
What Is the World to Do About Gene-Editing? - amanuensis
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/03/21/what-is-the-world-to-do-about-gene-editing/
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technotony
The main thing* holding back this is that we don't understand the human genome
enough to make really useful edits. It's very rare that there's a change that
would be better done with germline engineering than somatic cell engineering
or gene therapy. One day that won't be true however, and that's when the
problems will really begin.

To me the strongest non-religious argument against doing this is that it will
further accelerate wealth benefits, eg if you could make your kids smarter.
One of the problems with that however is that this technique is so cheap and
easy that banning it will just create a black market, or a single country
decides to allow it for economic or political reasons and people travel there
to get pregnant.

That impossibility of controlling this is why I think we have no choice but to
proceed slowly, cautiously, but under full transparency.

* there are also uncertainties about off-target effects and overall safety of the technique but I'm confident those issues will eventually be fixed too.

~~~
chrischen
I think the strongest argument against gene editing is the tendency for
societal biases to be taken to the extreme. Gene editing is drastic and has
the potential to greatly reduce genetic diversity in a population since people
tend to want to become “normal”, or meme certain popular traits. If you gave
minorities the ability to become a white males in America, would they?
Certainly many would and it would mean losing the benefits of such diversity
we currently have, even if it’s tougher for many people to be non-white male.

See “Chinese footbinding”, “injecting cement into posteriors for beauty”,
“plastic surgery” for examples of the absuridty people will go to to fit in.

~~~
ramblerman
I can't help but find this incredibly condescending.

You would take away a technological advantage from majorities and minorities
alike because their choices might not lead to your ideal of diversity utopia.

~~~
iguy
Here's a different take, on a different sort of diversity:

Suppose it turns out that extremely high-achievers are gambles on the part of
nature, which have some chance of going wrong. For example, suppose that every
birth of a potential future Nobelist comes with a 10% chance of serious
disabling autism. (I stress, I'm not claiming that this is true, just setting
up a thought experiment.) Many parents would decline this gamble: 10% is quite
a high chance of devoting the rest of your life to care, for a tiny chance of
having a world-class star in the family, who will anyway have very little
personal gain from his contributions. But if the whole society decides never
to gamble, we will (in my scenario!) miss out on major advances.

~~~
chr1
If we get to the point where we can distinguish genes that cause autism to be
able to remove them, we'll also be able to distinguish 10% Nobelist case.

But even if that was not the case, with gene editing some parents who did not
have a chance to make that gamble, will be able to make it intentionally.

~~~
iguy
The point of my thought experiment is to imagine that these are the _same_
genes. Remember that about half of population variation is "unshared
environment" meaning noise in the translation of DNA into an adult: genes will
never allow perfect prediction.

I guess I believe that very few parents would make this gamble, because the
risks are very personal and the benefits are mostly to others. But I could be
wrong. One real live example is that there's been very little push-back
against eliminating Tay-Sachs via testing.

~~~
chr1
In your thought experiment, even if very few parents made the gamble, it would
be enough to keep the gene around until we figured out what in the environment
caused autism, after which the many more would want to have it.

For the Tay-Sachs example what would be the reason to push-back against
eliminating it? And who should have pushed back? people who had that gene, or
people who didn't?

IMO the solution is to simply have more people, if we have 1000 billions on
earth (which is possible with seasteading and terraforming deserts), 10
billion on moon 100 billion on mars we'll have enough place to try out all
kinds of solutions, for people to decide how much to edit or not to edit their
own genes, and many new random mutations arising simply because there are more
new people than were in all of the history combined.

~~~
iguy
Other thought experiments are certainly possible, but mine is about the stated
gamble, in which you cannot predict. That's what's meant by "unshared
environment", it's poorly named, the environment you talk of is "shared
environment". As I said, I don't know that this is true in the real world, but
I don't think it wildly implausible. (Maybe tortured mad artists are a better
example than nerds.)

Tay-Sachs is the first example I know about, of some genetic strain of humans
being deliberately bred out of existence. Phrased like that I think the idea
would alarm many people. But it has not. (I should remind myself more of the
details of this story.)

Thought experiments aside, note that it's not obvious we need a single new
mutation to make much smarter people. We just need the shuffling of the deck
to place more of the existing + variants into one body. This will obviously be
the goal of embryo selection, and I think would also be the goal of explicit
editing. I'd wager that many more of the Nobel-sized brains alive at the end
of this century (and the next) will owe their existence to one of these kinds
of engineering, than to population growth.

------
mirimir
Let's say that we accept the "my body, my choice" argument for legal abortion
on demand. It applies to eggs, sperm, unimplanted zygotes and preterm fetuses.

So why doesn't it also apply to CRISPR editing of our somatic and germline
cells? I suppose that we could carve an exception, in the interest of the
public good. As we have for the War on Drugs. But that's a dangerous path, if
one cares about personal freedom.

~~~
vore
Germline editing has consequences far beyond "my body, my choice". If your
offspring have genetic defects from gene editing, and their offspring also
have the same genetic defects, then "your choice" has consequences far beyond
just you that "personal freedom" can't cover.

If you choose to abort, only your offspring is affected: far less
consequential than possibly ruining generations to come.

I don't know what the War on Drugs has to do with anything here.

~~~
sho
> If your offspring have genetic defects [..], and their offspring [..]

> If you choose to abort, only your offspring is affected

By aborting, you're not merely potentially saddling your offspring with
genetic defects - you're denying them the most basic right to exist in the
first place! And their offspring, too. You're shutting down that whole line
before it can even start.

I'm pro choice, but this line of argument makes no sense to me. Hard to see
how anything could have consequences "far beyond" depriving a germline of
existence itself.

~~~
Thiez
You may be pro-choice, but you would probably oppose the right of mothers to
end the lives of their children (and descendents of those children) _after_
pregnancy. So I don't see what is strange about the argument; you are allowed
to terminate a pregnancy, but you do not necessarily have the right to inflict
arbitrary other life changing modifications on your children. Like, no doctor
would agree to amputate the legs of an unborn child without medical necessity
(when asked by the mother), and I think 'my body, my choice' does not apply
there.

I will admit there is a bit of a grey zone; few (if any?) places outright
prohibit pregnant women from smoking and drinking, despite the possible
negative consequences, but such behavior is still generally frowned upon.

~~~
chr1
> but you would probably oppose the right of mothers to end the lives of their
> children after pregnancy

Unfortunately the distinction is not that clear cut. When we have technology
to raise several weeks old fetus to maturity in an artificial womb (which
we'll have soon), what will be the difference between 'after pregnancy' and
'during pregnancy'? In both cases it will be something that can become a human
if someone wants to spend resources to keep it alive.

> Like, no doctor would agree to amputate the legs of an unborn child

Situation with gene editing is the opposite. Is it moral to allow your child
to be born with one leg, if there is an way to cure her to have both legs?

And the point about 'affecting all descendandts' is wrong because if we have a
technology to make a change we can easily reverse it too.

~~~
iguy
> the point about 'affecting all descendandts' is wrong because if we have a
> technology to make a change we can easily reverse it too

If we had perfect editing technology (even without perfect knowledge of
effects) then as you say we could easily Ctrl-Z the next generation.

But we don't have this yet, so I think it's not unreasonably to worry a bit
about inflicting changes (including unintended off-target edits) on grandkids
too.

~~~
chr1
Sure worrying a bit is reasonable, and that's the reason most people would not
use gene editing now. (Unless they are trying to correct some well understood
life threatening condition).

If we talk about so many people using it that it can change genetic
composition of humanity, it means we already have a reliable way of making
changes.

