
First gene-edited babies claimed in China - sjreese
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181126/p2g/00m/0fe/047000c
======
skosuri
The edited gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function, but
is the entry point for HIV. So editing for prophylaxis. This was probably done
because if there aren’t a ton of loss of function beneficial traits, and
probably with the main desire to be first. Except, if the reports are true,
this is not just an experiment but a person (or people). I guess the main
desire is to normalize editing. Brave new world I guess, whether we like it or
not.

~~~
xtrapolate
> "gene is for CCR5, which currently doesn’t have known function"

It's in the article:

> "Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face
> higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of
> dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and
> it's very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern,
> Musunuru said."

~~~
a_imho
_it 's very treatable if it occurs_

Surely it is a bit of a stretch.

~~~
cultus
People with HIV just have to pop a couple pills a day now to take their viral
loads to literally undetectable levels. With treatment, people with HIV can
expect to live normal lives, and be healthy and active. It's also almost
impossible to transmit HIV with such low viral loads.

~~~
dajohnson89
And how expensive is that treatment?

~~~
joshstrange
Truvada which is a HIV prevention drug was priced at ~$1500/mo. I mention it
because I know the chemicals in Truvada are similar but IDK the price
comparison. Most people on HIV meds are probably hitting their Out-of-pocket
max pretty early in the year.

I have had two high deductible plans in the last two year (work changed
providers) and here were the things I remember:

Old Insurance:

Deductible: $3,000

Tier: 2

Price: 100%/$60

New Insurance:

Deductible: $3,000

Tier: 3 (maybe 4, I can't remember)

Price: 100%/25%

It was effectively free to me on my old insurance with the copay card (covered
$3600) because I would hit my deductible and then have enough to cover the co-
pays after. On my new insurance it's not feasible for me to pay ~$400/mo until
I hit my OOP ($6000). You might be asking why I didn't look at a PPO plan
instead of high deductible, because of the drug tier there was no difference
in the price.

------
wonderwonder
There have been a good deal of medical and technological breakthroughs over
the last couple decades. Reusable rockets, VR, machine learning, etc. This is
the first article I have read that has made me realize that the future is
right here, right now and there is a very high probability that things are now
going to change rapidly.

One thing to consider is that via crispr and stem cell treatments, genetic
changes can be affected in adults as well, you just need to wait for the kinks
to be worked out now and apply large sums of money. Our definition of 'haves
and have nots' is potentially going to change in ways we have never imagined.

~~~
AllegedAlec
As I said in another thread on this article:

On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite
serious diseases.

On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not
having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China
to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this
that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.

Some of them:

\- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary
supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it
easier to control the population.

\- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some
deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon

~~~
landryraccoon
This technology might not work at all, or it might be highly effective after
refinements.

If it is highly effective moral arguments are moot. Genetic engineering will
be like nuclear weapons. A nation that desires to be competitive or have
economic dominance won’t have any choice, it will be forced to adopt its usage
(or be left behind).

Even agreements to control nuclear weapons that could cause human extinction
still leave nuclear weapons in the hands of many major nations (and a handful
of tiny ones) so international agreements have little chance of curtailing
genetic engineering.

~~~
AllegedAlec
I'm not saying that we should try to ban genetic engineering. It's here to
stay.

I'm just trying to point out that the Gattaca situation people seem to be
afraid of is not even in the top 10 of worst scenario's.

------
carbocation
> _It 's "unconscionable ... an experiment on human beings that is not morally
> or ethically defensible," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of
> Pennsylvania gene editing expert and editor of a genetics journal._

This is 100% correct.

(COI: Kiran was my postdoc while I was a student in the lab a decade ago.)

~~~
wycs
Perhaps this is true. I do not know. But human enhancement through genetic
engineering is coming. Changes in traits, such as IQ, by 5+ standard
deviations looks possible. We would be fools to outlaw it here, for we would
become as children compared to future citizens of nations that do not share
our taboos.

~~~
nradov
Genetic engineering might be able to prevent certain inherited diseases, but
otherwise major net improvements are unlikely. A boost in one area tends to
cause problems in other areas. That's why evolution through natural selection
hasn't significantly increased average human intelligence over the past few
thousand years. The average human genome appears to be close to a local
maximum.

~~~
BurningFrog
Human intelligence has not increased because it has not been strongly selected
for. If it was maximized, at the expense of other traits, a lot could
definitely happen.

> _The average human genome appears to be close to a local maximum._

Absolutely, but it's maximized for the environment we lived in 10-100
generations ago.

~~~
nradov
"Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders, research
suggests"

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-
the-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-
intelligent/)

~~~
nostrademons
Not saying the conclusion is wrong, but that experimental methodology seems
sketchy as hell. Why? Their sample consisted entirely of Mensa members. Mensa
!= the general population of high-IQ individuals.

You join Mensa if your IQ is a large part of your identity. Individuals who
have a high IQ but _also_ have a lot of other things going on in their lives
(like career success or fulfilling personal relationships) tend to concentrate
on those things rather than join Mensa. Therefore, membership in Mensa tends
to overselect for individuals whose self-conception is both narrow and focused
on their intelligence. There's a lot of other evidence in psychology that a
narrow self-conception correlates highly with mood & anxiety disorders. You
can also get correlations with physical ailments like environmental allergies
and asthma as well, because someone who _doesn 't_ have these physical
ailments is more able to get outside or pick up sports rather than go to
meetings of a high-IQ society.

So the way they designed their experiment, they introduced tons of conflating
factors that may or may not actually have anything to do with IQ. It's
certainly _possible_ that high IQs are associated with mental and physical
disorders - but what the experiment shows is that _membership in Mensa_ is
associated with mental and physical disorders.

------
citilife
This sounds super sketchy:

> He said the parents involved declined to be identified or interviewed, and
> he would not say where they live or where the work was done.

> There is no independent confirmation of He's claim, and it has not been
> published in a journal, where it would be vetted by other experts. He
> revealed it Monday in Hong Kong to one of the organizers of an international
> conference on gene editing that is set to begin Tuesday, and earlier in
> exclusive interviews with The Associated Press.

To be honest, _if this is true_ it sounds like he modified them without the
parents knowledge or consent. Usually, I'm super skeptical of any "research"
coming out of China. However, I've suspected that China has been doing this
for a while anyway (without sharing it). So I'm left with three possibilities
in my mind:

1\. Government is releasing this to see how the world will react

2\. The doctor excited to share their work, shared it - but did the work
without the parents consent

3\. Parents did this knowingly and in a controlled way

Of those options I'm betting #2 followed by #1. Highly doubt even if the
parents consented this was entered into with the knowledge of the risks.
Seriously if they are using Cas9 who knows what else could go wrong.

~~~
SCAQTony
Exactly. What happens when these babies become toddlers or young children and
they start contracting all sorts of weird cancers.

See article: Potential DNA damage from CRISPR has been ‘seriously
underestimated,’ study finds

[https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/16/crispr-potential-dna-
dam...](https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/16/crispr-potential-dna-damage-
underestimated/)

The results come hard on the heels of two studies that identified a related
issue: Some CRISPR’d cells might be missing a key anti-cancer mechanism and
therefore be able to initiate tumors.

~~~
wagutina
China will make sure the world doesn't see the failures of their experiments,
this is the very scary part of the story

------
WheelsAtLarge
And we are here, a brave new world. For years I heard and read that we would
never need to worry about scientists editing the DNA of a human embryo that
would be brought to term. The argument emphasized the fact that professional
ethics would prevent it. Well, ethics change and not all professionals will
follow them.

As a programmer, I know how hard it is to modify a ball of code without having
unexpected consequences. We barely know how the human genome functions. I hope
we don't do too much damage.

~~~
buboard
Nah we are not in brave new world yet. We are in a world where china is
willing to brute force its way into it through very risky experiments, while
the west is not willing to own up to the reality that our future is no longer
natural, and we are not even going to be a single species.

------
rm2889
This is quite interesting. There is a certain very small percentage of the
world's population that is immune to the HIV virus. These people's T-cells
have the CD4 receptor, but not the CCR5 receptor. The HIV virus needs both
these receptors to successfully affect the host's cells. The absence of the
CCR5 receptor still allows the person's T cells to function normally, so if
this works, it can pave the way to creating offspring who are immune to HIV

~~~
hanniabu
Does CCR5 have no other purpose? Hard to believe that it'd exist if it wasn't
needed.

~~~
sanxiyn
There are literally millions of healthy people without CCR5 receptors.
(Millions is approximately 0.01% of world population and this mutation's
frequency is certainly greater than that.)

~~~
glenneroo
What about possible dependencies which are also missing or required in those
healthy people? That is, if you remove CCR5, are there other components which
should be removed/replaced/inserted to enable the anti-HIV functionality? I
would venture to guess that nobody really knows... yet.

------
booleandilemma
This is how China is going to take the lead. They will start breeding disease-
resistant, stronger and smarter humans, and the west will take the moral high
ground, tweet about how evil China is on their new phones, and fall behind.

Our ethics will be our downfall.

~~~
wagutina
Rather "and do the same" than "fall behind".

We are taking the Chinese route for surveillance, data, AI. It's going to be
the same for genetics. Maybe even faster because people don't want to be spied
on but want to have stronger/resistant/smarter children, especially when
they'll see other people getting those advantages.

------
sanxiyn
Hear it from He Jiankui himself:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc)

~~~
baybal2
Oooh, so it is _that He_ , the man used to have a very peculiar reputation on
Chinese university BBSes back when China just got internet connectivity. That
was what possibly lead to him being ousted from Chinese academia a decade ago.

I myself think it was certainly no coincidence that Stanford picked him up.

I'm afraid calling up some of his opinions, and in particularly on the topic
of race, as they will be a ten megaton flamewar bomb. Google him yourself if
you know Chinese.

~~~
roel_v
C'mon man, you can't leave those of us that don't speak Chinese hanging like
that.

------
cnfteol
a giant leap

i had thought this wouldnt happen for another few decades

this is bad news for tibetans since their high altitude gene is known even the
andes high alt adaptations are being discovered which is really one of the
closest things to a genetic super ability you can get

so it will only be a few decades more until this last barrier to han
colonization of tibet falls

deep sea diving is another such genetic ability recently investigated

------
oh-kumudo
It already causes quite a debate on Chinese internet as well.

People are genuinely concerned about the unknown effects on the babies, and
questioning the authors and the hospital's motivation of applying such
techniques to human this early without fully understanding its consequences.

~~~
jobigoud
IVF was also very controversial and "unnatural" at the time. I hope the kid is
fine.

------
DennisAleynikov
the first edit is HIV resistance, not a bad way to start the black mirror
episode that is the rest of our lives from now on.

~~~
pgreenwood
If it works and HIV resistance installed in a population, then it opens the
possibility HIV could be then could become an effective bioweapon for that
population.

~~~
learc83
1\. If it works, you'd need to wait 50+ years until most of your population
was immune. You'd have to hope that in that time HIV vaccines/cures aren't
developed.

2\. HIV would make a terrible bioweapon. It's difficult to spread, takes a
very long time to incapacitate people, and there are generally effective
treatments.

------
nopinsight
Here is a controversial article published in 2013 by an evolutionary
psychologist that everyone should give some thoughts on:

Disclaimers: I do not have the expertise to evaluate its veracity but if true
it will affect everyone in the world in some important ways within a few
decades (the effects might already start to appear as we see how fast China
has developed technologically. Yes, technology transfer is clearly a factor
but few developing nations can absorb and adopt advanced technologies so
rapidly). I also have not pondered deeply enough to have a strong position on
the complicated ethical implications alluded to in the article and expressed
with concerns elsewhere.

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

> ...

> Deng also encouraged assortative mating through promoting urbanization and
> higher education, so bright, hard-working young people could meet each other
> more easily, increasing the proportion of children who would be at the upper
> extremes of intelligence and conscientiousness. ...

> But crucially, Comprehensive National Power also includes "biopower":
> creating the world's highest-quality human capital in terms of the Chinese
> population's genes, health, and education ...

> The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome
> sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets
> of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my
> DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-
> sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for
> China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize
> the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized
> eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest
> intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any
> one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of
> "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese
> family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of
> generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness. ...

> My real worry is the Western response. The most likely response, given Euro-
> American ideological biases, would be a bioethical panic that leads to
> criticism of Chinese population policy with the same self-righteous
> hypocrisy that we have shown in criticizing various Chinese socio-cultural
> policies. But the global stakes are too high for us to act that stupidly and
> short-sightedly. A more mature response would be based on mutual
> civilizational respect, asking—what can we learn from what the Chinese are
> doing, how can we help them, and how can they help us to keep up as they
> create their brave new world?

~~~
ramraj07
Thanks for that super weird article. The author's motivations for supporting
China's eugenics efforts are puzzling for sure.

Thankfully we might be safe for the time being. IIRC the BGI IQ sequencing
initiative did not lead to any meaningful discoveries since it's not yet
obvious or fully proven yet that IQ is that heritable.

My 50c is that we as a population have currently stopped evolving regions of
our genome that can keep resulting in progressively higher intelligence, for
two possible reasons: 1. there's some evidence at least from my view that any
further increase in intelligence will cause other side effects like depression
and autism (or perhaps a more intelligent version of us cannot unsee the
futility of our lives?); 2. It's not in the interests of the population as a
whole to continue having a fight between individuals having heritably
different IQs, i.e. we have evolved into a local minima so that all IQ
differences are stochastic and it's _really_ hard to leave this minima through
mutations.

I think the second possibility makes sense because intelligence is such a huge
evolutionary advantage that a population with high instability in this trait
might be doomed (more intelligent people can cheat more easily for short term
personal benefit at the expense of long term population benefit). I really
think that one of the first things modern humans evolved was the genetic
ability to make sure that intelligence was completely randomized among the
population, and I now hope that's true also because of all these efforts
because if it's true none of these efforts would succeed for a long time.

~~~
nopinsight
Thank you for the interesting hypotheses regarding the evolution of
intelligence. I have a somewhat different take and would like to share:

Some of the most intelligent people in history including renowned
philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians did not seem to focus on using
their intelligence to acquire as much power or wealth as possible. They seemed
to enjoy contemplating more universal and deeper questions than immersing
themselves too much on worldly matters. A majority of powerful people did seem
to have above or well-above average intelligence but they were probably not in
the same league, intelligence-wise, as those famous thinkers. Their other
traits were also important to their rise to power.

Environment and population intelligence likely have co-evolved and very high
intelligence did not confer much advantage over an above average one for most
common professions before the 21st century. The technology and level of
economy-of-scale available in the past meant that social graciousness and
other personality traits could have been better predictors of career and
economic success than intelligence above a certain point.

To have a great engineering or scientific career developing some of our
increasingly advanced technologies, very high intelligence seems to present
certain advantages over a more balanced group of traits. So a shift in global
technological landscape could also mean that the optimal collection of
population intelligence and other traits change as well.

As concrete examples, the founders of the largest American tech empires all
seem to have/had an IQ at least 3-4 SD above mean based on their academic
records.

PS. Your 1) seems possible in some cases and I would add that traits like non-
extreme autism-spectrum condition may not be a handicap, but rather an
advantage, in a certain environment and career path.

~~~
yesenadam
_Some of the most intelligent people in history including renowned
philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians did not seem to focus on using
their intelligence to acquire as much power or wealth as possible._

More significantly, they tend to not have children.

"Men of the highest genius who were childless include Newton, Faraday, and
Mendel; Vivaldi, Handel, and Beethoven; Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; Plato,
Aquinas, Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Kant and Mill. Anyone who thinks he can
frame a list of comparable individuals who had on the average enough children
to counter-balance the childlessness of these, is welcome to try; but he will
not succeed. ...Just below the very highest level, and average number of
children is again far below the average for people of no intellectual or
artistic distinction. And it is, again, spectacularly depressed by the huge
contribution of the childless: Copernicus, Swift, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson,
Haydn, Dalton, Francis Galton himself - to mention a few examples at random."
(David Stove, _Darwinian Fairytales_ )

~~~
nradov
One wonders whether those geniuses were actually childless, or if they perhaps
sired some unacknowledged children?

------
rshm
[https://apnews.com/4997bb7aa36c45449b488e19ac83e86d](https://apnews.com/4997bb7aa36c45449b488e19ac83e86d)

Has more info

------
ttflee
The Shenzhen HarMoniCare Women & Children’s Hospital, the medical ethics
committee of which gave a permit to this, was one of the so-called Putian-
systems, a medical network established by hundreds of people from Putian,
Fujian who earned their first bucket of gold by selling “home made remedies
and fake medicine at high prices”.

[https://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-
politics/article/1940...](https://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-
politics/article/1940668/baidu-scandal-spotlight-china-military-hospitals)

EDIT:

Shenzhen Medical Ethics Expert Committee said that the trial was not reported
to before the trial.

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2018/11/26/524939.html&xid=17259,15700022,15700124,15700126,15700149,15700186,15700191,15700201&usg=ALkJrhiDehC95dc3xPQZBlTpe4sNP3u-Bg)

------
walrus01
in vitro sex selection (mostly for male children) has been going on for a long
time, seems the next logical step:

[https://www.google.com/search?&q=in+vitro+sex+selection+chin...](https://www.google.com/search?&q=in+vitro+sex+selection+china&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

~~~
artellectual
Gender selection, will have adverse effect without a doubt, nature has a
healthy balance between the number of men and women in the world, and certain
culture preferring boys / girls will lead to us having too much of one and not
enough of the other. There is already evidence of this in China and India.

------
markdown
This will be a great tool to help game the social score.

More intelligence + less risk-taking + more respect for authority = a high-
score child sure to get into the top University and have the freedom to travel
there.

/s

------
jhowell
Looking at how addictive our interactions with technology have become this
seems concerning. A future where we can all exist and never look up or leave
our thought bubbles could have a dramatic impact on humanity and motivations.

------
thomasfedb
Moral frontiers aside, current gene tech is still not where we'd like it to be
in order to pull of these sorts of things and know we haven't done harm. Side
edits are a big problem with CRISPR-Cas9.

~~~
carbocation
To be fair, that's part of the moral argument.

~~~
thomasfedb
It's a technical problem in it's own right, it also has significant in the
moral argument.

~~~
carbocation
I agree.

------
joejerryronnie
I wonder how many of us are totally fine with gene-edited babies but find
Facebook morally reprehensible?

------
meshr
1\. Do they grow HIV-resistant people for sex-work industry?

2\. Why does China outlaw cloning if it has the same risks?

------
TeMPOraL
For the surely upcoming discussion about pros and cons of genetic editing in
humans, Kurzgesagt has a basic overview of the space, if you can spare some 15
minutes with your morning coffee.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY)

(not affiliated, just love their videos)

------
Namari
We finally reached Gattaca

~~~
gwern
Gattaca was actually embryo selection, not editing.

~~~
Namari
Oh, was it? A good reason for me to watch it again, I haven't watched that one
in ages.

------
michael_bluth
How will we know if it "worked" ?

------
Traubenfuchs
While the western world is whining about irrelevant ethics the Chinese will
eventually eradicate countless diseases, engineer the perfect superhuman and
take control of their evolution. Transhumanism is here and happening right
now. We are committing a crime against our future generations if we decide not
to participate in it. We actively decide against prosperity and advancement.
We are luddites.

Complacent western weakness at its best.

------
Svexav
It’s no surprise this comes from China, the same country that grinds dead
babies into pills.

~~~
cyphar
When I first read this comment I thought it was hyperbole (I've heard about
the vaccine and melamine scares -- which harmed and killed many thousands of
children -- but not about dead babies being put into pills). But no, it's real
fucking thing[1,2,3,4]. What the actual fuck. How is a Hacker News comment the
first time I've heard of this?

[1]:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/ho...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/horrifyingly-
ground-baby-pills-are-real-thing/328490/) [2]:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17980177](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-17980177) [3]: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/south-korea-
cracks-do...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/south-korea-cracks-down-
on-baby-flesh-pills/3999028) [4]:
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/9...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/9250438/Pills-
filled-with-powdered-human-baby-flesh-found-by-customs-officials.html)

~~~
markdown
I don't understand this. They don't advertise the pills as human flesh pills,
so why use that material in the first place? Why not dead chickens, or runoff
from an abattoir?

