Absolutely not. It _cut_ the DNA at three nine precision (not that great given the number of base pairs we have); and things sitch together at much higher error rate.
It is a great technology, but it is not as great as many claim
What references are you following? Haven't heard this before.
Unless you live in the Whitehouse.
> In previous mouse studies, loss of NANOG disrupted both the epiblast and the yolk sac - a tissue that supports the developing embryo. In this human embryo study, loss of NANOG primarily affected the epiblast, the future body-forming line of cells.
A sperm on its own was never going to be a person. A egg on its own was never going to be a person.
A embryo... we cause the sparks to fly here and it's disturbing to think we can poke at the genes when we really have no idea what we are doing. Was a soul created here? Lot of people think yes. So lots of people naturally care about that taking place. Just to poke and prod 1 of billions of base pairs to see what happens does not seem like a good idea or..even a practical way to learn anything.
I would bargain there are a lot more pairs you could mess with that would have the same effect and would prevent the embryo from developing further.
I lean that we most likely are creating souls (however that works...) the moment of conception and we probably should be fooling around with doing this stuff. This article reminded me of this video I saw 10 years ago that shows there is a moment in time where sparks literally fly and it's pretty amazing to see.
No, what is your opinion?
>Or is it just a blessed few?
Specifically humans.
>What about asexually reproducing species?
They have life that's for sure but I think it's very different than humans.
Sounds like humans to me, perhaps ones who could live longer?
Look, I think we know how these discussions go, I'm not sure they get anywhere. Your pretty sure you know what's going on, I'm pretty sure I know what's going on...
Id hope there would be caution in manipulating the formation of a human when there isn't a great way to test these things without observing the results after they are born without any significant confidence what was manipulated effected the outcome or had a desirable result. There is no world where this real world testing is not reckless.
Yes, it is called hybridisation.
So the embryo a 10 days after conception is not the same thing as at conception. Did God kill it?
A lot of age related dysfunction is systemic as opposed to genetic. Even for the stuff that's (epi)genetic in nature it's important to bear in mind that each cell has its own independent copy.
(Obviously when we discovered the reset mechanism people started asking why we cannot press the reset button at 70yo)
I know for a fact that epigenetic material isn't magically reset to some prior state in a blanket manner because changes to the epigenome based on the environmental conditions in which the parents are born and raised are heritable by their children. For example widespread famine has been shown to leave changes in the epigenome that remain for at least several generations.
You might want to flesh this part out a bit more before criticizing scientists tweaking some cell clumps.
For example, what happens when we get to the point where we need to use the scientific method to test if the gene editing was successful and didn't cause negative outcomes for the child's entire existence perhaps? Will they need to live their whole life for us to confirm the cure worked?
Genes are an important part of lifeforms. Of course, you may object to tinkering with them and wait until nature has done the tinkering for you. That will inevitably slow down progress by obtaining information so much slower that countless lives will be miserable due to missing cures and treatments. This is a zone where there is no clear moral answer. The only thing I would say with confidence is that gene editing is very likely the key to a plethora of treatments and preventative measures.
> Will they need to live their whole life for us to confirm the cure worked? People already do that right now without gene editing. A friend of mine is 10 years over the life expectancy of their condition just because their parents decided to have them live their whole life "to confirm the treatment worked". 9 out of 10 people with that condition died by the age of 12 if not within the first year of birth. I'd wager being part of a medical/scientific program to monitor your condition is the least of your concerns at that point.
Why would the presence of breakthroughs in medicine on other fronts mean that we shouldn't try gene editing?
> what happens when we get to the point where we need to use the scientific method to test if the gene editing was successful and didn't cause negative outcomes for the child's entire existence perhaps?
That is what clinical trials do today for medicine. Are you opposed to those as well? Many have died and many have been saved in the pursuit of better care.
Well that would be an entirely different line of research, which is not this research here, and a large expansion of the question which we could debate and discuss thoroughly on its own merits at such a time as the issue arises.
Aka this is just the slippery slope fallacy of argument.