Topic: Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up. - page 2. (Read 1468 times)

I just knew I had seen this article before New DNA-editing technology spawns bold UC initiative

That wired site is Plagiarising, does not even give credit at all, just quoting a small section is quite the norm these days.
A link back (from wired) would have been the right and proper thing to do.

LOL, she just overstated them!!

Social dangers??  wtf is she on about?  

Nice parlor trick.  Of course anyone with half a brain knows that "designer babies" are produced by -actually taking part in their development as living beings-.  

Anyway, legal hurdles?  lmao.  

Finally I can start work on my Monkey-Dog! Funnest pet ever!!!! 

I would be happy with an AmazonBasics© Jet pack

So it looks like life is turning into a sci fi movie, BUT WHERE IS MY DAMN HOVERBOARD!  And dont link me to that cheesey one they made, I want something I can buy at walmart dammit.

Critics Lash Out At Chinese Scientists Who Edited DNA In Human Embryos



For the first time, scientists have edited DNA in human embryos, a highly controversial step long considered off limits.

Junjiu Huang and his colleagues at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, performed a series of experiments involving 86 human embryos to see if they could make changes in a gene known as HBB, which causes the sometimes fatal blood disorder beta-thalassemia.

The report, in the journal Protein & Cell, was immediately condemned by other scientists and watchdog groups, who argue the research is unsafe, premature and raises disturbing ethical concerns.

"No researcher should have the moral warrant to flout the globally widespread policy agreement against modifying the human germline," Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group, wrote in an email to Shots. "This paper demonstrates the enormous safety risks that any such attempt would entail, and underlines the urgency of working to forestall other such efforts. The social dangers of creating genetically modified human beings cannot be overstated."

George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard, agreed.

"Their data reinforces the wisdom of the calls for a moratorium on any clinical practice of embryo gene editing, because current methods are too inefficient and unsafe," he wrote in an email. "Further, there needs to be careful consideration not only of the safety but also of the social and ethical implications of applying this technology to alter our germ lines."

Scientists have been able to manipulate DNA for years. But it's long been considered taboo to make changes in the DNA in a human egg, sperm or embryo because those changes could become a permanent part of the human genetic blueprint. One concern is that it would be unsafe: Scientists could make a mistake, which could introduce a new disease that would be passed down for generations. And there's also fears it this could lead to socially troubling developments, such as "designer babies," in which parents can pick and choose the traits of their children.


http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/04/23/401655818/critics-lash-out-at-chinese-scientists-who-edited-dna-in-human-embryos

Britain becomes first nation to legalise three-parent babies


Britain will become the first nation to legalise a "three-parent" IVF technique which doctors say can prevent some inherited incurable diseases but which critics fear will effectively lead to "designer babies".
After more than three hours of debate, lawmakers in parliament's upper house voted on Tuesday for a change in the law to allow the treatments, echoing a positive vote in the lower house earlier this month.

The treatment, called mitochondrial transfer, is known as "three-parent" in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor.

Although the techniques are still at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, experts say that now legal hurdles have been overcome, Britain's first 3-parent baby could be born as early as 2016.

Mitochondrial transfer involves intervening in the fertilisation process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/25/britain-becomes-first-nation-to-legalise-three-parent-babies.html

So why do we immediately disbelieve these claims? 

First there is the publication style, making it seem like written-for-idiots clickbait. 

Second, we have been through this with PCR and 30 years of basically the same claims.  Effectively these techniques have as their only successes those modifications of genomes that made plants less productive, e.g. either needing more chemicals or needing purchasing seeds, because that means you could charge the farmers more.     

None of all this tech has been able to reproduce anything like the feats of e.g. the ancient american agricultural scientists. 

I like to keep an open mind so I'm not going to fully discount crispr.  However it's totally clear nothing useful will come from this while the research is paid for in fiat. 

[...]
Earlier this year, Baltimore joined 17 other researchers for another California conference, this one at the Carneros Inn in Napa Valley. “It was a feeling of déjà vu,” Baltimore says. There he was again, gathered with some of the smartest scientists on earth to talk about the implications of genome engineering.

The stakes, however, have changed. Everyone at the Napa meeting had access to a gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9. The first term is an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” a description of the genetic basis of the method; Cas9 is the name of a protein that makes it work. Technical details aside, Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people. “These are monumental moments in the history of biomedical research,” Baltimore says. “They don't happen every day.”

Using the three-year-old technique, researchers have already reversed mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS. Agronomists have rendered wheat invulnerable to killer fungi like powdery mildew, hinting at engineered staple crops that can feed a population of 9 billion on an ever-warmer planet. Bioengineers have used Crispr to alter the DNA of yeast so that it consumes plant matter and excretes ethanol, promising an end to reliance on petrochemicals. Startups devoted to Crispr have launched. International pharmaceutical and agricultural companies have spun up Crispr R&D. Two of the most powerful universities in the US are engaged in a vicious war over the basic patent. Depending on what kind of person you are, Crispr makes you see a gleaming world of the future, a Nobel medallion, or dollar signs.

The technique is revolutionary, and like all revolutions, it's perilous. Crispr goes well beyond anything the Asilomar conference discussed. It could at last allow genetics researchers to conjure everything anyone has ever worried they would—designer babies, invasive mutants, species-specific bioweapons, and a dozen other apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. It brings with it all-new rules for the practice of research in the life sciences. But no one knows what the rules are—or who will be the first to break them.


http://www.wired.com/2015/07/crispr-dna-editing-2/