Scientists Hold Secret Meeting to Consider Creating a Synthetic Human Genome

[notliketherest]

Interesting ethical issues arise when talking about "writing genomes" and essentially creating a designer human synthetically. Now let's say the scientific community decides against doing this based on ethical reasons. What's to stop rogue scientists from going ahead with the research and going around the global community? Would they need the protection of a nation state to move forward? What could be done to stop them? We're getting into cloners from Kamino territory here...

[hackuser]

Good questions.

* One thing that can stop them is the law; it could be made illegal, which does stop a lot of behavior. International treaties often work too.

* Also, if it's considered out-of-bounds by the scientific community then it could ruin the scientists' career; that's probably not a risk that a talented scientist with a promising career would take. They couldn't even publish a paper, publish in arXiv, get feedback on their work, or participate in any online discussion. They couldn't go to a conference (there wouldn't be one in their field) or even tell anyone what they are working on. What a life to choose.

* Significant progress likely requires more resources than could be mustered covertly, including financial, technological (where do you buy equipment and supplies?), and especially labor: Not only do they need talented PhD students and postdocs, but progress in most fields requires a whole community of scientists who build on each other's work, not one who discovers it all themself.

[brianbarker]

Orphan Black neolution territory. Other actors will do it. Scientists who want to do it will find a place where they can.

[maxander]

Money. Doing biology research is expensive.

You'd have to find a country that cares about blue-sky health research and not bioethics, which sounds tricky. Despite the hype, this sort of technology wouldn't have any useful immediate applications- even if we could make a human with a complete custom genome, we don't have a good idea a what genes to give him/her in order to produce useful qualities like intelligence, strength, etc.

[brianbarker]

While the US debates such efforts in fear what could happen, other nations who don't see it as a problem will do this. It has always been a matter of time.

[WhoBeI]

I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

[krapp]

Of course, Frankenstein's creation wasn't the monster in that story, at least not at first. The monster was the human too wound up in his own bigotry and religiosity to accept the consequences of science on its own terms, Frankenstein himself.

[a3n]

Maybe this is where "AI" will come from, particularly military AI. If the genome were synthesized, then some people could convince themselves that what grew wasn't human and could therefore be shaped and enslaved.

[grondilu]

Even if the technique for synthesizing a human genome was available literally tomorrow, it would still take a few decades for the first genetically synthesized human to be born, to grow up and to get an education before it becomes useful to anything.

That would leave lots of time for non-biological AI to catch up.

[fiblye]

So basically Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner is going from scifi to a WIP.

[maxander]

> “Our ability to understand what to build is so far behind what we can build,’’ said Dr. Minshull, who was invited to the meeting at Harvard but did not attend. “I just don’t think that being able to make more and more and more and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper is going to get us the understanding we need.’’

As point of comparison, consider how well any of us would understand software engineering if it cost thousands of dollars to compile a program. That is the potential impact of this technology- talk about using this to create super-humans or whatever is pure hype and/or scaremongering.

[Houshalter]

Such a process could create humans who have multiple times greater IQs than the smartest humans who have ever lived. Perhaps as high as 1,000, by some estimates. See: http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-ar...

Truly a terrifying possibility.

[jhartmann]

I'm just curious, why is it terrifying? Would a super intelligent human being produced by science be any more terrifying then one that occurred naturally? Couldn't we be creating a being that could push us forward collectively? Think about the contribution to modern life Einstein, John Von Neumann, and Bohr had. If we had a way to make very intelligent designer humans, there could be a chance they could push us collectively forward in a similar way. I imagine that an Einstein born now, with access to the whole worlds information could be much more impactful (or maybe he would just succumb to liking cat videos.) All humans designer or not can be terrifying, beautiful, impactful, and other worldly. You don't have to be unnatural to be an evil bastard, and maybe an engineered human could be like Gandhi. Don't prejudge, just because its unnatural doesn't mean it is not good.

Just like GMO doesn't mean bad (I eat organic food by the way), a lot of this goes to intent. If science wants to push us forward and make us better. I'm all for it. If they want to engineer us to be resistant to industrial chemicals or pollution so that companies can pollute more, or make super soldiers that is when you have to be terrified . Not just because we have something artificial.

[louprado]

If an small army of clones possessing IQs of 1000 wiped us all out, then their IQs would drop to 100. Does that make you feel better ?

[callesgg]

The person that would be the result of such modifications would most likely have serious psychological issues and probably other problems that we cant even imagine.

We are like kids playing with loaded machine guns, currently we are working on removing that fiddly thing called a safety.

And we're like how hard can i be, our parent mother nature does it all the time.

[eli_gottlieb]

IQ is not a linearly meaningful variable. Once you go over 160, IQ deltas stop meaning much of anything.

[laxatives]

"By some estimates" is reference to the logic that one professor scored humans on a log scale 1-5 and Einstein was a 0.5, therefore some human could be a 0.1

By that same logic, there are 0.0001 or 10000. Its completely baseless.

[peter303]

Humans/mammals have 50 times more coding DNA than simple fungi they've syntesized so far. Plus natural mammal DNA is usually subdivided into multiple pieces on a chromosome called introns. It is unclear how important the non-coding inbetween DNA is. Homever nearly the entire lab mouse genome has been purified into single pieces called coding DNA and can be purchased from labs. Maybe they'll try synthezing a mouse first. The human case shouldnt be more difficult.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

As eukaryotes, fungi also have introns.

[grondilu]

Why focusing so early on a human target?

Animals and plants physiology is still capable of doing things we're not nearly capable of reproducing in laboratory. Plants and insects production are still used in pharmacology so it seems to me there would be a huge commercial potential for plant and animal organisms made from scratch, just as there is currently for organisms just barely modified.

The human case will always be made difficult by ethicists and other party poopers, anyway.

[hackuser]

This foolish move could seriously damage legitimate genetics research and applications, and other science, in the public eye, affecting funding and even legality. The reality may be different than first glance, but we live in a world of first impressions and the people invovled should know that.

The participants must have some sense of where the lines are and also respect that the public has a right to make decisions for their own society.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

Well at least it's a secret meeting.

[Tycho]

I kind of feel relieved that I'll probably be dead before this kind of thing irrevocably destroys the relative equality of the human race.

[grondilu]

People are already different in terms of capabilities. Yet they are equals in terms of rights, and there is no reason that should change, even with this kind of things.

[kruhft]

My first thought was "Wierd Science"[1].

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/