Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal mayhem

Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Johnjonjoan on Sunday June 28, 2020 @04:33PM (#23671817)

Biology is more like a class where everything's private and there was no documentation on the public methods (for us)

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Barrin92 on Sunday June 28, 2020 @05:03PM (#23672031)

in biology nothing is private or even in a class because in biology there is no designer, so there is no need for encapsulation.

One of the more and more prominent insights in biology is that almost every gene apparently appears to influence everything else.[1] Which is why I think methods like CRISPR are fundamentally misguided for anything but the most simple problems.

Trying to impose deliberate change on biological systems by editing a single gene is like trying to turn a story from drama into comedy by switching out individual letters.

[1]https://www.quantamagazine.org/omnigenic-model-suggests-that...

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Johnjonjoan on Sunday June 28, 2020 @06:02PM (#23672436)

I'm curious why you're so sure there isn't a designer.

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by discreteevent on Sunday June 28, 2020 @06:32PM (#23672597)

One can never be sure, but from all the evidence it looks like that if there was a designer, they weren't operating at this level, so the parents point is unaffected by this concern.

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Johnjonjoan on Sunday June 28, 2020 @06:43PM (#23672649)

I'm unsure, the only contradictory point to my proposition was that there was no designer.

"in biology nothing is private or even in a class because in biology there is no designer, so there is no need for encapsulation."

How can the point be unaffected if you are rightly saying the point is in question?

Are we on the same level as the implementation when we write our classes?

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Barrin92 on Sunday June 28, 2020 @07:18PM (#23672807)

are we talking god or like ancient aliens prometheus engineers here

I don't believe in god because I don't believe in anything magical or spiritual, for reasons too trivial to list here and I don't see the slightest hint of any design in any biological systems

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Johnjonjoan on Sunday June 28, 2020 @07:35PM (#23672895)

If you asked someone two centuries ago they would tell you that you believed in magic.

How do you know reality isn't a simulation?

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Re:Crispr gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal m... by Barrin92 on Sunday June 28, 2020 @11:48PM (#23674164)

I don't know if reality is a simulation or not, however there's no clear way to prove it or not so in the absence of any evidence I'm not inclined to believe it, this is my approach to everything. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don't tend to assume that improbable things are true if the world works just fine without them.

I'm not sure why someone 200 years ago would accuse me of being superstitious.

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