World's first GM babies born

Wow, really. I was waiting to see where this thread was heading before commenting. I have to say I'm quiet surprised at the small minds and scare mongering. Really soulless monsters come on !!

I'm sure people were saying the same thing 30+ yrs ago with the first test tube babies, actually I'm sure the same taboos on this subject still apply.

These technologies allow man kind a wonderful gift. A child that will not be plaged with genetic problem, many a child that would be born regardless of intervention.

So I say why the hell not remove the problem gene, modify if you will and have a child born that has the best opportunity to contribute to this world.

As for "playin god". Well god doesn't always do his best does he?? What's wrong with improving or fixing his mistakes. Ok I accept this will or could be used for evil. But mostly it can only be for the better of mankind.

It's to be expected that people don't like medical advances as huge as this, its scary the unknown or untested. But please stop the 'monster and soulless child" rubbish

"Playing god" pffft... Who?

Eta: people underestimate the lengthens a women will go to to bare a child of her own. You may guess and assume but not know unless your in that position. It will become the norm and common place in let's say...30+ yrs from now.

Originally posted by texasgirl
I understand this is being used for some people having problems conceiving but why not adopt instead?

Because it's an evolutionary trait for people to want their children to have their genes. Take a look at some of the behavior around you and you'll realize that our species, no matter how intelligent and logical we become, will never outgrow our baser evolutionary programming.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


You might not be as alone as you think... its taboo to say it but and might even be borderline eugenics but if we don't step forward and explore the unknown how are humans ever going to improve, yes we could wait for boring ol' evolution or adaptation but it may not save us from our selfs, we may need gmo children resistant to the super bugs in the future to work in hospitals, gmo children with extra respiratory genes to populate our smoged cities, or gmo.children to resistant to certain cancers.....you don't know until you try one can only guess and comparing apples to.oranges is reasonable but corn to kids??? come on!!!...and the genral populous wonders why there isn't disclosure on various topics, because most react with feelings rather than the possibility of further advancements in humanity!!

reply to post by ShadeWolf


It's interesting that you call the progression of technology "natural"... I think technology is, of course, a fantastic thing.

I just think people are well within their right to be cautious about such an experiment. For the mothers who couldn't have children... im sure they will be over the moon to be able to have a child. And im sure they will have a different opinion. But it doesn't sit right with me, personally.

reply to post by GrantedBail


You "science" and "biology" people on here make me sick to think you are in favor of this in the name of science!

Humans are too dumb and unadvanced to think what they make here will turn out good! God is the only one who can create life, this is an abomination....

You all were looking for the anti-christ.......Well it looks as if there might be one here sooner than later....

You all don't understand not to mess with God, or his creation.........Yet

Originally posted by ThePhysicalExperience
reply to post by GrantedBail

 

I wonder if this will mean the babies have 78 chromosomes.

I don't thin so, and certainly hope not. There are plenty of unpleasant genetic disorders that involve humans who have extra or less chromosomes than they are supposed to.

Who knows though, I guess time will tell what's in store for these children.

Originally posted by Kevinquisitor
Some would say that we are naturally headed to the same direction as our creators. How do you think we were created?

Another civilization obtained knowledge of bio-engineering through practice, and made a sub-species to carry out menial tasks for them.

This is possible, there does seem to be stories about exactly that, but we have yet to identify the parent race, or the slave. We assume we were the slaves, and that the more advanced parent race left Earth, died, lives among us, but we don't have any solid evidence yet. It doesn't help with the hoax's and pseudo scientists that tend to push these claims either. I suppose the best evidence lays in religious texts of gods, but even those are heavily disputed as containing any facts at all.

Every time men manipulate nature it turns into crap eventually, while killing our own species one bit at a time.

Is in human nature to kill, decimate, manipulate and invade, designer babies are nothing but more crap on an already path of killing our own species.

Nature always win, when we the pest we call humanity gets out of hand for nature to deal with it will find a way to make our species another extinct one.

We are so arrogant that we think we control our world, our environment and nature, but is the other way around.

reply to post by GrantedBail


I'm fed up with these scientists fulfilling their sickest fantasies and desires at humanities expense. They don't care if the DNA or what have you is stable or not. They divulge in their sick practices without any foresight into what might become of altering the structured way of life. Life is a cycle. Mother Earth is a perfect harmony, or was, at least. Much like mutating crops, this will prove to be fruitless in the end. I definitely can see the other side of this; mother's who are unable to carry a seed can now have a child. But what people do not realize is this throws off the harmony and that person (because of previous undetermined factors) is not supposed to be having children. This is called natural selection. We allow the weak to prosper while the strong wither.

When I got out the military, I did home care pediatrics with babies on respirators. Two of my patients also had a g-tube. (feeding tube in the stomach.) They couldn't breath on their own, and some couldn't even eat on their own. Over the two years I did homecare, I took care of four babies.

Every single one of those children, every one of them, we're born outside of natural circumstances. They needed fertility doctors to make the pregnancy stick. Well it stuck, and these children's quality of life is - hard. Tinkering with science didn't do these children any favors, but the relief of having a child for the parents, is what is all important to them. They wanted a baby. Their own baby. Nothing else was going to do.

I'm all for science correcting the defected genes so that these children are born with quality of life equal to that of people who come together and their genes mesh to make a healthy child. It's heartbreaking, these children who come into the world on a forced medical procedure, they are often born - with serious complications. It might not be pretty to hear, but it's the truth. Some people have genes that won't reproduce, because they weren't meant to reproduce. Now if science can go in and fix those genes, I'm all for it, for the parents and children sake. There is nothing more terrifying, than having a child whose every breath, is a struggle to live.

Peace,
Cirque

reply to post by CirqueDeTruth


That is the ugly reality that religious groups and government doesn't tell you when they use the propaganda that babies are born "by miracle and survive by miracle" they don't want you to know that the miracle is one of long life of medical care and handicaps.

But when one make it within 1000 on their on that is a miracle the rest are just half done lab rats.

Sadly that is the truth.

Gattaca, coming to real life in your town soon.

More information on this story

You all might find this article interesting.....Apparently this happened around 2001 not 2012 and the doctor no longer works for St Barnabas (I actually live in New Jersey not far from there and did some asking and he, in fact, does not work there any longer) but he now works for a military hospital doing this same work somewhat.

reply to post by GrantedBail


Thank you for bringing this to attention.

This may sound totally insensitive but we have enough people on this planet,way too many struggling for survival on a daily basis for us to be playing God. If you can't have kids and you really wish to experience parenthood, why not adopt a child. Besides we have enough "plastic" modified fools with an identity crises running around the wealthy circles. Whats next America? Clone a puppy and if it barks too much just throw it in the bin and order another one.

Originally posted by texasgirl
Why are we doing this? Don't we have a massive overpopulation problem? I understand this is being used for some people having problems conceiving but why not adopt instead?

This is getting out of hand.

No, we don't have a massive overpopulation problem.

Thats not really true. We have resource misallocation problems and problems with corruption and greed. There is no real problem with the numbers.

As was mentioned, this story is around 12 years old.

BLACKOWT's link was particularly useful.

The process used does not result in modifed nuclear DNA, but does affect mitochondrial DNA:
Cytoplasmic Transfer

Considering there are less than 3 dozen proposed mitochondrial DNA groupings shared between 7 billion+ of us, I'm not too squicked out by this. I find human chimeras much more twitch-inducing.

TBH - I wish genetic modification which benefits the future child had been possible when I was just a twinkle in my parents' eyes. It could have saved me a great deal of psychological and physical pain.

Now - if only our ethics would keep up with our technology...

reply to post by GrantedBail


Why do we need semi-auto assault rifles?

Well... why do you need genetically modified babies?

reply to post by GrantedBail


People, please, humans already are a GMO.

Human Genetics

This doesn't come as a surprise to me. But worrying about possible events beyond my lifespan is absurd, for that, I'm thankful.

For those who don't know, link. en.wikipedia.org...

The pros are promising, but sacrifice weighs heavy "In the way we run our world." I'll weigh in with what I think.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
Let's translate this into advertisement form.

Transhumanism, the positive step forward, evolving the human race.

Large, Bold appeasing words to draw the eye, to incite hope...


For those who can afford to evolve.

Here we have our fine print. This isn't fear, this is reality purposely put out of sight, and out of mind.

See what I did there? What happened to "Human Evolution?" What happened to the promising future of the "Human Race?" You didn't expect the great divide waiting for you, patiently, on the horizon of a brave new world? Poor and dying as my ancestors were back then, where is the freedom I was promised? Am I now worse off than I was before? Naive to believe false promises, cleverly constructed monologues from figures in suits, sitting upon the throne behind big name corporations, their logos overshadowing developed nations. In the balance of black and white, roll the dice and manufacture your nightmares at your own discretion, but remember in our world, "Those capable of making such ideas reality, decide the price, and thus, decides who gets to live without disease. You benefit me, and I shall benefit you. Signed x.

To believe they give a @$#% about me, or you, or any of us for that matter, is an outright farce. Evolution shouldn't come at the end of a business deal. Just a thought...
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Simply my opinion, and nothing more.

Originally posted by evc1shop
reply to post by texasgirl

 

I would venture a guess here that the scientists performing these experiments and creating these babies specifically sought out mothers that could not conceive and that wanted to have a child of ther own. The reasoning, to me, is that most women upon hearing anything unnatural would cringe but those who can't have one would actually praise the effort and sort of be "used" by the scientists to diffuse the media criticism and promote that this is a good thing by telling their sob story about how they couldn't have baby Jane and then the good dr's stepped in and used this "miraculous" advancement in technology to create their little precious bundle of joy.

How else would you get a normal woman to embrace such a thing?

A normal woman?

Well, a normal woman wouldn't do this, because she doesn't have to, because there is no problem with her having a child.

For a woman who otherwise wouldn't have a child, yes, they would do this, because they get a child.

That's like saying only sick people go to the hospital. Well.... duh. If you are healthy you don't go to the emergency room...

Sometimes I wonder if people even think before they post.

And for the person who compared this to GM crops, care to explain why? GM crops have genetic material from OTHER ORGANISMS.

Are you chicken little's really so uninformed that you can't tell the difference between combing genetic material from two separate species, and combining genetic material from the same species? The latter is called reproduction, btw, and no it doesn't have some grand plan, regular old sexual mixing of genes screws up on occasion and the result is genetic issues. Which, due to people like you, are unlikely to ever be fixed because you little knees knock on your shoulders shake and the mere mention of "genetics"

I hope you people don't eat broccoli, cauliflower, or any other "fake" foods out thee. Those didn't exist, us humans invented them (long before modern day GM crops) by playing with genetics. Whether they knew that's what they were doing or not, it doesn't matter, that's what it was, genetic manipulation.

It makes me sad that a woman who otherwise wouldn't have her own child now CAN have a child, and is likely to get hassled by thuggish cavemen like you people. Your likely the same people who tell women they can't have an abortion, and now tell them they cannot get preggers either.

How about you just sit back and let people do their thing, OK? Leave worrying about genetic sex slaves and whatever else odd creepy thing you mind can think up to those in mental institutions, those people have nothing else to do, I hope that's not the case for you.

If you people had your way, nothing would have ever changed, we'd still be cavemen living at the brink of extinction due to your lack of ability to change and adapt with time. Maybe that would be better for you, less for you to be scared of sitting in a cave all day.

You're familiar with what happened to the dinosaurs, right?