Posted on 11/29/2018 1:45:26 AM PST by a fool in paradise
More
The Chinese scientist who claims he made CRISPR babies is under investigation
He Jiankui says he created twin girls whose genes were edited to make them resistant to HIV. Was that ethical? Or even legal?
by Antonio Regalado November 26, 2018
—
CRISPR inventor Feng Zhang calls for moratorium on gene-edited babies
A leading scientist wants Chinese researchers to halt a project to create genetically modified children.
by Antonio Regalado November 26, 2018
What could possibly go wrong?
Courtesy of Western companies handing over their IP in return for access to prison labor and human guinea pigs.
Can the Lord’s return be far away?
God will turn out the lights on humans running things soon. This ghoulish endeavour is the final straw in my view. A rubicon that humans will cross that God will not tolerate. That is my belief anyhow.
Agreed
I am reminded that things will get far worse before the second coming. Although I hadn’t included this particular item to my personal list of possible scenarios, it certainly fits the pattern. Stay safe.
“Courtesy of Western companies handing over their IP in return for access to prison labor and human guinea pigs.”
Yes. That!
It is also the result of molecular biologists seeking fame and stature by being first to do something that most graduate students in molecular biology could do. This technology was developed scientifically, but what the Chinese are doing with it at this point is way premature and is more showboating than science. I suspect their government encourages this.
The words of Psalm 2 kind of leap off the page after reading about this gene editing stuff. Human arrogance and self will be the ruin of many unfortunately.
or introduce genetic defects through mutation
or spurn new even more aggressive less resistant forms of HIV etc
Seriously, the main difference between CRISPR and other gene editing technologies is the hype. We have had the technology to alter genomes for a long time; we do not use them on humans.
This scientist He was looking for publicity, nothing more.
Influenza kills far more Chinese than AIDS. Many Chinese have a variant of the major histocompatibility comp!ex, a protein involved in immune function, that makes them very susceptible to severe effects of influenza infection. Why didn’t He go after that, and potentially save more people?
Also, I find it highly disturbing that there is evidence of genetic testing of preborn babies up to 6 months old. That opens the possibility that He has been killing babies for research.
In other articles (not necessarily about CRISPR) there are scientists who strive for “near human” test subjects by doping human DNA into other “things”.
If they can create a “subhuman” class they believe they are ethically clear to experiment on “it” or harvest “parts” from “it”.
Just as if they can establish a “cure” using fetal stem cells there will be a demand and a “need” for such cells to be created to be harvested (creating human organisms to harvest parts).
The technique described in the article you linked is actually the use of pig embryos as petri dishes to direct the formation of human organs from cells. No human DNA was inserted into pig cells. The human cells injected into the pig embryos receive the growth signals from the surrounding pig cells, and that is what directs them to form organs.
My main concern is about the source of the human cells. Were they harvested from murdered babies? Or do they come from another source of stem cells, for example placenta tissue? Also, I would have concerns about retroviruses. Our genomes have a high content of retroviruses, which are mostly inert. So do the genomes of most multicellular organisms. While pig and human genomes probably share a large number of retroviruses, they are not all the same. What if an inert pig retrovirus enters human cells and becomes “ert”? What if the pig retrovirus then infects the human recipient of the organs grown in pigs? The potential of pig viruses infecting humans has been a long-standing concern of researchers who have been looking into the potential of using pig organs for transplant.
Of course pigs die for all of this research, but I don’t think there is much concern for them.
This pig embryo was injected with human cells early in its development and grew to be four weeks old. The experiment made headlines when it was announced in early 2017; now, researchers have improved the procedure and tested it on sheep...
...The breakthrough moves researchers a small step closer to growing human organs for medical transplant.”
“To make chimeras, researchers isolate one animal’s stem cells, which can develop into any cell type in the body. They then inject some stem cells from one species into the embryo of another—a tricky procedure to get right...
...Stem-cell experts lauded the human-pig study, but they noted that the pig embryos’ counts of human cells—about one in a hundred thousand—were too low for successful organ transplants.
On Saturday at the 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas, researcher Pablo Ross of the University of California, Davis, announced that he and his colleagues have fine-tuned the procedure—boosting human cell counts in sheep embryos to one in ten thousand...
...And to prevent immune rejection, extra steps would be needed to ensure that leftover bits of animal viruses are struck from the pig or sheep’s DNA. But the work shows progress toward more viable organs...
...The U.S. National Institutes of Health currently forbid public funding of human-animal hybrids, though it signaled in 2016 that it might lift the moratorium. (So far, private donors have funded early research.)...
...“The contribution of human cells so far is very small. It’s nothing like a pig with a human face or human brain,” Stanford University researcher Hiro Nakauchi, Ross’s collaborator, said at the meeting. Nakauchi added that researchers are trying to target where human cells proliferate, to ensure that they don’t set up shop in animals’ brains or sex organs...
odd choice of a disease to modify for...
arthritis?
Some cancers?
ALS?
But HIV?
Its a slippery slope because only after-the-fact will they find out they’ve unintentionally edited-out other genes or functions too, leaving these people crippled, deformed and in pain.
Unintended consequences.
HIV is where the reaearch money is
In China??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.