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Quote:
Originally Posted by PullMyFinger
What if they identify the gay gene? Should they fix it?
It is a very good question.
Let's suppose, just suppose that a gene is identified and it can be switched.
I want to flip the question.
What if they find the heterosexual gene, should they fix it?
If a male child is more likely to have a higher income and better chance of supporting parents into their old age, wouldn't a gay male child be more likely to find another gay male as a partner and provide even better support?
Wouldn't corporations and governments prefer gay men over straight men since they are less likely to be absent from work to attend to sick children?
In countries with over population wouldn't there be an incentive to encourage people to have gay children who are less likely to reproduce?
Anytime a doctor saves a life, he or she is playing God. Anytime a woman has successful IVF, she and her medical provider are playing God.
I understand the concerns with genetic modification, but playing God is nothing new for humans.
Also, if some radical person were to attempt to create a race of people with this technology, I'd think they'd attempt to breed people who weren't intelligent in order to control them.
Anytime a doctor saves a life, he or she is playing God. Anytime a woman has successful IVF, she and her medical provider are playing God.
I understand the concerns with genetic modification, but playing God is nothing new for humans.
Also, if some radical person were to attempt to create a race of people with this technology, I'd think they'd attempt to breed people who weren't intelligent in order to control them.
Certainly we've had leaders with no apparent scruples - they were willing to lay waste whole nations in order to get what they wanted - Hitler, Stalin, etc. With genetic modification, what's different is that changes to the germ line - that is, changes that can be inherited - continue until they (the carriers) die out without progeny or evolve naturally, or until they're edited out of the human genome. In that sense, this particular playing God could be eternal.
If a group were to create tailored people in this way, Why would they limit themselves to creating less intelligent people? If the point is to have unquestioningly loyal people, & as long as you're in the neighborhood anyway, Wouldn't you tweak for additional intelligence as well as strength & endurance & so on? Seems natural to me, if you want the biggest bang for your buck. & as for control, you could gene edit to get that too.
"The team injected 86 embryos and then waited 48 hours, enough time for the CRISPR/Cas9 system and the molecules that replace the missing DNA to act — and for the embryos to grow to about eight cells each. Of the 71 embryos that survived, 54 were genetically tested. This revealed that just 28 were successfully spliced, and that only a fraction of those contained the replacement genetic material. “If you want to do it in normal embryos, you need to be close to 100%,” Huang says. “That’s why we stopped. We still think it’s too immature.”
"His team also found a surprising number of ‘off-target’ mutations assumed to be introduced by the CRISPR/Cas9 complex acting on other parts of the genome. This effect is one of the main safety concerns surrounding germline gene editing because these unintended mutations could be harmful. The rates of such mutations were much higher than those observed in gene-editing studies of mouse embryos or human adult cells. And Huang notes that his team likely only detected a subset of the unintended mutations because their study looked only at a portion of the genome, known as the exome. “If we did the whole genome sequence, we would get many more,” he says."
(My emphasis - more @ the URL)
The mutation rate was much higher - even with partial data - than the results with mouse embryos & human adult cells had led the team to believe would occur. Clearly, these lines of research need a lot more work, & careful isolation from the World, until we understand & can absolutely control the proliferation of any mutations.
There is no known way to modify all the DNA of an adult - each cell contains a copy of the individual's genome. There are a lot of cells in an adult human, & no way to access them all & make sure all DNA is altered. It's just not in the cards, & I don't know that anyone is even looking @ the possibility of doing that.
"The team injected 86 embryos and then waited 48 hours, enough time for the CRISPR/Cas9 system and the molecules that replace the missing DNA to act — and for the embryos to grow to about eight cells each. Of the 71 embryos that survived, 54 were genetically tested. This revealed that just 28 were successfully spliced, and that only a fraction of those contained the replacement genetic material. “If you want to do it in normal embryos, you need to be close to 100%,” Huang says. “That’s why we stopped. We still think it’s too immature.”
"His team also found a surprising number of ‘off-target’ mutations assumed to be introduced by the CRISPR/Cas9 complex acting on other parts of the genome. This effect is one of the main safety concerns surrounding germline gene editing because these unintended mutations could be harmful. The rates of such mutations were much higher than those observed in gene-editing studies of mouse embryos or human adult cells. And Huang notes that his team likely only detected a subset of the unintended mutations because their study looked only at a portion of the genome, known as the exome. “If we did the whole genome sequence, we would get many more,” he says."
(My emphasis - more @ the URL)
The mutation rate was much higher - even with partial data - than the results with mouse embryos & human adult cells had led the team to believe would occur. Clearly, these lines of research need a lot more work, & careful isolation from the World, until we understand & can absolutely control the proliferation of any mutations.
There is no known way to modify all the DNA of an adult - each cell contains a copy of the individual's genome. There are a lot of cells in an adult human, & no way to access them all & make sure all DNA is altered. It's just not in the cards, & I don't know that anyone is even looking @ the possibility of doing that.
Thank you for your update on this thread.
Certainly if "repairing" one part of the DNA leads to possible modifications of another section this technology has big problems.
Note I said IF.
I also looked for recent articles and found this one.
CRISPR is now being sold as a mail-order kit for just over $100 bucks. What I found disturbing was demonstration that the experiment worked was proof that E. Coli bacteria was now resistant to an antibiotic.
Making antibiotic resistant bacteria doesn't sound good to me. What stops a group from converting other bacteria into resistant strains that become a real problem.
Certainly if "repairing" one part of the DNA leads to possible modifications of another section this technology has big problems.
Note I said IF.
...
CRISPR is now being sold as a mail-order kit for just over $100 bucks. What I found disturbing was demonstration that the experiment worked was proof that E. Coli bacteria was now resistant to an antibiotic.
Making antibiotic resistant bacteria doesn't sound good to me. What stops a group from converting other bacteria into resistant strains that become a real problem.
No worries, it's good to keep up with the literature. & thanks for the cite, I'll read it.
Along these lines, you might look @ Soonish : emerging technologies that'll improve and/or ruin everything / Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, c2017, Penguin Press, 303.49 WEIN.
They look @ Synthetic Biology, Targeted Medicine & CRISPR-Cas9 specifically. (See MustReadNonFiction in the Books section, I reviewed & gave more information there.) It's a light-hearted look, but interesting information.
As to E. Coli - well, the bacteria are always evolving, & bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become a real problem in the World in the last 10 years. We're down to massive doses in shunts of antibiotics whose maximum dosages are nearly lethal in & of themselves. We need to get cracking on new antibiotics, or come up with new approaches to infection control, or both - & the sooner the better. It takes a long time to get antibiotics out of the lab, into animal/human tests, & then to market.
Last edited by southwest88; 11-21-2017 at 04:17 PM..
Reason: add
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