Using a “genome editing tool” called “CRISPR/Cas9,” a team of British researchers have blocked the formation of the protein that helps days-old embryos form into cell clusters known as blastocysts, effectively killing the human beings that had been conceived just hours earlier.
A team of researchers at the United Kingdom’s Francis Crick Institute have been messing with the genetics of newly developing human embryos in order to prove it can be done. That according to the lead researcher, Kathy Niakan, who specializes in stem cell research. The goal, she said, is to eventually identify which key genes human embryos need to develop successfully into full-grown babies. But, in the process, her team is destroying life. Niakan said, in an interview with Reuters:
>"One way to find out what a gene does in the developing embryo is to see what happens when it isn't working. Now we have demonstrated an efficient way of doing this, we hope that other scientists will use it to find out the roles of other genes."
Using a “genome editing tool” called “CRISPR/Cas9,” her team blocked the formation of the protein that helps days-old embryos form into cell clusters known as blastocysts. They performed this technique on 41 human embryos, then “stopped embryo development” at the seventh day after conception to analyze the results of their actions. Similar techniques have already been used to prevent “disease-causing mutations” in another experiment. Niakan said she hopes her research can lead to a breakthrough that helps infertile couples to conceive, or to prevent failed pregnancies.
Those advances are still a few years off, she noted. The techniques being employed by her team, however, can also be developed into the means to create “designer babies.” Scientists in her field have long debated the ethics of such work—not withstanding the loss of dozens, possibly hundreds, of lives in the process.
They removed oct4 from human embryos and saw that they didn't develop. Are you fucking kidding me? This has been known for decades.
Easton Lopez
Lost lives in the form of failed blastocysts? Is this parody? Wait, does this mean that "life begins at conception" people are serious about protecting cell clumps a few days old? They call that life?
Asher Jenkins
Can't make an omelette without blocking the formation of proteins in an egg.
Aaron Sullivan
Reminder that even the old testament says fetuses up to a few months are "like water" and after they're not more than a limb. Only on birth are they given the breath of life and constitute a person.
We're actually far more conservative than fucking old testament jews because we at least say no abortion after the second trimester. I'd even say no abortion after the first trimester is reasonable. But Christians don't read the bible, and when confronted on points of the old testament they say they don't have to follow that book.
Gabriel Cox
Well..."life" certainly does begin at conception. Obviously the debate is if it is human life.
Aaron Bailey
>Reminder that even the old testament says fetuses up to a few months are "like water" and after they're not more than a limb. Only on birth are they given the breath of life and constitute a person. Nowhere in Scripture does it say anything like this, you have no idea what the Bible says because you haven't read it cover-to-cover for yourself. Try reading the Bible next time before you spout nonsense like that. Abortion is murder. >“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5) youtube.com/watch?v=XKPFqTahBoY youtube.com/watch?v=o6DDO06zkcA
Henry Price
>destroy life Sensationalist bullshit confirmed
Jason Gutierrez
>christchan Veeky Forums is an autism free board. Please shitpost on /pol/ as an alternative
Owen Carter
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)
Jaxson Jones
Neither of these verses preclude abortion user.
Julian Ramirez
It is human life; it's human DNA in a complete set. The question is whether or not said it's morally acceptable to kill said human life that early.
Hunter Jackson
Yes it does user, it's simply that you're blind and you need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Abortion is murder. >“This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” (Hebrews 10:16)
Brandon Fisher
>Nowhere in Scripture does it say anything like this Numbers 5 God sanctioned abortion in the instance of infidelity.
Sebastian Richardson
Numbers 5 regarding the woman drinking the bitter water isn't a procedure for abortion, it's consequence of sin that the woman must bear for her infidelity, if she did indeed carry it out in the first place. We live under the New Covenant by the Blood of Jesus Christ, so we as Gentiles don't observe the Mosaic Law. The Bible says in many places that abortion is murder such as when King David laments the death of his firstborn son to infidelity, King David says, "I will go to him, but he will not come to me." I'm amazed you're willing to nit-pick certain chapters of the Bible out of the context and twisting it in your ignorance instead of simply seeing the cruelty in abortion. Try again user.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
Andrew Scott
This is a science board
Xavier Ward
The withering of the thigh refers to the withering of the child, according to judaic law a fetus of a certain time was considered a limb, a thigh to be exact.
Leo Brown
what is the liberal obsession with killing fetuses
Xavier Kelly
>Kathy Niakan It private life stays private after she just confessed to having murdered hundreds of children"
James Russell
nice
Nathaniel Adams
Former pro-choicer here, it's been hilarious watching these embryos crash and burn, but seriously we can't let Niakan her get hands on the nuclear codes.
Andrew Sanders
>destroy life >messing with the genetics >designer babies >loss of "lives" yeah... they basically try to insert what they want the reader to conclude/believe into the reader.
Wyatt Taylor
What a load of trash. This person should write for The Onion.
Jeremiah Baker
Yeah. If CRISPR wasn't the hottest meme this paper would never get past peer review in nature. At least with Mitalipov they have the chance to uncover something new, while this is just lazy science being promoted because politics.
David Foster
CRISPR is going to be to the 2010-s what "nanotech" was to the 2000-s - overhyped "miracle technology" that ends up producing nothing useful.
Jackson Williams
he says while putting life in quotation marks
Carson Gomez
>Women killing babies on regular basis, scientists find! A recent study has shown that a majority of adult women (87,4%) purposely choose to have their unfertilized eggs go to waste. Effectively killing the potential human life within, in a process called “menstruation”. Even worse, most women within this group reported that they felt no remorse or shame.
Atheism. Not even once.
Caleb Watson
and rightfully so. if not, you wouldn't even be allowed to scractch your head. because you would be killing living HUMAN(!) cells in the process.
Kevin Robinson
Now you're moving goalposts. You implied it was not life, which it by all definitions are. Also nice strawman.
Christian Ramirez
nah, CRISPR's usefulness is in that it makes gene editing extremely easy and cheap. So research would be faster and more common.
Jaxson Diaz
I’m not the same user as But just because something is alive doesn't give it special status. And just because it is Human doesn’t mean we should consider it holy or sacred. A small fertilize egg is just that. A small fertilized egg. And nothing more. It is not sentient. It does not have feelings. It is alive no more, or less, than any random cell from your body. And “killing” it is not murder. For if it were, you would have to stand trial for killing any living cell, anywhere.
Easton Powell
I wonder what the end goal of the anti abortion people is. There's an inherent conflict of human rights involved in incubating a child. 1. The woman's rights of freedom and self determination. 2. The child's right to live.
Until science perfects a safe removal and artificial incubation process someone's rights will always be violated. So why do anti abortion advocates not make the public aware of the great need for scientific funding? Is it really just all a front to put women back into their place as they see it?
Luis Ramirez
wut? women arent men, making babies is prime function 1 for women.
Ian Ortiz
Why should aborting your fetus on a whim be considered an irrevocable human right for woman, especially considering how cheap and prolific birth control is?
Ian Fisher
eh, it wouldn't be the first time that someone's tried to make a CRISPR allele and it had a different phenotype than the published alleles. i've seen my own lab and some others go through some real growing pains as they try to cope with CRISPR alleles being inexplicably alive when we've thought for years that gene was necessary for survival because the homozygous T-DNA mutant was dead
Grayson Long
>There's an inherent conflict of human rights involved in incubating a child. how does one come to this conclusion, can you lay out the steps please
use science
Josiah Diaz
made me laugh
Benjamin Nguyen
It is human. It has all the genetic information to be fully developed. She is killing a person when she does it. Not that i am opposed to this if it is of value to humanity. We kill people all the time if they commit terrible crimes in order to rid them from society.
James Edwards
>step on a bug >OH NO YOU DESTROYED LIFE
A bunch of cells isn't even on the same level as a bug either
Ayden Brooks
>just because it is Human doesn’t mean we should consider it holy or sacred You don't really believe this, do you?
Robert Jackson
When we are talking about single cells or small lumps of cells, yes.
Jackson Ward
...Why?
Not
Evan Smith
what's the difference between the lump of cells that's you, and a single one that will become you?
Ryan Sanchez
Not him but life holds no intrinsic value. Let's not lie to ourselves here. Hitler was no different than mother Teresa until they started developing personalities at like 3-4 years old
Jacob Murphy
When you sweep up all the dust in your house, do you throw it away, or enshrine it?
Owen Murphy
The difference is that one IS a person, and the other, that COULD become a person, by definintion is not a person yet. Any cell from your body could become another person given the right sequence of events. But a pile of bricks is not a house, and a clump of human cells is not a person.
To be fair, "mother" teresa was an abhorrent person.
Logan Murphy
What's wrong with murder?
Bentley Martinez
>kathy niakan Wasn't that the one who got the controversial license from the government to use CRISPR for embryonic development research? We already had our round of outrage over this, now the same shit? Besides, it's not even groundbreaking research or anything. Trash reporting.
James Lewis
>effectively killing the human bein- Nope. Not human.
Daniel Collins
blastocyst =/= baby
not even close
Leo Hughes
Because the fetus has no rights to the woman's body. I laid it out fairly specifically: 1. The woman's rights of freedom and self determination. Effectively the right to do with her own body whatever she wishes. 2. The child's right to live. I simply accept this for the sake of discussion with pro-lifers as my argument is primarily aimed at them.
Taking these as axioms, there exists a conflict in that prohibiting the woman from taking an action regarding her body is violating her rights and not doing so violates the child's rights. Technology can resolve this conflict to the satisfaction of both parties via the safe removal and artificial incubation of the fetus.
Thus the next time you see a pro-lifer, ask them why they're wasting their time, money and effort protesting a planned parenthood facility that may one day be doing fetal transfers instead of abortions.
David Gray
>2007 >in 10 years we'll be able to regrow limbs and other formerly "permanent" injuries! >2017 >in 10 years we'll be able to regrow limbs and other formerly "permanent" injuries!
I feel like this is becoming nuclear fusion all over again
Carter Sullivan
Nobody has ever said anything like this to my knowledge. Can you link an article and quote it?
Popsci enthusiasts aren't the authority on predicting scientific progress, so let's not pretend they can.
As for CRISPR, it already has accelerated research in biology immensely. It's already paid off. And we're not even talking about editing embryos or other extravagant-sounding applications.
William Williams
the formation of the zygote is literally the beginning of the animal life cycle.
get the fuck off Veeky Forums with this unscientific liberal propaganda.
Josiah Sanders
He IS wrong about embryonic cells not being human, they are.
But he's also right about them not constituting a human BEING, more commonly known as a "person". Embryonic cells aren't a person, they're just human cells. So are the skin cells you shed every second. The researchers killed human cells, but they didn't kill a person. The whole outrage is bullshit and you know it too, so stop pretending to be a conservative that is concerned with le loss of human life, it's ridiculous.
Camden Richardson
You cant kill a human that hasn’t developed yet. Thats like saying every time i ejacullate from masturbation i kill millions of humans. Religion should be illegal.
Evan Rogers
>Nonsentient clusters of cells >Murder! In that case using disinfectant is murder too
Andrew Martinez
>Veeky Forums >A place for morals Get out
Joshua Wright
Jesus was right, don't wash your hands, soap is MURDER
Brody Powell
t. embryo
Gabriel Hall
Your false comparison is idiotic and disingenuous, and you even know it. The OP's story explicitly identifies the entities being destroyed as embryos. Not eggs or sperm cells - embryos. Because human life begins at conception, your masturbation is not on the same moral plane as killing living human organisms. You know that you were already acquainted with the correct logic of this refutation, even if it doesn't personally matter to you, so don't feign ignorance of the argument.
You also know that your comparison is false because what makes the one cluster of cells so much more ontologically important than the other clusters of cells, is that the one is human and the others are not. Do you even anthropocentrism (you should).
Joshua Turner
>Aborted children in Heaven Sounds like the luckiest condition imaginable. They get to go straight to Heaven without having to suffer this gay Earth and without the risk that they'll reject salvation and go to Hell. Truly the best gift you could give your child.
Henry Richardson
>what makes the one cluster of cells so much more ontologically important than the other clusters of cells get help
William Reed
>I'm amazed you're willing to nit-pick certain chapters of the Bible out of the context and twisting it in your ignorance instead of simply seeing the cruelty in abortion. Try again user. You really think your shitty poetry is going to change anyone's mind on that? The Bible does nothing to explain why abortion is cruel; it has passages that condemn the idea, but only a simpleton would see those as an answer to a complex issue. It's a lot easier to have a book give you your opinions instead of trying to come up with them yourself, eh?
Kevin James
>mental gymnastics
Juan Torres
yeah yeah whatevs
is this gonna get me some of that dank ass placenta stem cells so I can regrow literally everything cuz if not literally don't care and they're wasting time
Benjamin Long
>complex issue
Aaron Brooks
>It's a lot easier to have a book give you your opinions instead of trying to come up with them yourself, eh? It's called spiritual blindness, this is why even when an atheist reads the Bible, they still don't know what they are reading because they are spiritually blind. You need to read the Word of God, with the Eyes of God. Satan knows the Bible better than any of you do, but Satan doesn't know righteousness. Get in the Spirit and Seek God (Jehovah, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit). Now is the time, the end is near.
“This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” (Hebrews 10:16)
Dominic Watson
I could do the same exact thing with a hammer. What's significant about killing unborn babies using a billion dollar notepad
Joshua Collins
Can I be scared about this? Do I have the right of fundamentally disliking abortion?
I'll admit to be a catholic, but that's not the main issue here.
What fundamentally scares me about abortion, is that it is the ultimate testament of "humans are valuable and should be preserved, unless nobody cares about you and you can do nothing. Then you have no value and can be disposed of"
I mean, I understand the nuances that are sapience, sentience and "clump of cells", but then what protects babies after they are born? They are not sapient either, an arbitrary humane death (shotgun to the brain, because the baby is annoying) shouldn't be against our moral values, since we are terminating a non-sapient life without pain or suffering.
I understand the rights of the mothers to do with their bodies as they please, but then my brain tortures me with another question: is it anything wrong with a single mother commiting suicide, leaving a baby in a crib to die of dehidratation? When does the wishes of the baby override the rights of the mother?
Ayden Wood
Have you ever tried psychedelics? If you havent then you are a faggot pretending to know anything about "spirits."
Tyler Bailey
You should have seperated the last paragraph from the rest of it with a line. That would have really sold it
Jace Adams
>indoctrinated into geographically default religion >not blind faggot
Logan Campbell
>The techniques being employed by her team, however, can also be developed into the means to create “designer babies.” Scientists in her field have long debated the ethics of such work
It's only moral to worsen human genetics (non-whites breeding with whites), not to improve it.
Cooper Gray
Define better whitey
Chase Evans
your god must be some kind of chucklefuck if he can't just imprint the truth inside you intuitively from birth without needing a long, esoteric symbolism book
Grayson Sullivan
Bait.
Charles Campbell
Culturing jewish cells in the laboratory the other day I squirted some bleach in the dish by accident
IT WAS ANUDDAH SHOAH
Jacob Thompson
No, that's sin and unbiblical.
Adam Miller
>destroy life Nice non-statement.
At least these crispr-scientists aren't destroying logic.
Mason Davis
>logic is more important than life
Sebastian James
There's nothing "esoteric" or hidden about God, it's all out in the open in the Bible. In fact, it's real simple:
>They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." (Acts 16:31a)
See? How difficult was that? The only secret is the day and the hour of the Lord's returning, only the Father knows, even Jesus Christ Himself doesn't know the day or the hour. Now stop being a doubting Thomas and start reading your Bible.
Jordan Thomas
Any site calling itself "trunews"...
Adrian Powell
All embryo experiments kill the embryo. In fact, they are legally not allowed to allow it to grow.
Connor Rogers
Ridiculous government restrictions under the guise of "ethics" are to blame here. I have a brutal disease that would be a prime candidate for CRISPR therapy but caring politicians always cripple research. On both sides: the right because of god and the left because of an ostrich in the sand attitude towards genetics.
Alexander Anderson
The bible is a fictional work, we know this is a fact. While fiction is an okay place to find ideas, building your life on it is a horrible idea. If your moral values have to come from a book instead of deriving them through the principle of reciprocity then you don't belong on Veeky Forums.
Nathan Price
90% of humanity dying is better than 90% of humanity falling into illogical lovecraftian orwellian thought processes.
Jason Baker
>Do I have the right of fundamentally disliking abortion? yes, you have the right to think whatever you want in your own head
