UK scientists gain licence to edit genes in human embryos

Funnily when I heard about this on NPR, the last thing they said was that some see this as a step towards designer babies, which is exactly what coordinators are

We've truly entered the Cosmic Era.

>>13829867
Nope. We haven't discovered the almighty Space Whale that will put an end to all religion yet.

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>>13829887
>implying a Space Whale can end Islam.

Silly kuffar.

World already on its way to /Gattaca/
>tfw you can't alter your genes to improve yourself

>>13829887
>implying the Space Whale wouldn't become the key figure of its own religion

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>>13829887
>he doesn't know that all major religions incorporated the discovery of aliens into their doctrine centuries ago

Look at this retard, look at him and laugh!

>>13830013
What if we invent designer babies who are so supersmart and genetically perfect, they can retroactively alter our inferior genes so that we become supersmart and genetically perfect too?

>>13829849
How are we doing on artificial wombs?

>>13829849
Further proof that the UK is retarded.

Do you know what happens with we artificially modify genetics? We create defects, new diseases and cancers. Because we barely know how organic life works. Modern science doesn't even have any substantial clue as to how a brain works, yet they want to arbitrarily modify human genes? When we genetically modify plants, we make all sorts of dangerous errors and failures. Doing that to humans in our gene pool is going to be catastrophic. People are retarded.

>>13830174
Sacrifices must be made for science.

>>13830174
go be a luddite somewhere else

>>13830185
Grow a brain and stop misusing words, child.

>>13830174
I bet people said the same thing about lighting flammable liquids in an enclosed space, and then the combustion engine was invented. Shit, I bet some guy was all "Don't stick stuff in that fire, man. You don't know how it works, and it hurts like hell."

Got to play with shit to see how it works, it's hard to prove any theories without experimentation.

>>13830174

I imagine they're only going to go so far.

Not to mention if you think that no other country on the planet has or is currently doing this as well.

>>13830199
No, people said the same thing about O-rings before Challenger exploded.
>bro you haven't tested it properly you shouldn't do it just yet we need to learn more
>FUCK OFF LUDDITE WE'RE LAUNCHING
>forty seconds later
>KABOOOOM

>>13829867
Now we can truly shape the product of the female egg and the male Mobile Suit Gundam SEED™ according to our will.

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>>13830199

Do you realize how retarded that sounds?

Why dont you go put some embryos in some gasoline and light it up is what you're saying.

>>13830174
Can't be any worse than what inbred rednecks in the us are doing to the human gene pool

>>13830174

The main reason that we know anything about how organic life works is because a few centuries ago people started playing with it, seeing what worked and what didn't, what happened when you changed it in different ways or exposed it to a variety of stimuli and so on - often against the wishes of the government. The single best way to find out how something works is by observing what happens when shit goes wrong and then working from there to find out why it went wrong. And you cannot do that if you're never allowed to touch the stuff in the first place. For decades surgery on the heart was a taboo in science because it was viewed as something that would never be possible to get right and then after WWII there were so many wounded soldiers suffering heart problems that surgeons felt they had no choice but to try and within a decade or two they had the process basically perfected.

This is just more of the same, and in every way safer because they're not proposing that scientists modify embryos of fertile women that will then be allowed to come to term and born - the embryos will be experimented on and then observed and destroyed after seven days. Everything has to start somewhere, and this is a good place to start with modification of the human genome, since you can experiment observe changes on the most basic level of human existence and ensuring that they have some degree of confidence before they move forwards with it. It won't even be the sole thrust of the field, since there'll still be lots of experimentation in other areas that will eventually filter back to working on the human genome when they've done more experimentation on other animals and cells to gain confidence that they have the process and theory correct.

>>13830522

Modern science does actually have some substantial clues as to how brains work by the way. There have been fairly substantial leaps in the fields of neuroscience in the last few decades and we can observe the process of a single thought in action and the changes it renders on the brain now thanks to it. What we don't know is how the mind works, because mind is a substantially different thing to brain in many ways and a lot more messy.

>>13830185
>>13830199
>>13830254

Man, how awkward is it going to be if the first round of proper experiments with embryos gets defended with this whiggish garbage, and it actually DOES go horribly wrong?

I'd rather rationalize it by saying that someone's got to try it, and it's better to do it openly with the right methods, instead of going
>muh progress
>muh human ingenuity
>muh irreproachable scientific integrity

>>13830522
>>13830527
Honestly, I didn't read your post past the first sentence because it's really predictable and I'm sure doesn't say a whole lot.

Basically, you say that we need to experiment to learn. Okay. But that does not mean and has never meant anything goes. There needs to be more non-human mammal research before we directly move to humans. Even if they experiment on these embryos and find what they think is a cure for something which is then implemented in humans, they should first do testing within non-humans to study patterns over shorter generational cycles. I understand that they are destroying the embryos they test, but this will only lead to an accelerated application in non-experimental human subjects which is a pitfall due to the relatively slow generational cycle of humans.

>>13830578
So you want us to first create hyperintelligent chimpanzees and rats before we move on to create hyperintelligent humans?
That's madness.

Well, if anything, the ISIS debacle is shaping up to looking a lot like spark for the Reconstruction War in SEED, what with the blackflags already pissing off the West and the Russians and on their way to getting china involved as well. Give or take a few more years of scattered wildfires and somehow depleting all the crude underneath the desert, and they only need to somehow pack bags and move to Kashmir so that Putin can drop some Soviet-era nuclear ordnance on them and somehow not ignite a N-War in the process.

So in any case, most of us will probably not live through it all to go shoot genetically-altered kindergarten children, at the earliest, 40 years on at the conclusion of the Reconstruction War, whenever it starts.

>>13830583
Hyper-intelligent rats and chimps would only try to rise up and overthrow their human oppressors. If we skip that step straight into making hyper-intelligent humans, there is no possible way our hubris could come back to haunt us.

>>13830583
They are obviously much easier to take out than hyper-intelligent humans.

>>13830607
And what are you going to do once they create human-sized mechas piloted by newtype-rats?

>>13830618
>piloted mechs
I thought they were supposed to be hyper intelligent?

>>13829887
>Aliens, therefore your religion is wrong
Why are sci-fi writers such idiots? This exact plot point was used in Mass Effect. Somehow the existence of aliens convinced people that religion is wrong? How? I'm not even religious, and I honestly don't understand the leap of logic, because there isn't any.

>>13830627
Human-sized mechas actually work. Proof, we humans are human-sized. At least some of us are.

Also, it's of course for infiltration purposes.

>>13830578

> I don't have to read posts to respond to them because I'm just too cool for school

Baby-batter pancakes make surprisingly good tissues for weepy elephants. There, now you have a first sentence that isn't quite so predictable and if you want in future I can try dropping random nonsense in to the middle of my posts so that reading three whole paragraphs isn't quite so much like hard work.

That aside, no-one here has said that anything goes, nor does that article indicate that anyone in the UK thinks that's the case. Just because you have fears about a slippery slope doesn't mean that people should never go near the edge in the first place, or try to plot out a way around it. Nor does it mean that they are going to stop experiments on other animals, because it's only a license for a small group to do experimentation on human embryos in one country out of dozens that are doing this kind of research. All of that research will continue and all of it will continue to influence people's theories and experiments and not just this one teams research in future. People have to start working with the human genome eventually and you're basically just suggesting that they shouldn't do any kind of work on it at all until they have completely worn out work on animals with a much shorter life cycle like fruit-flies, which is a ridiculous assertion since while they do have some surprising similarities to humans you can only get so much from doing and you'll still have a lot of unknowns to consider even if you discover everything about them before moving forwards with human genome research.

>>13830174
>>13830174

how do you think we re going to learn about organic life?

>>13830630

Most people writing sci-fi and games, at least for Western audiences are either some strain of Christian/Jew or at least raised in an environment where that's the dominant theology. And those religions all tend to emphasize that humans are special and specially created by God and so the view is that if other sentient species turn up it proves we're not special and thus that the religion as a whole is bunk. There'd probably be some kind of crisis of the faith if/when aliens are proved for those religions and within a few years some revisionism would take place that resolves it officially while most practicing adherents would just take it in stride and resolve it on a personal level without issue. Buddhism and other religions don't really have that problem and so would be unlikely to be affected at all.

>>13830174
go back to /pol/ Muruta Azrael

>>13830630
It's probably that old chestnut about religion getting BTFO by scientific progress, but on a grander scale. Aliens would totally undermine organized religion even more, because of reasons, and post hoc rationalizations of religions will finally be rejected by everyone, forever, also because of reasons. Also, even if a new religion is formed from finding new stuff in space, it will immediately be dismissed as a fringe of crazies by the public at large, or turn into a menace to humanity, with nothing in between.

>>13830655
I was raised Evangelical and this reasoning is just merely conjecture. Humanity was created by God. However, nowhere in the text does it indicate that their creation denies the possibility of other forms of sentient life. It would be insulting to God to even presume that he cannot or does not concern himself with his other creations.

In fact, humanity is not as special as these writers believe them to be, according to biblical text. Angels were created before humanity, and even stated to be higher in rank and superior to humanity. Angels were not created on Earth, they were even there at its creation. Angels are Aliens by definition.

Does their existence threaten humanity's role as God's beloved creation? No, why would it? God was already in the presence of angels before even thought of humanity. Early Church Fathers speculated the existence of life on other planets, and nowhere were they concerned of their role in God's dominion.

I just don't see how the existence of other intelligent life on other planets would jeopardize the Christians/Jews/Muslims' belief of being God's creation. Their text has already confirmed the existence of ancient advanced extradimesional nonhuman beings.

>>13830718
yeah, I'm nonreligious but I too don't get why ayyylmaos preclude Jehova. It's not like the book starts "NO FUCKING SPACEMEN" or something

>>13830164
But Khan

>>13830728
>>13830655
Well, you did say many of them presumably grew up in a Christian environment. I always took it as a way of retaliation when they grow up and choose to abandon the faith. Sort of like David Willis (albeit the fact his Christian parents were too extreme). They're striking back against the circumstances of their birth.

>>13830718

Well of course it's conjecture, that was my point: that the people writing sci-fi or games often don't really know that much about the religions they're speaking about and just operating from popular perception. And in the case of most of those people, popular conception is mainly concerned with Western monotheistic religions, which are popularly viewed as elevating humans to special and specially created in God's image - so that if something shows up that doesn't resemble humans, it cannot resemble God, therefor is either less than or else those religions are wrong. And if they're wrong then everyone will quickly realize it (contrary to everything ever) and bingo, no more religions.

I don't believe it's true, nor was I trying to suggest it was, which was why I said that most practicing adherents would just resolve it quickly on a personal level without any official input and that it would be the Church that would struggle most to really resolve it on an official level, since red tape will always hamper these kind of things in large organizations of any kinds, even when there's some basis for the resolution in the canon.

>>13830735
Apparently, his rule wasn't that terribad, and the only reason why augments are/were such warmongering assholes was because they had all a specific personality disorder that gave them evil autism, which the 20th century-scientists who modified the kids into superkids already knew about and could have fixed easily, but thought that making them violent brats is necessary to fully unlock their potential to become new ubermenschen.

>>13830744

If we find alien life that doesn't look anything like us, the church would just change their interpretations of the scriptures.

'"Made in god's image?" Obviously that doesn't refer to our physical bodies, you fool. God isn't so limited as to be bound by mortal biology. We were made in god's image because of how he designed our minds and souls, not our bodies.'

There. Now we can export religion to the Martians. Which they probably don't want, but that's not our problem.

>>13830834
>There. Now we can export religion to the Martians. Which they probably don't want, but that's not our problem.
I imagine martians have their own hipsters that will flock to our religions because they're cool and different. And the same goes for our hipsters.

>>13830834
IF MAN IS CREATED IN GOD'S IMAGE, HOW CAN IT BE INFALLIBLE?

>gene editing
Fuck that I wanted cyborg humanity future.

>>13830174

FOR OUR BLUE AND PURE WORLD!

>>13830864

> Why not both?

>>13830174
Well doy, that's the whole point of the exercise. By messing around with human genes we can learn those things we currently don't and obtain that more in depth knowledge of the genome needed to do anything of substance.

No one's just going to jump in and try to engineer crazy nonsense. Science is actually a lot more boring than you think.

>>13830578
If you want to know how htings work in humans the best material to workwith is human material. Genes interact with each other in really complex and fiddly ways, so much so that it's not really feasible to assume that even genes in a very genetically similar species (like pigs) would operate in a similar fashion.

Well time to form the blue cosmos who's in?

I'm not letting some test tube shits take my job, I'm building a wall.

>>13830914
It's the rules of cheesy sci-fi you can have one or the other. Both is only allowed if they're trying to kill each other.

>>13830963

We need more cheesy sci-fi with both. Warhammer 40k has both if I recall (not a fan of it, but I think the Spess Marines have both?). Can't think of any others that have both off hand.

>>13831078
40k does have both. In the Space Marines' case, they're always genetically altered, but not always cybernetically enhanced. If they lose an arm or an eye, they get implants to replace the lost part, though.

However, in the case of the Iron Hands chapter, they're obsessed with replacing as much of their human flesh as possible, so they're all pretty much cyborgs.

>>13829849
We GATTACA now.
If you thought the age old tendency of a younger, entitled, technologically savvy generation taking jobs from older people was a terrifying concept, get ready for genetically engineered superkids who actually ARE superior.

>>13831139

It'll probably be no different from educationally superior kids taking jobs from people in that it'll probably take a while but eventually balance out to everyone having genetic modifications (or cyborg enhancements too since those will probably become economically viable first) since it benefits everyone, the rich included, more to have everyone have those enhancements than to only have an elite upper caste who have them. If only the elite have them, then the non-elite aren't nearly as efficient at working as they could be, so they take longer to make what they can make and can only make a smaller set of things than they could if they had those enhancements, thus work is slower and less efficient, prices are higher and specialization doesn't grow. If they have those enhancements open to them though, they can make more, for cheaper and specialize to make a wider variety of stuff for the rich to take advantage of. That's the main reason why everyone in large portions of the world has a decent education open to them now: because it benefits society and the elite more for the peons to have that than to not.

>>13830232
And no more space ships will explode due to crappy O-rings. Progress!

>>13830914
Jinteki cannot into Haas-Bioroid.

>>13831186

He's not even right about the cause of Challenger anyways. It wasn't that they didn't do enough testing, because the problem with the O-rings was known and had been brought to the attention of some of the NASA upper staff but had been ignored as not enough of an issue to warrant immediate attention. And then it was an issue, and high-lighted larger issues within NASA itself. More testing didn't need to be done to prevent Challenger, better internal communications and more rigorous standards were what was needed.

>>13831200
>During the investigation Sally Ride told Richard Feynman that the O-rings were not tested at temperatures below 50 °F (10 °C).

>>13830834
well if aliens were to look too far out it actually wouldn't be inaccurate to the bible's depictions of angels, and I mean the actual H.R Giger and Lovecraftian tier ones not the human seraphims everyon

>>13831314

> The report found that managers at Marshall had known about the flawed design since 1977, but never discussed the problem outside their reporting channels with Thiokol—a flagrant violation of NASA regulations.

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm

> Also, to measure the pressure between the O-rings, engineers attached instruments to the leak test port at a segment joint. Although the test was successful in that it demonstrated the case met strength requirements, test measurements showed that, contrary to design expectations, the joint tang and inside clevis bent away from each other instead of toward each other and by doing so reduced-instead of increased-pressure on the 0-ring in the milliseconds after ignition. This phenomenon was called "joint rotation." Testifying before the Commission, Arnold Thompson, Thiokol's supervisor of structures, said,

> "We discovered that the joint was opening rather than closing as our original analysis had indicated, and in fact it was quite a bit. I think it was up to 52 onethousandths of an inch at that time, to the primary O-ring."

> Feynman was critical of flaws in NASA's "safety culture", so much so that he threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle, which appeared as Appendix F. In the appendix, he argued that the estimates of reliability offered by NASA management were wildly unrealistic, differing as much as a thousandfold from the estimates of working engineers.

Testing at those temperatures would have proven that the o-rings had an additional issue, but the engineers at Marshall knew they had issues all along and had tried to communicate this to no effect because people at NASA concluded that they were good enough despite those issues. If they were going to dismiss them based on testing that already showed them as sub-standard, they'd have dismissed them despite the temperature issue as well.

>>13831463
>you say >>13830232 is false
>get proven wrong
>post unrelated stuff
Why
The claim of
>you shouldn't do it just yet we need to learn more
was already substantiated
Are you that worried about winning on the internet

>>13831479

How is the fact that NASA were aware the design had faults and wasn't really suitable proof that what they really needed was more tests to prove just how unsuitable it was and not that what they really needed was to find a more suitable design and just ignored that need because they didn't feel it was pressing enough?

>>13830596

And I'd take it the Zika Virus will be our Type-S Influenza?

>>13832281

A resurgence of MERS or Pepe's Favorite, aka Ebola, would be a likelier outcome. Or if the rumour mill is to be believed then none of them fit since the patchworks manufactured the Type-S in their space colonies.

But that would be almost a century after, assuming that the Reconstruction War is somewhere within the next 30 or so years. We'll be dead long before Al da Flaga was even born.

>>13830174
They're only going to be included in the gene pool if they're allowed to reproduce. The only issues with this are social/ethical ones.