Post #2915218
2026-01-06 12:05 UTC
Replies (4)
-
@AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2026-01-06 12:48
If he got incredibly lucky, they're immune to AIDS. It's much more likely that they're not and will develop symptoms of new and exciting genetic disorders never seen before. The biggest problem was that the technique used is really unreliable, so you'd expect off-target edits to be more common than on-target ones for a human-sized genome. For bacteria, you can get around it by letting the modified bacteria reproduce for a few generations, then testing most of them. If they're all good, then it worked, and if any aren't, you need to make a new batch. Testing DNA destroys the cells you're testing, so if you test enough cells in a human embryo to be sure that the edits worked, it dies. You can't just start when the embryo is a single cell to ensure that the whole thing's been edited in the same way as you need to test something pre-edit to be able to detect off-target edits.
-
@SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2026-01-06 17:32
> It’s illegal to gene edit embryos? Not in all countries. In US, it's not illegal unless you use federal grant money. So Sam Altman is starting a company to do this, basically targeted eugenics for wealthy people. Of course, the technology is not 100% accurate, so there will be children born with genetic abnormalities or disease, ...so keep the receipt!
-
@JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org 2026-01-06 12:51
This guy did so to two children, giving them an experimental immunity gene IIRC. He promptly faced jailtime for medical malpractice. He apparently is back in the news for wanting to do alzheimers testing on mice and then zygotes. this time all above board, he says.
-
@NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 2026-01-06 13:26
We are never going to turn lizards into Charizards without breaking some eggs