Gene therapy - a brave new world?

[pErvinalia]

I also wonder if it might just be available to those who can afford it - assuming it isn't affordable to national health systems. That raises the prospect of an elite rich and healthy class and all that goes with it..this the 'Brave new world' in the OP title.

Analogous to the movie Gattaca (and a bunch of other similar movies that escape me at the moment).

[Forty Two]

I would go even further than that; so long as you're not making changes that will limit or disable future generations (eg just look at what we have done to the noble wolf, and all the health issues the various breeds have to endure) then I think it's fair game.

Going beyond the straightforward corrections I mentioned earlier would have to be thought through very, very carefully, as there is a potential minefield of unintended consequences and ethical concerns. I'm not saying that genetic alterations beyond simple corrections of defects are automatically wrong, but I'm saying they could easily be seriously problematic.

They will someday be able to engineer for higher IQ, strength, speed, durability, disease resistance. That's going to change humanity forever. Ethical? Who knows. Inevitable? If we survive as a civilization, yes, inevitable.

They can engineer fish to be transparent, and plants to be disease and pest resistant. There is no theoretical barrier to making humans smarter, stronger, faster, disease resistant, and longer lived. I see no "ethical" issue with that, and I see no moral issue. There does not seem to be any non-religious reason for suggesting that the size, intelligence, speed and durability of humans which arbitrarily evolved is what we have to stay with. Under the right circumstances, evolution could have produced humans with the strength of gorillas.

The real problem, as a practical matter, is in the transition. The humans that are born naturally will, of course, be at a significant disadvantage. But, in a generation or two, it shall pass. Everyone will be engineered, and most sex will be with robots, and it will seem normal. The idea that humans used to leave their procreation up to chance, exposing their kids to risks of genetic defects, low intelligence, physical issues, mental issues, etc., will be looked at as barbaric.

It's just our lack of familiarity that causes us concern. The normal is right. Those of us who remember when smoking was allowed in workplaces and restaurants will remember that when the movement was afoot to prohibiting it, people had conniption fits and were saying that bars would close and restaurants go out of business because smokers would not go there. And, that people had a right to smoke, and restauranteurs and businesses had rights to do what they want and allow what they want in their establishments. Now, looking back, allowing smoking in workplaces and in bars/restaurants is almost unthinkable. Same thing with seatbelts in cars. When they were coming out the public had great resistance to them, and most people questioned the ethics of forcing people to do something for purely their own good, and not to prevent harm to others. Now, not wearing seatbelts is viewed as bizarre. Kids are raised on it. It's normal.

[Forty Two]

I also wonder if it might just be available to those who can afford it - assuming it isn't affordable to national health systems. That raises the prospect of an elite rich and healthy class and all that goes with it..this the 'Brave new world' in the OP title.

Stratos and the Troglytes --

[NineBerry]

I also wonder if it might just be available to those who can afford it - assuming it isn't affordable to national health systems. That raises the prospect of an elite rich and healthy class and all that goes with it..this the 'Brave new world' in the OP title.

The rich elite has already in the past created their own specific gene pool by inbreeding among each other. See genetic diseases in royals.

[pErvinalia]

and most sex will be with robots, and it will seem normal.

I wish that point would hurry up and get here..

[mistermack]

All of these things encounter resistance at first, and the arguments get ignored and overruled in time.

The slippery slope argument gets trundled out every time. It's so overworked it's pretty jaded these days.

The average man in the street can see immediately the stupidity of the argument, that curing nasty diseases will lead to designer babies.
The designer babies will come anyway, with or without the cures. If the money is there, people will supply the goods.

We already have designer dogs and cats, without the gene therapy. The demand is there.
One day we will have big brains, big dicks, big tits, no baldness, long legs, long life, all on a menu when you order the gene makeup of your fetus.
Of course, the poor will then look different to the rich. They will be shorter, uglier and less healthy.
You get what you pay for.

[JimC]

I also wonder if it might just be available to those who can afford it - assuming it isn't affordable to national health systems. That raises the prospect of an elite rich and healthy class and all that goes with it..this the 'Brave new world' in the OP title.

It is a potential concern, sure. However, after the initial expensive research, developments in automating both gene scanning and CRISPR technology might make the process not much different to other medical interventions. Something for society to consider is that many people with genetic disorders that are not immediately fatal require a lifetime of expensive medical support, which the development of effective gene therapy may circumvent.

[NineBerry]

Replacing everyone with plastic drones would be even cheaper.

[Forty Two]

We already have designer dogs and cats, without the gene therapy. The demand is there.
One day we will have big brains, big dicks, big tits, no baldness, long legs, long life, all on a menu when you order the gene makeup of your fetus.
Of course, the poor will then look different to the rich. They will be shorter, uglier and less healthy.
You get what you pay for.

Not sure why we would want small brains, small dicks, tits, baldness, short legs, and short lives, if the alternatives are available.

But.... the result has been foretold by Zardoz...

[NineBerry]

Tomatoes that were bred to most efficiently grow don't have the same strong taste as other forms. Optimized humans might be boring as fuck.

[Forty Two]

We should be able to isolate the gene related to the taste of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, etc., and make them taste like salad dressing. That would provide dressing-resistant salads, so we can eat healthy salads without drowning them in fatty and sugary, high calorie salad dressings. The future is limitless.

[NineBerry]

Fat is flavour.

[Forty Two]

I think genetic engineering will give us nonfat fat.

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's encouraging that they've had success with this trial; expect more to follow. However CRISPR isn't a magic bullet yet.

"CRISPR gene editing can cause hundreds of unintended mutations"

As CRISPR-Cas9 starts to move into clinical trials, a new study published in Nature Methods has found that the gene-editing technology can introduce hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome.

"We feel it's critical that the scientific community consider the potential hazards of all off-target mutations caused by CRISPR, including single nucleotide mutations and mutations in non-coding regions of the genome," says co-author Stephen Tsang, MD, PhD, the Laszlo T. Bito Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and associate professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University Medical Center and in Columbia's Institute of Genomic Medicine and the Institute of Human Nutrition.

CRISPR-Cas9 editing technology—by virtue of its speed and unprecedented precision—has been a boon for scientists trying to understand the role of genes in disease. The technique has also raised hope for more powerful gene therapies that can delete or repair flawed genes, not just add new genes.

The first clinical trial to deploy CRISPR is now underway in China, and a U.S. trial is slated to start next year. But even though CRISPR can precisely target specific stretches of DNA, it sometimes hits other parts of the genome. Most studies that search for these off-target mutations use computer algorithms to identify areas most likely to be affected and then examine those areas for deletions and insertions.

"These predictive algorithms seem to do a good job when CRISPR is performed in cells or tissues in a dish, but whole genome sequencing has not been employed to look for all off-target effects in living animals," says co-author Alexander Bassuk, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics at the University of Iowa.

In the new study, the researchers sequenced the entire genome of mice that had undergone CRISPR gene editing in the team's previous study and looked for all mutations, including those that only altered a single nucleotide.
The researchers determined that CRISPR had successfully corrected a gene that causes blindness, but Kellie Schaefer, a PhD student in the lab of Vinit Mahajan, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University, and co-author of the study, found that the genomes of two independent gene therapy recipients had sustained more than 1,500 single-nucleotide mutations and more than 100 larger deletions and insertions. None of these DNA mutations were predicted by computer algorithms that are widely used by researchers to look for off-target effects.

[mistermack]

Tomatoes that were bred to most efficiently grow don't have the same strong taste as other forms. Optimized humans might be boring as fuck.

I doubt if the lack of taste is down to genetics.

It's more to do with the intensive way that they're grown.

Field mushrooms are the same breed as cultivated ones, but they have about 100 times the flavour.
I've picked mushrooms that grew in the garden after I threw out the compost of a grow box, and they were intensely tasty, far better than the original grow box ones.