Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

bro read the room

If you're being pedantic, babies usually never die - they transform into an adult which is the form that dies.

Typically yes? But surviving infancy is the first step on the road to immortality (but that will require more than CRISPR... probably?)

Immortality? (rolleyes)

Hopefully after living a long and fulfilling life? Geez

Edgy! No one has ever considered the mortality of their children ever, or contemplated the difference between death before and after the realization of potential. Wow!

Genuinely don't know why this is edgy. I was trying to understand his logic

Having a child predecease you is one of the worst things that can happen to a person in general. This is a common sentiment in humans. The strange thing is that you mentioned you're trying to follow "logic." This is not logic. These are emotions.

Not only a hurtful question, but a stupid one as well. Well done.

This question is logically sensible but considered emotionally abhorrent. If you haven't been tested for autism you should consider taking a quiz.

I understand this. My question arose from the fact that it seems like he only cares about the child dying before him, not the child's death overall. It was

> the idea of being told my 1 week old baby is going to die

not

> the idea of my child dying

Care to explain why it is stupid? And what's hurtful about it, too? Deciding on a child, you KNOW it's going to day at some point

If you dont see the fundamental difference between a one week old baby dying and a 70 year old dying, you are beteft of humanity. One is a baby, one that is completely new to the world and totally innocent. The other is a person that has lives life and experienced life.

"I am simply a machine. I do not experience death as humans do. It is just a cessation of function." - Data in Star Trek The Next Generation,

Please stop with the ad personam. Can you explain how this relates to my question (and you could answer it as well)? Also, is death of an older person worth less grievance?

A parent's obligation is to try and do everything they can to make their child's life good. I think most people would agree that living more than a week is a good thing.

Only 1% of the population has autism. Presenting autism as a considerable possibility for trollish behavior isn't much different than what the parent commenter did.

I don't really know what you're going on about? We're all going to die, we all know that that's going to happen, but none of us want to suffer and most of us would like to live relatively long lives.

I am not a parent but I think if I did have a kid I would try everything I could to keep my child alive and minimize pain in my child's life.

Yes. Yes it is.

> that the child will die at some point

So what? So a father shouldn't celebrate medical advances that mean their kid doesn't have to die after a week? And if it does, they should just be like "Ah, that's life!"

The medical profession allocates scarce resources based on the amount of quality-adjusted life years it will bring.

Humans see value in living life, so cutting a life short is worse than a life that would be ending soon anyway.

I never said any of this

I didn't say you did. I was trying to understand your point, and so was inferring what you could possibly have meant with your original comment.

Oh, sorry. I definitely think a father can (should?) celebrate medical advancements like this, and definitely shouldn't undermine death like "Ah, that's life". My point is that people often worry about their children's death when they themselves are still alive. Death seems okay if it's when they don't get to see it

"questions I don't want to think about are trollish"

now, confirmed.

Death of someone whose potential was largely realized is a very different thing than the death of someone who never got a chance at the same.

I would be deeply unhappy to learn that my children won't live to old age.

Also witnessing the death of a loved one is obviously traumatic. People grieve their parents dying of old age.

What was the question? The rampant flagging here is quite annoying.

My original comment said:

> But your child will die and that's a fact. Is it only ok for it to die after you?

It’s less of

> my baby is going to die, woe is me

and more of

> have I failed my baby so much as a parent that he won’t even grow to adulthood (much less have a wonderful, happy life)

It’s not exactly a rational feeling; it’s not like this baby was going to die through lack of parental effort or care or anything else that the parents have any real control over, so it’s not like they could have done anything differently.

Nonetheless, it can make you feel like an utter failure of a parent. To some people (I admit, not everybody), that is absolutely crushing.

Is there more context to this question? I couldn't read the article because of the pay wall. But in isolation, this is a dumb question. All decent parents want their child to live as long as possible and be as healthy as possible. Is there something deeper you were trying to get at?

You are trying to frame this as pure “logic” but if you had read a single book on ethics or even philosophy you would see that’s not the case. You are basically asking “but why is good better than bad?” Acting as if you are logical but failing basic premises of logic or ethics. Any ethical framework is going to have axioms, typicslly these axioms are things that are inarguable for any person, namely its better to live than die, or to reduce suffering, etc. using basically any ethics system and pure logic you will quickly reach a conclusion that a baby living is better than one dying.

This really has nothing to do with the inevitability of death. Death is inevitable, however there is a difference between a child dying and an elderly person dying. A child has potential, they have not lived their lives. A child has not actually lived the full basic human experience, they havent had a crush, or fallen in love or married or had children or had any great successes or failures or close friends or anything, these things everyone does. An older person has, they are not a pure soul who hasnt experienced life. After 70 years you can be sad for the individual passing but happy that they have experienced life. This is why when a parent has a child they arent sad that their child will die in 80 years, but are devasted if they die at a week. The child never even had a chance. When you actually have a child, its an emotional and fulfilling experience, and to have that torn out so early is damaging.

From an empathy and emotional pov these things are so extemely basic and foundational aspects of being a human, a 10 year old from any culture on earth can undersrand this with no difficulty. And any person with even a passing familiarty with logic, ethics or philosophy will dismiss you as being earnest. Which is why people are assuming you are a troll.