Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

Careful with qualifiers there. I genuinely believe that vaccines can spread illness to the non-vaccinated, since it has happened many times and is well-documented. For example, it's why only the inactivated (aka "dead" virus) polio vaccine has been used in the US since 2000.

I'm not arguing about whether the risks of the attenuated virus outweigh the benefits. I think the data are very clear there. (Heh -- and I'm sure the vast majority of people will agree with that statement, even if they disagree on what the clear answer is....)

It's just that one shouldn't mock a belief without including the necessary qualifiers, as otherwise you're setting up an argument that can be invalidated by being shown to be factually incorrect.

As for genetic modification of humans, IMO there are a lot of very good reasons to be wary, most of them social. Fatal hereditary conditions are obviously an easy call. What about autism (not saying there's a genetic link there to use, just a what if)? Or other neurodivergence? Like being a troublemaker in class? Or voting for the party that doesn't control the medical incentive structure? Heck, let's stick with the fatal hereditary conditions, and say the editing does not affect germ cells. Is it ok if the human race gradually becomes dependent on gene editing to produce viable offspring? Or let's say it does extend to germ cells. The population with resources becomes genetically superior (eg in the sense of natural lifespan and lower medical costs) to those without, creating a solid scientific rationale for eugenics. Think of it as redlining carved into our blood.

I don't think discrimination against the genetically modified is the only potential problem here.

As humans, we'll deal with these problems the way we've dealt with everything else transformational. Namely: very, very badly.

I mean, I feel like autism is a terrible example here, it's not just some quirky personality trait, it's a reality people live with that runs the gamut from difficult to completely debilitating. Even the more mild forms of autism cause extreme difficulty in many aspects of life. If that was curable or preventable, that'd be great.

If it turns out some pathogen or chemical made me autistic, regardless of whether or not I could be cured as an adult, I'd have certainly preferred to live the reality where I had been as a child.

Sure, the purpose was to illustrate a slippery slope, and curing autism is meant to be more obviously good than abolishing all forms of neurodivergence but less obviously good than fixing fatal hereditary diseases.

I'm not going to claim that I know the perfect place to draw the line.

I think a better reason autism is a bad example is that part of its definition is that it is a consequence of fundamental brain structure and development (differentiating it from other psychological disorders which are acquired and more malleable). These aren't things you will "undo" with some gene edits. The whole brain has developed in a different way. Short of re-growing them a new brain you aren't going to change that (assuming you wanted to).

>...and say the editing does not affect germ cells.

To me the wildest scenarios take this off the table.

> vaccines can spread illness to the non-vaccinated, since it has happened many times and is well-documented

Nothing in medicine is certain. Nearly any medical treatment has a small chance it could kill you. There’s a small, but non-zero chance of a lethal infection even if they injected you with saline, odds that rise dramatically in less than sanitary conditions.

Ironically the use of the attenuated oral vaccine for polio was because of the risk of infection in places where the availability of sterile syringes was hard to guarantee. It’s all about the relative odds.

I think scientists have believed for a while that any type of “autism cure” would need to be extremely early intervention for maximum effectiveness for exactly this reason. I remember speaking with a team that was studying detection of autism in the womb for this exact reason.

At one time organ transplants were considered an ethical grey area (perhaps they still are by some), but I think most people now would consider it better to save lives in such a manner when it only brings help to those who need it and it's possible to, compared to the alternative. Having the capability may mean that things like organ theft now exist, but the benefits around the world outweigh the nastiness that has always come as part of human nature.

I agree that organ transplants are a net positive, and in fact are far less susceptible to unintended consequences (there's a pretty low limit to the number of organs and operations involved, for one.)

I also think that gene repair is a net positive. I would just like us to, for once, look ahead and foresee some of the foreseeable consequences and act to mitigate them before the bulk of the damage is done.

I don't think it's necessary to slow the development; gene therapy is too desperately needed, and slowing it down so that we can prepare is not going to cause us to prepare.