First gene-edited babies made in China, scientist claims

[roy 1,216]

but its made in china

[derpmonster 22,412]

1 hour ago, ReginaGeorge said:

Okay y’all are here talking about nonsense when this could actually (if true) stop awful diseases from genetically going through family members such as cancer, parkinson’s, etc.. 

We have to consider the potential negatives before we get too excited.

Who gets access to it? Do corporations patent it? Do countries keep it? Do rich people get it? Should the poor just die? Can it be used as a weapon of war? All of this needs to be answered first.

 

7 hours ago, Satans Ex Wife said:

Are you referencing genetically editing embryos of vectors such as mosquitoes to prevent adult humans from getting malaria? Or are you talking about directly editing the DNA of mature humans? Because I've read a  bit about the former, but not the latter.

The latter! It's possible but has a high failure rate. Here's a very simplistic scenario: Viruses can be used as vectors. You inject the needed DNA material into a virus. Now, you "infect" the person with the virus. This virus now contains "good" genetic information. It will go and attack a person's cells, replacing the DNA of their cells with its own which is what we supplied.

More sophisticated methods can help you attack specific cells and specific genes. We obviously don't want to replace everything. We can find viruses that only attack specific cell types. As you can expect, this is very preliminary and experiments have been done on rats etc. but it's probably too unsafe for humans at this point. We don't want to trigger genetic anomalies which could happen due to failures and mutations (or if the virus decides to do its own thing).

It can potentially cure autoimmune diseases, cancer, and many more things.

This is one way of gene therapy: replacing an existing organism's genes in-situ.