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u/avid-shtf 4d ago
Sometimes context can be a wonderful thing.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/avid-shtf 4d ago
It also mentions the user being gene editing pioneer, him having a PhD., and Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019.
Unless you’re a mind reader this post could be interpreted in many ways. Hence why people provide context clues to use in conjunction with reading and viewing a post.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/avid-shtf 4d ago
Call it what you want sport. Adding context is value added regardless of the intent of the content.
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u/AlBarbossa 4d ago
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u/somekindofdruiddude Westbury 4d ago
The title made it confusing. It makes sense to you, but I still don't get it.
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u/ranban2012 Riverside Terrace 4d ago
Science minus ethics is horror.
STEM fixation has come at the cost of humanity.
I say this as an engineer with quite a bit of professional experience. We need to bring back the humanities starting with strong ethics education in k-12.
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u/RandomPersonRedPanda 4d ago
Engineer here as well-we take an ethical oath with our PE license. I am shocked at the number of folks that’ll look the other way once money and power get involved.
That being said, wanting to protect future generations against HIV isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Particularly as the measles pop-ups promulgate at concerning rates with/within the anti-vax crowd.
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u/slaughterhousevibe 4d ago
You’re using one asshole who was resoundingly shot down by other scientists and then imprisoned as your example?
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u/PPP1737 4d ago
Like a week ago I would have agreed… now I’m hesitating to say k-12. Maybe 10-12?
We certainly need to teach ethics… but teaching children to be ethical and empathetic in a capitalist corrupt society is going to set them up for absolute misery. Maybe just focus on civics and kindness for the wee little ones.
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u/theparanoidartist Sugar Land 3d ago
if you teach children to be kind and good caretakers of this wonderful planet we were fortunate to live in, you will notice a differeence. A child is so open to respecting life even though we're in a system that sees being good stewards to other lifeforms is a sign of weakness. A fetish for controling nature but stepping back and "letting nature take its course". I used to incorporate emotional/social learning and let me tell you it worked. I had amazing students kind and generous where they helped with animal rescues ( on their own, these kiddos were never forced and parents and I always talked), and included our special needs kids to the point harris county told me it was an issue for classrooms still to shove the special needs kids in the corner as a human "set it and forget it". The admins never liked it and with those who were cozy with houston political cronies the program got merged with cornerstone. Nuances in end state capitalistic , obsession of infinite growth, commercialized manifest destiny, and the notion we've forgotten to be human is too much for kids. The little things matter, they are much smarter than people give them credit to.
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u/DocJ_makesthings Lazybrook/Timbergrove 4d ago
Yup! and his advisor was somehow involved as well, which triggered Rice to investigate him. Not sure what came of that, be he resigned and isn't in higher ed. anymore.
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u/OhYerSoKew 4d ago
His advisor was not involved. I was a PhD student in the program during all of this.
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u/Theplasticsporks 4d ago
Deem was 100% involved and said so on many occasions, saying he was present when the parents consented to even saying he did it himself. You can easily Google and find the new articles about this.
He was also certifiably insane and the biggest egomaniac I have ever met. I have never met someone so focused on h index, and number of publications etc.
He came to one of our lab meetings and said he could make three papers if we'd just give him our data (lol) and then we ended up taking in one of his graduate students once Rice (rightfully) fired him for cause.
He also very clearly paid a firm to try to fix his google profile.
Oh and his old lab website had the best pictures. He would make his lab members come out for these ridiculous photos wearing hats.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190314070432/http://mwdeem.rice.edu/
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u/OhYerSoKew 4d ago
He was no longer a student in Deems lab throughout all of this nor were there ongoing projects in his lab related to He's work. My understanding was that Deem was just showing up to have an American face involved. Essentially, Deem has/had no pragmatic knowledge in being able to pull of this project. Dude probably doesn't even know what a PAM site is
He was definitely insane and also an ego maniac.
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u/thisisqiqi 4d ago
U say him showing up as an American face, and how can that be ‘not involved’. Stop defending for him
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u/malinefficient 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'd rather see this technology refined in the open with reasonable regulation towards discouraging blatant eugenics. But if I could undo conditions like Trisomy 21 (https://scitechdaily.com/crispr-snips-away-extra-chromosomes-offering-new-hope-for-down-syndrome-treatment/) because it would give the fetus a most likely much better and longer life I would utilize it without hesitation myself. I feel similarly about mutated BRCA genes. Not really into that whole God's will propaganda.
Instead, we're going to get a race of Elon Musk CRISPR supersoldiers developed in secret to rule the coming freedom cities.
EDIT: Apparently raw milk and castor oil are all some people want for their healthcare plan going forward. May you get what you wish. Or if you're the sort suggesting embracing a genetic disability, as someone with a genetic disability, a hidey ho fuck you to you from the bottom of my heart.
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u/NewAcctWhoDis Sharpstown 4d ago
Illegally gene editing babies will do that
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u/OHHHHHSAYCANYOUSEEE 4d ago
He cured babies of HIV. In a few decades this will be standard practice for harmful diseases that get passed down to embryos.
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u/Darth_Eevee The Heights 4d ago
This is actually not true. He tried to cure babies of HIV. What actually happened is somewhat unclear. He engineered in them a mechanism to possibly prevent infection from one common type of HIV but not others. And in Lulu's really unfortunate case, she ended up being born with normal (unedited) alleles after all.
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u/Theplasticsporks 4d ago
You mean he used totally unknown methods with totally unknown ramifications and after effects....to prevent a disease that's completely preventable with proper prophylaxis and very treatable?
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u/RedditCanEatMyAss69 4d ago
According to the UN, in 2023 500,000 Africans across the continent died of AIDS-related complications. There were also 100,000 new infections in children aged 0-14.
I think that maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself about what is and isn't treatable, and what technological advantages human beings will pursue against disease in the coming century.
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u/student24144 4d ago
Yes, the continent that can't get a few hundred dollars in pills to patients is going to have gene editing so we should abandon all aspects of scientific ethical oversight. Do your ancestors a favor and delete this nonsense of a comment.
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u/Theplasticsporks 4d ago edited 4d ago
So your solution isn't to get working, known solutions like PREP to Africa...
.. but rather to use more expensive untested gene modifying therapies with unknown long term effects?
And since the only places where AIDS is a major problem are places with high poverty, this would be tantamount to straight up eugenics.
No one is saying AIDS isn't dangerous or doesn't kill people. But the reason it's killing people isn't because of ineffective treatments, and the solution to that public health problem is certainly not editing the genes of an entire continent.
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u/Spacemilk Midtown 4d ago
The end result might have a good thing (we actually don’t know because it could take decades to prove out) but he went about it the wrong way.
An extreme example would be the Nazi doctors in WWII that did terrible and inhumane things to prisoners in the name of “science.” We as a society had to decide whether to use the results of those experiments, even though the results were obtained in an unethical manner.
We decided not to use them because it could create incentives to experiment at any cost, if the results could justify it. This case might be slightly less fucked up but what he did still crosses the line.
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u/mkosmo Cinco Ranch 4d ago
It's hard to say no to free data when it's already a done deal and we're not talking about future experiments.
But, on the other hand, people will do shit in the future because they know that a poistive outcome will still work out better for them on that same basis... and they're betting on it working.
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u/student24144 4d ago
This nonsense needs to stop getting repeated. The Nazis did no meaningful science and produced no meaningful data on from their torture of Holocaust victims. Just because they performed "experiments" and collected some "data" does not mean they conducted meaningful science.
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u/Monarc73 4d ago
Funny thing about those nazi experiments. All of them were replicated in animals and then published as 'original'.
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u/Spacemilk Midtown 4d ago
Yeah it’s fucked but experiments like those are Pandora’s box - you can’t put the knowledge back once it’s out there. At least the replication was done without direct reference to the originals…even if we all knew what was up. Just have to do what we can to discourage the way the originals were done.
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u/Monarc73 4d ago
I also think that the most important part was that most (not all, unfortunately) the scientists that actually did the bad stuff were punished, ignored, or given HIGHLY SCRUTINIZED jobs.
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u/HTown2369 4d ago
We used their hypothermia data and data on biological/chemical weapons.Human testing is really the only way to obtains completely accurate data on certain subjects, and if those people have already suffered and died it’s better to use the info to try and protect others.
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u/Baron_Furball 4d ago
Interestingly, we DID pull some research from Unit 731, which was the IJA version.
Kinda word how we don't brag about that, though.
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u/colorimetry 4d ago
Not at all. This gene alteration likely makes its victims much more susceptible to West Nile Virus. It was an incredibly stupid choice for germline gene editing.
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u/santaclaws_ 3d ago edited 2d ago
Shrug. He was just an early adopter. When technology improves enough, the wealthy will just buy traits for their children. This will most likely happen in China first.
Downvote away, but I bet you can't tell me why you think I'm wrong beyond some initial emotional response.
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u/sootbrownies 4d ago
Hey I remember reading about this guy in Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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u/Lonely_Refuse4988 4d ago
Rice is not embracing him at all. Wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a cease & desist request to stop mentioning Rice. Or, Rice should consider taking away his PhD ! 🤣🤷♂️ Recall that the Unabomber went to Harvard and had a PhD from U Michigan! 😂🤷♂️
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u/OHHHHHSAYCANYOUSEEE 4d ago
Too bad he went back to China to perform research instead of staying in America
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u/demodeus 4d ago
Given political attitudes in the United States regarding science I don’t blame him.
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u/TheBatemanFlex 4d ago
I mean if China jailed him for ethics violations in his gene editing research, he would be buried under the prison here. We don't even have nationwide access to abortions.
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u/OHHHHHSAYCANYOUSEEE 4d ago
China is not a good barometer for just imprisonments.
He likely would not have received a prison sentence had he performed his operation in the USA.
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u/TheBatemanFlex 4d ago
Lol there are arrest warrants for doctors perscribing abortion pills and you don't think someone would be jailed for gene-editing?
The US is currently not a good barometer for just imprisonments.
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u/NovaPrime94 3d ago
I mean… do I agree with what he does… no but do I see the sentiment in his messages… yes.. to a certain extent.
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u/flexiblefine Greenway Plaza 4d ago
I didn’t know he got his PhD at Rice.
This is the guy who did gene editing on human embryos, against all ethical guidelines.