Gene Editing Poll
ASPartOfMe
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30 Dec 2018, 12:26 am
Poll: 7 in 10 Americans support editing baby genes for health, not smarts
A month after startling claims of the births of the world's first gene-edited babies in China, the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds people are torn between the medical promise of a technology powerful enough to alter human heredity and concerns over whether it will be used ethically.
Jaron Keener, a 31-year-old exhibit designer at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, said he's opposed to "rich people being able to create designer babies."
But like the majority of Americans, Keener would support gene editing in embryos to prevent incurable diseases. His mother has lupus, an inflammatory disease that may have both environmental and genetic triggers.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans also favor using gene editing to prevent a child from inheriting a non-fatal condition such as blindness, and even to reduce the risk of diseases that might develop later in life, such as cancers.
Side effects are possible, such as a gene-editing attempt that accidentally alters the wrong DNA spot, and the poll finds 85 percent think that risk is at least somewhat likely.
But about 7 in 10 Americans oppose using gene editing to alter capabilities such as intelligence or athletic talent, and to alter physical features such as eye color or height.
The poll highlights that if gene editing of embryos ever moves into fertility clinics, there will be some hard choices about what non-fatal disorders should qualify, said Columbia University bioethicist Dr. Robert Klitzman. What if scientists could pinpoint genes involved with depression or autism or obesity — would they be OK to edit?
Indeed, the poll uncovers a lack of trust in science: About a third think this kind of gene editing will be used before it's adequately tested, as many scientists say happened in China. Nearly 9 in 10 people think the technology will be used for unethical reasons, including 52 percent who say this is very likely to happen.
And roughly three-quarters of Americans say gene editing probably wouldn't be affordable for the average person — raising the specter of certain genetic diseases becoming a problem only for the poor.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,067 adults was conducted Dec. 13-16 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
This shows how autism is viewed by the public could be a crucial factor in possible future eugenic elimination of autistic people.
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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2018, 1:23 pm
I think there's only one sane way to do this, and I say it with my programming hat on.
If you have a system you're dealing with that's highly complex, highly fragile, and you don't know what more than half of it does - it's suicidal to go in and tamper with it, especially if you know that getting it wrong will cause all hell to break loose.
The thing we need to do is thoroughly audit/interrogate the human genome to figure out what does what. We should then find maybe 10 to 20 genes, at the bottom of the stack, that reliably cause the most antisocial behavior, cause the most disease, and then audit all of the positive effects they have to make sure we have them in perspective. Then, and only then, we should look at this list and figure out if there are any that we can say have all down side and no upside. Then, if we know that there is an analog to this gene that's benign or even helpful, switch it accordingly. I'm thinking out of that list of 10 or 20 you'll have five at the most that we'd be willing to change across our whole population.
Anything less wildly conservative than that just won't be a good idea. We're way too hot-headed as a race, way too ambitious, and this is where the right idiots could grab the gun and put everyone's fingers over the tip of the barrel.
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30 Dec 2018, 3:30 pm
Humans should stay the hell away from gene editing.
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30 Dec 2018, 8:34 pm
Assuming it could be done perfectly, I don't see why we shouldn't edit the hell out of ourselves. Who wouldn't want to be faster, stronger, smarter? Free of diseases? How would you feel if your parents had had the option to give these glittering, priceless gifts to you and refused them to you? Imagine if the people you see with fantastic genetics had been given those rather than simply being lucky, while you could have had them if not for your parents.
About autism, I see no reason not to purge it from the human race. Ideally we would keep the few strengths the condition can provide and give them to everyone while eliminating all of the many weaknesses, but if it was just a choice between autism or no autism, purging it would do way more good than harm. On top of that, for some reason it's not just mental, get a random group of autistics together and we are really noticeably physically inferior to a random group of NTs. Considerably lower life expectancy. The forum is full of miserable people, and there are large swathes of autistic people who are incapable of posting here. The condition can be completely disabling in all aspects at it's worst.
It's one thing aborting autistic babies, removing the autism though...
techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2018, 10:14 pm
I remember back in an intro communication class in college, early/mid 2000's, I did a presentation on gene-targeting drugs. Apparently, even that far back, they were looking at drugs that would hit receptor sites, similar to the way current drugs hit neural receptors, and either muffle or amplify gene expression.
I think we should do a heck of a lot more with that, ie. something that can be undone if the results are undesirable, for a long time before we go mucking around with anything permanent.
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ASPartOfMe
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31 Dec 2018, 1:54 am
About autism, I see no reason not to purge it from the human race. Ideally we would keep the few strengths the condition can provide and give them to everyone while eliminating all of the many weaknesses, but if it was just a choice between autism or no autism, purging it would do way more good than harm. On top of that, for some reason it's not just mental, get a random group of autistics together and we are really noticeably physically inferior to a random group of NTs. Considerably lower life expectancy. The forum is full of miserable people, and there are large swathes of autistic people who are incapable of posting here. The condition can be completely disabling in all aspects at it's worst.
It's one thing aborting autistic babies, removing the autism though...
I would like some autistic gene editor to edit out people’s(NT and autistic) fear and dislike of autistic traits. Many of us would have more opportunities for jobs and relationships etc. That should get rid of a lot of the mental illneses that kills us off early and makes us LOOK physically inferior.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
04 Jan 2019, 10:11 am
I saw a thread about this on another site last night and the reactions just astounded me. The comments predominantly said that “leftists” thought it was “racist” to not want your genes or your kids’ genes edited. WHAT???
I turned to my husband and told him that these people now think we’re crazy because we think our entire family on both sides have the right to live, as we are. Ridiculous, right? My husband and many of his family is autistic and my family has a serious genetic disease. We are all doing quiet well. I personally would not change places with another person. You can go to an ataxia forum and find plenty of people who say different, but that’s them.
As we were told to our faces by genetic counselors before we ever thought about having children, gene editing risks changing good things that come along with your genetic challenges. Perhaps my brain disease is also protecting me from some other disease. Perhaps my husbands autism helps him live a long time. Let’s count our blessings here.
04 Jan 2019, 7:27 pm
there'll be side effects by definition: full blown tay-sachs is an awful disease. half-blown tay-sachs makes you immune to tuberculosis.
full blown OCD can ruin lives, half-blown OCD is a trait I might want in a surgeon.
non-verbal autism is something society doesn't want to deal with. half-blown autism (i.e. Asperger's) is likely the reason for science and a lot of art.
basically, I agree with techstepgeneration's sentiment. we don't know enough to screw with this. But if we go beyond fixing lethal diseases we know are caused by a single gene mutation (like Huntington's disease), I actually advocate for faster, taller, smarter babies first - because "fixing" autism might actually not be a smart idea at all. I wouldn't mind being a bit faster, though.
But we know how this is going to go, don't we? there'll be gene-edited babies in some low-regulation countries for a bit, and then they'll lower regulations here, too, and then 80 years after that we'll know what scientists have done wrong in the first 3 generations, and gen4 will deliver super-smart, super-fast, super-healthy, and super-expensive babies. Likely, this is going to be an exclusive science for the offspring of jeff bezos, so they can accumulate more wealth while they get a thousand years old...
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techstepgenr8tion
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04 Jan 2019, 8:46 pm
Human puppy-mill, with a couple hundred years of that sort of vanity you won't be able to have kids with much of anyone without their eyes getting closer and closer together.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
05 Jan 2019, 12:30 am
It’s probably better to let nature take its course. I can’t see this as being a useful thing for future generations.
Overpopulation will accelerate to a point even worse than it is now, society will start to crumble due to the lack of diversity. Everyone will have the same strengths and weaknesses, or lack thereof.
05 Jan 2019, 12:34 am
You are not thinking about the greater good here. It’s not just about you or babies that come shooting out of your vagoo. It’s about advancement of the species and society.
auntblabby
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05 Jan 2019, 12:53 am
The thing we need to do is thoroughly audit/interrogate the human genome to figure out what does what. We should then find maybe 10 to 20 genes, at the bottom of the stack, that reliably cause the most antisocial behavior, cause the most disease, and then audit all of the positive effects they have to make sure we have them in perspective. Then, and only then, we should look at this list and figure out if there are any that we can say have all down side and no upside. Then, if we know that there is an analog to this gene that's benign or even helpful, switch it accordingly. I'm thinking out of that list of 10 or 20 you'll have five at the most that we'd be willing to change across our whole population.
Anything less wildly conservative than that just won't be a good idea. We're way too hot-headed as a race, way too ambitious, and this is where the right idiots could grab the gun and put everyone's fingers over the tip of the barrel.
100%.
Read my mind. There is nowhere enough intricate knowledge on the human genome to make this done on an excessive global scale to be anything other than outright dangerous.
10-20 genes is not enough.
Nature is more complex than even the most advanced human minds can understand. Nature was built to stabilize itself, if you mess with the balance too much, it starts to have extremely negative effects on our planet and ecosystem. We have living proof of this - look at the industrial era intervention.
One might have an idea, but it's not enough knowledge to make this work safe on a large scale. The set of genes that cause pancreatic cancer might also have a correlation to reproductive health, or how the digestive tract of your grandchildren turn out when mixed with specimen b's sperm. 3 billion DNA base pairs - breeding with another 3 billion base pairs filtering down generations with additional base pairs - it just gets more complex as time goes on. Good luck trying to tease that out in a few decades.
