I have for long thought that when you’re born, you got your DNA and there’s nothing you can do about. If your disease was heritable and incurable, and you got the wrong genes, there’s no hope. But recently scientists have found a way to edit genes, and although the method is both young and immature, it shows promise.
I wonder, in your opinion, is there a small chance editing genes could become a treatment in the distant future?
I doubt in our lifetime. Probably in the next lifetime though.
Oh man its a huge chance…due to evolution theres upgrade slots so to speak. You wouldnt even have to edit the dna thats already there just insert something that cancels out the sz onto one of these free spots…
I think that this is absolutely a potential. I don’t see it in the distant future - but in the next 10 to 15 years.
I think its sooner than most people think:
Some relevant news articles below:
"“We all kind of marvel at how fast this took off as a technology,” Doudna told Business Insider. “There’s just a really tremendous feeling of excitement for the potential of CRISPR.”
Now a biotechnology startup founded by Doudna and other early CRISPR pioneers has announced plans to use CRISPR in adult humans as early as 2017. The startup, Editas Medicine, plans to use it treat a rare form of blindness.
Other gene editing technology exists too. A rival method was just used to tweak a child’s genes to cure her leukemia, as Sharon Begley reported for STAT.
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and - as Wired notes - we have to be very careful. But for serious diseases and disorders I think the case is pretty easily made:
This is just beautiful, SzAdmin. Human trials for blindness already next year!
Yes - I’m sure the technology is being tested and used in a lot of labs now around the world. It could help a lot of people.
as they say…
Technical details aside, Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people. “These are monumental moments in the history of biomedical research,” Baltimore says. “They don’t happen every day.”
We could have all the super powers our planet offers. …you could never freeze thanks to the dragonfly…never have to eat anything other than sunlight thanks to plants…
I agree with SzAdmin i think there will be huge changes by 2030. There was news a few weeks ago that they may have cured HIV with Crispr.
Rchrd,
If you can search on the internet to find researchers who are interested in, or doing work on, gene therapy and mental illness - post here and I’ll see if I can get some information from them on how this might apply to our area.
i also want more info on gene therapy…
how if affects mental health…
There’s a saying that goes “if an expert says it cannot be done, get another expert”. But I am not sure I can handle the disappointment if this is said to be a dead end.
In a quite recent article, it said that “when it comes to schizophrenia and other complex conditions, individual genes have only a weak and inconsistent association (which is why it’s often silly to look for single-gene factors). But groups of interacting gene clusters create an extremely high and consistent risk of illness — in this case, on the order of 70% to 100%. It’s nearly impossible for people with these precise genetic variations to avoid the condition.”
My light at the end of the tunnel is the possibility that cancelling out such genes, either one by one or all of them, could be a way out. If each patient becoming a well functioning citizen would mean a gain in the million dollar class, and there’s millions of such patients, this should be something investors should be willing to gamble on. Or the government for that matter.
Scientists are known to be conservative when they speak, but I don’t think anyone would know for sure that it wouldn’t work, since it’s never been tried before, and the technique is still in its cradle…
I thought that was Cancer? I don’t know I just heard about it from someone who heard about it.
I sure hope so, but I don’t know. But the sooner investors would get their eyes open that there’s potential here, even if it’s a long shot, the better.
It certainly raises some interesting possibilities. What if they could edit genes to produce obedient, fanatical soldiers? What if they decided they wanted some nine foot tall basketball players? There certainly is a strong ethical impetus to destroy genetic diseases. What if they wanted to weed out antisocial personalities? They’re getting to the point where they can manipulate cells enough to stop the aging process, and enable people to live 300 years with the body of a twenty-five year old. Certainly raises some interesting possibilities. Think how many books you could read in 300 years.
Nuclear technology can also be used for both good and less good reasons. But I think such discussions are beyond the scope of this thread. I sure hope they go ahead with the planned study to cure a form of blindness, and I sure hope this would be utilized against other diseases as well.
Another new gene therapy effort is moving ahead:
EU Regulatory Panel Recommends Approval Of Glaxo’s Gene Therapy For Bubble Boy Disease
They would have to be careful that this kind of thing doesn’t lead to a resurgence of eugenics. With schizophrenia and other serious mental illness it very much assumes genetics is the primary,overwhelming factor.
I hear you. But I think the other way around.
The current status is that patients are allowed to have children. This is despite that, according to Wikipedia, if one parent is affected the risk is about 13% and if both are affected the risk is nearly 50%. And “estimates of heritability vary because of the difficulty in separating the effects of genetics and the environment; averages of 0.80 have been given.”
Either if genes play a small or big part, if there is a possibility to cancel out such genes in live humans, that would strengthen the case against eugenics (if what you mean by eugenics is denying patients the right to have kids). But this is a bit beside the point.
hey @Rchrd .i also do have hope from broad institute…which is primarily biggest donated by sir ted stanley …
so far they have found 1st genetic or biological cause of sz…
lil old video is here…