
Geneticists Are Concerned Transhumanists Will Use CRISPR on Themselves - sageabilly
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/geneticists-are-concerned-transhumanists-will-use-crispr-on-themselves
======
cryoshon
Uhh... I don't believe that these concerns are valid at this point in time
because the technical complexity required to actually "use CRISPR on yourself"
(which isn't even a coherent idea in the first place) is extremely daunting.
We're talking intermittent failure with a fully kitted lab, trained people,
good protocols, and a concrete goal. CRISPR being scientifically "easy" to
implement relative to the other solutions on the market doesn't mean you can
just slop together some new genes and go wild. Geneticists should probably
know that, but whatever.

The point is, you can't just "take CRISPR" and "chop up some cool new genes"
then "use it on yourself". I mean, I shouldn't have to say this at all, but
only with a childlike understanding is such a sequence of events remotely
conceivable. Each of those items within quotation marks entail a deeply
complicated series of planning actions and laboratory manipulations within
different scientific paradigms, executed without mishap.

Even if it WAS that simple, who cares? People unambiguously have the right to
experiment on themselves and alter their bodies however they wish without
unwanted external interference.

~~~
TheCraiggers
I love everything you said, but the last sentence gave me pause.

There are a few cases were experiments on themselves using CRISPR may be at
best morally "wrong". Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your
offspring, for example. Another (probably less likely but more interesting to
me) example is altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease
to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.

~~~
curryst
I don't think it's any different from many things we already do that are
considered "right".

> Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring

Is it wrong for someone who has a genetic disorder to breed? What about cases
where both parents are carriers of a recessive genetic disorder, which gives
the child a 25% chance of expressing the disease and a 50% chance of being a
carrier themselves?

> altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold,
> optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.

Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong. Is it morally wrong to
let your basement be damp and grow mold? Sure, it's stupid, but is it morally
wrong? Is it morally wrong to have unprotected sex?

We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent
is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't
realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong.

I think the more compelling argument is, what happens to people who don't want
to alter their DNA if this actually works? If this is allowed in sports, much
like steroids, other athletes will be compelled to undergo treatment just to
remain competitive. If we can make people smarter, then people who won't
undergo treatment could be relegated to doing menial tasks simply because they
won't edit their own DNA.

To add another interesting corollary to that, what about people that won't do
it for religious reasons? I know some people who oppose any kind of genetic
alterations for whatever reason because it violates "God's design". I'm sure
someone will call it discrimination when they have to flip burgers because
they haven't undergone treatment to have an Einstein level IQ like the rest of
the workforce.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take
> hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.

> Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong

"we" _who_? I suspect that it something quite a lot of people who consider to
be morally wrong (whether they would consider it the kind of moral wrong that
it would be desirable to formally sanction, as through legal prohibition on
doing it or legal restriction on public interaction if you do it, is a
separate consideration, but consider the issue of mandatory vaccination which
involves legal restrictions if you fail to take _active_ steps, involving
treatment of your own body, to protect yourself and, through herd immunity,
others from communicable disease -- its not implausible that many would
consider _active_ steps, even involving modifying your own body, that increase
the risk of communicable disease sufficiently to not only be abstractly
morally wrong, but the kind of moral wrong for which legal sanction is
appropriate.)

> We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your
> intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but
> didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong.

In morality, as in law, while intent is usually important, actions taken
without intent to cause harm _but_ in which known risks of harms to others
exist and are ignored, or even cases where risks of harm exist which would
have been discovered with due care and are unknown to the actor due to their
lack of concern, are often _also_ considered wrong despite the absence of
specific ill intent.

~~~
curryst
You touch on mandatory vaccination, which is already largely polarized, but
what about any of the hundreds of ways you can decrease your immune response
that we don't commonly talk about? Lack of exercise, overconsumption of
alcohol, being overweight, these things all decrease the functioning of your
immune system, thus inviting disease. Are they morally reprehensible? And how
does one way the cost benefit of the genetic modifications? We already have a
substantial number of people on immunosuppressants for transplants, among
other things. Is it okay for them to invite communicable disease because they
would die otherwise? If so, where is the line where it is acceptable to
compromise your immune system?

> in which known risks of harms to others exist and are ignored

What level of possible risk defines an immoral action? If we compare it to
driving, there's a known risk that I'm going to kill someone while driving.
With genetic modification, there's a very low assumed risk because we honestly
haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen. The assumption of benefit is
about the same as the assumption of detriment.

> cases where risks of harm exist which would have been discovered with due
> care and are unknown to the actor due to their lack of concern, are often
> also considered wrong despite the absence of specific ill intent.

This is a more nuanced area, especially in medicine. We have a lot of medical
research that was enabled, or greatly hastened, by experiments undertaken with
little knowledge of what the outcome would be. This would have the advantage
of the subjects providing consent, since they seem to be acutely aware that
there could be serious side effects. How far can we go without actually
applying this research to people? How long will it take to get there, and how
much time will trying the research on people save? How many lives could be
saved by trying it on people now?

> due care

I also disagree with the use of this term. What is "due care", and at what
point have you satisfied it? It seems to me that if you get to the point where
you know all of the potential outcomes, the value of actually doing the
experiment is greatly diminished. From my understanding, it seems highly
unlikely for this gene splicing to have a radical effect either way. The two
most likely outcomes, I think, are that no noticeable change in expression
occurs, or the patient dies.

------
rwmj
I'm having a hard time understanding why this is bad.

If people experiment on themselves, then it seems the worst that could happen
is they injure themselves to such an extent they require expensive ongoing
medical treatment paid for by the rest of society (if they die, they just win
a Darwin Award).

There will be charlatans (as with stem cell treatments) who try and sell this
to desperate people with terminal diseases, but that's already covered by
fraud statutes.

The upsides from human enhancement are pretty limitless and exciting in the
long run.

~~~
wlesieutre
The significant change with CRISPR (compared to other ways that transhumanists
might accidentally kill themselves) is that it can make heritable genetic
changes. Experiment on yourself, sure, but to pass your untested
experimentation along to children is a totally different ethical question.

Recent news: [http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-
fo...](http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/12/01/crispr-inventor-calls-for-pause-in-
editing-heritable-genes/)

> A three-day international summit on the ethics of making permanent,
> hereditary changes in the human genome begins today in Washington, D.C., the
> fruit of an informal discussion organized in January by Jennifer Doudna, the
> inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology that makes such changes cheap and
> easy.

AFIAK this should only come up if people are messing with sperm/eggs, but it's
definitely something to be aware of. Can CRISPER change existing DNA that
would alter future sperm production? (am not a biologist)

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>but to pass your untested experimentation along to children is a totally
different ethical question.

They pass it on to the fetus, which does not have the same rights as a human
even if it may eventually become such. This touches on a number of issues,
include eugenics. For example, if it is wrong to pass on unknown quality genes
to your children, what about passing on known bad genes? Look into the rare
cases of the genetically deaf ensuring their children have the same condition,
which is legal even though it would be illegal to permanently deafen a child.

Also, if a person's right to do what they want with their own body can be
limited due to the rights of possible future children (who may never even
happen), what does this say of issues such as abortion or birth control
(especially permanent methods). We should be very careful before assigning any
duties people have to persons who don't yet exist.

~~~
cobaltblue
If a CRISPR change doesn't kill you, it seems to me unlikely to kill your
offspring. This may be naive, I don't know to what extent a gene variant would
be fine in an adult but not fine in a child. Most self gene edits would not be
random, but would be more along the lines of "in studies x% has variant A;A
and y% has variant A;G or G;G. A;A is "better" in some sense I care about, and
I have A;G, so I'm going to edit that G to an A." Maybe there are dependent
genes that need editing as well that we don't know about because otherwise
you're no longer a viable lifeform, but it seems that any cascading effects
would come up before you had a child. It's like editing a character in the
string constant pool of a program. Maybe it'll be fine, or maybe you need to
edit some other part whose logic depended on the original character to match
the new character and avoid a crash or misbehavior.

Getting my genes sequenced for $100 revealed I'm a carrier of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease)
It would be highly irresponsible of me to breed with another carrier due to
the 25% chance of an offspring with the disease, which all but guarantees
early death. If one of us parents has the gene edited away, or it is edited
away in the womb, this is a good thing.

~~~
adenadel
I want to clear up a misconception here. Odds are that for $100 you didn't get
any sequencing done. More likely they used a genotyping chip to look for
(potentially a lot) of specific variants. This is what 23andMe does. The price
of sequencing the exome (all of the genes in the genome) is approaching $100
and could be lower than that for really high volume producers, but for now the
most common assay at that price point is a chip.

------
chrisprobert
I would put > 50/50 odds on there being a human alive today with at least one
CRISPR-edited germline variant. I think the question is now how can we
regulate/control CRISPR germline editing; not how can we prevent it.

Human embryo gene editing was reported in May 2015
([http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5)).
It's reasonable to assume that the editing took place significantly before the
submission date, especially given reports that the paper was first rejected
from several other journals on ethical grounds
([http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-
mo...](http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-
embryos-1.17378#/b1)). I'm not trying to suggest that these particular
scientists have performed experiments on viable embryos also, but I'd be very
surprised if someone hasn't.

~~~
nonbel
Don't they need to use controls? I mean these are faulty zygotes, they could
already have mutations at that site and other places as well.

------
pmoriarty
RadioLab had a great episode about CRISPR:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-
part-1-crispr/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/)

~~~
comrh
I listened to this one with a PhD in genetics. We both thought it was really
well done and produced be he thought it was really overblown. His reasoning
was that CRISPR requires a lot of tries to get right and isn't the magical
gene editing tool the podcast suggests.

------
grownseed
An interesting, related article was posted on HN not long ago: "Better Babies
- The long and peculiar history of the designer human" \-
[https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-
a-l...](https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-long-and-
peculiar-history)

I think it's probably a good idea to keep in mind that we don't know nearly as
much about editing DNA as we'd generally like to think.

------
lemevi
One of the quoted "transhumanists" is labeling those opposed to CRISPR as
"bioconservatives", my first encounter with this word. Let's just keep
labeling people and calling them names, this is going to advance the
discussion in positive ways I'm sure.

~~~
Karunamon
Labels are how humans reason about categories of people, behavior, and things,
so raging against the way the mind works is pretty futile at best.

Anyways - the label fits. If I want to tinker with my own genes, it is
downright regressive to suggest that I don't own my own body enough to do
precisely that.

Questions about passing those modifications into the gene pool are a
_separate_ from the question from the freedom of a person to do whatever they
wish to themselves. I'd be willing to put up money on a bet that we will
eventually have restrictive laws against self genetic modification along the
same lines as the War On Drugs, and that those laws will not have exceptions
for people who are unable to reproduce.

~~~
Retra
You _don 't_ own your body enough to do whatever you want with it. Everything
you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body, and every
law that exists is a means of restricting your ability to do just that.

If I genetically engineered myself to produce an STD that selectively mutated
into a deadly virus when it comes into contact with certain groups of people
selected by genetic markers, well... that's not justifiable under the guise of
"owning my own body" \-- which is a vague concept anyway. I only own it
insofar as everyone else allows me to control it. Ownership is negotiated, it
is not assumed.

~~~
phkahler
>> You don't own your body enough to do whatever you want with it. Everything
you do comes down to you controlling and manipulating your own body, and every
law that exists is a means of restricting your ability to do just that.

Most laws come into play when it involves OTHER people, not just yourself.
Laws are to protect people from each other, not themselves.

~~~
Retra
Laws also protect public resources which you would use if you hurt yourself.
For example, emergency rooms. If you hurt yourself, you do hurt others, it's
just indirectly. There are plenty of laws for preventing you from hurting
yourself. Worker safety. Public health. Motor vehicle safety.

------
andrewclunn
If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue
eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser
bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon
master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK CARES?!

Like the people claiming that we're, "playing god," weren't going to be
against this shit regardless. The best defense against bullshit regulations by
busy bodies is to get ordinary people excited about this, not to grovel and
cower in fear. Bring on the future!

~~~
jerf
"If some neo nazis wants to make sure their child had blonde hair and blue
eyes, a personal trainer and olympic athlete want their child to have denser
bones and be tall, and a Harry Potter fan fiction writer and her dungeon
master boyfriend want their kid to have pointy ears, then WHO THE FUCK
CARES?!"

Strawman. For better or worse, _far_ more things are on the table than that,
if gene manipulation becomes practical. We have to live with the results of
the genetic tinkering, and not all the things that could be done are anywhere
near that neutral.

~~~
andrewclunn
Oh, so "slippery slope" then. See, I can throw out logical fallacies like
they're candy too.

~~~
jerf
That's not thinking, that's an attempt to stop thinking. We already know
things we can do that would be far more interesting and dangerous to live
with, if we just had control over genes. If all that we could do is make "a
tall person", there'd be no debate. Your brain is probably recoiling from the
possibilities, because you simply can't accept them, and reaching for denial
and bad humor in an attempt to cover it over, but that's going to be really,
really dangerous in the near future. You'd better look reality in the face
instead of trying to mock it or it'll blindside you, and the same goes for our
regulators and bioethicists.

------
abandonliberty
The early adopters and concerned geneticists are both living in the future.

With their help someday we may be able to eliminate genetic conditions like
[color] blindness, aging, deafness, homosexuality, blackness, and your less
preferred gender.

Where do you get uncomfortable with this list? Technology has benefits and
risks. It's not too early to start the discussion. It's even relevant to what
society and people today categorize as "healthy" vs "disease".

Many in the deaf community argue that they are not diseased.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture)

------
reasonattlm
Already happening:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_name_is_liz_parrish_ceo_of_bioviva_the/)

BioViva is a small group that recently announced they have moved ahead with a
human test of telomerase and myostatin-related gene therapies as a potential
method to modestly slow the effects of the aging process. Their initial goals
are to get things moving in this part of the field by taking this step
forward, observing the results, and raising funding for further development
efforts to try to lower the costs of this sort of approach. The BioViva CEO
Liz Parrish, who is also the initial test subject, recently hosted an AMA (ask
me anything) event at Reddit's /r/futurology community. Her comments below are
lightly edited for continuity, since they are pulled from numerous distinct
answers to questions posted by the community

\----

I am patient zero. I will be 45 in January. I have aging as a disease. To take
on this role myself was the only ethical choice. I am happy to step up. I do
feel we can use these therapies in compassionate care scenarios now but we
will have to work them back into healthier people as we see they work as
preventive medicine.

The genes targeted are human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and
follistatin (FST). In animal models neither FST nor hTERT have increased the
risk of cancer. We expect to see the same result on myself, and to that effect
we are measuring all known cancer biomarkers. The gene therapies on my body
are to measure the effects on humans. There is plenty of animal research to
support these gene therapies but no one was conducting human tests. We are
using both visual biomarkers, MRI and a panel of blood and tissue testing
including work on telomere length and epigenetic testing. We are collecting as
much data as we can, but unfortunately we currently don't have the coverage
rate for this therapy, how much of the tissue of the body is affected.
Depending on the tissue and vector used we ultimately expect to see similar
rates of transfection as seen in mice, which is somewhere between 5 to 60%.

We are working as hard as we can to bring it to the world as quickly and
safely as possible. We will will evaluate monthly and within 12 months we will
have more data. If the results are good we hope to have something to the
general public, that is cost acceptable, in 3-5 years. Our goal is to build
laboratories that will have the mission of a gene therapy product at a reduced
cost. Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to
build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has
technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can
afford. We need to do the same with these therapies. What you will get in 3-5
years will be vastly more predictable and effective that what we are doing
today and at a cost you or your insurance can cover .

We need a lab that works solely to bringing those costs down. We would need
about $1 - 1.5 million to build one lab to focus on this. We can expand as
needed. I would love to crowdfund this project but I do not know how to get
good results at that scale - I think the price tag is high for that modality.
We are raising investment to do offshore clinical trials. Many USA companies
do this. If we can cut costs we will be able to bring back a treatment that
people can afford.

\----

------
oldmanjay
The internet is scary. I'm concerned that people will use computers to commit
crimes.

~~~
toomuchtodo
People using computers doesn't do inheritable damage to the human gene pool.

~~~
oldmanjay
No, and individual humans have no responsibility to the entire gene pool much
as individual computer users aren't responsible for keeping the entire
internet safe

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you're referring to their offspring, correct. That's an ethical question.

If you're using it on unwilling/unknowing participants alive today, that's
criminal assault (up to murder, depending how reckless you are).

------
rsync
Fantastic!

We need early adopters and "early failers". Godspeed to those intrepid
pioneers!

------
leishulang
Why is this bad? Just GIT commit every time you change your super-awesome
source code and revert to whatever version you like when things go wrong. Or
just tell people: This is not a bug, it's a feature.

------
SixSigma
Would that count as Prior Art come patent day ?

------
api
War on drugs 2.0 here we come... sigh.

