Enh overselling would be if a million people died miserable deaths because they didn't test this well enough. They did test it well enough to find this. Everything is working fine.
This failure was foreseeable, as it will be next time.
Marketing evolves in markets--a disaster for science. Competition for jobs, grants and investors rewards deception of self and others. Innovators win by overselling
HT @HeatherEHeying https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/611659/turns-out-crispr-editing-can-also-vandalize-genomes/?utm_campaign=social_button&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-07-17 … via @techreview
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Sorry, no. This tech beat out competitors that were "less promising". It did so by over-promising. You will never be able to quantify the loss due to hype.
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You are off the mark here. CRISPR is an incredibly important, basically free, tool for inumerable research labs, enabling many discoveries. Competing methods orders of magnitude less efficient. The issue identified in the Nat. Biotech paper doesn't matter for many applications
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My point isn't about its value, it is about the degree to which it has been oversold, which is substantial.
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I think it would be difficult to overstate/oversell its impact in the research lab - where it is genuinely revolutionary. In terms of clinical applications, you may be right. But competing tech was stone-age by comparison. The off target issue is likely fixable - early days.
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It is now fairly commonplace to make targeted (even single nucleotide) changes in germ-lines of mice, and some other animal species using CRISPR. The technical obstacles to doing this in humans are very likely surmountable. Challenging ethical questions follow.
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Silly argument. CRISPR for gene therapy was never going to happen. There are many, many other uses of CRISPR.
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And this is what the rationalizing sounds like.
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Why so?
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Sorry, that was meant to be how so? By which I mean are you saying there aren't other uses of CRISPR besides gene therapy?
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It's been oversold across the board, which is not to say it isn't remarkable.
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Unless you know the extent to which it can be utilised in biotech and research it is impossible to know whether it is oversold.
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Yes: Wholly predictable. We underestimate the complexity of biological systems, and therefore the effects of our tinkering, at our peril. In a different lay-article addressing the same peer-reviewed research in Nature Biotechnology, there is this: https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/16/crispr-potential-dna-damage-underestimated/ …pic.twitter.com/dY7PzpbxQy
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Speaking as a fan of both you and your wife, I’m glad that I found a topic in which we strongly disagree. I think given the right amount of time and good faith, I (or someone else) could alter your opinions about biotechnology. Up for having your mind changed?
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If you were to respond in good faith to the quoted biotech spokesperson’s argument - that these non-target changes are not a surprise and certainly not unique to CRISPR - can you at least see how using words like ‘failure’ and ‘vandalism’ are ideologically clouded with bad faith?
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Introducing CRISPR-Cas9 to any cell is going to induce cellular stress due to double stranded breaks and unwanted DNA trimming catalyzed by the enzyme. What I don’t like about the primary article is that it describes nothing of the specific role of Cas9 in these outcomes...
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Many academic and industrial based labs are know this and are working to prevent these sorts of outcomes. Detrimentally, Chinese researchers aren’t regulated like they are in the US and have already began using CRISPR-Ca9 in macaques and in humans.
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The bit about "designer babies" is telling: the writer has zero clue of what is reported and what it means. The report is trivial and is a 100% expected consequence of the fact that nothing is perfect. Hint: if you make billions of trips, you will likely die in a car accident.
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Quantum computing.
//...Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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