Discussion summary
Researchers are using precision editing to study human embryo development, raising ethical and regulatory questions. Discussions include the creation of embryos, legal restrictions, and scientific methods.
What the discussion says
- Some believe embryo editing raises ethical concerns about creating 'souls'.
- Others emphasize the importance of scientific research and data collection.
“Embryos have to reset after conception to delete faulty DNA.”
“In the US, embryo research is legal but not federally funded or approved for treatments.”
Comments
Hacker News
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.
by smalltorch
I wonder what the regulations are for this sort of work
by ape4
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.
by MichaelZuo
> 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
by j16sdiz
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- Hacker News
- 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.
by smalltorch - I wonder what the regulations are for this sort of workby ape4
- 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.
by MichaelZuo - > 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
by j16sdiz