
Chinese scientists admit to tweaking the genes of human embryos - DocFeind
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-scientists-just-admitted-tweaking-205300657.html
======
jnem
Regardless of how we feel about genetic engineering, is anyone else tired of
seeing manipulative headlines in regards to any news that comes out of China?
Every-time I see a story about China, it has a negative connotation. In this
case, "Chinese scientists just admitted to tweaking the genes of human embryos
for the first time in history" is purposefully inflamatory. They didn't
"admit" it, they actually tried to get it published in some major science
publications. Use of the word Admission implies they were trying to be sneaky
and hide the results. Thats not the case at all.

Journalists of the world, have you no idea what you are doing? Purposefully
causing misunderstanding between nations is the path by which wars are paved.

This is a sore subject for me because while Im American, my wife is Chinese,
and therefore half my family is Chinese and lives in China. I do work with
Chinese developers everyday, but to hear the world news pundits put it, those
developers are by default criminals. This needs to stop.

~~~
StavrosK
Is it "journalists of the world?" It just sounds like American propaganda to
me, I haven't noticed a similar sentiment towards China in Greek news, for
example.

I think Russia and China get the "criminals by default" attitude in the US.

~~~
scarmig
Out of curiosity, I looked up recent China headlines in some UK papers.
Method: Google News, search the newspaper's domain for China and list the
first three. Includes opinion pieces, and also syndicated ones (though I think
even for syndicated editors will usually write the headline). I also included
evaluations of positivity and negativity, but of course YMMV.

UK (total: 4 positive, 2 neutral, 3 negative)

The Guardian: "China warns North Korea's nuclear arsenal is expanding"; "How
China's Macau crackdown threatens big US casino moguls"; "Chinese school bars
windows and balconies to stop pupil suicides"

2 positive, 1 negative

The Daily Mail: "Japan ministers go to Yasukuni a day after China talks";
"Volvo prepares to send 'Made in China' cars to US"; "Host Malaysia avoids
Chinese ire over disputed sea at ASEAN summit"

1 neutral, 2 negative

The Financial Times: "China spells out cost of meeting pollution targets";
"Made-in-China cars steer course abroad"; "Mercedes-Benz fined over China
price-fixing"

2 positive, 1 neutral

USA (total: 2 positive, 3 neutral, 4 negative)

NYT: "China's Big Plunge in Pakistan"; "Xi Jinping of China and Shinzo Abe of
Japan Meet Amid Slight Thaw in Ties"; "Chinese Regulators Fine Mercedes-Benz
Over Price Fixing"

1 positive, 2 neutral

WSJ: "Executive Shows China’s First Home-Grown Electric Sports Car"; "China
Says Please Stop Hiring Funeral Strippers"; "Debt Builds in China Stock Rally"

1 positive, 2 negative

WaPo: "What China's and Pakistan's special friendship means"; "China's
pathetic crackdown on civil society"; "This Chinese feminist wants to be the
country’s first openly lesbian lawyer, and police harassment won’t stop her"

1 neutral, 2 negative

USA papers do appear to be more negative, but another trend is right-
leaningness being predictive of Sino-negativity. So the apparent country
connection may just be a side effect of that.

------
madaxe_again
I am pleased to see that they are at least being open about the fact that
things aren't quite working as they expect:

 _They also found a "surprising number of ‘off-target’ mutations," according
to Nature News._

This is the thing which scares the daylights out of me around genetic
engineering generally. While some genes expressing differently will present
clear dysgenic properties, others may not evince until much later in life - or
perhaps even in subsequent generations, by altering gametes or epigenetic in-
utero signalling or whatnot in unanticipated ways.

Yes, we can do epidemiological statistical studies to understand what
individual genes affect, yes, we can do this for combinations of genes - but
we can't study the affect of genes on subsequent generations, apart from in
drosophila studies and what-not - which frequently end up demonstrating that
yes, these edits do have unanticipated affects a dozen generations down the
line, particularly when multiply crossed with other variants, and random
mutations.

If human genome tinkering ends up common place, we will end up either with
strict reproductive controls, or we will end up reproducing through cloning,
and our evolution becomes entirely self-driven. The alternatives are likely
just too dangerous.

Edit: sorry, forgot one of my points. Right now, we rely on statistical
studies to understand what parts of the genome do. This could be remedied by
having adequate computational power and models to actually simulate an
organism from the molecular level up. Only then will we actually have some
degree of control, and _true_ understanding of what we are doing.

~~~
gwern
If you are worried about off-target mutations, you sequence a cell and see if
any showed up compared to the parents' genomes + intended edits, and if they
did, you toss that embryo.

~~~
dbcooper
You may only be able to sequence 30% of a single cell's exome (not even its
entire genome), so you will not have that level of certainty.

~~~
gwern
So grow the embryo further and sequence more of it, or draw upon the prior
information about off-target rates to make the best use of 30% coverage and
pick ones with inferred rates which are acceptably low. Or use even more
CRISPR to get rid of existing mutations to maintain total mutation load at
normal rates... Many options.

(Really, all these comments sound like people trying to find an excuse for why
it doesn't work, rather than consider how it could work.)

------
jrkelly
"Admit" is a pretty loaded word. The results were published in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal by the scientists.

------
bayesianhorse
To clarify the ethical problem in this research: It's not the same as in stem
cell research. When just using stem cells for research, and not "growing them
out" to a human being, the main ethical issue is "messing" with creation,
however you believe creation happened or what it means for your religion or
morality.

But in this research, the intent is to let the embryos develop into full human
beings. It would be unethical to edit such a genome if it is uncertain whether
or not the individual will suffer due to these changes.

The problem they talk about is that you trade one deadly or very damaging
mutation with a couple dozen other mutations with unknown consequences. These
are almost certainly harmless, but the risk of introducing another
catastrophic defect is still too big.

To make this tradeoff more secure you would need to sequence the embryo's
genome at a certain state in its development (after gene editing, but before
transplantation) and check it for errors. But we neither have the technology
to get accurate genomes from a few (or just one) cell, nor do we have the
genetic maps required to tell if mutations have consequences or not.

~~~
nichtich
you obviously didn't read the article. They are using embryoes to be diacarded
with defects that would never be able to develop into human beings.

~~~
bayesianhorse
The technique is useless if it is not applied to embryoes which can develop.
Sure they may be doing it to nonviable embryoes currently, but that's not the
goal.

------
tokenadult
I read the article that was kindly submitted here to open the thread. I read
all the comments that were posted here before this comment. I read the
underlying _Nature News_ article that the submission was based on. Reading
that, I discovered that the underlying research paper, "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated
gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes,"[1] is open-access, so we can all
read it for ourselves to see how what is reported by the study authors
compares to what is reported by the thread-opening news story.

[1]
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13238-015-0153-5](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13238-015-0153-5)

------
98Windows
"In the west, we have debates about whether we should intervene to prevent
disease or use stem cells, while the Chinese just do it on a massive scale.
When I was in China, some researchers showed me a document from their Academy
of Sciences which says openly that the goal of their biogenetic research is to
enable large-scale medical procedures which will "rectify" the physical and
physiological weaknesses of the Chinese people."

\--Slavoj Zizek

~~~
hackuser
Where is this quote from?

~~~
wetmore
[http://io9.com/5627925/slavoj-iek-wake-up-and-smell-the-
apoc...](http://io9.com/5627925/slavoj-iek-wake-up-and-smell-the-apocalypse)

------
malandrew
Strangely, I think this is a case of "this is something that is going to be
done eventually by someone somewhere, so it might as well us". US religious
"morality" that dictates we shouldn't "play god" is going to cost the US the
leadership position in genetics science and research. It's already code the US
in terms of stem cell research.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Western religions (various forms of Christianity) formed under hundreds of
years of virtual and real slavery conditions. The Roman empire wasn't exactly
the friendliest place to live if you were an outsider. Therefore a big part of
the belief system is the value of the individual. IIRC, Christianity was one
of the first belief systems to suggest that all people _were_ actually people:
up until then, "people" was just part of whichever clan you were in. Other
folks were sub-human.

So the real question in regards to both abortion and embryo hacking is how
much value we place on other humans -- humans of a different color, humans
that are babies, humans that disagree with us. Do we treat them as we would
want to be treated? Or are they basically disposable?

I'm not a religious person, and the theology gets very complicated, but it's
not simply a matter of "religion says this must be bad, so I will reject all
science and progress!" Folks on both sides of this discussion tend to over-
simplify the positions of the others. Didn't believe you were doing that, but
I felt the discussion could use a little more clarification.

~~~
userbinator
_So the real question in regards to both abortion and embryo hacking is how
much value we place on other humans -- humans of a different color, humans
that are babies, humans that disagree with us. Do we treat them as we would
want to be treated? Or are they basically disposable?_

This gets particularly interesting when we consider that most people would be
absolutely horrified at the idea of killing humans which are "imperfect" in
some way, yet as one of the sibling comments says:

 _Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective breeding
through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and potentially
adding "good" ones._

Presumably the creation of the embryo would've involved some degree of
selection already, so "embryo hacking" seems more like patching bugs before
birth... and this process is basically on the border between controversial
abortion and widely-accepted selection before conception. I suppose your
opinion on it rests on some deep notion of what you think humans and life
is/should be.

Also non-religious and ambivalent about this - if only for the fact that
governments and corporations are likely going to eventually figure out how to
use this tech to their own advantage...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _This gets particularly interesting when we consider that most people would
> be absolutely horrified at the idea of killing humans which are "imperfect"
> in some way, yet as one of the sibling comments says:_

>> _Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective
breeding through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and
potentially adding "good" ones._

Eugenics got itself a bad name early in the 20th century, but if you discard
that cultural meme, the basic idea of purposefully improving genetic traits
does make quite a lot of sense. It's that meme that makes people discard the
concept wholesale.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
Eugenics got a bad name because they've tried to play god by sterilizing
people
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization)
. There is no cultural meme here.

~~~
Torgo
There was also the socially-constructed "ideal" human that eugenics strived
for, or how it designated non-white races as "inferior" genetically, or the
subjugation of the individual's fitness to society's "needs". My feeling is
that these ideas are "not even wrong" enough that they'll incrementally come
right back if you don't place a moral firewall around the entire concept.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _My feeling is that these ideas are "not even wrong" enough that they'll
> incrementally come right back if you don't place a moral firewall around the
> entire concept._

Interesting concept, I haven't thought about that this way before. Thanks!

------
o0-0o
One of my friends runs one of the largest water districts in Australia. Upon
learning I went to Singapore for a business trip, he told me a funny story
about the lack of concern for anything but progress in areas with large
Chinese populations. He was being given a tour of the Marina Bay, which is the
central bay in Singapore, by the Chinese developers leading the project. They
bragged how they dredged the entire bay, reinforced the walls with concrete,
and so forth. Basically, they took a natural bay that had existed for
thousands of years, and enhanced it to be more stable and sterile. In noting
their progress, the Chinese developers stated that they had to move the
fisherman to a part of the city that was not so clean, shiny, and modern. My
friend, being Western, asked them what they did with all the fish. The Chinese
laughed and laughed. They thought he was joking.

~~~
Gigablah
> asked them what they did with all the fish

The same thing they did at places like Sydney Harbour, I presume :)

That aside, the double standards present in this comment is breathtaking.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't get the joke, what did they do with the fish? Did they just migrate
away?

~~~
Gigablah
Well, what do you think? Do people "relocate" fish when they develop a
coastline? The joke here is that his "Western friend" actually took himself
seriously.

------
shiven
Why the surprise? This is a logical next step to the Chinese Eugenics program
that has been going on for decades.

[https://edge.org/response-detail/23838](https://edge.org/response-
detail/23838)

Welcome to the brave new world, whether you like it or not, it is here and it
will only expand.

------
dccoolgai
"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists
in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a
watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there?
Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook
no improvement?"

Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, "Dynamics of Mind"

------
snake_plissken
"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack.
Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for
his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire
nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize
someone who cannot feel pain?"

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter

------
nl
How long before someone the EPOR gene and creates a set of unbeatable
endurance athletes, ala Eero Mäntyranta
([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Mäntyranta#Genetics](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Mäntyranta#Genetics)
)?

------
restalis
I'm ambivalent about this. For one, like I've mentioned before¹, I'd like to
have humanity in one piece, for as long as possible, and the genome meddling
cuts dangerously close in this regard. For another, this is progress and
although I don't take pleasure admitting it, setting limits to R&D effort in
this direction comes plain and simple out of fear and nothing else. I don't
like thinking of myself to be some kind of zealot fighting for religious
dogmas. Humanity may not be "ready" only in our perception.

¹
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253039)

------
dbcooper
One of the main findings of this work is that within the exome (coding part of
the genome) they found many off target mutations. However, there did not seem
to be much/any effort to design their plasmid to minimise these off target
mutations.

------
ComputerGuru
It's a brave new world.

~~~
marvel_boy
Yes, a brave new world. [http://www.vice.com/read/chinas-taking-over-the-
world-with-a...](http://www.vice.com/read/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-
massive-genetic-engineering-program)

~~~
vixen99
I don’t think ....

'they have any imperial ambitions to spread China’s borders—they’re not going
to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th century—but they do want
respect and they do want influence and they don’t trust America or Europe to
run the world in the right way, in terms of issues like global warming or
equality or economic stability.'

Well, that's alright then.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
I have a firm suspicion that most geo-politics are a farce; that the same
money that runs the West, runs the East.

That's because - if you always want to win, you play both sides.

~~~
98Windows
Win what?

~~~
WorldWideWayne
Mainly control or leverage over people. It's quite easy to create your own
order out of chaos if you're the one who is providing the chaotic events. The
British Empire conquered the East a long time ago.

------
yarper
Well, now we can all go home and watch Gattaca (1997) smugly.

------
thuffy
Contrast this (Chinese eugenics) with our dysgenic system of subsidizing
defective genetics for the profit of the medical industry, and, well, the
obvious result is that western civilization is in big trouble!

More info from this link that shiven shared below: [https://edge.org/response-
detail/23838](https://edge.org/response-detail/23838)

