Amazing the domino effect.
Maybe if you suppress the immune system, introduce working mitochondria, and then stop taking the immunosuppressants, any mitochondria that are still outside cells get cleaned up and the ones that got absorbed are shielded and can do their job.
Another thought, what about three parent households engaging in IVF? Will this be an option to have 3 biological parents regardless of disease? How will we keep records properly? What are the legal consequences? Do mitochondrial parents need to pay child support?
Absolutely not. This is in vitro:
>> The eggs from both the mother and the donor are fertilised in the lab with the dad's sperm.
In vivo would make no sense.
It would certainly be one of the more stranger ways to explain the birds and the bees
Some of us are a bit more comfortable with IVF-like processes because the intent is to foster human life rather than take it, just as it's acceptable to cause an abortion in the process of saving a mother.
But that (fostering human life) is also not a settled debate if the laws in some states are any indication. But debate is hard in jurisdictions where minority opinion can hold sway (like in Florida where a referendum hit 57% for enshrining a right to abortion).
While I'm resolutely pro-choice and don't consider a fertilized cell to be "human", (before I continue I want to be clear, I 100% support these types of procedures in the article) there is eventually going to be a grey area where debate needs to happen before we hit Gattaca-style dystopian editing.
PS This is not meant to argue against your view per se, which I disagree with but respect. I mean to illustrate how very quickly this gets messy and rational debate flies out the window. But that's the same with anything political in today's climate... :-/
(the same as with pro-choicers and third trimester abortions for example)
Frankly, advice on having children from celibate men doesn't need special consideration from women.
I say this as someone who was at least raised Catholic and still has an affection for the faith.
Or adopt?
This feels a bit narcissistic. If you and your partner determine you have genetic traits you'd rather not have, you have the option of not having biological children.
This just feels like it's going to open Pandora's box. You and your partner are short and near sighted, edit in some height and vision.
You're partner has ethnic traits they don't want to pass on ? Just edit those out.
This feels like something that's going to start well intentioned, but snowball into very strange outcomes.
God forbid this ever comes to America's profit driven health system. The rich would have the option to edit in "better" traits. Gattica here we come
The cold truth is that it is thus inevitable that in the future humanity will need gene modification to avoid the spreading of harmful mutations. This is what they are doing here, especially since mitochondrial DNA is inherited directly from the mother means that any problems will be propagated to all future generation unlike normal genes.
From this perspective, techniques that are technically eugenics, but can't feasibly be used in evil ways, are unambiguous progress. I'm wary of gene editing, but the technique described in the article doesn't seem like a slippery slope to me.
This feels like something that's going to start well intentioned, but snowball into very strange outcomes.
Adopt who? There is almost no children available for adoption, only highly handicapped children who needs an auxiliary family.
Might be easier with a donor egg, but where are you going to get that? Egg donation is highly regulated and many would find it hard to get a donor. Of course this solution also requires a donor egg, so you'd already need to have that available.
This is not true, at least in the United States. For one thing, there are many children in foster care who want to be adopted. It is also possible, though difficult and expensive, to adopt infants from mothers giving up their children for adoption as well. I am not saying it's an easy option or that everyone should do it, but it is an option.
And? I suspect that when the first glasses were made, someone complained about people playing God, too: why do you want to correct your eyesight when you were not intended to see well by the Almighty?
Correction of genetic problems early on seems a lot better than various complicated treatments down the line.
"Strange" often means just "we are not used to it", but the next generations will take such things for absolutely granted.
It is no less strange that I, a Central European, am talking to an American in almost real time and free of charge, and can read his replies. That would be indeed very strange to anyone prior to 1995 or so.
And yeah, this connectedness has downsides as well, but we may work on them.
In some Asian countries modifying your eyes to look white is a common practice. You could easily end up with biracial people editing out some of their more ethnic features for the next generation.
Not to mention their might be some mistakes along the way. You can't git reset --hard a human.
As imperfect as humans are, that's what makes us human.
Now if as a consenting adult you want to modify yourself, laser eye surgery, etc, go ahead.
I think a lot of these biotechs that raise alarms are pretty safe, and the problem is that we’re really bad at explaining in lay terms how it all works, and people naturally assume the worst.
I think it’s also an issue of practicality (and this is where it flirts with being eugenics). What’s the alternative? To tell people not to reproduce if they have known disease prone genes? To make them not reproduce? To tell them they don’t get universal healthcare if they do?
I think mucking about with our building blocks is the least bad option we have.
> What’s the alternative?
Acceptance. These parents can still reproduce. A female child will most likely be healthy, like the mother. And the male child will not always be born with a mitochondrial disease. People do not realize that father's can also pass mitochondrial genetics to their children. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/6639/)
In trying to remove all risk from our lives we are making it inherently risky in other, usually unknown, ways.
All the spiritual practices talk about acceptance, so just pick one.
But my bigger point is that it is still eugenics. And that is bad no matter what the goal is.
As a parent of young kids, this is a core issue I grapple with. I want my kids to have fun and take risks and learn how to handle the bumpiness of life. But I don’t want my kids being maimed or killed.
I think the argument could be simplified to “we’re collectively better off if we live in a manner where one consequence is that x% of us will get badly hurt.” And I personally believe that’s a true statement.
My youngest was one of the x%. He played in a risky way (that was entirely normal when I was a kid) and later that night a team of orthopedic pediatric surgeons had to put his body back together.
The hardest thing for me is not to be constantly saying “that’s too high; get down from there; don’t go too far; slow down” because that trauma lives with his mom and I far more than it does with him. But I believe it’s important for him to keep taking risks.
I also believe it’s up to each parent to decide how they want to raise their kids. We don’t get to collectively decide for the parents.
Which relates back to the topic: I think it’s collectivism vs. individualism. I believe we cannot decide for people that they don’t get a choice in the matter. Even if one might argue that this poses a collective risk to the population.
The idea of individualism is a hard one for me. Are we really individuals? I mean, we get half our genetics from each parent, so where is the individual? Can any of you live as a total individual, without the assistance of even a small group? When in human history, even primate history, have you seen our species survive without a community?
When a parent makes this decision for gene therapy, that does not just affect the parents, it affects the child (the outcome of which is still not understood) and it affects those child's children.
Natural selection exists for a reason, but the eugenicists think they can control it.
Comparing gene therapy to cognitive therapy (telling your kids to not be stupid), is in no way comparable. Doing gene therapy is not "raising your kids", it is creating your kids.
I am saying this as someone who lives with THREE genetic disorders. von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (Father and Mother, hemangioblastomas), Cystathionine beta-synthase deficiency (Mother, homocystinuria), and a DNM1L Deficiency that leads to mitochondrial fission dysfunction (myoptahy, ME/CFS, OCD, Anxiety, Asperger's).
If there is a way to detect or prevent genetic defects before the kids are born, we should really allow people to make a choice.
And I really don't care if doctors mix genetic material from 3 people to make a healthy baby. It's still a form of evolution. I'd think we should really try to give two people who really want to have a kid a chance to have a healthy kid...
You're literally advocating for letting genetic diseases cull the afflicted populations, "selecting for the better genes" that way. Seemingly the exact opposite of your claimed position, I hope you appreciate.
Or you have no problem with selection as long as "nature does it"? That's the best idea I have for reconciling this at least. Are we humans not part of nature though? Is you preferring what nature does not just a preference still?
If we figure out that some specific genetic difference results in people eventually dying before they reproduce, what's the difference between editing that out vs. letting nature do its thing?
We're not that smart. Everything has unintended consequences. One example some people have studied is sickle-cell anemia. It's a recessive trait so if you get two copies of the gene you get sickle-cell which is a horrible disease. However, if you only get one copy of the gene it provides substantial immunity against malaria.
Now, maybe in this case you could say, okay, we will cure malaria somehow, not worth sickle-cell existing. But the thing is that gene isn't "the gene for sickle-cell anemia," nor is it even "the gene for malaria resistance and sickle-cell anemia." It affects hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of different things.
I think there are some conditions where I don't have a problem doing that, and sickle-cell, mitochondrial disease, these things do seem "bad enough" to be worth putting our fingers on the scale. But I am not sure it's so clear-cut, and I think it's right to say that eugenics are categorically suspect.
How do you determine that? We've come far enough to see and manipulate individual atoms, emit and count individual photons, and build machines that understand human language (if ever so fleetingly). Unless how we work is fundamentally betraying how we can reason about the world, and we find that that's intrinsically linked to our genetics, I really don't see us not cracking it eventually proper.
> Everything has unintended consequences.
People use medications every single day that are effective for what they are taking it for, yet have "unintended consequences" that are consciously ignored or are found otherwise negligible by them. Seems like unintended consequences are not a blocker. The criteria hasn't been perfection even up to this point, it's always been a desperation-driven best-effort. Much like life and civilization as a whole.
I can appreciate e.g. hesitance in taking on the responsibility of possibly being wrong about how something like this works - nature cannot be blamed, but humans can and that feels bad. But the alternative is pretty clear and is not going away on its own. I'm pretty sure at least that just like how genetic traits can be evolved multiple times independently, genetic defects can be too. This is also why I think to characterize this as eugenics is extremely and fundamentally wrong. Eugenics was about leveraging population control to ensure only the "good" genes get passed on - a concept that flagrantly flies in the face of this independent recurrence effect.
But my bigger point is that it is still eugenics. And that is bad no matter what the goal is.
They should not mess with genes where the sciences is not 100% settled but that still leaves a lot's of mutations known to be 100% deleterious. There are no benefits in having hereditary blindness, deafness or schizophrenia!
Correct me if I am wrong because I am absolutely not a historian. Eugenics was horrible not because we understand Mendellian genetics but because it was forced on people in the intent to allegedly "improve" a (political boundary placeholder)'s population in some way that was outright obscene, including use by Nazi Germany and many other places and regimes. US courts, etc.
I think the difference here is that the technology is not forced to be used.
These activities are in no way evidence for people thinking (too?) highly of themselves or "as gods". Just a completely made up accusation.
I also don't see why the scary labels are relevant necessarily. To be afraid of whether this qualifies as eugenics or if you qualify as an eugenicist is sitting backwards on the horse completely. But maybe I just misinterpreted your catious wording and there's no being afraid here - in other comments you outright state you consider this eugenics, for example.
> [As] Humanity[, we need to] accept our fates.
No, we really don't. Though if you and people of the same opinion just accept fate, you also accept this research and similar continuing on, so maybe this is not even a point of debate in practice.
Kinda funny to attack TFA by associating it with a naughty word while tracking in such awful ideas as if we're unable to evaluate the ideas ourselves.
Selective breeding in livestock, mate selection in wild animals and humans...
I do understand your point. I struggle with whether it is cause for (more than theoretical) concern.
The ethical quandaries don't seem that important when it's isolated to expression of personal choice.
State-driven decisions are ugly of course. And perhaps the insanity that we see in dog breeding is very bad.
But we don't see the dog breeding problems in human parents (aside from the initial mate selection, which can be vicious!).
So where does that leave us? Using blunt tools is OK but precise tools are bad?
This is different, another step in the erasure of genes that harm humans. This is not a genocide.
It seems like your argument boils down to we should continue to have horrible suffering and early death because diversity of DNA is good and we shouldn't edit out potentially helpful mutations (that also cause horrible suffering) - if we can beat malaria, why would we need sickle cell?
[0] https://3billion.io/blog/whole-genome-sequencing-cost-2023
If a gene has evolutionary survival by definition it is not a gene that harms humans, it only harms individuals. What you said here is what the eugenicists said. They thought there were genes that made blacks stupid, and that was harming them. They even thought there were genes that made whites sociopaths and wanted the Native Americans to breed with whites so we could live communally. This was an idea put forth by John Collier, the the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1930's
> if we can beat malaria, why would we need sickle cell?
Have we beaten malaria? No. Do we need to? No. We need more children who are born heterozygous for the Hemoglobin subunit beta gene SNPs that make them resistant to malaria. I mean why not gene therapy for babies living in these malaria infested areas, give them the mutation for sickle cell! Oh, because we know the cost of that.
You know its funny you brought this up because I spoke with woman once who was researching sickle cell treatments and I told her the cure was easy. Just do genetic testing on humans and do not allow people who are heterozygous for the HBB gene SNPs to mate. It would be wiped out in a few generations. She looked at me with horror, as she should, because that is eugenics. When they are doing here is no different.
Diversity of genetics is what makes a species survive. As I pointed out, there is a benefit for being homozygous for some of these mitochondrial diseases. Future generations will not have these changes, what is the cost of that? More infection later in life, more mild suffering for other disorders? You know the oxidative stress produced from mitochondria are helpful fighting infections and viruses (https://www.cell.com/trends/microbiology/fulltext/S0966-842X...) maybe these kids also carry immune systems disorders and these MtDNA mutations could be a benefit?
You act like you know the costs of this, and you do not. You only see the immediate benefit, short sighted and limited.
Of course, science fictions authors,scientists and philosophers have written plenty of material on the matter and the danger of such societies... and it might blow up in our face one way or another, but nothing aside of our demise can stop scientific progress...