Autism Eugenics attempt at MIT

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There is a lot of muddled thinking here.

Eugenics grew out of animal husbandry.

The idea was that people could be bred for desirable characteristics, just as farmers had been breeding animals for desirable characteristics. The initial concepts were simple: individuals with undesirable characteristics would be prevented from reproducing while individuals with desirable characteristics would be encouraged to have as many children as possible.

The key concept of eugenics is controlling the nature of future generations by some means of controlling which traits are reproduced.

How is gene therapy different?

An important distinction to understand if you don't want to be mired in ignorance and superstition about genetic technology is the difference between germ line cells and somatic cells. The germ line cells (eggs and sperm) carry the genetic blueprint for future generations. The rest of the cells in the body are somatic cells. They contain the codes needed to perform their functions in the body, but these codes are never used to make the next generation.

Therapies that alter the code in a particular set of somatic cells may change the molecular function of that cell, allowing, for example, production of a protein that it was previously unable to produce, but those changes cannot be passed to the next generation.

Only edits to the code in germ line cells can be inherited.

There is a write up of this here.
http://www.genetherapynet.com/types-of- ... erapy.html

The technique described in the OP is not any kind of eugenics.

You may want to use politics to deny people the ability to use gene therapies to change the functioning of their own bodies (a hard cell if the therapy allows asthmatics to breathe or diabetics to make insulin, for example) and that's your right. But to argue that all such therapies are "eugenics" makes you seem ignorant to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the biology and I don't think you are doing your cause any favors by taking this approach.

The position that this technique is some kind of eugenics because it involves genes is akin to Trump's thoughtful positions on Muslims and Mexicans.

hellowp asked: "How can a missing gene be turned on?"

The answer is that a change in a codon, a meaningful letter group in a strand of DNA, can prevent the instructions in a sequence of code from being properly read.

Cells are like molecular factories and sequences of DNA are like the blueprints for the products they create out of raw materials. You have probably heard of the basic "letters" of the genetic code, the ones we name G, A, T, C. These are the amino acids Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, Thymine. They pair to make the rungs in the helical "ladder" model of DNA. Groups of three of these form a basic unit of DNA information transfer, called a codon and sequences of codons are used by helper molecules in the cell to make proteins for use in the cell and elsewhere in the body. There are many kinds of error that can get into the sequence and many error correction mechanisms defend against that, but sometimes an error in a codon prevents and important function of the cell, for example the production of a vital protein. Any technique that allows the "typo" in the codon to be repaired will permit the cell to begin producing the protein that the undamaged codon would have produced.

If you are interested in this, Nature has a fairly accessible write up here:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpag ... on-6523228
and Wikipedia has a codon table here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_codon_table

The technique in the article allows exactly this kind of repair. This is an edit to somatic cells and so cannot be inherited. To use the edit for eugenic purposes, you would have to edit the eggs or sperm, which would not provide any therapeutic benefit to the patient.

Some more about shank3 for those who are interested:

https://gene.sfari.org/GeneDetail/SHANK3

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/22q133 ... n-syndrome

Also, for those who are confused about what a gene is, why the sloppy journalist's language about a "missing gene" is profoundly misleading:

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/gene

Based on history an experience and and experience and the money involved I choose not to believe thier statements of very limited intent. Because eugenics has very negative connotations they just can not announce we are going to start sterilizing people thought to be passing on Autism genes. In order to bring eugenics back in favor they probably can not use the word eugenics. They have to start very small. Gene editing they claim and probably will cure or alleviate things like cancer. Not many people except a few cynical pattern thinkers like myself are going to oppose that. If you asked me pre 9/11 about something like the above I would have probably thought of it as the writings of a paranoid lunatic. But Americans have accepted things without a fight I never dreamed they would accept. The survalience state started with small impercetable steps well before 9/11. Lesson learned. The definition of autism has greatly expanded to help people, I see no reason why the definition of eugenics should not expand to prevent harm.

Expanding on what was said above it is equating Autism with things like cancer that will make people accept things or take a chance on things they would not normally accept. I myself think very early and intensive ABA designed to intercept and deflect autistic traits has more "promise" in eliminating autism or core Autistic traits then gene editing. But I won't summerly dismiss the chances of gene editing "accomplishing" the same thing because it seems too complicated at the moment.

Follow the money...
http://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-MH097104-03

Clearly the Trilateral Commission and their overlords from the Bilderberg Group are serving their alien overlords with area 51 technology and going all out to enable the nefarious Dr. Feng to

History has shown us that optional health-care practices end up becoming the future's mandatory practices. Medical ethicists will have a field day with this possibility.

Socially speaking, let us say that a certain percentage of autistic individuals choose to undergo gene therapy successfully (something about which I am doubtful). After a rapacious news media glorifies the successes, how soon before it and key political leaders demand, simultaneously, "saving public funds" and "'improving' lives" by making such therapy mandatory? Sure, initially, such a requirement would be tied to maintaining governmental or educational benefits. But, eventually, budget hawks will screech about the remaining autistic inidivduals who are "feeding at the tax-payer trough" while resisting a treatment that would benefit them and their financial caretakers.

We have seen this kind of "care" before.