> This highlights why it was so irresponsible to create CRISPR babies, and why you take things slow in science. Don't let the analogies about bio being programmable just like a computer fool you - it's not that easy or that simple. Bio is messy and complex.
> As a biologist and programmer, nothing makes me roll my eyes harder than SV types talking about biology like a computer.
Same.
But in truth, I'm glad this experiment took place, we need to adhere to the rigors that uphold the notion of incremental progress for a desirable end, and this begins by quantifying just how immense this problem really is. I'm glad that Dr. Jiankui He did it anyway.
It cost him his career and he will likely remain as a cautionary tale for all other future biologists in academia, but in Biohacking scene he is really no different then the pioneers in cell biology that often resorted to self experimentation, History in Biology is such a fickle thing: we'll laud them when the outcomes favour conventional wisdom and it accepts there methods, but infamy awaits anyone who defies to go out of its per-ordained confines. Even though we all accept that the walled garden of peer-reviewed publication is flawed and riddled with so many unnecessary things that encumber its ability to live up to its potential when it can use unorthodox or unconventional means and methods.
The Health Sciences, specifically that of genetics and cellular and molecular biology, has a history of being the punk-rock branch. Where even a monk playing with peas in his free time can help establish the notion of inheritable mutation (Mendelian genetics) based on adaption created by a British Medical school drop out who took to sea-fairing and island hopping to create the concept of what we'd eventually call Darwinian Evolution.
This is our History and as a Cell/Molecular Biologist myself, I take great pride in it and I have tried my best to live up to this reputation and apply this to my work in Agricultural and Food Sciences after abandoning my career as a lab scientist.
Dr. He got consent from the parents to undergo this procedure and move Biology in a territory it otherwise would never go for another couple of decades at the earliest. This is more than what some physicians did not too long ago, and the data we obtained from those experiments proved incredibly useful to this day.
> As a biologist and programmer, nothing makes me roll my eyes harder than SV types talking about biology like a computer.
Same.
But in truth, I'm glad this experiment took place, we need to adhere to the rigors that uphold the notion of incremental progress for a desirable end, and this begins by quantifying just how immense this problem really is. I'm glad that Dr. Jiankui He did it anyway.
It cost him his career and he will likely remain as a cautionary tale for all other future biologists in academia, but in Biohacking scene he is really no different then the pioneers in cell biology that often resorted to self experimentation, History in Biology is such a fickle thing: we'll laud them when the outcomes favour conventional wisdom and it accepts there methods, but infamy awaits anyone who defies to go out of its per-ordained confines. Even though we all accept that the walled garden of peer-reviewed publication is flawed and riddled with so many unnecessary things that encumber its ability to live up to its potential when it can use unorthodox or unconventional means and methods.
The Health Sciences, specifically that of genetics and cellular and molecular biology, has a history of being the punk-rock branch. Where even a monk playing with peas in his free time can help establish the notion of inheritable mutation (Mendelian genetics) based on adaption created by a British Medical school drop out who took to sea-fairing and island hopping to create the concept of what we'd eventually call Darwinian Evolution.
This is our History and as a Cell/Molecular Biologist myself, I take great pride in it and I have tried my best to live up to this reputation and apply this to my work in Agricultural and Food Sciences after abandoning my career as a lab scientist.
Dr. He got consent from the parents to undergo this procedure and move Biology in a territory it otherwise would never go for another couple of decades at the earliest. This is more than what some physicians did not too long ago, and the data we obtained from those experiments proved incredibly useful to this day.