Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be changed.

That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

One other fun part of gene editing in vivo is that we don't actually use GACU (T in DNA). It turns out that if you use Pseudouridine (Ψ) instead of uridine (U) then the body's immune system doesn't nearly alarm as much, as it doesn't really see that mRNA as quite so dangerous. But, the RNA -> Protein equipment will just make protiens it without any problems.

Which, yeah, that's a miraculous discovery. And it was well worth the 2023 Nobel in Medicine.

Like, the whole system for gene editing in vivo that we've developed is just crazy little discovery after crazy little discovery. It's all sooooo freakin' cool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudouridine

I suppose a downside (depending on your perspective) of this is that it will make people who are genetically modified in this fashion trivial to detect.

That's good if your goals are to detect genetic modification which may be considered cheating in competitive sports.

That's bad if your goals are to detect genetically modified people and discriminate against them.

I see a near future where the kind of people who loathe things like vaccines and genuinely believe that vaccines can spread illness to the non-vaccinated feel the same way about other things like genetic modification and use legal mechanisms to discriminate and persecute people who are genetically modified.

Don't be silly, the rich will want their babies to be perfect so gene editing will be legal and considered OK.

Can you explain why this is a bad thing, or is it just “”the rich” bad”?

Not OP, but presumably it's because it could cement a permanent divide between classes. We still have quite a bit of upward mobility in the US, but health is a tremendous predictor of future outcomes, so gating that to the rich is dangerous to the stability of society in that way.