we can now "correct misspellings in our DNA"

[everything]

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech ... eases.html

In 2016—when he was 43—his team had invented single-letter base editing: a tool used to modify DNA that is currently revolutionizing the world of medicine. Three months ago, a London hospital announced that it had used base editing to save the life of Alyssa: a 13-year-old girl with a very aggressive form of leukemia. “Her cancer is in complete remission,” Liu gushes.

The operating manual of a human being—present in every cell—is a piece of text with more than three billion chemical letters. Errors in this DNA cause cancer and a multitude of diseases. Liu wants to rewrite this human book to eliminate typos.

Alyssa’s medical team, from University College London, used base editing to modify a donor’s white blood cells, to help them attack her cancer cells. David Liu’s amazing techniques have outdated previous gene-editing tools, including CRISPR, which was invented in 2012 and won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The researcher likens the original CRISPR to a pair of scissors: useful for deactivating genes in a rough way, but not rewriting them accurately.

Today, his own pencil with an eraser is already being surpassed. In 2019, Liu announced a new tool: quality editing. “It’s like a word processor: you can search for a specific sequence and replace the entire sequence with another sequence that you want,” he explains via videoconference. Quality editors—which are still in the experimental phase—can theoretically correct 89% of the 75,000 genetic variants associated with diseases.

[yeniseri]

Mother Nature adapts to the internal structural milieu of the organism meaning this bidrectional communication is always 'sensing' a disruption that on a DNA
level needs to be "correct" but the greater force will always dominate. Many times the "recorded information" in the DNA is the dominant result and we feel
the benefits, bad or good. I come back to my old mantra, a la Ayn Rand, that it is the States social milieu that matters meaning the monetary benefit of position and
social status will determine who will get that benefit.

It sounds nice and wonderful in a "utopia" that medicine will "correct DNA mutations" but it is not so. Some will definitely benefit but the multitudes will die as they always have.
Mutations are not always bad but of course the scourge of cancer warrants these pre-analyses to mitigate the x cancer and save lives.
Anyone look at health statistics recently? Look at certain zip codes and you will see patterns on who gets health care and why? Who survives? Who gets the benefits? Nothing has changed though
innovative technologies can surely change the landscape for the many to change lifestyle, outlook and even a vision that allows for better prognosis in the long run.

I again come back to even a basic view on North America and democracy! The Quakers and the Pilgrims had the right to leave their homeland and come to a new nation and we all can agree
on that> But who suffered the consequenes of that arrival? Whose land got stolen and were never compensated for that theft?

This is the modus operandi that has determined direction and purpose of public and economic policy in USA for over 300 years! I hope I am wrong and everyone who needs care
will get it regardless of which social milieu they belong to and USA will live happily ever after.

[everything]

I have no idea what your rambling rant was about, but it was interesting.

[yeniseri]

Interestingly, I often get that so let me try again. I will try to summarize, in a different way.

1. It is true that better ways of detecting what is 'mutated' in DNA is upon us but it is not for anyone and not anyone can afford it, or, are part of the social strata to count as if there will be equity in medical procedures.
2. The founding of US economic policy is abuot who are 'allowed' to benefit and at whose expense. There is no doubt that this is changing but 'bad habits' rarely die hard enough.
3. If we follow the founding of this great nation, equity is for those who count. Again, look at the health statistics at which groups have better prognosis in chronic diseases!
4. At a base level, women have to grovel for many men to acknowledge there need medical care (of a certain type) and men are the only ones to dictate by law (de jure) what care a woman is allowed per medical procedures.
In truth, this specific policy has nothing to do with medical care but on men wanting to control women's bodies to do with as they wish and under their conditions. If men were to give birth, the world would be in a heap of sh*t because they would refuse to do so.
5. There are certain threads which link things regardless of their uniqueness or different beginnings but critical analyses of things show us the Unity of thought often negated by the same mind.
Heaven and hell have the same origin

A recent report with AI and its ability to 'better" discern mutations in cells is positive but again who will have the opportunity to benefit and at whose expense.
NOTE: Correcting misspellings in DNA is wonderful...

[Steve James]

Yeah, the use of the technology will be determined by who holds the power coupons ($).

Afa the tech, correcting genetic misspellings that lead to disease is great. Are people going to provide genetic samples before, at or after birth?
Where are the limits for what is considered a disease? Who makes those decisions? Whoever does will have an enormous degree of influence. Will it be parents, doctors, or will individuals be able to decide for themselves?

This is the old "we can do it but should we do it" quandary. We know from the internet that someone will do it just because they can just to pwn those who say we shouldn't.

[origami_itto]

What could possibly go wrong?
Have they never read, like, any hard sci fi? Are they just Star Wars fanboys with no depth of theory? What a travesty.

[everything]

ah ok I think I follow you now. inequity, injustice, the political and policy process, etc. may make these things go very badly, or at least, sub-optimally. agree with your concerns and warnings.

I guess (very rough guess) from an economics pov, if it's much cheaper to help treat diseases that are due to a "typo", everyone in theory benefits from the improved technology (better/faster/cheaper) due to the way the "system" pays. suppose everyone on rsf pays some insurance premium (or tax or whatever), then this little girl gets cancer, and the previous technologies are super expensive and not life saving, but the "fix" of the "typo" is cheap/effective, then we all benefit in theory from the economics (and the little girl especially). this could be wrong and is oversimplified etc.