this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago

I'd like to get in to genetic engineering. When I came across his story while researching crispr, I sympathized with him. He did the experiment in what to me is a moral way. Just going on memory it was like 'take 4 embryos, edit two, keep parents in the loop and ask which embryo they want'. Complain all you want, but he did no wrong; it's the public and system that then wronged him. So yeah, of nearly anyone, he is the one who most gets to say 'ethics ruining science'. It's ironic because there are tons and tons of unethical science activities done literally every day. But for those to be ignored and instead ethics police to hit him when he did all his stuff morally and resulted probably in two extrahealthy kids... Yeah I agree with him. I think everything should be done morally, but if he is going to be hit like that under the guise of 'ethics' then nah. 'ethics' needs to be replaced by morals and decency. Literally horrifically murdering people (war) is legal and accepted while him using science, AND CORRECTLY, to protect people from liferuining diseases got the treatment it did? nah. I hope he continues growing and doing more genetic engineering and this time doesn't share a single thing with the public. He should never give the people that treated him like that a single piece of data. There are ways to bypass the patent thickets if he isn't selling what he does, especially if he shares no info about it. I support him.

prepares for 200 downvotes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

my type of guy. And he still does his research to help people even with the public treating him like it does.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

Dr He's dream of baby gladiators cannot be hindered by whiny-don't-make-the-babies-fight so-called "ethics"!

Imagine what the world has lost

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

Watch Star Trek

[–] [email protected] 91 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

I think a really exceeding important clarification here is he edited the genomes of human embryos, not babies. Babies are already born humans, embryos are a clump of cells that will become a baby in the future. I do not condone gene editing without consent, which is what he did, and yes there is lots of questionable ethics around gene editing but he did NOT experiment on babies. This should be made clear especially in a science based community, memes or not.

Implying that babies are the same thing as embryos is fundamentally incorrect, in the same way a caterpillar is not a butterfly and a larva is not a fly, the distinction is very important.

EDIT To add further detail - One of the reasons this is so unethical is that he experimented on human embryos that were later born and became babies. His intent was always to create a gene edited human, but the modifications were done while they were embryos, not live babies.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 hours ago

Seems like splitting hairs, at best, for you to claim the three edited human babies who were born from this experiment aren't part of the experiment. He fully aimed to study them and they are still being scientifically monitored.

He also had a bizarre contract he made the parents sign that if they changed their minds they had to reimburse him the financial costs of the experiment.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I have talked to some Americans who claims that sperm + egg = baby and I want to place an egg in front of them and ask them what it is and if they say anything other than a chicken, I will laugh.

Also, thank you for the distinction. Kind of insane to call embryos babies. It is shit like this that makes me feel like my brain is shrinking when I talk to some people online.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

They became babies when they were born with experimental modified genomes without their consent

[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 hours ago (12 children)

I understand what you're saying, but his experiment allowed the embryos to come to term and be born as human babies. Scientists have worked with human embryos before and avoided similar outcry by not allowing them to develop further (scientific outcry, not religious). Calling his work an experiment on human embryos ignores the fact that he always intended for his work to impact the real lives of real humans who would be born.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 hours ago

Real humans who would be born and could potentially have children, passing whatever genetic edits they have (intended and off-target) into the gene pool.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I totally agree, I do believe what he did was unethical and criminal.

I also believe the clarification on if the experimenting was done on live human babies or if it was done on human embryos is exceeding important. Implying that this was done on live human babies is basically misinformation. Just look at the rest of this thread and how people are talking about this, everyone is discussing this as if its was living, breathing, crying babies that were experimented on, not a clump of cells before they have any type of living functionality.

If anything what you said should be included, he experimented on embryos with the intent of them being born and becoming babies. But it most definitely should not be "he carried out medical experiments on babies", because that is patently untrue.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I disagree and think you are getting too caught up in semantics in this case. Can I put cats and mice in separate rooms, with the intention that the cats can find a way into the other room, and claim I am only doing an experiment on the cats, even once they get through and start killing the mice?

What if I had a woman take some kind of drug during the first 3 weeks of pregnancy, with the explicit purpose of seeing what it does to the baby when it's born. Can I say, no, no, I was experimenting on a woman and a zygote/blastocyst, not a baby!

You don't get to just remove yourself from the result. If he did something that made the baby be born in a way that's different to how it would have been born, in my mind that is a direct experiment on the baby, just via indirect means.

You can say the title isn't specific enough for your liking, but by my standards it isn't wrong or misinformation. He conducted an experiment that directly affected the lives of babies. That IS an experiment on the baby, regardless of the method used to perform the experiment.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

Its is semantics, but also this is science and semantics are important. If we want to get really in to semantics we should say the experiments were done on humans, as the embryo, fetus, baby, toddler, pre-teen, teenager, and adult are all phases of the human life cycle and this experiment was done to produce genetically modified humans. Even CRISPR experiments refer to the organism model when experimenting, not the life cycle phase, unless it is specifically part of the experiment IE: in vitro vs In vivo

Saying the medical experiments were done on babies specifically is for the shock value, and it works, look at the reactions it gets. This should be a hotly debated topic, people should be concerned about the ethics of gene editing and how it is regulated. This experiment was not ethical in anyway and it was criminal, but using hyperbole to inflate the shock value for engagement is also not the way to communicate how unethical and criminal this is.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

I think the only thing that deserves clarification is if he broke ethics to do biomedical research. It sure seems he did. There's ethics approval in any study for a good reason.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Mengele vibes right there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

That borders on Holocaust denial to even try and compare the two

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Well, the nazis did make a lot of scientific progress…

/s, just in case

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

I am pretty sure that NASA would unjokingly agree with you on that.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

"Speed limits are holding me back from getting from a to B in as little time as possible" yeah, and they reduce the likelihood of injuring/killing a people in the process.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

yeah, but, consider: I really want to get to point B. like, so badly. and I'm pretty sure I'm a good driver.

[–] [email protected] 141 points 20 hours ago (15 children)

Ethics are supposed to throttle human activity. That's their fucking job. That guy is a goddamn sociopath.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

not necessarily throttle, but divert into more ethical directions.

the nazi twin 'experiments' for example, were monstrous but produced like no useful data.

atrocities do not necessarily mean better science. sometimes you're just being an edgelord.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I think he does it ironically tbh, his posts are all over the place, from making fun of Europe for regulating everything to then saying that gene editing should be regulated by international laws to then saying ethics are holding back humanity, then just saying he loves austin texas, then stating that he will not develop bio weapons lmao.

Stanford cup and CPC flag, he does have a sense of humour tbh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago
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