The children are 5, and he was trying to edit their genes without causing them horrible disfigurations or disease. He was “successful so far” in that the children have not yet experienced any debilitating side effects and haven’t died a painful death.
How is any of that, even in a general sense, in any way justifiable?
Progress is about movement, not destinations. Some days you move the ball forward. Some days you stop it from moving backwards. On really shitty days, you just try to slow it down moving in the wrong direction. It takes effort, and dilligence, and I agree it’s exhausting. We may not live to see the mountaintop, but we stand on the shoulders of giants and we try to make the world better for the next group. If we live our lives that way, we can die knowing it was worth being alive. Anything else is just killing time.
He cured a genetic disease. Wtf is wrong with that?!
The hell he did. You need to go back and read what his experiment was. He says he hopes to someday cure a genetic disease. In the meantime, he was just testing to make sure he could edit genes without causing long term health problems which he won’t know until the kids grow up and have them!!
Ethics are not subjective. That’s what makes them “ethics” and not “morals.”
How the hell you gonna get informed consent from a baby you created in a lab?
What the entire fuck are you talking about? There are standards for medical ethics, and this doctor ignored all of them. Vaccines and antibiotics are methodically tested on animals before they are tested on humans. They are tested with informed consent, and in scientifically rigorous conditions.
This doctor modified the genes of unborn embryos in the hopes of creating children who are immune to HIV. He took three discarded embryos, edited their genes, and then implanted them in a womb to be born.
We’ve done similar animal testing, but medical science is nowhere near declaring such interventions as safe for human trials.
The doctor is declaring it a success because the children he created in a lab for the purposes of experimentation have grown up healthy so far, and at 5 years old are showing no adverse effects from the gene editing he did on them.
I think you haven’t read the article. He’s not curing infants of genetic disorders. That’s one hypothetical application of his intervention, but that wasn’t the experiment. He’s trying to make them immune to a virus. Is he going to try to infect them with the virus? Can’t really be sure if it worked with just a blood sample, after all.
It’s weird that I have to even argue this with somebody. Who defends this guy?
The children are healthy so far and his admirable intentions don’t mitigate the fact that he’s experimenting on humans. Even if he is successful (and I hope for the sake of the children he was), it’s still unethical to try.
Like if I wanted to test out my new fireproof spray by spraying it on some puppies and then setting them on fire, it wouldn’t be ethical even if the spray worked.
What a load of horseshit.
There was nothing unconstitutional about the first executive action to cancel student debt. Such action was explicitly permitted by the HEROES Act, and only a bad-faith interpretation by an illegitimate court consisting of corrupt justices was able to find otherwise.
And there’s nothing wrong with this attempt, either. It’s just that Conservatives don’t want the government helping people in an election year. Debt cancellation is universally popular and only negatively impacts the politicians who aren’t in favor.
We’re at the restaurant. The waiter is walking towards the table. The menu is in front of you. It’s the dry chicken, or a rusty fork in your eye. Those are the choices. You don’t have to like it, but you will choose or the choice will be made for you. You can complain to the chef, but if you don’t order the dry chicken, you will get the rusty fork stabbed into your eye. You can demand we go to a better restaurant next time, but right now you’re either going to eat some dry chicken and look for ways to make the best of that situation, or someone is going to stab your eye with a mangled fork that is almost certainly covered in tetanus.
When Harris is President, and Trump is in jail, we shall discuss the next election. Until then, you’re either with Harris or you’re with Trump.
Remember, this is what Conservatives are good at. They don’t bitch and moan that their candidates aren’t perfect. They bitch and moan that reality isn’t what they want, and consistently demand that politicians cater to their brand of narcissism. Conservatives have installed acolytes at every level of government, in every judicial system across the country, on every school board and election board. They have achieved this by unwavering devotion to make the world benefit themselves at every turn. They have lost more battles than they have won, but they don’t need to win every time. They just need reasonable people to grow tired and give in a little. That’s how you end up controlling six Supreme Court Justices, two of the three most populous states, and most of the religious institutions in the country.
Slams! Dut duh duh, dut duh duh. Let the boys be boys!
[L]ook for something to kill
I had not thought about it, but I didn’t have any interest in the Biden/Trump debate. I knew what to expect, and Biden’s disappointing showing just made me bored with the whole thing.
I’m actually excited to see Harris pick Trump apart tomorrow, and I hope she doesn’t take her foot off his neck the whole time.
I agree that she’s not as progressive as I wish she was. But the overton window is stuck on a fascist dictator, so I’m going to vote for Kamala and we’ll call that progress.
I welcome her efforts, and agree with her that Trump is a cancer upon the party.
But Trump is not some invader to the party come to conquer. He is the natural product of a brand of political narcissism that she’s supported and espoused her entire public life. She’s like a tobacco executive with metastatic lung cancer, who has suddenly realized that cancer is bad but doesn’t think people need to stop smoking. They just need to cut out the cancer, and then they can go back to enjoying the smooth taste of Conservativism.
She’s brave to go against the party. She’s smart to recognize the opportunity she has to reclaim control of the GOP by helping Kamala and the Dems. If Trump loses, and the Dems take the House and Senate, she can point to the loss and say “See, I told you so.” But anyone that falls for that line has a very short memory.
This reads like a Baptist minister discovering a boyfriend his daughter’s room, and then losing his shit like the boyfriend hadn’t been invited in. “How could you dupe my sweet, innocent political party with your seductive money and influence!”
If this pisses you off, good. Because this is the legal system we have, and it’s always been this corrupt. It’s always been this unjust, this skewed, and it will continue to be until we demand a change.
Gross. But you’re right, denying it just prolonged the news cycle, and creates an incentive for someone to prove it. The guy used to visit a store to masturbate, there’s no chance he was careful enough to avoid creating some evidence. He should just ignore the story and try to move passed it.
Doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jd-vance-national-abortion-ban-soros-1235062748/
“No fair using the entirety of what we said to make us look like shitbags!”
The penalty for filming in Arlington is a fine and up to 6 months in jail. Jail time is very unlikely, and there’s no indication of what the fine would/should be, but the bad press would be worse than any financial penalty.
Assault is a more serious crime, but the victim would need to cooperate with the prosecution. I don’t know if “press charges” is the correct term, but the victim is afraid of retaliation, so I doubt any of it goes anywhere.
I’ve just been doing it manually every time I see it. It’s probably getting old, but then that’s the point, innit?