Stephen hawking dies at 76

[cytg111]

Hmm, it might be. It's a complicated subject and the thing is, I rather agree with boomerang and his comment. Genetic testing (which is possible as early as the 8-cell stage) has certainly tossed a major whammy into the ethics issue here. I don't have the numbers on hand or anything, but I recall many years ago when I was considering going into genetic counseling, that aborting fetuses with Trisomy 21 is, rather unsurprisingly, quite common. That was 10 years ago when I think the only other effective genetic screen you could run was for Cystic Fibrosis.

I don't think this is a simple issue where there is a solid "yes this is the right decision for you and humanity" or "no, it is absolutely monstrous." I think the answer can be both, for the same couple and for different reasons. Obviously plenty of kids born with Downs syndrome can lead rather happy, productive lives. Parents love their kids...but at the same time, a young couple with such a fetus probably have no idea what kind of commitment that means: financially, emotionally, energy--a complete lifestyle change that was never in the cards. Things happen between parents they never thought possible: One blames the other for the horrible genetic defect that has destroyed their child's life and wrecked their family. Yes, it happens, and if one understands human nature, these kind of awful thoughts occur when you cast about looking for explanations that don't really exist. So, is it better to decide to abort if you absolutely know you can't raise this kid and give them a good life? Maybe.

as for genetically-engineering away these awful problems....I find that nature has some clever ways of reducing an accumulation of lethal genes that can wreak havoc on populations. Spontaneous abortions and miscarriages happen all the time...but we don't realize it because so few couples really advertise these things. It's a stigma. A developing embryo could have all sorts of supposed problems that are, now, easy to see and target, but looking at one or two of them, you're only seeing 1% of the picture. What if we manage to knockout something like ALS or a nasty gene with a high probability of cardiac hypertrophy, et al? I bet the presence of just some of these issues is an indicator for potentially others. You might be able to target and eliminate one dastardly gene, but leave the embryo viable to come to term with a host of others that never would have manifest.

And as Boomerang mentioned, say we were able to do an embryonic screen for ALS (I don't think that is possible yet...is it?), then what if Hawking's parents had made that decision and this world would have existed without him? I know it's something of a weak thought experiment because the world is simply what it is, the result of natural process generally beyond our control and a cascade of decisions made by generations upon generations, and it is almost certainly true that another physicist would have made the same discoveries (It is commonly accepted that great discoveries and inventions are as much, if not more a product of the zeitgeist in which the individual works, not a singular, unique genius--hell, the steam engine was invented a handful of times, over generations, long before Watt came along)...but the point is that an individual's worth isn't simply their ability to contribute in standard, societal-defined ways.

I think alot of your reservations is getting leapfrogged by technology, I fully expect the future of first world children to be engineered rather than by two strains of DNA randomly spliced together for constructs of natural selection to give a thumbs up or thumbs down over 50-100 years. Speaking of natural selection, we are in agreement that it was effectively nullified the second we decided to take care of our weak and sickly right? If we are to move the genepool forward today there is only one way to do it; edit the code (or bomb us back to sticks and stones).
For growing new humans I see genome editing/designing as an inevitable part of our future for the simple reason that if we dont do it we will at the loosing end of that natural selection equation. It would be like Russia having the nuke and we wouldnt.. and Russia pressed the button.
This is the bottom line, for each generation currently born under first world standards we loose a little functional DNA. We fade away, little by little, generation by generation. Eggs and Sperms dont form until later in the pregnancy, lots of time for DNA to shred and even then there is the odd chance of background radiation knocking one of those "Spermatogonial stem cells" out of wack.

as for genetically-engineering away these awful problems....I find that nature has some clever ways of reducing an accumulation of lethal genes that can wreak havoc on populations. Spontaneous abortions and miscarriages happen all the time...but we don't realize it because so few couples really advertise these things. It's a stigma.

Unless the genes are assoicated with core functionality of being able to go to term I dont see how or why it should result in spontanious abortion, if it is indeed the case as you say with Downs I expect, no I know , that that extra chromosome also codes for features that disrupts the whole biomechanical process that is the pregnancy.

A developing embryo could have all sorts of supposed problems that are, now, easy to see and target, but looking at one or two of them, you're only seeing 1% of the picture. What if we manage to knockout something like ALS or a nasty gene with a high probability of cardiac hypertrophy, et al? I bet the presence of just some of these issues is an indicator for potentially others. You might be able to target and eliminate one dastardly gene, but leave the embryo viable to come to term with a host of others that never would have manifest.

That might be. It may also not be. Not knowing. Is that gonna stop us or do we march on?

And as Boomerang mentioned, say we were able to do an embryonic screen for ALS (I don't think that is possible yet...is it?), then what if Hawking's parents had made that decision and this world would have existed without him? I know it's something of a weak thought experiment because the world is simply what it is, the result of natural process generally beyond our control and a cascade of decisions made by generations upon generations, and it is almost certainly true that another physicist would have made the same discoveries (It is commonly accepted that great discoveries and inventions are as much, if not more a product of the zeitgeist in which the individual works, not a singular, unique genius--hell, the steam engine was invented a handful of times, over generations, long before Watt came along)...but the point is that an individual's worth isn't simply their ability to contribute in standard, societal-defined ways.

I think we should be careful of mixing quantitative considerations with qualitative, ie. using a qualitative measure to conclude something on behalf of something inherently quantitative. Stephen Hawking was most certainly a gift to mankind and not strapped to that chair who knows he may not have had the focus to experience the universe like he did, had we fixed him in the womb. Who knows? I do know that persons with downs do not fit into the social structures we have build for our selves and I also know that persons with downs is an evolutionary dead end, I know that persons with Downs will require many more resources than said persons is capable of giving back and I know that persons with Downs is a big stress on the parents and their relationships, I know that many persons with Downs end up living miserable lives.

I fully embrace the future of coding, programming language of the future : ACGT.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Didn't you sport as your avatar for quite some time a satirical portrait of Mohammed, which was a direct and grievous insult to ALL of Islam, because you didn't like the actions of some of Islam?

Anyway, back on topic, Hawking responding to John Oliver's question if there was a universe in which he was smarter than Hawking, "And one in which you are funny"

Heh, no. That was Sam the Camel, a character from stories I created to tell my son. Now if you are saying Mohammed is a camel then I admit to being caught unawares

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I'm just not sure why you did that. Neither the article or I made any attempt to disparage say Christians in general, so I'm a bit confused.

It's rather like compiling a list of Muslims and tossing in ISIS. I'd argue that the latter is not the norm and so it would not occur to me to include them.

 

[zinfamous]

I think alot of your reservations is getting leapfrogged by technology, I fully expect the future of first world children to be engineered rather than by two strains of DNA randomly spliced together for constructs of natural selection to give a thumbs up or thumbs down over 50-100 years. Speaking of natural selection, we are in agreement that it was effectively nullified the second we decided to take care of our weak and sickly right? If we are to move the genepool forward today there is only one way to do it; edit the code (or bomb us back to sticks and stones).
For growing new humans I see genome editing/designing as an inevitable part of our future for the simple reason that if we dont do it we will at the loosing end of that natural selection equation. It would be like Russia having the nuke and we wouldnt.. and Russia pressed the button.
This is the bottom line, for each generation currently born under first world standards we loose a little functional DNA. We fade away, little by little, generation by generation. Eggs and Sperms dont form until later in the pregnancy, lots of time for DNA to shred and even then there is the odd chance of background radiation knocking one of those "Spermatogonial stem cells" out of wack.

Unless the genes are assoicated with core functionality of being able to go to term I dont see how or why it should result in spontanious abortion, if it is indeed the case as you say with Downs I expect, no I know , that that extra chromosome also codes for features that disrupts the whole biomechanical process that is the pregnancy.

That might be. It may also not be. Not knowing. Is that gonna stop us or do we march on?

I think we should be careful of mixing quantitative considerations with qualitative, ie. using a qualitative measure to conclude something on behalf of something inherently quantitative. Stephen Hawking was most certainly a gift to mankind and not strapped to that chair who knows he may not have had the focus to experience the universe like he did, had we fixed him in the womb. Who knows? I do know that persons with downs do not fit into the social structures we have build for our selves and I also know that persons with downs is an evolutionary dead end, I know that persons with Downs will require many more resources than said persons is capable of giving back and I know that persons with Downs is a big stress on the parents and their relationships, I know that many persons with Downs end up living miserable lives.

I fully embrace the future of coding, programming language of the future : ACGT.

Well we know, more and more, that disease, or traits, or most any phenotype is rarely the result of a single gene. It is usually the product of a network of genes, or TE's, various functional elements, co-factors, etc. Cutting out a single bit in that cascade to get a single, targeted result most likely leads to other problems, novel traits, good or bad. We use these tools daily, in the lab, on model organisms, because we are studying very specific problems--not because we are trying to "create new monsters."

There is a functional, investigative reason for using these tools that are highly controlled. Extrapolating their function outside into a vanity model is truly beyond the scope of its value and its efficacy. ...it's almost lunacy. I don't ignore that we will likely approach this paradigm at some point--gene therapy is kinda, barely, almost sorta maybe a thing...but not really...but maybe, but evolution is still a powerful tool, despite our more or less extending ourselves beyond its typical power ...however, we aren't also within an observable era to where we can really see functional effects..."loss of DNA" as you suggest. Our generations are simply too long to really see this kind of thing in the microsecond of existence that humans actually represent on the evolutionary scale. Certainly not in our modern era of, let's say a piddly 200-300 years. Barely 4 or 5 generations of humans! With the humble fruit fly and it's sluggish 7-20 day generation period, you want a good 15 or so generations minimum of inter-species crosses to see some established hybridizing taking hold.

The Y chromosome, the only chromosome that is actually "losing" information (the only chromosome that doesn't recombine), or DNA as you suggest, isn't really losing information any more. We used to think that, that it would disappear, but it isn't. It has shrunken more or less to its barest functional use: a mere handful of male-specific traits. It's the product of an ancient X chromosome, that males have lost. Nothing more, really, but it's pretty much where it is going to be. ....and that shrinking probably stopped near 100-125k years ago. About when proto humans became modern humans and, genetically, we really haven't changed all that much. 125k years...an actual pittance in evolutionary time.

 

[mikeymikec]

It's rather like compiling a list of Muslims and tossing in ISIS. I'd argue that the latter is not the norm and so it would not occur to me to include them.

I'm still confused. The author IMO isn't trying to make a value statement about any larger group of people. It doesn't even say "these Christians are saying he's gone to Hell", it says "a bunch of religious people", and it includes one apparently-Muslim in there as well (two if the video counts, I haven't watched it). The only argument angle I can think of where your point of view might stand up would be if the author was trying to put forward an entirely anti-religion point of view, backed up with a string of other articles where the author explicitly does that.

While I don't agree with taking say WBC or ISIS's statements and saying "this is what Christians/Muslims/religious people think" (because those two organisations are extremists in those larger communities), the fact of the matter is that both organisations claim to be part of those larger communities (and such a claim can't easily be rejected because it takes very little to claim to be part of those communities), and like it or not, some members of those larger communities (excluding those two organisations for the moment) have some pretty ugly opinions, and we're not talking about some fringe nutcases. To say that only the most wholesome statements can be allowed to represent "religious opinion" would definitely be dishonest. The larger problem is such religions need to evolve a single unifying perspective but their defining nature is a conservative one (using the literal definition of the term) - ie. the centuries-old "word of God" in this case, so evolving goes against the very fabric of those religions. Without unity the extremists can't be utterly rejected, because without true unity a multitude of varying and sometimes agreeing voices can't validly reject the extremists.

Having said all of this, I think this is way too much time to devote to a bunch of idiots who chose to go on the record to blather about their beliefs because an atheist died

 

[Thebobo]

that is all better than the ignorance, idiocy, purposeless accumulation of wealth, banal sportsing events, and murder fetishing that we currently worship as goals in themselves, don't you think?

This irks me, kids worship someone who can throw a ball in a hole or push a button to make music. How about Doctors, scientist, researcher, people who contribute to society.

 

[shortylickens]

Seriously, you just had to bring fucking politics into this, asshole.

Its in P&N you pencil dick.

 

[SNC]

Its in P&N you pencil dick.

How about you bend over and I'll shove my pencil dick up your fat fucking ass you steaming pile of shit.

Why not just drive all threads to the bottom.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Lol...take it to the PM's, lovebirds

 

[Muse]

that is all better than the ignorance, idiocy, purposeless accumulation of wealth, banal sportsing events, and murder fetishing that we currently worship as goals in themselves, don't you think?

Agreed. And anti-intelligence is suspect too unless it's maybe the CIA variety.

 

[Muse]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008

Not only was he a brilliant scientist but he was a good teacher who helped excite generations of people about the possibilities and mysteries of science.

My cousin's husband was a professor of physics at Oxford, where they still live. He's about the age Hawking was and is recently in maybe not much better shape than Hawking was, he had a bad stroke maybe 2-3 years ago now.

 

[Muse]

He'll finally get to travel beyond the known universe. Godspeed.

He said this:

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/world/europe/stephen-hawking-quotes.html

As an atheist I'm sure hawking would not approve of your comment.

Precisely.

 

[Muse]

RIP. Hell of a contribution to the world.

:/




Edit: Is it wrong to say rest in peace to an atheist? It's not like they are planning on getting back up...

Whenever I see or hear R.I.P. I realize it's for the benefit of everyone perceiving it, not the deceased. IOW, it's a blessing on the prospect of the survivors processing the death of another, whatever that might entail.

I don't remember Hawking being an easily triggered person. I think he was a big enough man to take a statement of goodwill as intended, not as some little outraged personality.

He wouldn't have been outraged, that's not the same as not approving. If asked if he approved, he would have said no, but without malice.

 

[Muse]

His value at the end was being a spokesman, not a physicist and there's nothing wrong with that. Personally, I find value in mortality because the downside of science as done by the human animal is that there is incredible inertia created by established individuals and institutions. Someone today might have the solution to the problem of quantum gravity and reconcile GR and the quantum realm and that effort be dismissed simply because they weren't in a particular lab or program or that a Hawking didn't come up with it.

Some may see Hawking as a unique case and that's far from true. As a person he was unique as we all are. He was rare in ability to be certain, but unique in that way? I think not. Several billion people in this world and many far greater than Hawking will be born and die and no one but their soon to be forgotten loved ones will ever have known them.

In a larger perspective, this is what makes me take pause, that the greatest are lost in obscurity.

This is an interesting perspective. Einstein himself said that some of the greatest scientific riddles that he wrestled with could be solved by children with their uncluttered unfettered senses relative to those of "sophisticated" adults.

The concept of unheralded, unappreciated, or underappreciated greatness is fascinating.

 

[Muse]

What the fuck does that have to do with the death of this man? You fucking asshole team players can't ease up for a fucking minute can you. For the record I'm a Conservative.

I don't believe you, and there is no record. Your statement there isn't worth the paper it's written on (it's digital). The fact remains and it's huge: science gets a bad rap in the USA and that's a damn shame. Wise up and admit it. Like Neitsche said, "everyone should learn at least one science." EVERYONE! Then they'd have an appreciation for how important it is. Disrespecting true science is some of the worst kind of ignorance.

 

[Muse]

Yeah but they also think a man who is his own son yet distinct was born from a virgin, killed, dead long enough to start stinking, and then came back a zombie messiah.

What a lot of people (those in particular) claim to think and what they actually think are very different things.

 

[1prophet]

and have people forget how science and scientists are treated by a large segment of the populous, forget it.

Especially the liberal entertainment industry that loves to portray them as nerds, geeks, social buffoons with two left feet while elevating the singer, sports star, movie star {and today the socialite that is famous just because} as the role model.

This is the common negative stereotype that liberal media like to portray scientists as.

and to females this is the role model presented

instead of this below and our so called enlightened liberal media can't figure out why there aren't more females in STEM fields.
http://famousfemalescientists.com/

Famous Female Scientists

Some of the greatest scientists of all time were females who have made important discoveries in a variety of fields in science. Several of their contributions throughout history have even surpassed those of their male counterparts. Our list of the most famous female scientists below are organized in order of popularity so you can read about the advancements that they made.

Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Famous For: Work on radioactivity
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win this award in two categories: Physics and Chemistry. She discovered polonium and radium and her work helped with the creation of X-rays. Jane Goodall (1934)
Famous For: Primate studies
Jane Goodall is known world-wide for her groundbreaking studies on primates. She is considered the top expert on chimpanzeees in the world and is perhaps best known for her 45 year study on the social lives of these animals in Tanzania.
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012)
Famous For: Nerve growth studies
Rita Levi-Montalcini was a neurologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for her findings in nerve growth factor (NGF). She was the first Nobel laureate to live past her 100th birthday. Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
Famous For: Research on RNA, DNA, graphite, coal and viruses
Rosalind Franklin was a X-ray crystallographer and biophysicist whose work greatly contributed to the comprehension of molecular structures. Her most notable work revolved around X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her work in this resulted in the finding of the DNA double helix.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
Famous For: Work on radioactivity and nuclear physics
Lise Meitner was a key member of a group that discovered nuclear fission. One of her colleagues, Otto Hahn, was given the Noble Prize for this work and Meitner’s exclusion from the award is considered to be a huge error by the Nobel committee. Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)
Famous For: Work in nuclear physics
Shirley Ann Jackson was the first African American woman to attain a doctorate degree at MIT in nuclear physics. She has received many awards for her research and work as well as several honorary doctorate degrees.
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)
Famous For: Findings in astronomy
Maria Mitchell was the very first American female to become a professional astronomer. She discovered a comet in 1847 that was aptly named “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.” Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956)
Famous For: Study of radiation
Daughter of famed Marie Curie, Irene Joliot Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the finding of artificial radioactivity. She, along with her husband Frederic, also turned boron into radioactive nitrogen as well as aluminim into phosphorus and magnesium into silicon.
Elizabeth Blackburn (1948)
Famous For: Work with telomere
Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for her discovery of telomerase which is the enzyme which replenishes telomere. Telomere is part of the end of a chromosome which protects them.

Melissa Franklin (1957)
Famous For: Particle physics studies
Melissa Franklin currently holds a position as an experimental particle physicists at Harvard University where she is Department Chair. She headed a team at the Fermi National Acceleration Lab in Chicago where they found the first signs that top quarks exist. Franklin was also the first woman to get tenure at the Harvard Physics department.
Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)
Famous For: Discovering comets
Caroline Herschel worked closely together with her brother Sir William Herschel throughout their careers as astronomers. Caroline discovered several comets, one of which, the 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, is named after her. She was the first woman scientist to be recognized by the United Kingdom. Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994)
Famous For: Protein crystallography
Dorothy Hodgkin is known for her advancement of X-ray crystallography techniques which are now implemented to figure out the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. She was given the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her findings on the makeup of vitamin B12.
Gertrude B. Elion (1918-1999)
Famous For: Development of new drugs
Gertrude B. Elion was a joint-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 “for discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.” One of her most notable creations was the development of the AIDS drug AZT. Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997)
Famous For: Work with experimental physics and radioactivity
Chien-Shiung Wu is known for her work on the Manhattan Project and her help with finding the process for separating uranium into U-238 and U-235. She has several nicknames including the “Chinese Marie Curie” and the “First Lady of Physics.”

 

[Thebobo]

Especially the liberal entertainment industry that loves to portray them as nerds, geeks, social buffoons with two left feet while elevating the singer, sports star, movie star {and today the socialite that is famous just because} as the role model.

This is the common negative stereotype that liberal media like to portray scientists as.

and to females this is the role model presented

instead of this below and our so called enlightened liberal media can't figure out why there aren't more females in STEM fields.
http://famousfemalescientists.com/

What do you call someone who is so partisain that his/her whole life revolves around us vs them and has to mention the us vs them in every single pathetic post?

OMG is that the only movie you have ever seen with a scientist?

 

[Commodus]

Especially the liberal entertainment industry that loves to portray them as nerds, geeks, social buffoons with two left feet while elevating the singer, sports star, movie star {and today the socialite that is famous just because} as the role model.

This is the common negative stereotype that liberal media like to portray scientists as.

and to females this is the role model presented

instead of this below and our so called enlightened liberal media can't figure out why there aren't more females in STEM fields.
http://famousfemalescientists.com/

Back to the Future was from the 1980s. You might want to update your cultural references a bit.

When it comes to men: Stephen Hawking himself had guest spots on multiple TV shows. And might I remind you of The Theory of Everything, an Oscar-winning movie about Hawking's early life?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is revered in the liberal community for not only making science more accessible to everyone, but refusing to tolerate the science denial that's all too common in conservative politics. And when it comes to women: his version of Cosmos focused a lot of attention on women scientists who got short shrift in the past, like Cecilia Payne and Margaret Harwood.

Amazon is helping to produce a biopic about Marie Curie.

Hell, the movie Kinsey made Kinsey's wife (a prominent researcher) an important figure.

Yes, Hollywood is still sometimes guilty of stereotypes about scientists and women, but the notion that it hasn't changed (and isn't changing) is ridiculous.

 

[SNC]

I don't believe you, and there is no record.

What makes you think I give a fuck what you think?

 

[Muse]

What makes you think I give a fuck what you think?

Nothing. But you did make an assertion about yourself and I call shens. And get this: I don't give a damn what you think about yourself, but when what you profess is stupid and wrong, I'll call you out. Smoke that.

 

[SNC]

Nothing. But you did make an assertion about yourself and I call shens. And get this: I don't give a damn what you think about yourself, but when what you profess is stupid and wrong, I'll call you out. Smoke that.

It might be funny to hear why it is you think I am not as I say, but I really... What about me "professing" my conservatism is unbelievable, wrong or stupid?

 

[Muse]

It might be funny to hear why it is you think I am not as I say, but I really... What about me "professing" my conservatism is unbelievable, wrong or stupid?

For one thing I think it's reprehensible to hang a sign on yourself. Why pigeonhole yourself, give yourself more credit. You certainly have more potential than that.

 

[cytg111]

Well we know, more and more, that disease, or traits, or most any phenotype is rarely the result of a single gene. It is usually the product of a network of genes, or TE's, various functional elements, co-factors, etc. Cutting out a single bit in that cascade to get a single, targeted result most likely leads to other problems, novel traits, good or bad. We use these tools daily, in the lab, on model organisms, because we are studying very specific problems--not because we are trying to "create new monsters."

There is a functional, investigative reason for using these tools that are highly controlled. Extrapolating their function outside into a vanity model is truly beyond the scope of its value and its efficacy. ...it's almost lunacy. I don't ignore that we will likely approach this paradigm at some point--gene therapy is kinda, barely, almost sorta maybe a thing...but not really...but maybe, but evolution is still a powerful tool, despite our more or less extending ourselves beyond its typical power ...however, we aren't also within an observable era to where we can really see functional effects..."loss of DNA" as you suggest. Our generations are simply too long to really see this kind of thing in the microsecond of existence that humans actually represent on the evolutionary scale. Certainly not in our modern era of, let's say a piddly 200-300 years. Barely 4 or 5 generations of humans! With the humble fruit fly and it's sluggish 7-20 day generation period, you want a good 15 or so generations minimum of inter-species crosses to see some established hybridizing taking hold.

The Y chromosome, the only chromosome that is actually "losing" information (the only chromosome that doesn't recombine), or DNA as you suggest, isn't really losing information any more. We used to think that, that it would disappear, but it isn't. It has shrunken more or less to its barest functional use: a mere handful of male-specific traits. It's the product of an ancient X chromosome, that males have lost. Nothing more, really, but it's pretty much where it is going to be. ....and that shrinking probably stopped near 100-125k years ago. About when proto humans became modern humans and, genetically, we really haven't changed all that much. 125k years...an actual pittance in evolutionary time.

Came back to it and dug this thing up.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ner-diy-gene-editing-therapy-crispr-interview

I dont see anyone stopping this train, the cat is out of the box, pandoras box is open.

Btw, that part about the Y chromosome loosing data is a different animal in this context IMO(IIRC the Y doesnt have the copy protection that other chromosomes do). From the time of inception(you could argue earlier) to creation of precursors for egg and sperm is the timeframe when you have unprotected DNA, code that is gonna leak and break.
Now we have these shiny new tools to mend and create in places where natural selection is no more.
One of the corner stones in human evolution; owning our own code.
I am loving it!