Posted on 06/13/2026 12:52:44 PM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
Editing the genes of a human embryo remains highly controversial, particularly after Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world eight years ago by doing just that using the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR — and then allowing the embryos to be carried to term and born.
Proponents say the tech could allow us to treat diseases in powerful new ways, while critics liken it to eugenics, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent by allowing parents to select certain desirable traits.
It should therefore come to no surprise that the most recent attempt to edit human zygotes, embryos at their earliest single-cell stage, has once again fueled controversy. As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, a team led by Columbia University geneticist Dieter Egli used a technique called base editing, essentially editing a single strand of DNA, to edit two genomic sites.
The goal wasn’t to establish promising new therapeutic or medical treatments, as the scientists noted in their paper. Instead, they attempted to demonstrate that base editing was a viable way of editing sequences of DNA in embryos without risking the damage earlier attempts involving CRISPR have caused.
But as Scientific American reports, the latest research could lay the groundwork for more controversial work, despite the embryos not being carried to term, with pioneering genome‑editing researcher and Alexis Komor, who helped develop CRISPR, telling the publication that the “cat’s out of the bag.”
(Excerpt) Read more at futurism.com ...
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Breed a race of perfect slaves, get rid of unmodified humans (except the ruling class). Right?
As soon as this “perfect slave race” gets on social media, they will devolve into an insane Leftist tribe of “Gimmedats” and start demanding reparations.
Its been going on in Ukraine for 15-20 years.
This is the real reason the Senate has been sending $$$ there.
I know this for sure as I have friends who have been in contact with them.
Operation moved to Serbia during the war.
It’s like “Frankenstein” or “Jurassic Park”.
We have to tell the leftists that it’s being used to wipe out the gay gene. They’ll help stop it.
The cat was out of the bag when Mendel bred his peas.
You beat me to it. Frankenstein was my first thought. Not as funny as Mel Brooks though, more realistic, and more scary.
Used properly it has benefits like fixing disease carrying genes.
The subtitle claims it will be a way to “do enhancements” but I doubt that very much. The interplay between genes is very complex, such that playing around trying to craft an ‘improvement’ is likely to have all sorts of unintended consequences (mostly bad if not outright fatal). Fixing mutational defects is more plausible, and certainly more ethically defensible. If someone does claim to have produced an ‘enhancement’ at some point, I suspect it will be highly situational (like someone able to tolerate heat better, but is miserable in cold weather).
This is the sin that brought the flood in Noah’s day. Foreign DNA 🧬 in the Human Genome.
I think those floodgates have been open for at least the last 25 years. Open to those who can afford the treatment.
LOL! Great idea!!
The cat was out of the bag when Mendel bred his peas.
Draka series by S.M. Stirling
When a sci fi author writes qqbout it, he’s accused of naziism, even though the nazis lose to the draka. When a scientist actually attempts it, he’s a researcher at the forefront of science. What a difference a phd maskes.
Have we closed the floodgates on gain of function research yet?
One night he and I were watching the news together. There was a story about genetic engineering, about adding in DNA from one species to another. And it went on to describe how it could be done to humans someday soon.
Dad looked at me and told me "I don't think that's going to be allowed to happen much. I have to believe that something higher than man is going to interfere, because we're doing things with creation that we have no right to be doing."
Dad was a wise man.
Amen!
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