Comment on Least extreme biophysics phd
stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I think a really exceeding important clarification here is he edited the genomes of human embryos, not babies. Babies are already born humans, embryos are a clump of cells that will become a baby in the future. I do not condone gene editing without consent which is what he did, but he did NOT experiment on babies.
Seems like splitting hairs, at best, for you to claim the three edited human babies who were born from this experiment aren’t part of the experiment. He fully aimed to study them and they are still being scientifically monitored.
He also had a bizarre contract he made the parents sign that if they changed their minds they had to reimburse him the financial costs of the experiment.
He also had a bizarre contract he made the parents sign that if they changed their minds they had to reimburse him the financial costs of the experiment
Here’s a scenario.
I think you’re suffering from a form of justification bias. That sounds like something out of a dystopian sci fi.
Here’s the MUCH more realistic scenario that makes his contract unethical:
Scientists try to introduce mutation into embryo
Mother for whatever reason decides she doesn’t want to have the embryo implanted.
Who knows, maybe they can’t afford kids. Or her and the father are about to break up. Or she has found out she’s at risk of complications.
Or maybe they overhear that the experiment didn’t go as planned and the mutation is useless or possibly harmful.
Anyway if they say no they’re suddenly in debt millions of yuan.
Implanting an embryo into a person under those conditions would be coercion.
Mother for whatever reason decides she doesn’t want to have the embryo implanted.
Who knows, maybe they can’t afford kids. Or her and the father are about to break up. Or she has found out she’s at risk of complications.
I think I am just suffering lack of information.
I assumed the contract is to be an after birth thing and not something that makes sure that the mother has to bear the child.
Besides, if the implantation is not done, hasn’t He not actually done the procedure and can choose another (although hard to do so in time)?
Does the embryo have some kind of compatibility with the mother, for implantation to be successful?
In case He has the option to find another chap for the process in the above cases, I won’t consider the contract extending to this time.
I have talked to some Americans who claims that sperm + egg = baby and I want to place an egg in front of them and ask them what it is and if they say anything other than a chicken, I will laugh.
Also, thank you for the distinction. Kind of insane to call embryos babies. It is shit like this that makes me feel like my brain is shrinking when I talk to some people online.
They became babies when they were born with experimental modified genomes without their consent
Babies are conceived without their consent.
In case of a C-section, they are born without their consent (implying that they would rather grow up inside the womb :P (look, idk what babies think when they don’t come out, but we sure aren’t asking them whether they’d rather stay in there))
Obviously the notable, unusual, unethical thing here is the non-consentual gene editing, not the mere occurence of birth
Fair enough.
CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I understand what you’re saying, but his experiment allowed the embryos to come to term and be born as human babies. Scientists have worked with human embryos before and avoided similar outcry by not allowing them to develop further (scientific outcry, not religious). Calling his work an experiment on human embryos ignores the fact that he always intended for his work to impact the real lives of real humans who would be born.
AltheaHunter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Real humans who would be born and could potentially have children, passing whatever genetic edits they have (intended and off-target) into the gene pool.
stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I totally agree, I do believe what he did was unethical.
I also believe the clarification on if the experimenting was done on live human babies or if it was done on human embryos is exceeding important. Implying that this was done on live human babies is basically misinformation. Just look at the rest of this thread and how people are talking about this, everyone is discussing this as if its was living, breathing, crying babies that were experimented on, not a clump of cells before they have any type of living functionality.
If anything what you said should be included, he experimented on embryos with the intent of them being born and becoming babies. But it most definitely should not be “he carried out medical experiments on babies”, because that is patently untrue.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
I disagree and think you are getting too caught up in semantics in this case. Can I put cats and mice in separate rooms, with the intention that the cats can find a way into the other room, and claim I am only doing an experiment on the cats, even once they get through and start killing the mice?
What if I had a woman take some kind of drug during the first 3 weeks of pregnancy, with the explicit purpose of seeing what it does to the baby when it’s born. Can I say, no, no, I was experimenting on a woman and a zygote/blastocyst, not a baby!
You don’t get to just remove yourself from the result. If he did something that made the baby be born in a way that’s different to how it would have been born, in my mind that is a direct experiment on the baby, just via indirect means.
You can say the title isn’t specific enough for your liking, but by my standards it isn’t wrong or misinformation. He conducted an experiment that directly affected the lives of babies. That IS an experiment on the baby, regardless of the method used to perform the experiment.
stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Its is semantics, but also this is science and semantics are important. If we want to get really in to semantics we should say the experiments were done on humans, as the embryo, fetus, baby, toddler, pre-teen, teenager, and adult are all phases of the human life cycle and this experiment was done to produce genetically modified humans. Even CRISPR experiments refer to the organism model when experimenting, not the life cycle phase, unless it is specifically part of the experiment IE: in vitro vs In vivo
Saying the medical experiments were done on babies specifically is for the shock value, and it works, look at the reactions it gets. This should be a hotly debated topic, people should be concerned about the ethics of gene editing and how it is regulated. This experiment was not ethical in anyway and it was criminal, but using hyperbole to inflate the shock value for engagement is also not the way to communicate how unethical and criminal this is.
arrow74@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
By all accounts what he did worked. The potential to end HIV is huge. The amount of human suffering that could be reduced by rolling out what he did is very real.
The technology is here. It’s better to strictly manage it for the public good than to lock it away.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Incorrect.
arrow74@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Per the wikipedia page it states that it is not clear if it effective because they’re not going to intentionally infect the children to test it. But we see the results specifically on the targeted gene. That’s a success and demonstrates the technology works.
I’d argue the folly was inserting an artificial gene as opposed to the natural gene that we already know works. Either way the technology showed expression on the correct gene, that is a success.
JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What “accounts” are you reading? You need to read more accurate accounts, because what he did didn’t work and the experiment wasn’t very useful.