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Least extreme biophysics phd (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 163 points 1 day ago

If a person's criticism is of "ethics" in general, that individual should not be allowed in a position of authority or trust. If you have a specific constraint for which you can make a case that it goes too far and hinders responsible science and growth (and would have repeatable, reliable results), then state the specific point clearly and the arguments in your favor.

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago

And we already have a safety valve for when conventional ethics is standing in the way of vital research: the researchers test on themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine

If it's that vital, surely you would do it to yourself?

It's not terribly common because most useful research is perfectly ethical, but we have a good number of cases of researchers deciding that there's no way for someone to ethically volunteer for what they need to do, so they do it to themselves. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they make very valuable discoveries. Sometimes both.

So the next time someone wantz to strap someone to a rocket engine and fire it into a wall, all they have to do is go first and be part of the testing pool.

[-] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 day ago

If it's that vital, surely you would do it to yourself?

You can't really do the kind of experiments being done genetically modifying growing infants on yourself, I imagine. Not that that should be an excuse, of course.

[-] Nursery2787@lemmy.ml 3 points 20 hours ago

You can work your way through all the different animal models, showing that you have a clear understanding of every single bio mechanism. Then start off with a small change to a human baby THAT WOULD OBVIOUSLY BENEFIT showing that nothing bad happens. Like we figured out this specific sequence leads to deformed hands, we have plenty of control babies with the deformed hands.

By this guys own logic, he didn’t even get usable fucking data. Crispr changes DNA, yeah no shit we all knew that. He gave them a slight boost to HIV. How the fuck are we supposed to find out without exposing them. A high likelihood that they would have grown up never worrying about HIV in the first place.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

The babies were born to HIV infected fathers, so the part about “never worrying about HIV in the first place” isn’t quite accurate.

But honestly, that makes it even more infuriating. There probably would have been patients that would have CONSENTED to this if given the opportunity. He probably could have done things the right way - worked with animal studies, gone through the ethics process.

Instead, he decided to move fast and break things, without regard for others autonomy or consent.