this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
98 points (93.0% liked)

News

23387 readers
2409 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's not really how that works. There's not a section in one's DNA that codes for bones, rather there are sections that code for proteins that get involved in chemical reactions that begin building bones themselves. DNA codes for chemicals that when they come together at the right time produce your fingers for example. It's not that the DNA codes for a 32mm birth canal it just codes for the proper chemicals to come together to begin developing what will eventually become the birth canal.

So editing the DNA to modify a particular physical aspect is not just reprogramming a new number somewhere in the DNA, it's coding for more expression of particular chemicals to come together. But like anything, adding more reactions can have various side effects, having those chemicals linger for too long and the tissue may eventually become too frail to even give birth to begin with.

You know, like utilize our knowledge of DNA to fix known issues as such

And that's easier said than done. Editing DNA isn't something we regularly do and when it is done, it's usually done on something simple because editing usually results in a 99% loss. Long story short, editing haploids (and most likely male sperm) is going to be the primary means for germline genetic editing that "might" be passed on to children because most people are not ethically okay with attempting to edit embryos with a 99% failure rate.

But editing haploids doesn't assure that the trait will be conveyed to the offspring. During combination some of the genetic material is mixed around in a sort random fashion. So that new trail could get mixed around and now you've coded for a pregnancy that might end in miscarriage or even worse, might not.

It's really complicated and incredibly error prone to edit DNA. Which is why it is mostly done with sperm, yeast, bacteria, and what not. Things that if we kill 99% of it, isn't some big ethical concern. Editing an embryo is like rolling ten million dice and every single one of them have to land on six otherwise you've just doomed that person. That's not an impossible thing, just a highly improbable thing and no one is really comfortable with those odds from an ethical standpoint. We're not really good at editing DNA correctly the first time, but given enough of something, we can eventually have success. So if the odds are one in a million and you have 500 million of something, then you've got really good odds at success.

So you should keep that in mind when you think about editing DNA. Even if we got really good at knowing which genes to express and which ones to repress (which we're not even there yet), putting in those changes that would actually make it to the offspring would also be monumental. So yeah, we're not anywhere near where I think you think science is at.

start growing people in a lab

I also commented elsewhere about this notion. But also, even if we did have an artificial womb today, it's likely going to be in the NICU of your local hospital and not some laboratory. Because an artificial womb, as I indicated in my other comment, would only really be for preterm births greater than 22 weeks gestation, which is way better than what we get with incubators that only give moderate success rates at 28 to 32 weeks gestation and are ideally for 32 to 37 weeks gestation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah yeah, I was almost born premature at 4 months, almost certainly wouldn't have survived. Would I care? Hell I wouldn't have even known.

Again, we have absolutely no shortage of humans, why are we so focused on figuring out how to make more? Go adopt one, orphans exist too ya know.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well, if you read the article, you'd know that this isn't about artificially inflating the population, but helping preterm infants survive. So are you saying that you're all for preterm infants dying when we have the means to allow them to survive? In addition preterm infants often have lifelong medical issues, some of which will drastically shorten their lives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hey, great comments! You're really contributing to the debate, giving serious feedbacks!