Definitely a complicated issue here now that it looks like it’s entered the realm of reality.
I doubt anyone would object to any sort of gene editing that removes obvious genetic illnesses from the baby’s genome, things like Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.
Things get murkier when it comes to illnesses that may have a genetic component, but DNA isn’t the only cause: morbid obesity, heart disease, etc.
And then things get really murky when you go the full “designer baby” route, with things ranging from determining the baby’s eye and hair color all the way to creating a genetically engineered super man/woman a la seen in some dystopian (or post-dystopian) science fiction. The most obvious example I can think of are things like Khan Noonian Singh from Star Trek (though it was murky if he was genetically engineered vs. created through old-fashioned selective breeding eugenics).
Anti-abortion advocates are often also deeply against this, as are a segment of disabled-rights advocates. Not majorities, but there is a significant voice of opposition to even that level of gene editing.
Color me informed then. I’d thought people would be in favor of gene editing to remove/prevent fatal genetic illnesses as opposed to ones that are merely “disabling” (for lack of a better term).
I’m also surprised at the anti-abortion resistance, again, specific to prevention of fatal illnesses. Well, maybe only a bit as there is often a fair bit of hypocrisy on their part. I mean, if one of the reasons a woman would choose to have an abortion is because the baby would be born with a fatal genetic illness that would result in it suffering/being still born/living a very short life/etc., you’d think anything that would give the woman a reason not to have an abortion would be a good thing. Then again, they are also often against contraception, so there’s where the hypocrisy comes in.
The argument is usually that the short life and caregiver burden of a fatal childhood illness are “part of god’s plan” and who are you to engineer a way around god’s plan?
Yeah, that’s what I thought when you mentioned it. It’s very different from a lot of the beliefs of even the most religious people I know, who were always like (roughly speaking), “God gave Man knowledge to heal illness and preserve life. You should use as much of that knowledge to heal illness and preserve life as much as possible.”
The line is that genetic engineering aborts the life that would have been had we not interfered. We effectively “aborted” the original genetic code and put a different one into the world.
Religion creates some… odd notions that wouldn’t even occur to others.
Not too long ago I was presented with… well this from a religious person (my mother):
“Did you know that some of the founding fathers took cadavers and cut them open to study them?” Presented in the tone of ‘scandal, maybe we aren’t such a great country after all’
I wasn’t even sure how to respond. It’s like… out of left field. To me it’s like penalizing them for breathing air or drinking water. I’m not trying to disparage religious people, just saying good faith disagreements caused by faith are possible.
Oh yeah, I mean, I get that if you’re of that mindset, that’s the notion you’d come up with. I just have been fortunate not to have met people of that mindset.
I wonder what these people would be saying if post-birth genetic editing becomes a thing (and yes, I know there are some experimental treatments involving this).
Well, context is everything. Back then, just about all of those cadavers were acquired via grave robbing. Of course, out of all the sins committed by the founding fathers as viewed by modern eyes, one could argue grave robbing is near the bottom of the list.
While I’m as against grave robbing as much as the next person, for one, I didn’t know that, but for two, that really wasn’t the part that she took issue with. Her issue came from the treatment of cadavers, they’re somehow above other dead things in her eyes.
Whereas I have about as much respect for human corpses as I do for animal corpses or felled trees.
I was thinking about that. Logically, I agree. A body is just dead meat there’s nothing special about it, in fact it’s hazardous to have around for too long and there’s nothing wrong with study, dissection, experimentation, etc. Culturally I still have hangups about generally treating remains with a modicum of respect; don’t throw Grandma out with the trash, don’t disrupt graveyards and such.
We’re a bit off topic here, this is after all the genetic engineering thread, but that said.
I agree treat graveyards with respect but not because there’s corpses there, but because the owners of the land do not appreciate it when people treat their property with disrespect. I’d give about as much respect to a graveyard as a stranger’s lawn.
As to throwing grandma in the trash. I’d say that’s up to a mix of the wishes of the owner of the body and whatever modern public health policy has to say on the matter. That is to say, if both of those parties consent to it, I’ve no issue with it, whatsoever. (Though I suspect the latter may have thoughts)
I respect anyone who disagrees, they can do/feel however they’d like. I just clearly do not think of the human dead as highly as many other people.
Edit: Upon rereading this I see that I have a lot of respect for owners of things. If that ever becomes less important, comrade, I imagine I’ll rethink some of these ideas to line up with a new system.
It’s way more complicated than that, unfortunately. The old dogma of “one gene equals one protein,” while still sorta true, oversimplifies the issue. The interactions of those gene products together are extraordinarily complicated, and some disorders we previously thought were explained by a single mutation can instead be the result of a complex chain of gene regulation. A single mutation in one gene can impact the role of countless others.
So where we think the answer is clear-cut, it may not be. Add to that this Chinese researcher’s approach (which from what I can gather is a targeted knockout as opposed to an alteration) and you’re basically shooting in the dark. There are variants of CCR5 that, while conferring HIV resistance, also make you more susceptible to other infection and worsen your outcomes.
The most wild part of all of this is that this guy went whole hog. Instead of coverting CCR5 to a known HIV-resistant variant, he cut the whole fuckin’ thing out (well, introduced a nonsense mutation anyway), which introduces wayyyyyy more variables.
And we still don’t understand the long-term stability of CRISPR editing, so its therapeutic application is also unknown.
We will likely get there one day, but right now, we have a very powerful tool and very very very little knowledge of how to actually use it effectively. We need to do a lot of work figuring out how to not cause damage before we can even get to talking about designer babies or the like.
Oh, I agree that it’s more complicated than that. I was thinking purely from a hypothetical standpoint of, “if we can definitively figure out what genes to modify to fix these problems, we should.” I know that the current state of the art isn’t capable of doing that in a properly targeted fashion yet, if it’s even possible.
