Dr. Zhang creates first Genetically Engineered Baby in Mexico

independent.co.uk/news/science/three-parent-baby-world-first-born-mexico-a7333191.html

Dr Zhang told the New Scientist that, as the technique has not been approved in the US, the team went to Mexico where “there are no rules”.
“To save lives is the ethical thing to do,” he added.

The world’s first child created using a controversial “three-parent” baby technique has been born in Mexico, it has been announced.

According to critics, the procedure is tantamount to genetic modification of humans or even “playing God”. But supporters say it allows women with a particular type of genetic disease to have healthy children who are related to them.
The child’s mother has Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system and would have been passed on in her mitochondrial DNA.

Although she is healthy, two of her children have died as a result of inheriting the disease: a girl who lived until she was six and an eight-month-old baby.

Based Dr. John "There are no rules" Zhang

“To save lives is the ethical thing to do,”

“To save lives is the ethical thing to do,”

ethicists BTFO

That child would be dead if Zhang only followed some stupid fucking rules only bootlicking autist would care about

Not dead

It would die slowly and be expensive for everyone in society and on healthcare facilities.

IT would basically sit in a hospital for 6 months to 6 years, dying.

Because that is "ethical".

So by what percentage roughly is the child in question actually genetically related to the healthy "battery mother" in question?

How much DNA is contributed by mitochondrial DNA?

On a serious note. The only thing important Veeky Forums speaking is the idea it was an American team going to an area with less regulation to proceed.

Thereby showing how useless regulation is for something like this on an individual country basis.

Fucking based, I hope more and more people will follow this line of thinking

Chinks will inherit the earth.

He didn't save a life using experimental methods.
He conceived a life using experimental methods.
That's what makes it unethical.

>That child would be dead
That child would never have been conceived.

Or she could not just reproduce because she has a fatal disease and natural selection is supposed to weed her out. She could've easily adopted a child. Who knows what that baby's health is gonna be like in a few decades

this desu

Whites BTFO

The battery mother contributed all of the mitochondrial DNA, but none of the nuclear DNA.

Normally, humans have 46 nuclear chromosomes that encode the ~20,000 genes encoding proteins and RNAs that are needed for life.

Every cell has 2-10 mitochondria which each encode 13 proteins. These proteins are needed in the ETC, but nuclear proteins are also necessary for proper ETC functioning.

So, to answer your question, the DNA contributed by the battery mom is near 0. There is very little mitochondria DNA compared to nuclear DNA, and people typically are thinking about the 46 nuclear chromosomes when they talk about DNA.

You know what, you just inadvertently made a big point.

The method used to conceive a healthy child allowed the mother to bypass the disease activating in the child. But isn't the code for said disease still there in the kid's genes?

What exactly did this accomplish ultimately other than proving the procedure could be done.

This sort of thing gives me hope.

My family has a history of heart disease, diabeetus and mental health issues on both sides. Basically my parents shouldn't be allowed to breed.

If this sort of idea advances and they can screen out my sort of genetic predispositions then i would want my children to be conceived this way.

Except that you don't how the child will contribute in the future, he could be a new genius.

I love good news.

>history of heart disease, diabeetus and mental health issues on both sides
Stop drinking, smoking, overeating, eating McDonalds every day.

Really that simple desu

This is honestly the best way to move things forward it seems like. Do it and then tell the world "we have already done it, here are the results"

No, you are wrong. The kid does not have any of the defective mitochondrial genes.

The kid should be fine as long as the nuclear transplant does not have adverse effects.

Those diseases are not based on mitochondrial genetics, so this procedure cannot help your children.

However, heart disease, diabetes, and mental health issues have large environmental components, so raising your kids to live a healthy lifestyle would help them avoid those conditions.

Wrong.

The mother already had two children that died due to inheriting Leigh syndrome. This child might also have inherited Leigh syndrome if not for the deeds of Zhang. Therefor he saved the life of the child and the act was ethical.

Yet again ethicists are btfo like they have been throughout all human history.

I see then, so then does that mean the kid now has the battery mother's mitochondrial genes instead?

Or did this procedure simply phase out future generational inheritance of the defective mitochondrial genes altogether by bypassing the traditional birthing process?

>controversial “three-parent” baby technique
>controversial

To plebs who can't understand simple biomedical science, sure

The baby has 23 chromosomes from the father, 23 from the mother, making about 3 billion base pairs. Then the battery mothers mitochondria (which has about 16,500 base pairs).

I think the only controversy here is the name. I saw it and I thought it was absurd.

>it gives women with genetical diseases a chance to have a healthy baby

>If I was born 20 years later, I wouldnt have to suffer and live with triplicated a-genes and a beta-thalassemia

fml

I was born with poland syndrome so I kind of feel you

>mexican intellectual

They implanted the maternal spindle (the non fertilized nucleus) of one egg of the affected mother in a donor egg. The interesting part is that the affected mother had some mitochondrion affected by the mutation and some sane. This is the reason the mother was healthy but some of her children could be affected by the disease. Because it is possible for an egg to have only defective mitochondrion.

The first three parent baby was Emma Ott, born in 1997; Alana Saarinen was born in 2000

>Basically my parents shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Don't worry user. It's not like you will be having kids anyway

Not that guy but I've pretty much decided never to breed even if I had the chance because I've got shitty eye sight, heart disease, three different cancers, diabetes, running in both sides and from my mother's side I've got two different neuromuscular diseases and colorectal cancer.

While I'm technically "healthy" I'm still a carrier for most of that shit and my brother wasn't so lucky and ended up with DMD.

If I were to ever have a kid I'd want that shit to be fixed genetically first.

Neat, don't see anything unethical about this.

Look up mitochondria on wikipedia. All they do is produce ATP, the energy source for cells. All of the DNA that is responsible for appearance and other inherited features is stored in the nucleus.

Google CRISPR/Cas9, we are finally making advances in those areas. If people aren't moralfagging too much, then we might get there in your life times.

>mental health issues
>stop being fat
Really makes you think

Actually a good diet is beneficial to mental health.

>>“To save lives is the ethical thing to do,”

>ethicists BTFO

i'd be surprised if you can quote an ethicist who advocates the opposite

muh ethics is a meme, they just say nonsense and state it's ethical based on some obscure reasoning, like muh culture or muh heritage.

>ethicists following any rational line of thought

well, can any of you both cite or reproduce an ethicist's claim which might suggest that saving lives is unethical?

Yes, opposing basic research funding.

aka animal testing

Only time will tell user.

The trolley problem.

>Be me in Biology lecture
>Professor talks about Chinese scientists working on CRIPSR
>Class mumbles "Chinese give no shit about ethics kek"

Why is it so hard for people to develop both right and left brains?

Problem is the child who was "saved" didnt even fucking exist until Zhang intervened and performed the procedure. You cant save someone/something if/before it fucking exists numbnuts

what do you think of the moral status of animals?

in the extreme case you entertain the ethicists argument, and that you agree that animals are worthy of moral consideration, yet, we still must press on with animal testing, because the good of 'potential' lives saved far outweighs bad of experimentation that ultimately results in the death of an animal.

this might open up situations that are not as agreeable. why stop with animals, and include humans too (with the previous assumption that it is acceptable to subject beings with moral status to experimentation)? if you were to show up at a hospital, why can't the doctor cut you up for organs to save several other people who desperately need them?

this most certainly and directly saves lives rather than the hundreds or thousands of mice that die to develop a procedure whose efficacy remains to be seen and may or may not have government approval.

I literally read the first sentence of your shitty ass post and STOPPED

you stupid fuck low IQ trash. Fuck off back to some shit board for low IQ faggots like /cgl/ or something.

>muh animal rights
>muh ethics

This could possibly be a problem longterm.

It's going to happen whether we like it or not. Mankind taking its evolution into its own hands is almost like what we're engineered to do. How the human species comes to live with this power, and how it all shakes out, can't really be predicted.

I see mostly bad things.

Everyone is going to die of aging soon.

Who the fuck cares about "ethics". I'd turn prisons into fucking rat labs. I'd increase incarceration rates. I'd allow any fucking testing people said okay too.

Then, on top of that I would start putting all resources into cloning and genetic engineering possible.

Fuck your stupid ass low IQ ethics.
>hurr what about da goriluh dat will hurt
I would tear open every Gorilla on earth to advance medicine 1%.

So pretty much you'd make human society hell, negating any purpose behind these advancements.

Shh. Brainlets don't know the brain is part of their body.

This. The brain is magic and just is, off on its own, why the hell would it be affected by dietary intake or environment? Moreover, how? Pills are obviously the only thing that can interact with the brain, you fucking idiots.

Ugh.

gtfo

One question, the "3rd parent" is a donor , right?

idiot. if ethics didn't matter, then it wouldn't be right or wrong to do any of this. can you even claim that animal testing is wrong or right then? or at some point do you claim that we all do this because of 'muh feelz'.

>Who the fuck cares about "ethics"
nearly everybody who could barely articulate a poor reason why murder is wrong and act accordingly.

The chance is less than hitler winning ww2

So it's 50/50?

There is no 'supposed to' in natural selection, you teleological shit. This very process of genetic engineering IS natural selection.

If they can extract mitochondria and implant new ones, could they also implant chloroplasts? Don't chloroplasts function like mitochondria having their own DNA and everything? Would inserting chloroplasts into an embryo give an animal the power of photosynthesis?

Just limit your calories and your schizophrenia will go away.

The rules are bullshit. 80% of "ethics" rules are bullshit, and not really about ethics but about religion.

>natural selection
>natural
>artificial conception
>artificial
THEY'RE THE SAME GOD DAMN THING

murder is wrong because it wastes economic potential and the resources invested to raise such a person.

Ethics and Morals are for bitches.

Indeed. People don't call it 'artificial termite harvesting' if a chimp uses a stick after all.

This.

Came here to post this.

News media has a short fucking memory and no research skills.

>Why can't science give me a magic pill now! Buaa!
Keep deluding yourself, brainlet. ;^=)

>comes to Veeky Forums just to post shitty bait in multiple threads

>>murder is wrong because it wastes economic potential and the resources invested to raise such a person.

you tell me that murder is wrong and you give a reason why.

i tell you that you're making an ethical argument. if you don't think that you are engaging in ethics then you commit yourself to speak only of facts and descriptions, but without any notion of wrongness or wastefulness. if that isn't the case, then you mean to say that murder is factually wrong?

>economic potential and resources are important

nice moral position bruv

he was great in hangover

>The trolley problem
So you pull the lever and have the train kill that one guy.

What's the problem?

>One question, the "3rd parent" is a donor , right?
Yes, the donor of the egg with the healthy mitochondria.

got my medical state exam in a couple of weeks . any tips for cheating

Hey idiot, the child didn't even exist. Did you read the article?

This is simply your subjective moral standpoint. You're only human, ethics and morals are the pinnacle of human achievement and nature. They're the most important things ever existing on this planet, all the sciences are far behind.

>you are there too!
>keeps replying like a desperate beta
So no argument? Typical brainlet.

>or even “playing God”
What is this and why is it bad?