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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27744 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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With how much panic and FUD there is over simply eating GMOs versus becoming them?

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/crispr.2020.0082

A large majority of countries (96 out of 106) surveyed have policy documents—legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes, and international treaties—relevant to the use of genome editing to modify early-stage human embryos, gametes, or their precursor cells. Most of these 96 countries do not have policies that specifically address the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos in laboratory research (germline genome editing); of those that do, 23 prohibit this research and 11 explicitly permit it. Seventy-five of the 96 countries prohibit the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos to initiate a pregnancy (heritable genome editing). Five of these 75 countries provide exceptions to their prohibitions. No country explicitly permits heritable human genome editing. These data contrast markedly with previously reported findings.

That seems like regulatory hell if I've ever seen one.

I think you can do this research but you are subject to Institutional Review Boards or your country equivalent

Ah, IRBs, a pox on human progress, without even smallpox around to contest for the greater evil.

unless you consider human rights to be a stumbling block

Why, I do, so good guess even if purely by accident.

The AMA condemns it, for example:

The American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs stated that "genetic interventions to enhance traits should be considered permissible only in severely restricted situations: (1) clear and meaningful benefits to the fetus or child; (2) no trade-off with other characteristics or traits; and (3) equal access to the genetic technology, irrespective of income or other socioeconomic characteristics.

Imagine if they banned elective surgeries or something like braces because, gasp, it costs money, and the rich can better take advantage of it than the poor.

Make no mistake, the whole field has been pushed back decades by intentional lobbying from bioethicists and the usual useful idiots on the environmentalist side.

So in your view the current model where mostly unlimited animal testing is allowed, we should instead jump to human embryos, edit them and allow them to grow as fetuses, and as humans under comparable conditions and then test the editing results through IQ tests? Or do you think that editing of embryos should be allowed for research but not allowed to progress further toward human birth?

Edit: Or do you see embryo editing as something that should be allowed as it exists in its current state that should be completely allowed with no exceptions like elective surgery totally separate from medicine entirely?

So in your view the current model where mostly unlimited animal testing is allowed, we should instead jump to human embryos, edit them and allow them to grow as fetuses, and as humans under comparable conditions and then test the editing results through IQ tests?

Yes.

The expected benefits so grossly outweigh the costs that it's ludicrous.

I'll only accept that my opponents on this matter are being internally consistent when they advocate for every mother who grabs a glass of wine during their pregnancy to end up in the gulag. We certainly won't agree about anything, but I'll respect them more.

Humans are allowed to consistently harm the potential of their progeny, and yet a systematic approach that acknowledges the risk and considers it in service of the greater good, that's verboten. We live in a clown world, and the inmates were the ones who built the asylum, let alone run it.

Or do you see embryo editing as something that should be allowed as it exists in its current state that should be completely allowed with no exceptions like elective surgery totally separate from medicine entirely?

The fact that it's theoretically legal is little consolation when there's minimal opportunities to engage in it. Besides, there are plenty of restrictions on elective procedures, as the constant ruckus about gender reassignment surgeries can demonstrate.

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