Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
An update on gene medicine: Speaking the words of life to make the blind see
So in the last few years there have been some serious advancements in genetic medicine that I have recently learned about. My first reaction was surprise that I didn’t hear about these earlier while being ceaselessly bombarded by political minutiae. Every darn day it’s Trump and Biden and Congress not doing anything. But while that’s happening or not happening as per Congress, scientists and doctors are boldly healing diseases that have never been healed before. It’s like Star Trek up in the lab.
Geordi La Forge (WikiMedia Commons)
Over the last four years or so, treatments for visual impairment/blindness using genetic engineering have been on the rise and are producing effective results. Now blindness doesn’t mean a person lives in complete darkness. Most blind people can sense light to some degree and some can even make out shapes. I heard from a blind person that no two blind people are the same in what they can and cannot sense. In addition to blindness there are many other kinds of visual impairments caused by genetic diseases that can also effectively be treated by genetic engineering. So while it is a slight exaggeration to say that we are making the blind see, we are as a species making great progress towards that goal.*
I can’t get into all the specific diseases and treatments for the purpose of brevity but this BBC video gives the basic idea of what many treatments are doing.
Essentially, a benign virus is inserted into a person’s eye that changes the DNA of the cells in the eye. The defective DNA is replaced with better DNA and then those cells function much better. This is a gross oversimplification of course but those are the basics.
For many people on Ricochet this may seem neat but not all that world altering. Researchers have been figuring out new things for Doctors to shoot into sick people to help them for around a century. It happens all the time.
But I can remember that when I was growing up, I learned that genetic diseases could never be cured, only treated because we can’t change people’s DNA. This was treated as an unalterable fact of biology and reality. You could change the chemicals in the body and you could do surgery to correct anatomy but you couldn’t change anything with genetic diseases. So this common usage of gene therapy feels like alchemy to me. This isn’t a better version of new technology – this is a radically new technology that is quickly improving.
My point is that we live in an age of medical wonders as well as political blight, and we should focus a little more on the positive. Be more like this guy who saw a sunset for the first time in years.
*Glory to an improved mankind!
Published in General
I keep thinking of Leonard Cohen’s lines:
And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,
and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.
Just remember, as we learned from those who protested cochlear implants etc because they thought it would destroy “Deaf Culture,” there are people who oppose cures for blindness because they think it will destroy “Blind Culture.”
I am aware about the Deaf Culture but I have never heard of a Blind Culture equivalent.
Do you know that to be true, or are you just assuming it works the same way?
I ask because I can understand how a shared language binds a community together and separates it from outsiders. The deaf community has such a shared language. Blind people do not in any sense that I know about.
This post reminds me: Has Biden cured cancer yet?
I think he is hoping a revival of “the king’s touch.”
Let’s start with Braille.
Is it a different language, or is it a different communication technology?
It could be figured as “just” a different technology, but it could be considered as a different language in the same ways as other written vs spoken languages, for example. A “felt” language would be bound to have some particular aspects. Just off the top of my head, how would one “shout” or “whisper” or “quote” etc, in Braille? The issue of capitalization is also unique with Braille. And there also appear to be some multi-letter “phrases” or sounds, and even some whole words, that can be represented by a single symbol.
Different systems of writing are something, but likely not enough to make Braille into the basis for a separate language of the kind that can form and maintain a community. The deaf sign languages have their own grammars, for example. (American Sign Language is more similar to French sign language than to English language, due to the common origins of the French language and ASL. That should give clues as to the separateness of American Sign Language from English.)
However, you still haven’t answered my question: “Do you know that to be true, or are you just assuming it works the same way?” If you know it to be true, then my own understanding is lacking in some important ways.
I know there were people who opposed ALL “cures” for things such as deafness and blindness – as well as homosexuality – for that reason. Rush talked about it some too, back when he was getting his own cochlear implants. Whether their opposition “makes sense” or not, is not the issue. And neither may be as strongly-voiced now, for whatever reason. But they definitely existed, and probably still do even if not as widely known or as strongly expressed. Remember, the left is much about “identity” and “blind” is another “identity” they can capitalize on.
I didn’t know that the deaf culture opposition to cochlear implants had anything to do with leftism. The American right places as much value on identity and identity politics as does the left, even though they don’t tend to like the leftist language about it.
You think people on the Left and on the Right – not necessarily the politicians, but the “regular people” – would be equally opposed to, for example, some kind of genetic cure for homosexuality?
Based on what?
No. They each have their own identity markers and virtue signals.
Such as?
It’s easier to mention them when they appear on Ricochet, which I’ve done, than to remember just what they were. I’ll be sure to speak out more loudly next time.
You can’t think of even one genetic-type malady that conservatives don’t think should be cured because that would be bad for their political ambitions?
It shouldn’t be difficult to come up with ONE.
Unless… Maybe there aren’t any?
??? Why would I say there are no magnetic truck stops? Or whatever it is you’re talking about.
Glory to an improved mankind?
I’d start by giving the glory to God. We, after all, did not create the human eye. Nor can it be explained by evolution.
While an improvement in vision is a major advance in our science and medicine, it does not involve changing germline DNA (i.e, changing “defective” DNA in gametes or embryos). However, that is in the realm of possibility, and has been demonstrated for a cardiac hypertrophy gene. Unfortunately, it took the creation and destruction of some 60 odd human embryos to demonstrate the success of the CRISP cas9 procedure. That was reported a year or so ago (no taxpayer funding used). The ethics of creating, then destroying 60 human embryos to demonstrate a technical capability to “cure” a gremlin genetic disorder (i.e., the disorder will not only not be present in the individual, it will not be present in any of his descendants) is fraught in and of itself. . That is certainly a genetic cure. Deciding when and how to use such “cures” will be problematic, to say the least. There is now an approved method of doing just that regarding Sickle Cell disease. It is an involved process, not without risk. But it is preferable to Linus Pauling’s “yellow star” program of screening for sickle trait and placing a visible brand on affected individuals so that they don’t marry and produce infants with sickle cell disease. Or Pauling’s insistence that any fetus with sickle cell disease be aborted. That was over 50 years ago.
At this point there exists the capacity to “cure” any number of genetic disorders, even things that may not be critical, such as partial red green colorblindness. There also theoretically exists the capability to modify genes to supposedly produce humans with greater longevity, greater overall health, greater intelligence? Such thinkers as Yuval Harari have extolled such capacities (Homo Deus), with the bizarre idea of making ourselves into gods.
Given our history with such things as Eugenics, and the resurgence of interest in producing “superior” human beings (in every way except morally), I am inclined to temper my enthusiam. There is a strong resurgence of Eugenic thinking among our scientific and cultural elite. I suspect that the Chinese as I write are creating humans with defective myostatin genes, which leads to a marked increase in muscle mass, athletic ability, and possibly almost cyborg type soldiers. Or at least olympic athletes that will dominate.
Correcting disease is one thing. Producing “superior” humans is another altogether.
What are you on about? Are you aware of what this post/thread is about?
I certainly thought I was until you came up with that last one.
It’s certainly a human accomplishment to restore sight to the blind. If a doctor saved my life, my primary thanks are going to him, even though I will thank God said doctor was available to help me.
Germline DNA modification could end a number of genetic disorders without the brutal culling of current eugenic methods. I am much less pro-life than you, but I think it is terrible to view abortion as a cure to genetic diseases. That’s part of why I support genetic engineering. I also think we should do it, as opposed to out-sourcing it to tyrannical countries.
It’s interesting to consider when to draw the line for genetic modifications. We all know some people are natural athletes, or are resistant to diseases. If you engineer for those phenotypes, you aren’t making someone “superior”, just someone who had a run of really good luck.
Do you think we’ll ever be able to do genetic repairs to an individual that carry on in their progeny?
Why not. You just use the same technology on the patient’s reproductive system. When they produce gametes the gametes have those genetic repairs. Less ethically troublesome than IVF.
For female egg production, it might need to be done when the female is still an embryo. But wherever it’s done, inserting something into the existing chromosomes is more complicated than just adding some DNA or RNA into a cell to hijack its machinery.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about people working on it, though. It’s a process that occurs without modern technology, too. I’ve seen estimates for the amount of human DNA that probably originated as virus genetic material and got incorporated into the human genome where on rare occasion it happens to do something useful, and was surprised at how much it was.