• Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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    11 hours ago

    To all the commenters saying this guy was a saint for doing what he did, would you say the same thing had the outcome been disastrous? Babies born without HIV, but with constant excruciating pain or mental deficiency?

    He took an extraordinarily reckless and permanently life-altering, for good or bad, risk with children’s lives.

    edit: spelling

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      A lot of geneticist are DEEPLY against trying these things. This guy’s lucky so far in that his actions haven’t caused serious problems, we really don’t know how adjusting genetics can backfire, but according to the professionals the risks are very very high.

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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      4 hours ago

      This is very hypothetical. You could make the same argument about any experimental medical intervention in a child’s life. If I had the choice of being born with HIV or an experimental procedure with some (how much?) chance of risk, I’d chose the procedure. I think the criticism of this form of treatment is highly coloured because it sounds like “playing god.”

      • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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        3 hours ago

        You could make the same argument about any experimental medical intervention in a child’s life

        Yup, and there’s even ethics review boards convened solely to analyze that argument with the particulars of a case and rule whether the treatment is okay to go ahead. This guy played god without approval from this review process and deserved the time served.

        • would he, as the God curing the hiv, be more or less moral than the God giving the hiv?

          The power to enact change is not a 100% bad thing. It only looks that way because of rampant corruption. There are good people in the world too. It is the good people who should be powerful. Keep in mind he is not developing something for a monsanto patent thicket; he is curing diseases without it being tied to nor profiting big pharma

        • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Okay, I do relate to this argument. It’s the ethics review board’s decision and not his to make. Fair enough. In this case, I am disappointed by the ethic review board’s decision, which is why I sympathize with the doctor.

    • ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 hours ago

      He also did actual time for it and everyone involved was banned from practicing medicine in China, even despite the fact they are the core of CRISPR technology at the moment, they still care enough about ethics to not support this.

      Seems like a case of one rogue team of people deciding what they where doing was for the moral good and then the state checking them.

      We can still see the initial intentions as being morally good, and the outcome of it being gray but punished; its a balanced perspective; a lot of people here seem to have the impression it was approved by the CPC when it wasnt.

        • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          This is a universal criticism of doing anything which is intended to be morally good.

    • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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      7 hours ago

      This is the moral dilemma.

      The whole Grimdank universe of just randomly testing things on people to make humans genetically more superior will absolutely improve life for future humans. No question. On paper anyways.

    • Mustakrakish@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Sure lets just torture all the poor people so a handfull of rich fucks can afford stem-cell-zinfandel, never mind that 100,000 people were tortured and killed, at least we discovered a new anti-wrinkle cream. If you don’t think that’s what it always is in practice you’re delusional. Shit like that is just as likely to cause mass disease or our extinction than it is to discover something useful, perhaps even more so