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Scientist who gene-edited babies is back in lab and ‘proud’ of past work despite jailing
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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The children are healthy so far and his admirable intentions don't mitigate the fact that he's experimenting on humans. Even if he is successful (and I hope for the sake of the children he was), it's still unethical to try.
Like if I wanted to test out my new fireproof spray by spraying it on some puppies and then setting them on fire, it wouldn't be ethical even if the spray worked.
What the entire fuck are you talking about? There are standards for medical ethics, and this doctor ignored all of them. Vaccines and antibiotics are methodically tested on animals before they are tested on humans. They are tested with informed consent, and in scientifically rigorous conditions.
This doctor modified the genes of unborn embryos in the hopes of creating children who are immune to HIV. He took three discarded embryos, edited their genes, and then implanted them in a womb to be born.
We've done similar animal testing, but medical science is nowhere near declaring such interventions as safe for human trials.
The doctor is declaring it a success because the children he created in a lab for the purposes of experimentation have grown up healthy so far, and at 5 years old are showing no adverse effects from the gene editing he did on them.
I think you haven't read the article. He's not curing infants of genetic disorders. That's one hypothetical application of his intervention, but that wasn't the experiment. He's trying to make them immune to a virus. Is he going to try to infect them with the virus? Can't really be sure if it worked with just a blood sample, after all.
It's weird that I have to even argue this with somebody. Who defends this guy?
I don’t think people here even know what IRB approval means
The children are 5, and he was trying to edit their genes without causing them horrible disfigurations or disease. He was "successful so far" in that the children have not yet experienced any debilitating side effects and haven't died a painful death.
How is any of that, even in a general sense, in any way justifiable?
The lack of informed consent is what makes this unethical.
Informed consent is a key aspect of clinical trials
I'd argue it would be ethical if the puppies were already on fire.
He cured a genetic disease. Wtf is wrong with that?!
He got lucky. If he'd given them a thalamide-like condition, would you still be saying the same?
When it comes to human experiments, you can't go solo and hope you get lucky. You need rigorous reviews, standards, ethics committees.
You especially can't trust the results of an individual who has already shown a clear lack of regard for basic rules and regulations in favor of his personal God complex.
Yea. He got lucky. Lucky he spent years studying to become a doctor and then further years studying gene editing and the roots of genetic diseases. All luck. No skill or hard work at all. Just a lucky break.
There are proper procedures for these sorts of experiments that were not followed.
No amount of domain knowledge offsets malpractice, which is factually what occurred here, regardless of outcome.
Just because I have significant experience in systems engineering and administration, and we have no testing environment that would work as an accurate "clone" of reality, doesn't mean that I just get to ignore proper procedure and make changes to my work environment as I wish.
Even when I have the knowledge to know the risks, potential problems, can map out the potential outcomes, etc. I still have to follow proper procedure. Sometimes that means creating test scenarios to approximate reality, sometimes that means that I simply cannot move forward until a suitable testing environment exists.
Either way, as a knowledgable professional, there are proper processes that must be followed.
These are much more dire in the realm of medicine than computers.
Personally, my metric for "success" on this is when they die of old age with no complications that could possibly be related to the genetic manipulation. Is your metric so low that the fact they have no reported complications this early in life means success?
If he had not been successful would you be as defensive of him? The children are still children, with a lifetime of potential complications left that may or may not occur.
Medical ethics is way more involved than "one guy has good credentials, so let him at it."
Human experimentation is a fraught topic, one with a literal genocidal history. You don't let "the guy who is really good at this do whatever he wants" to people, because that's what all the murderers did too.
That's a strawman fallacy, I did not say that. I did not make that argument.
He got lucky in doing something which is prohibited for a very good reason.
I can train for years to be a good air traffic controller. If I one day decide to have a plane take off from a runway while another is landing on it in the same direction and nobody notices or dies, I am still lucky despite all my training. Rules, especially safety rules, exist for a very good reason. They are written in blood.
Arrogant people defy such rules because they believe themselves to be better and other people suffer for it. The fact that this one person may have been lucky and succeeded makes no difference to the fact it should never have happened. It's like looking at lottery winners as if they're smart people for having sun the lottery and ignoring all the similar people who haven't won but lost.
If I'm a trained electrician and I have no fuses on me, so I just stick in a piece of metal, it may work. People might live in that home to great satisfaction until it is torn down, none the wiser. But it's not right. Because I'm taking unnecessary risks with their lives. One small oversight, failing appliance, or accident-prone cat and people will die in that house fire.
The hell he did. You need to go back and read what his experiment was. He says he hopes to someday cure a genetic disease. In the meantime, he was just testing to make sure he could edit genes without causing long term health problems which he won't know until the kids grow up and have them!!
No, he (hoped to) increase their resistance to HIV.
Ethics are subjective. What if more puppies were saved from fire than harmed as a result? Utilitarians would disagree.
Also its only unethical to experiment on babies if they dont legally consent.
So, always unethical, then.
Ethics are not subjective. That's what makes them "ethics" and not "morals."
How the hell you gonna get informed consent from a baby you created in a lab?
Well here we are. You have taken me seriously and now, with the help of chatgpt, i will respond to you.
ChaptGPT: You should review ethical subjectivism versus ethical objectivism.
Me: How can multiple objective ethical viewpoints exist without proving ethics are subjective? You would have to prove, or substaniate in some way that a certain objective ethical framework stands above others. Seeing as how this remains a popular philosophical debate, im guessing you cant prove that.
ChatGPT: popular ethical frameworks that could be adopted by a person include: denotational ethics, utilitarism, virtue ethics, natural law theory, divine command theory, moral realism, human rights theory, contractualism, objectivism, moral absolutism, pragmatism, rule consequentialism, ethical intuitionism, platonism in ethics, the doctorine of double effect.
Me: if you are saying its a moral choice to adopt an ethical framework, and thats why each of these choices are not subjective in themselves, isnt that kind of obtuse and a semantic argument? Which is exactly what i would expect from a lemming. Because thats the way internet arguments are won.
My friend: Tee is right on this one.
You: Damn man you are right.
you, Kant, always have what you want.
Kant didn't support Utilitarianism, he was in favour of categorical imperatives that were always true.
Hence the pun
Invoking pure utilitarianism and the idea of babies consenting?
Got a good laugh out of me. Gr8 b8 I r8 8 out of 8