this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 9 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (4 children)

To all the commenters saying this guy was a saint for doing what he did, would you say the same thing had the outcome been disastrous? Babies born without HIV, but with constant excruciating pain or mental deficiency?

He took an extraordinarily reckless and permanently life-altering, for good or bad, risk with children's lives.

edit: spelling

[–] Snowclone@lemmy.world 2 points 23 minutes ago

A lot of geneticist are DEEPLY against trying these things. This guy's lucky so far in that his actions haven't caused serious problems, we really don't know how adjusting genetics can backfire, but according to the professionals the risks are very very high.

[–] ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

He also did actual time for it and everyone involved was banned from practicing medicine in China, even despite the fact they are the core of CRISPR technology at the moment, they still care enough about ethics to not support this.

Seems like a case of one rogue team of people deciding what they where doing was for the moral good and then the state checking them.

We can still see the initial intentions as being morally good, and the outcome of it being gray but punished; its a balanced perspective; a lot of people here seem to have the impression it was approved by the CPC when it wasnt.

[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

We can still see the initial intentions as being morally good

Ah, yes... the pavement of the road to Hell.

[–] ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 hours ago

Good thing the CPC put a roadblock on that path and diverted us back into the morally grey middle road then.

[–] Mustakrakish@lemmy.world -4 points 2 hours ago

Sure lets just torture all the poor people so a handfull of rich fucks can afford stem-cell-zinfandel, never mind that 100,000 people were tortured and killed, at least we discovered a new anti-wrinkle cream. If you don't think that's what it always is in practice you're delusional. Shit like that is just as likely to cause mass disease or our extinction than it is to discover something useful, perhaps even more so

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today -1 points 3 hours ago

This is the moral dilemma.

The whole Grimdank universe of just randomly testing things on people to make humans genetically more superior will absolutely improve life for future humans. No question. On paper anyways.