First off let me say I'm 100% for this tech because IMO there's no way to stop progress. You can't control 7+ billion people.
That said, the first thing that came to my mind when they mentioned putting the CRISPR engine in new cells so they make more of the same and spread kind of like a virus... They mentioned they tried it and it worked first time. So, unless I'm missing something, it's only a short matter of time before some disgruntled person could try to destroy the world's food supply or cause many other large scale issues.
Maybe that's harder than it sounds but it just seemed like a crazy amount of power for any one person with access to the tech to have. And, unlike nukes there's really no way to prevent this power from getting stronger, easier, and more accessible. Nukes you need the fuel. This you mostly just need the knowledge.
Sorry I'm not suggesting any course of action. It's just I believe we won't make it past The Great Filter because as tech progresses it gets easier and easier for a single person to destroy the world. Embedding the CRISPR engine so it spreads seemed like a step in that direction.
This is also true for many domains. Space travel for instance... in just a few hundred years, it'll be relatively easy for a disgruntled individual to trigger a nontrivial sized piece of space debris to hurl towards a major city. Once we begin harnessing asteroids to mine them in earth orbit, Someone could eventually alter its orbit to destroy a city or worse..
Just a little time reading about this is sobering. There is certainly the potential for profound nefarious acts. However, also consider that you could have 'gene drive warfare' in which you release constructs that attempt to override the malicious ones.
Ultimately, while doing something like this is within reach of most moderately talented graduate students in molecular biology (and perhaps some remarkable amateurs), it does require a fair bit of infrastructure. Doing this as a 'black ops' project would require you to get together a good deal of laboratory equipment - especially things like Sanger sequencers - and oligonucleotides that are reasonably tractable. At least for now.
One possible solution to the crazy person scenario is the use of counter gene drives. I think they discussed this in this podcast or elsewhere, but the idea is that if a species has a particular gene drive inserted, then you can create a new member of that species with a second gene drive that deletes the first and/or writes over the original CRISPR'd gene sequence.
>"it's only a short matter of time before some disgruntled person could try to destroy the world's food supply or cause many other large scale issues."
You've been fooled by hype. There is a big marketing effort behind CRISPR for some reason, watch out.
This podcast mentions that only testing against non-viable embryos has been done. It's worth noting that just the other day, the results of the first testing against viable human embryos was released [0].
Also, I thought it was interesting when they talked about "who would turn down the ability to remove diseases for $x?" My answer would be people who simply don't have that kind of money.
This makes things complicated.
I'm not even close to an expert in this area, but I don't think it's too far a stretch to consider that having technology like this where you can theoretically pick and choose "add ons" for set prices would lead to class divides that are clearly visible when these add ons stop being just internal changes and start including exterior traits.
Consider being born into debt as an infant for all the 'deviations' that 'had to be corrected.'
Presumably the wealthy will have not only potentially negative traits removed but positive traits added where missing. And given that there will likely be a reinforcement effect where people with unfortunate or fortunate genotypes run away into two distinct populations, given the way wealth inequality is growing.
While originally written with a focus on "intellectual property" and predatory EULAs, Tom Scott's terrifyingly-plausible Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers[1] becomes even more frightening when adapted to your "born-into-debt" scenario.
While this is certainly a risk, the medical industry has done a prettt good job at making non-cosmetic tech available.
If we have the ability to knock out breast cancer or heart disease it'll happen just like polio. Cosmetic stuff will probably always have a $$$ above and beyond "normal" however and I'm fine with that
I firmly believe that the advent of human genetic engineering marks the end of humanity, at least as we know it, and if we had any sense, we'd abolish it right now and and punish any research into it with the most severe penalties possible. We lost our chance with nuclear weapons, we still might have a shot with genetic engineering.
Yes, we can eliminate many classes of disease with genetic engineering. But as you allude, it won't stop there. People will pick and choose external characteristics for their children. The idea that doctors will somehow be able to keep this in check is to ignore history and the huge incentives that are set up here. First, it will be diseases. Then it will be, for instance, the genetic propensity to obesity. Then 'disadvantages', like being too short or a little too dull. Then it will be external traits, like blue eyes or blonde hair. Then it will be mental traits and personality characteristics. And where it will end will be totally inhuman and beyond our present comprehension.
The result will be massive suffering, inequality, and possibly even the extinction of humanity as human genetic diversity is replaced with an ever-accelerating social competition that ends in a monoculture that will probably be ill-suited for survival the same way modern dog breeds often end up unsuited for survival.
Yes, it would be lovely if we could use genetic engineering technology safely and responsibly. We can't. That's to say nothing of the risks inherent in the technology if it became simple and cheap for anyone to use even on non-humans.
We left the pool of normal species as soon as we started using tools, agriculture, and industry. This is just the next step. Who knows where it'll go, but homo sapiens isn't equipped to be space-faring or even survive on this planet beyond a few billion years.
Humans have taken tools and industry to a whole new level, but there's nothing unnatural about that; it doesn't make us an "abnormal" species, whatever that means. But this is something well beyond just "the next step." We're directly and consciously changing our own genetic code. This is also not unnatural, but it represents an existential threat.
> Who knows where it'll go, but homo sapiens isn't equipped to be space-faring or even survive on this planet beyond a few billion years.
So? I don't see how that's an argument for human genetic engineering. If we want to perpetuate life throughout the universe for some reason, we can send probes loaded with microbes, maybe even advanced probes that can incubate more advanced animal and plant species to create an ecosystem. In your scenario, humanity is presented with its extinction through either natural causes or by being the architect of its own destruction. I'd prefer the former.
It's not like these things people have done are exactly safe and side-effect free already. People have:
* Made entire species extinct through hunting and deforestation
* As a side effect of industrialization, dumped enough CO2 to change the climate and will probably keep it up
* Domesticated multiple other species into being dependent on us, from crops to farm animals to dogs
* Started work on AI and machines which might even replace us one day
Genetic modification isn't a one-way street to destruction as much as AI is, or industrialization.
Also regarding perpetuating life: the one thing life has in common is that it perpetuates itself. We'd be a shitty species if we perpetuated machines or microbes instead of ourselves.
We directly and consciously altered our environment, energy consumption, knowledge consumption, mobility, appearance, anatomy, life expectancy etc. etc. But genetics is somehow not cool to touch?
I agree with your larger point, Bill Joy[1] notwithstanding, CRISPR is no more likely to wipe us out than nuclear weapons, driving cars, or any of a dozen 'unnatural' and dangerous things we've been doing for decades. But as rhetorical flourish, I'm not sure I can agree with the idea it will let us survive 'a few billion years.' Are there any species which have existed the few billion years the earth has existed? Multicellular ones? Once the sun boils off all the water on Earth in 3.5B years, presumably there won't be anything surviving here...
I don't think genetic changes alone will allow us to survive earth becoming a wasteland, but it may allow us to better survive travel through deep space in ships and become space faring.
When I visited hawaii, I noticed that there were large trees all growing on one of the oldest islands. Due to erosion, the island will eventually submerge back into the sea, and all those tress will be dead. Those trees don't know it, but their time will be up soon.
I don't know what the future holds, but shying away from technological development means that we as a species are like the trees. At least venturing to other planets would be like if the trees could send seeds across the ocean.
As far as escaping the heat death of the universe, who knows.
I don't know if you've noticed, but we haven't destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons, despite giving it a fairly good go for five decades. The Cold War is over.
We can eliminate many classes of disease with genetic engineering
Sounds good enough for me. Fuck cancer, fuck heart disease, fuck diabetes, fuck obesity. Full steam ahead!
> I don't know if you've noticed, but we haven't destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons, despite giving it a fairly good go for five decades
Five decades is nothing in historical terms, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that nuclear weapons would not be used in that time period. The reason they have not has been due to extraordinary effort, chance, and non-proliferation efforts. The future decades and centuries look much grimmer unless we can dismantle existing stockpiles and do what we can to enjoin future generations to not create them.
> The Cold War is over.
The Cold War is over, but the Pax Americana enforced by American hegemony will not last forever. If history teaches us anything, it is that all peacetimes eventually end.
> Sounds good enough for me. Fuck cancer, fuck heart disease, fuck diabetes, fuck obesity. Full steam ahead!
If eliminating heart disease means the extinction of human beings, or the death and suffering of billions of others, is that really worthwhile to you? What if heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity can eventually be dealt with through other, safer, means?
But will those benefits be shared equally? How do you feel about current class inequality being split further into a select "super race" of a beautiful, genius-IQ, long-living 1% vs... the rest?
The weaponry cold war did happen: how do you feel about a genetic enhancements cold war?
That might be true for awhile but technology tends to become cheaper and more available over time, barring artificial constraints like the types of regulations on drugs in America (which is a social issue, not a tech issue).
Then of course the risk is that a lack of genetic diversity wipes people out all at once, so some care is needed.
Also there already is a competition to become super beautiful, it's called sexual selection.
15 years ago, only the super wealthy had big flatscreen TVs. Now everyone's got them. If it takes 15 years to go from only the super wealthy having gene enhancements to everyone having them, that would be fine by me.
Science is all well and good, but the survival of the species is even better.
I am sure you would agree that if science, say, discovered a simple way to make large amounts of antimatter at home, it would be better to suppress that knowledge by whatever means necessary so that one crazy guy somewhere doesn't decide to obliterate the European continent.
there's the rub: even if nearly everyone agrees it's unethical and will speciate humans, there's a huge incentive for, say, china to defect from this consensus and develop a class of superhumanly gifted citizens. even if that class lacks genetic diversity, that seems like exactly the kind of issue that genetic engineering exists to solve.
I agree. The problem is once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't rely on every nation-state and every organization to adhere to any consensus about the use of genetic engineering.
In an ideal world, humanity would be scattered and numerous enough that the engineering of any one population would leave the others unaffected. But as it is, we're all stuck on Earth in a global, interconnected civilization without central authority, so once this technology is introduced, the incentives are aligned against us.
But I don't know what else to try.
> even if that class lacks genetic diversity, that seems like exactly the kind of issue that genetic engineering exists to solve.
Why would anyone choose to have genetically diverse children if that diversity led to immediate short-term problems? Who would bite the bullet and have 100IQ child who had to compete in a world of 150IQ children for the sake of genetic diversity?
This is just the next phase of evolution, and like all phases of evolution there are winners and losers on a grand scale.
I personally don't think we'll tend toward monoculture. Different needs, goals and cultural biases will promote different people toward different genetic ends.
A better money spinner would be to take the cryptolocker approach.
Engineer a relatively benign gene edit that makes life a little more annoying for someone and offer to send them the fix for 1 BTC. And actually deliver on the promise.
But you are correct that a class divide could be created. Perhaps a solution would be to class all the possible fixes people can get and have some that are considered "elective" and other that are deemed "critical". The state covers the cost of critical fixes (e.g. remove genetic diseases) but you can pay to have elective updates (e.g. vanity related or doesn't severely affect quality of life).
Just some thoughts. I'm sure there are better ideas out there to regulate this.
Healthcare (as an industry) is full of schemes to replace chronic conditions with fixed cost solutions.
If there is an insurance mandate for individuals, then actuaries who work at the payers (insurance companies) will absolutely fund CRISPR on embryos to reduce future costs.
One of the things I don't usually see discussed is the potential risks of this editing.
The editing has errors, but we have the technology to detect those, so it's really only a cost increase.
The more concerning issue for anyone who might want to do this is that AFAIK our understanding of what these edits do is pretty limited, so for things like known diseases it may be worth the risk to choose embryos or make edits, but for things that are more marginal, the risk might not be worth it and this may have a drag on people wanting to use the tech, even when it works great.
Can you give a source for your assertion that "we have the technology to detect those"? That sounds hand wavy. I am not aware of a complex system where that kind of thing exists predictably. Especially when you're doing editing that will permanently affect the gene line, I'd say predictability is impossibly if not in theory, computationaly.
You're right, it's a little hand wavy, but we can fully sequence the DNA we extract; so I guess it depends on the error type, if there is an error that is only present in some DNA strands, that could be problematic.
People usually think about societal issues, or the editing technology failing, not that the unintended consequences of our edits due to a weak understanding of what genes code for and how they really interact.
That's like saying that software development is cheap because all you need is a $1000 machine. Sure, the barrier to entry is low, but achieving anything significant still costs a lot (whether in recruitment costs and salaries, or in sweat equity and personal time investment.)
If you're a remotely rational government, why would you not subsidize it? The dividends you could reap from a population with greater health, intelligence, self-control, low time-preference, etc., would be ridiculous.
Of course maybe people will want to use it for more zero-sum things like height or looks, so maybe you ban or don't subsidize that, but inequality in more positive-sum traits is unlikely.
Fantastic piece. This makes me wonder if we today are technically the "backup". The (potential) last non-CRISPR gene-driven generation that someone in the future may have to revert to.
“I’ve told you before, Daniel: roach isn’t an insult. We’re the ones still standing after the mammals build their nukes, we’re the ones with the stripped-down OS’s so damned simple they work under almost any circumstances. We’re the goddamned Kalashnikovs of thinking meat.”
You can edit the genes so they are always passed on, rather than passed on half the time. This means that the genes will eventually spread to every organism in the species (given enough generations, but it will be an exponential rate).
It's cool you could encode your name into your genes and then it would live on as long as humanity.
A little unusual, this post. I don't remember seeing podcasts posted to HN. In any case, it's a good episode, which includes the original it updates. Highly recommended.
I'm surprised these reviews don't include the recent history of science funded by the wealthy - eugenics, asylums, lobotomies, thalidomide, and now kids taking psychotropics. That doesn't mean the same will be true of CRISPR but why create test subjects just because you can afford it?
You might want to get educated about the history of psychiatry. Asylums were an amazing upgrade to people being tied up in basements by their families. Medications helped people who otherwise would spend their whole lives in asylums, or simply kill themselves.
Even lobotomies kind of made sense, although thankfully far better treatments were invented at roughly the same time, so they were short-lived.
I'm very familiar, thanks. I didn't say these efforts didn't work in some cases. I pointed out that the early beta testers were the wealthy. That said, minors are still getting psychotropics without their consent and where their lives aren't in any danger (ADHD). Again, a phenomenon driven by wealthy parents.
many (most?) podcast apps have 'skip' buttons that allow you to set (say, 15 or 30 second) increments. if you have your podcatcher downloading mp3's of the shows, you can control what you listen to
That said, the first thing that came to my mind when they mentioned putting the CRISPR engine in new cells so they make more of the same and spread kind of like a virus... They mentioned they tried it and it worked first time. So, unless I'm missing something, it's only a short matter of time before some disgruntled person could try to destroy the world's food supply or cause many other large scale issues.
Maybe that's harder than it sounds but it just seemed like a crazy amount of power for any one person with access to the tech to have. And, unlike nukes there's really no way to prevent this power from getting stronger, easier, and more accessible. Nukes you need the fuel. This you mostly just need the knowledge.
Sorry I'm not suggesting any course of action. It's just I believe we won't make it past The Great Filter because as tech progresses it gets easier and easier for a single person to destroy the world. Embedding the CRISPR engine so it spreads seemed like a step in that direction.