much. (And neither are likely to result in an extinction- | level accident; you'd have to deliberately deploy potent | bioweapons in multiple places to extinct us.) | [deleted] | SavantIdiot wrote: | Yes but the CRISPR engine is passed on to offspring which | raises massive ethical questions. | | As I understand it (and hopefully I'm not way off base | here) there is a technique that creates a "gene drive" | which is kinda like an SDK that is inserted into the | patients genome which improves the efficacy of CRISPR. | | This code finds its way into the gametes which is then | passed on to children. The children did not ask for this | SDK, but now they have it and it potentially becomes | immortal in human DNA. | | On the one hand, cool: the SDK is there and possibly | makes it even easier to alter DNA> | | On the other hand, holy shit: there's a ticking timebomb | in the populations DNA now. | | It's called CRISPR-cas9: | | https://wyss.harvard.edu/media-post/crispr-cas9-gene- | drives/ | | https://scicomm2020.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/controversia | l-g... | ben_w wrote: | The really great thing about us knowing how to read and | edit genes now, is that if that happened we would notice | and could switch it off. The stuff we want to wipe out | using gene drives -- e.g. Malaria -- can't. | | There are things to worry about with cheap gene | engineering, but that particular possibility won't affect | us. | Waterluvian wrote: | Turning medical science from a technical problem into an ethical | one would be a massive epoch boundary for humanity, I'd say. More | so than the Internet. | BurningFrog wrote: | So this is editing liver cells, which I read somewhere is the | easiest to do, since the liver absorbs foreign elements from the | bloodstream. | | The success of this should mean that many genetic liver | conditions can soon be treated this way. | | For other organs, I expect a longer wait. | codeulike wrote: | The brain is particularly hard due to blood/brain barrier, | crispr is too big a molecule to go through. So might need | injections into cerebral spinal fluid for that | wgolsen wrote: | The lung epithelium has also recently been transfected in | humans (see Translate Bio cf drug; this and similar vehicles | can deliver editing tools) | jonplackett wrote: | Wonder how long it will be until this is used to enhance rather | than just to cure. | | Eg selective fast twitch / slow twitch muscle fibres. | rorykoehler wrote: | Probably already happening | jonplackett wrote: | Presumably it would be damn hard to detect if it was! | ausbah wrote: | >Doctors infused billions of microscopic structures known as | nanoparticles carrying genetic instructions for the CRISPR gene- | editor into four patients in London and two in New Zealand. The | nanoparticles were absorbed by their livers, where they unleashed | armies of CRISPR gene-editors. The CRISPR editor honed in on the | target gene in the liver and sliced it, disabling production of | the destructive protein. | | this is one of the coolest paragraphs I've read in a while. if | it's accurate, serves as a great reminder that we're in the | future as we speak | skybrian wrote: | Note that the liver is perhaps the easiest target since it | filters the blood. | | See: | https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/05/20/cr... | DoctorNick wrote: | The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW | right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of | a future, even with all this cool tech. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Everyone will move to Canada and similarly far north places. | Only the poor will be left behind to die in the heat and most | of the world won't care and will feel like "good riddance." | cj wrote: | It's not impossible to speculate the possibility that in | 50-100 years, climate change could be reversed through a | CRISPR-like technology (e.g. something that can be released | and replicate in the environment, thereby changing it). | | Or at the very least, I can see a future where gene editing | could relieve your suffering from heat by raising the | threshold your body can tolerate :) | ProjectArcturis wrote: | You want something that replicates in the environment and | removes carbon? We have those. They're called "plants." | nr2x wrote: | Even if we reforested every possible area, the current | rate of carbon outlay exceeds capacity to absorb. | | Well explained in the Economist video: | https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ | pkdpic_y9k wrote: | Does this include ocean farming based carbon capture? | That sounded like a pretty positive route in terms of | land use limitations when I heard about it. | chr1 wrote: | If we could convert Sahara back into a savannah or farms, | the amount of carbon required for the new soil and plants | would exceed the amount of extra carbon we have added to | the atmosphere so far. And there are many viable routes | to do that. E.g. building large number of ocean thermal | energy conversion plants [1] to reduce temperature of the | north hemisphere, recreating conditions that have caused | green Sahara in the past. There are numerous | possibilities to use engineering to revert adverse | effects of climate change, and to actually improve the | climate. The only scenario when we are doomed, is if | population declines significantly so that we get runaway | effect from carbon we have already produced melting | permafrost, and not have large enough economy to use | geoengineering on a large enough scale. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_co | nversio... | nobodyknowsyoda wrote: | > They're called "plants." | | Incidentally, CRISPR + plants is one of the most | promising solutions to climate change: https://www.ted.co | m/talks/joanne_chory_how_supercharged_plan... | PixelOfDeath wrote: | Looking at the world right now, I hope for the best with | that gene therapy against sociopathic billionaires. | coliveira wrote: | Too bad for the millions of people who will die because of | the changes during these 50 years... | nr2x wrote: | At current rates of carbon outlay, there won't be much of a | world left to save in 100 years. | pkdpic_y9k wrote: | Not unless we all work our asses off! Engineers can do | anything :^) | matmatmatmat wrote: | ... except politics, engineers are usually not very good | at politics, and climate change is, in large part, a | political problem. | nitrogen wrote: | Stop with the doom trolling and get busy inventing solutions. | pkdpic_y9k wrote: | Heck yeah, this why I keep coming back the HN community. | But if you gotta get that doom trolling out too its all | good as long as it reminds us all how hard we gotta keep | workin :^) | stavros wrote: | Without doom trolling nobody will vote for the people who | want to implement the costly solutions. | tpmx wrote: | Wow. So direct, constructive and succinct. I'll borrow | (parts of) that. | noveltyaccount wrote: | Is this a one-time treatment? Does it remove all of the | offending genetic material, and then when those cells divide | they are cured? Or does it require ongoing treatment? | rolleiflex wrote: | It's editing the genes of the cells of the liver, so | presumably when those liver cells divide and multiply, the | change would also be copied along as well. | | What isn't clear to me is that if this is targeted at the | liver cells in particular, or splicing it for every cell in | the body. In other words, this could be a germline mutation | (passed to children) or it could be a somatic mutation (no | change to future children), it depends on how targeted the | treatment was. | wgolsen wrote: | When administered IV, most LNPs of this type are highly | selective for hepatocytes. This edit cannot be passed on as | no germ cells will be transfected. | kaba0 wrote: | Even if it is not specific, I would believe gametes are not | affected/can be easily excludes due to the blood-testis | barrier. | myko wrote: | I'm very hopeful that someday these techniques will cure diseases | like Huntington's | xwdv wrote: | What are the limits of gene editing? | wizzwizz4 wrote: | We're constrained by the subset of physics that can be | implemented by proteins. Plus, the genetic code can't be too | big, or it won't fit, but I doubt we'll ever hit that limit | (provided we don't go the software route and build a giant | tower of massive abstractions that gets copied everywhere). | stuntkite wrote: | I don't think there are any aside from money, time, and | experience. If you'd like to give yourself glowing purple eyes, | huge muscles, and make it so you fart clouds of illegal street | drugs you can but it's much more difficult and messy than | deleting 'node_modules', rebuilding, and doing a `git push | --force` into prod at 5PM on a Friday before you take a long | weekend. | amelius wrote: | Before getting too excited, let's not forget the stories where | gene therapy went horribly wrong. | | https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-death-of-je... | | > Doudna expressed similar concerns about CRISPR. | | > "I hope that we don't get ahead of ourselves with this | technology. As exciting as it is, I really would like to see . | . . people take a very measured and responsible path forward, | where there's careful vetting along the way," she said. "Of | course, the challenge is that patients are waiting, so you | don't want to delay unduly. But you also want to be safe." | xf1cf wrote: | A better question might be what are the ethical limits of gene | editing. How long until we stumble over eugenics but with extra | steps? It seems to me at least to be the natural conclusion of | advanced gene editing. Law of unintended consequences and all | that. | palijer wrote: | I feel like I missed something, and now everywhere I look we have | headlines like this. | | What's wrong with "CRISPR gene editing shown to cure | Transthyretin amyloidosis in patient study" | | Maybe I'm now one of the old people who doesn't understand new | usage of language. But I understand that usage dictates grammar | rules, but I feel I missed something. | MrDresden wrote: | I believe the metaphore of the inverted pyramid used in | journalism plays a part here. | | edit: Strike that, hadn't realized that the article title and | the HN link differed so much. | dogma1138 wrote: | NPR isn't a research paper, or a researcher focused website. | eat_veggies wrote: | The paper linked in the article is titled "CRISPR-Cas9 In Vivo | Gene Editing for Transthyretin Amyloidosis." That's close | enough to your proposed title. If what you're looking for is a | technical research paper meant for people intimately familiar | with the field, then that's a great title. | | But it's a terrible title for an article meant for laypeople | like us. The words "transthyretin amyloidosis" are utterly | meaningless to me and most HN/NPR readers, but "He Inherited A | Devastating Disease" tells me what kind of disease it is | (devastating, heritable) and why CRISPR gene editing might be a | big deal. | | It also helps clue me into the contents of the article. Because | it is as much a summary of a key research result, as it is a | profile of Patrick Doherty, a man affected by the disease. | That's entirely missing from your title. | | None of this is new. "Write for your audience" is as old as | writing itself. | phreack wrote: | I know what you mean. These headlines read less like titles and | more like lyrics in a song ("He was a skater boy. She said see | you later boy."). It feels a bit condescending, as if it was | aiming at children. I'd much prefer a title with a "person with | thing does action" style. | ben_w wrote: | I think it's just an oddity of newspapers. Even before it was | called "going viral", they've been a bit like that. | boublepop wrote: | > What's wrong with "CRISPR gene editing shown to cure | Transthyretin amyloidosis in patient study" | | I understand your asking a rhetorical question but in the | interest of having a discussion about this I'll try to give you | an answer. Imagine a title like "Xonuicfixs shown in | zenocttkike to cure Xclatngt" | | Reading that you might thing "wrf are they talking about?" But | imagine I just change the title to be more like: | | "A breakthrough in Xonuicfixs shows promise as a cure for a | range of decided." | | Have I lowered the information content of the title? Yes, | certainly. However I have also made it very apparent to you an | others who don't know the subject matter why this is a | worthwhile achievement, and this might therefore just become | the first article that you read and learn about Xonuicfixs. | | And really shouldn't that be the job of a title? To convey to | potential readers why the content might be with their time. And | I would note that this is entirely different from clickbait | which tires to lure you into content with no information about | what the content is. | wgolsen wrote: | In my opinion, and it seems in the NPR editor's opinion, the | most exciting angle to this story isn't the cure of one | relatively rare disease (TAA), but rather the seemingly | imminent cure of many/most inherited diseases which affect | cells of the liver. Indeed, we can even make edits that confer | protective benefits to people at risk for diseases due to | mutations OR lifestyle (see a similar approach by Verve | Therapeutics). This is a big story which deserves the attention | grabbing headline. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Off topic: are there any central repositories tracking gene | therapy progress for various genetic conditions, with a similar | UX to Moderna's mRNA pipeline tracker? | | https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline | t3po7re5 wrote: | All FDA trials are listed here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/, I | believe you can search by gene. It's not as nice as the moderna | pipeline though. | iandanforth wrote: | Please do familial hypercholesterolemia soon! I know it would be | harder but getting started on targeting specific mutations could | be fruitful. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681164/ | bigmattystyles wrote: | I want the CRISPR research that focuses on CIP accelerated. I | have a minor chronic pain issue that will get worse over time | (think sciatica). By the time I'm 60 in 25 years, it'd be great | if we had that. No more need for opiates or drugs that barely | make a dent. | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_... | foreigner wrote: | This is awesome but I'm curious why they tried it first on this | super-rare disease instead of something more common? | SoftwareMaven wrote: | Extremely rare diseases and diseases that have no known | treatment options are given more lax rules for testing. Without | that, there would be no way to develop treatments for them, but | it comes with a side benefit of providing a method to attempt | new treatment modalities. | inglor_cz wrote: | My 2 cents: | | a) need to edit liver cells only, not the entire organism, b) | the disease is deadly, so the patients do not have much to lose | if anything goes wrong. | Turing_Machine wrote: | Wild guess: it's because he's 65. Many of these severe genetic | diseases kill their victims at relatively young ages. | | Ethical researchers are thus far being super-cautious about | modifying the genome of someone who's likely to have children. | While the article doesn't say, I wouldn't be surprised to learn | that he has explicitly agreed not to have any (more?) children. | hmmmhmmmhmmm wrote: | Original paper: | https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107454?query=fe... | | This is the first published IV-administration of a gene-editing | CRISPR payload. Interesting convergence with the nanoparticles | used in mRNA vaccines. Sickle-cell and immune reprogramming edits | have been made on cells removed from the body. Josiah Zayner | infamously injected himself with CRISPR at a conference years | back, but (1) unpublished, AFAIK and (2) he had been drinking | which likely attenuated the payload [and (3) he wanted bigger | muscles, not to treat a disease] | gwern wrote: | Mirror: | https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2021-gillmore.pd... | DrAwdeOccarim wrote: | Wow, it worked...This uses LNPs similar to the recent Moderna and | BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines, and N1m-pseudouridine mRNA, just like | the mRNA vaccines. This is incredible. | DudeInBasement wrote: | Cool, we can only show stories where it worked | carbocation wrote: | Human clinical trials are pre-registered, in order to prevent | exactly what you are describing (the 'file drawer problem'). | wesleywt wrote: | Coming from a genetics background, I can tell you the fact that | it worked once is a massive achievement in itself. This is | science fiction. | Causality1 wrote: | I must be out of the loop. Last I heard trials with CRISPR were | making not only the desired genetic changes but also dozens of | others at random points in the genome. Did they solve that | problem? | dsign wrote: | Humans improve technology all the time, CRISPR gene editing | would be no exception. | | Straight from Wikipedia: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEAPER_gene_editing | | I bet a dip into the specialized papers will show a multitude | of these techniques. | softwaredoug wrote: | The period missing from the title makes this very hard to parse | what is being said. | caymanjim wrote: | Agreed. NPR never used to use clickbait titles like this ("He | ..." is pure clickbait). It's sad to see them doing it | regularly now. I imagine the latest generation of journalists | grew up thinking this is normal. I know HN prefers original | headlines, but I wish these would be edited down when posted | here. | mjfl wrote: | "well then stop clicking on them!" | changoplatanero wrote: | Reminds me of this guy that cured himself of lactose intolerance. | https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a17804128/sc... | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | I think it's annoying people get upset that people who do this | potentially damage their bodies. First of all, it's that | individuals body. They can take whatever risks they want. I | don't see how trying to alter your own DNA is any worse for you | than skydiving. Both have inherent risks, none of which affect | others. Secondly, because there is no red tape or ethical | scientific practices required, this gives us the opportunity to | study some anecdotal evidence and (hopefully) these people | donate their bodies for research after death. We can't truly | know these affects if we constantly just act so tepid about the | procedures. | | Imagine if we had the scientific process about literally every | aspect in human life since the dawn of civilization? We'd still | be making bricks with straw, manure, sand, and water because | there wasn't a government sponsored test of the quality of | "Roman Cement" therefore we should not use it. Some of these | people who criticize a lot of science do so just for the sake | of disputing it. It's a good thing this stuff happens. The more | anecdotal evidence we have, the more likely it can be subject | to legitimate scrutiny and understand certain pitfalls that | these individuals encountered and why. Just telling these | people "you're stupid, it's bad for you!" is an ultimate waste | of time and just stagnates data collection. | tialaramex wrote: | > Both have inherent risks, none of which affect others. | | If you make germline edits, this does potentially impact | others - you can have children who inherit the edit. They | don't have any choice about that (depending on the edit they | might randomly not receive a copy of the edited material, but | that's luck) and its consequences in them may be undesirable | even if the outcome for you, an adult, was fine and anyway | your choice. | karmicthreat wrote: | In the particular context of Though Emporium this wasn't | going to happen. It used an adenovirus that couldn't | reproduce so it was only going to alter a limited number of | cells in his intestine. | | The technical requirements to this kind of limit the number | of people that are going to really mess themselves up. I | would be more worried about people accidentally releasing | edited bacteria or viruses. | ch4s3 wrote: | > releasing edited bacteria or viruses. | | From what I understand it's hard to order the sequences | of DNA or RNA you'd need for this without someone | noticing. It's probably not impossible, but not something | anyone is going to bungle into. | karmicthreat wrote: | That's what is usually said. I don't think I've actually | heard of this getting triggered. I'd like to think that | global governments have this totally under control. Maybe | the US does, but does China? In any case so far it's | seemed like a whole "this rock keeps away Tigers" sort of | thing. | stuntkite wrote: | I am 100% pro bio hacking, I would go as far as to say | that I think the bio hacking community might be the only | place I can see solutions to our largest problems coming | from. I mean the bio hacking community too, not acedemia. | Not that acedamia isn't crucial to that process. | | Anyway, Maybe a few years ago the barrier to entry was | too high for most people but that is so not the case | anymore. Even just this year a friend sent me a link to a | $2000 gizmo that was about the size of a pack of gum that | could do desktop sequencing. Generating your own custom | DNA in your bedroom is considerably harder (but not | impossible) but it is not at all difficult to order a | custom sequence from a half dozen different retailers. | The file you send them is just a big chunk of a few | letters. It's assembly code with no comments (yes I know | folks do put in comments in text sometimes and sometimes | biologically but just like always comments lie more than | not), they functionally cannot be checking for what it | could do if what you're working on is even remotely | novel. For the price of a playstation you can have it | delivered to your door next day air. | | There are very real risks here for our entire planet. | Possibly one of our largest risks. To hide behind "it's | too difficult for a malicious actor" is not helpful. I | think genetic literacy is maybe the only thing we all can | do as we might be entering very weird territory as a | closed system that has a bent towards global narcissism | and self harm. | | Something that gives me some comfort is that to be good | at it you really have to do a gross and difficult deep | dive into how all life works and I think there are very | few people that could do that and still feel like it's ok | to do harm at even a small scale. The things we are going | to see in the next few years will be pretty fucking | weird. I guess when you get down to this level, the only | thing to have is something like faith. Eeeek. | coryrc wrote: | That is the line of reasoning that leads to banning | abortions*. People have a right to alter their bodies. | | EDIT: and preventing young women from choosing | sterilization. | bobthechef wrote: | How do you reason that people have the (presumably | absolute) right to alter than bodies however they please? | How do you justify that claim? It makes very specific | assumptions which are very problematic. For example, do | you have the right to lobotomize a perfectly healthy | brain? It is immoral? Can you say you have the right to | do something immoral? How about altering your uterus | during pregnancy to prevent nutrients from feeding the | child? | | I think it's pretty obvious that right implies morally | acceptability. You can't claim to have a right to | something evil. (The reverse is not true. It is morally | acceptable to own a Tesla, but you don't have the right | to one.) Alterations can be harmful and any harm that is | not a justifiable side effect is by definition immoral. | That it's your body does not somehow negate the | immorality of self-harm. Indeed, direct self-harm is even | worse morally than harm of others because it is in direct | opposition to one's own good (arguably, harm of others is | also a form of self-harm, specifically harm of one's | character and will and habitus, of one's intellect | because of the harm of one's reasoning faculties it | entails, and harm of the common good). So you cannot say | you have the right to self-harm. This is just a strange | consequence of the incoherent ideology of absolute | autonomy. | | Now, if you have, say, a defect in your body that is | preventing the proper functioning of your body, then we | may correct this defect through intervention. This is | restorative, that is, it seeks to restore the function | due to the body by virtue of how it ought to function. | This is the basis of medicine. | | Another false view that can nudge people toward the view | that any modification is acceptable is metaphysical | materialism, also incoherent. In that case, crude | metaphors between artifacts and living things are | elevated to the status of the truth and since it doesn't | matter what we do to an artifact per se. We can modify a | computer any way we wish because there is no fact of the | matter about what a computer is or how it should be apart | from human intent. It is just a collection of things | arranged in a particular way incidentally that puts them | in a series of incidental causal relations, but there is | no inherent tendency for these things to exist in these | relations and no accounting for one in terms of the | others except through the lens of human intent. Living | things aren't like that. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Precisely. Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of | "well even though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say | it's bad for you there for you cannot do it" will | inevitably lead to the logic of dictating abortion rights | as well. This is exactly the logic conservatives use with | the Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good | for everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the | "my body my choice" when it comes to a vaccine. | Regardless of who is more logically correct in the | scenario, the current stance of American liberalism is | "my body my choice" only applies in terms of abortion. | Which conservatives when they get in power again, will | utilize as rationale to make it illegal as many have been | doing for the past decade. | coryrc wrote: | I didn't say you have the right to not alter your body, | the public health requirements for contagious diseases | seemed reasonable until people have started lumping gun | control and "possibly altering your non-existent | children"... maybe I'll one day feel as you do. | didibus wrote: | It isn't about knowing what's best for you, but what's | best for others. So where ethics come into play is when | what you're seemingly doing to yourself could actually | have impact on others as well. | | For abortion, you can claim it impacts others both ways, | are you impacting a new born from having its life, or are | you preventing a yet to be born child from having a | troubled life, and saving family, parents and society its | burden. | | For a vaccine, are you putting others at risk of a | disease by not taking the vaccine? | | For bio-hacking, are you possibly creating dangerous | virus or bacterias that could harm others, are you making | modifications to yourself which will put a tole on the | medical system if you later need assistance or special | treatment if you mess up, etc. | | This is the same reasoning with drugs often, will your | modified behavior cause harm to others if you consume | them? | | Etc. | | None of this is black and white, but I think having these | discussions on "what harm to others it can cause" is | justified. | bobthechef wrote: | "Otherwise if we're going to walk the line of "well even | though it's your body, 'us smarter people' say it's bad | for you there for you cannot do it" will inevitably lead | to the logic of dictating abortion rights as well." | | The first problem is that you are claiming that the | child's body is the woman's body. It isn't and you know | that. You know that is it an entirely distinct human | being with it's own DNA, etc, etc. In order to justify | abortion, you would need to argue that murder (which is | the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human | being) is justifiable. The logical consequences are | devastating. For example, if murder of the most innocent, | powerless, dependent, and vulnerable, by those with power | over them no less, becomes justifable, then it becomes | impossible to argue for the legitimacy any human rights | whatsoever. You can't just make up moral principles out | of thin air or assign arbitrary boundaries to them | according to taste. | | The second problem is that this logic seems to put the | cart before the horse. In other words, you've decided | that abortion is a right axiomatically and you've decided | to dismiss anything that would undermine that belief. But | the moral acceptability of abortion is not axiomatic and | must be judged according to prior moral principles. | | "This is exactly the logic conservatives use with the | Covid Vaccines but because liberals "know what's good for | everyone," people shouldn't be allowed to make the "my | body my choice" when it comes to a vaccine." | | See my first point above. Here conservatives are indeed | speaking of just their own bodies, so this is a false | equivalence. | stuntkite wrote: | His YouTube channel The Thought Emporium, is amazing. He just | moved into a new lab and I really appreciate what he's working | on and how he communicates it. The robot painting fluorescent | proteins is neat and recently he dropped a video demonstrating | his adventures making synthetic opal. | | Apparently the edit made him totally lactose tolerant for over | a year and now he has very mild lactose intolerance. He says he | hasn't redosed because he wants to improve the plasmid (I think | that's the right term, BUGFIX probably isn't right) before he | takes another run at it. | | Here's his update video from last year on that endeavor. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoczYXJeMY4 | faitswulff wrote: | Technically a plasmid is kind of like a software patch, but | generally they're employed by bacteria and not eukaryotes | like humans. | stuntkite wrote: | Interesting. I have watched nearly all of The Thought | Emporium's videos (so clearly I'm an expert, lol) and I | think he uses the term plasmid to describe DNA he's working | on in the crazy bio IDE he uses. I think in this instance | he applied it to a yeast that he cultured and put into | pills and swallowed. | | He really is doing some neat stuff though. He's inspired me | to do some small bio hacking experiments and it ALMOST | makes me want to go back to college. | shpongled wrote: | Plasmid is the correct term! | stuntkite wrote: | I am not being sarcastic when I say thank you for | confirming that. If someone didn't confirm it it would | pop back in my head for days, "maaan, you fucked it up | and now some other nerds are gonna use the term wrong and | that's really not helping anyone." heh. Cheers. :) | jcims wrote: | Here's his YouTube channel: | https://youtube.com/c/thethoughtemporium | | Amazing and alarming what a smart and dedicated person can do | with limited funds. | aardvarkr wrote: | That's really cool, thanks for sharing! I just watched his | video on the WiFi camera and I loved his presentation style | DoreenMichele wrote: | I recently watched the two videos on this (that I'm aware of) | and it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as | macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people who | will say "yes" to all kinds of crazy stuff out of desperation. | | Cystic fibrosis significantly impacts gut function and many | people with it do poorly with dairy products. I could see this | and/or some variation of this being valuable therapy for the CF | community while we wait for better answers. | | Although best known as a deadly lung disorder, the impact on | gut function is a major problem that just gets less press but | is something people with CF and their loved ones fret about a | whole lot. I think if you could do something to improve gut | function fairly quickly and semi permanently, you would likely | reduce a lot of their other issues as well because people with | CF are typically underweight, sometimes severely underweight, | and their chronic malnourishment is a major underlying source | of their inability to fight off infection. | jjoonathan wrote: | > it's the first time gene therapy didn't strike me as | macabre Frankensteinian experiments on vulnerable people | | That's because it has barely begun to become viable IRL while | science fiction writers have been using it as a convenient | punching bag for decades -- without ever stopping to ask if | they should. | DoreenMichele wrote: | No, that's because I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I | know what I and others like me have been willing to do in | the face of that and because I'm aware of real world | experiments done on people who were seen as _less than | human_ for some reason, such as the Tuskegee syphilis | experiments done on Black Americans and horrifying | experiments done on people in concentration camps in Nazi | Germany. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study | | https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi- | medic... | devoutsalsa wrote: | This is insane. I love it and it terrifies me at the same time. | TaupeRanger wrote: | Wow...this is a really big deal. Congratulations to this team and | to the patients who were treated. I hope the treatment continues | to keep the disease at bay. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-26 23:00 UTC)