In the US it's legal-sorta but the NIH can't fund it and the FDA is not allowed to approve treatments based on it. So someone could do it in a research setting but there's not a pathway to market in the US (in practice people will do the first ones in a friendly legal climate like Peru).
I don't have citations to hand but I can attest that this has been the case for a long time now. There are jurisdictions that are more open to various semi-banned (either unfundable, a regulatory morass, or both) topics of research; China is famous for offering lucrative grants to attract foreign researchers of many of these.
The short answer is the "14-day" rule, which doesn't allow development of the embryo beyond 14 days. The article gives specifics under the heading "Ethical and legal compliance"
is "master gene" a term of art, or just a headline term? the article makes it clear that the NANOG gene is very important, but the term "master gene" is pretty heavy.
> Using base editing, the researchers blocked a gene called NANOG in very early-stage human embryos, and found that the cells of the early embryo could not develop into more specialised pluripotent cells called the epiblast - which later form the body.
Excuse me wtf. They manipulated the genes of a live human in such a way that it failed to develop its body (and presumably died)?? Genuinely repulsive how casually this is mentioned.
A quick search suggests that we tried it a bunch on animals, failed on humans, and of the first three human transplants, you had an adult (20s), toddler (2yr), and adult (50s). All of them were due to medical necessity, as it was a high risk procedure.
Is there something you imagine the poster would be shocked by in that history?
Wait, you think the evil scientists just yanked an embryo from someone's womb? Are you stupid?
"The embryos, eggs and sperm used in the study were unused samples donated by couples who had undergone IVF treatment. Most donors had completed their family, and wanted their surplus embryos, eggs or sperm to be used for research.
The embryos were only cultured in the lab for up to six and a half days after fertilisation, and then allowed to perish."
Even in real pregnancies, it's estimated that as many as three quarters of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus. If one was of the opinion that life begins at conception, one should certainly be aware of that silent holocaust that has and always will eclipse all others for all of human existence.
Don't worry, the Fundies are already working on punishing women for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. I'm sure implantation failure is on the list...
Testing on early stage embryos is a thing yes. They have no brain, no heartbeat, feel no pain. Yes, they could potentially develop into a human being, but I wouldn't call it a live human yet. I understand your repulsion, but to other people it's no different than testing on sperm, eggs or other human tissues. And as the other guy said, these were discarded embryos from IVF, they would never become humans.
Human is a fact of DNA — of which embryos are unmistakably humans. But we don’t ascribe rights based on humanity, but on personhood, which is why embryos have virtually none.
You come across as dishonest and put people off from your perspective when you won’t admit basic facts — eg, this is experimenting on humans.
I think perhaps your aversion to basic facts is that you don’t feel comfortable being honest:
Of course I support experimenting on living humans. That's how medical research is done for everything. Eventually no matter how sure you are someone has to be the first.
Perfectly reasonable - eg, organ transplants were experimental in humans at one point in time, following success in animals but before widespread success in humans. People died from rejections.
My point is that if you feel that way, be loud and proud about it: having to deny the humanity of embryos suggests you’re avoiding cognitive dissonance or trying to manipulate others.
No, that skin I scraped off on the sidewalk is not a human just because it has human DNA (and indeed, the cells in it are still alive, for a time).
Similarly neither are embryos. Humans are a collection of trillions of cells arranged in a particular manner, not just any cell (or relatively small set of cells) that has human DNA. Human, as a word, has meaning far beyond that.
I'd agree that personhood is the more important qualification (though, of course, we experiment on people all the time, and rightly so). But a few cells with human DNA does not a human make.
Personhood is not a specific line. There's people with disabilities or conditions whom you could say are not persons (in some cases anymore, in some cases ever) but there's no boolean test to say for sure. Do you think they should be allowed to be experimented on?
If you prefer the term person to avoid confusion, fine by me. But then also don't use the term "experimenting on humans", because the meaning of that is experimenting on persons against their will.
There is nothing extra magical about conception that makes the creation of a human (or a person if you prefer that), all of the DNA already existed before and nothing that defines a person is yet present.
Does anyone know why such a fundamental gene would have such different behaviours between mammals?
> 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.
I think it's more of the fact that they were conceived which will bother most.
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.
what if heidelbergensis and other ancestors didn't exist but were written in a books by people you never met and any amount of questioning was frowned upon? do you believe in the relics never seen and take the word upon a class of believers that safeguard the history? sounds like a religion to me.
Are there any species you know of that would be able to interbred with each other? Why would that have been possible?
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.
Embryos have to reset after conception to delete all of the faulty dna inherited from the parents. Babies don’t get born with wrinkles for example. They start clean slate without (most) epigenetic damage that both sperm and egg had.
So the embryo a 10 days after conception is not the same thing as at conception. Did God kill it?
Do you have more information or citations related to epigenetic damage in the sperm and egg?
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.
I will never understand this mindset. What exactly do you think primary scientific research is if not collecting data on questions to which you do not know the answer? How are you supposed to get data to said questions without observing the actual events? I suppose you’re sanguine with the idea of letting future generations of children be born with potentially preventable genetic disorders based on your squeamishness?
Lots of breakthroughs in medicine happen without editing genes? And why do you think Im opposed to the scientific method based on this view point that maybe experimenting on human embryos is not a great way to learn stuff?
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?
> Lots of breakthroughs in medicine happen without editing genes?
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.
> 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?
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.
There is no progress without possible failure in medicine.
Each treatment starts with assumptions and you can only go so far until you start testing on actual people.
Until we understand the mechanisms completely there is no way around that.
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.
> Base editing can precisely change a single nucleotide base pair...
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
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 33.9 ms ] threadWhat references are you following? Haven't heard this before.
Unless you live in the Whitehouse.
Excuse me wtf. They manipulated the genes of a live human in such a way that it failed to develop its body (and presumably died)?? Genuinely repulsive how casually this is mentioned.
A quick search suggests that we tried it a bunch on animals, failed on humans, and of the first three human transplants, you had an adult (20s), toddler (2yr), and adult (50s). All of them were due to medical necessity, as it was a high risk procedure.
Is there something you imagine the poster would be shocked by in that history?
"The embryos, eggs and sperm used in the study were unused samples donated by couples who had undergone IVF treatment. Most donors had completed their family, and wanted their surplus embryos, eggs or sperm to be used for research.
The embryos were only cultured in the lab for up to six and a half days after fertilisation, and then allowed to perish."
Human is a fact of DNA — of which embryos are unmistakably humans. But we don’t ascribe rights based on humanity, but on personhood, which is why embryos have virtually none.
You come across as dishonest and put people off from your perspective when you won’t admit basic facts — eg, this is experimenting on humans.
I think perhaps your aversion to basic facts is that you don’t feel comfortable being honest:
You support experimenting on living humans.
My point is that if you feel that way, be loud and proud about it: having to deny the humanity of embryos suggests you’re avoiding cognitive dissonance or trying to manipulate others.
Similarly neither are embryos. Humans are a collection of trillions of cells arranged in a particular manner, not just any cell (or relatively small set of cells) that has human DNA. Human, as a word, has meaning far beyond that.
I'd agree that personhood is the more important qualification (though, of course, we experiment on people all the time, and rightly so). But a few cells with human DNA does not a human make.
They are absolutely a human.
There is nothing extra magical about conception that makes the creation of a human (or a person if you prefer that), all of the DNA already existed before and nothing that defines a person is yet present.
> 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.
https://vimeo.com/163864531
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)
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)
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?
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.
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.
You might want to flesh this part out a bit more before criticizing scientists tweaking some cell clumps.
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