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CRISPR Gene editing - The Next Step in Human Evolution?


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I always feel bad for the animals involved in medical research (not only this one but in general), but other than that I'm definitely fine with this development. Could be a huge breakthrough in curing Type 1 diabetes and other chronic diseases and growing and harvesting organs for transplants; just another step to eradicating hereditary diseases in the future. There's always a possibility of things going wrong and technology being misused but everything comes with a cost anyway so...

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1 minute ago, nudge said:

I always feel bad for the animals involved in medical research (not only this one but in general), but other than that I'm definitely fine with this development. Could be a huge breakthrough in curing Type 1 diabetes and other chronic diseases and growing and harvesting organs for transplants; just another step to eradicating hereditary diseases in the future. There's always a possibility of things going wrong and technology being misused but everything comes with a cost anyway so...

I can understand that but I am not a vegetarian and I think sometimes that we are raising some animals to be butchered so we can eat them, you could class this as the same, it just makes me shiver that all the experiments on the animals involved you don't know or won't be able to tell if they are suffering from the experiments, they can't speak our language and tell us so. 

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13 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

I can understand that but I am not a vegetarian and I think sometimes that we are raising some animals to be butchered so we can eat them, you could class this as the same, it just makes me shiver that all the experiments on the animals involved you don't know or won't be able to tell if they are suffering from the experiments, they can't speak our language and tell us so. 

Yes, that's why I said that I also always feel sorry for them but I think it's justified as "necessary evil" of sorts - well as long as you look at it from the utilitarian point of view of mankind's progress, advancement and survival at least. Mind you, I'm only talking about medical/scientific research and testing here; all other sorts of testing for trivial commercial things like cosmetics should definitely be banned (and I'm glad it is in the EU). Truth is, every medical breakthrough in history involved animal testing and research at some point and this is no different...

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13 hours ago, nudge said:

Japan approves first human-animal embryo experiments.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02275-3

I love how every medical researcher always says something on the lines of "don't worry we will take all the necessary precautions". But overall, I am fine with it if it helps further disease prevention and may even unlock some other medical doors.

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There's a new docuseries about gene editing called Unnatural Selection on Netflix. Haven't seen it yet but might be worth a watch - although judging from the trailer it might be a rather one-sided view with a lot of fear-mongering and focused more on garage style biohacking than actual science. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, nudge said:

More "CRISPR babies" incoming (potentially). A good read showing how this new experiment would differ from the one that He Jiankui did in China despite of targeting the same gene.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01770-x

@Mel81x

This right here "Rebrikov understands that if he proceeds with his experiment before Russia’s updated regulations are in place, he might be considered a second He Jiankui. But he says he would only do so if he’s sure of the safety of the procedure. “I think I’m crazy enough to do it,” he says." tells me all I need to know. He's going to do it and tell the regulatory bodies to go to hell. I think the way the laws are made now is absurd and if you dont run the tests how will you know the germline effect? Speculation? Doudna is the worst at these kinds of legalities and its no surprise the American government backs this while China has slowly had to yield due to pressure from the international community. I hope in the next 9 months Russian regulatory bodies say its okay so we can see what the chances are for a baby to survive birth with an HIV mother because right now the alternative is to condemn that child to HIV infection and then force that child to be medicated which runs into an agenda I think Big Pharma cares more about than gene therapy.

 

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4 hours ago, Bluewolf said:

Moved this here as we discussed it quite a bit in the past in this thread.

Can't shake the feeling that he's only been sentenced because the global public outrage made China look bad...

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2 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Makes you wonder what might be going on behind closed doors in other countries... 

Have you heard of Operation Paperclip? It was a secret US government/CIA operation that brought hundreds of ex-Nazi scientists into the US after the war and whitewashed their pasts in order to take advantage of their (often controversial) advancements in science and medicine including WMD, biological and chemical warfare and the likes... 

I have absolutely no doubt that every major country in the worlds is doing all they can to get their hands on medical/scientific/technological breakthroughs using all means necessary behind closed doors not caring about the"morality" and "ethics" whatsoever.

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1 minute ago, nudge said:

Have you heard of Operation Paperclip? It was a secret US government/CIA operation that brought hundreds of ex-Nazi scientists into the US after the war and whitewashed their pasts in order to take advantage of their (often controversial) advancements in science and medicine including WMD, biological and chemical warfare and the likes... 

I have absolutely no doubt that every major country in the worlds is doing all they can to get their hands on medical/scientific/technological breakthroughs using all means necessary behind closed doors not caring about the"morality" and "ethics" whatsoever.

No I have never heard of it but totally agree with you on the other points, There is no way that they would halt trials/experiments on moral grounds because they all want to be the first to find new breakthroughs. It's just that what they do is kept so tightly under wraps that they have just not been caught out yet... It's frightening what they keep from the view of the masses in order to gain an edge...The same could be said of Technology breakthroughs.. 

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11 hours ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

I've missed a fair bit of this. How close are we to seeing Solid Snake on the battlefield now? 

Hehe he's already on the battlefield in many ways. Boston Dynamics is now doing work with the USG to start building terrain-agnostic machinery and there was some talk about an exo-skeleton which can be used to carry far more weight than humanly possible allowing for better carry. 

Back on topic, I don't know if China really needed to make this move. They've never given two shits about the international community when it comes to this and neither has Korea when it comes to weapon tech advancement (and they have some superb robotics integration). Most of their funding is government-backed and while this may look like something to appease the international community it may also be planned to allow better investor involvement in their ongoing plans in the biotech industry. 

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CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing successful for Sickle Cell Disease and transfusion dependent β-Thalassemia - more than a year later, the patients had clinically improved and no longer needed blood transfusions.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2031054

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/crispr-and-another-genetic-strategy-fix-cell-defects-two-common-blood-disorders

 

A big breakthrough.

 

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A new breakthrough, sounds very promising - a new technique called CRISPRoff which is reversible and non-destructive (unlike traditional CRISPR), and the introduced epigenetic changes can be passed down to future lines of cells.

https://interestingengineering.com/crispr-breakthrough-scientists-can-now-turn-genes-on-and-off-at-whim

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Now this is interesting...

US startup Colossal Biosciences has announced plans to use CRISPR to bring woolly mammoths back from extinction and into the frosty landscape of the Siberian tundra.

https://scitechdaily.com/startup-colossal-biosciences-wants-to-bring-woolly-mammoths-back-from-extinction-it-might-not-be-such-a-bad-idea/

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Just now, nudge said:

In all seriousness though, this whole de-extinction topic is very fascinating. Imagine being able to bring back entire species, that's an incredible feat...

Yea it is to be honest.. I also take their point about money going in to it that might be better used elsewhere but could we really afford to not see if it could be done??? 

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