[jddj]

If that was your interpretation, maybe I could have been more clear.

I don't think gene editing of embryos is necessarily a bad thing (nor are there any international treaties as far as I'm aware), I was simply throwing it out there as an obvious example of something we're likely capable of in this space since many countries, including the US, already have laws which prohibit it.

My personal opinion leans more towards a moratorium while the issues with the technology and ethics are ironed out, because of the inherent complexity in that domain.

The linked article touches on the difficulties in achieving gene drives in mammals, and it would be easy to demonstrate that the scale of ethical concerns dwarfs those for attempting to eliminate malaria over a few mosquito generations and only after careful consideration of the consequences and implementation of failsafes. Nobody is concerned that CRISPR will only be available to socioeconomically advantaged mosquitos, for example.

Edit: trying to use fewer parentheses

[nightwing]

My point is that "ethics issues" with things like CRISPR and cloning are not real issues, and people talking about them do more harm than good.

For instance if not for multiple countries banning human cloning, we could already have human clones, which would have been very useful in studying how much of human behavior is determined by genes. There already should have been multiple clones of prominent scientists like Feynman, Gell-Mann, Penrose.

[jddj]

As great as it might be to snap our fingers and arrive at that reality, between here and there there's a big dirty transition period riddled with potential human suffering.

Given that a significant number of people identify many ethical and technological issues with human CRISPR, and that public opinion is far from reaching a consensus (if anything, my intuition tells me that in the West your stance is in the minority for people who are thinking about the problem), I'd say that talking about it is actually likely to do more good than harm.

[teh_infallible]

The ethical issue has to do with medical consent. It terrifies me that so many here on HN think it’s ok to experiment on an unborn human being. “Hey, I just gave you cancer before you were born, but hey, it’s all in the name of science, so it’s all good.”

[nightwing]

The decision on risk/benefit can be handled only by parents and doctors, not some bureaucrats or hn commenters who do not know enough about the context. "Hey, you are going to be deaf, because someone decided that 10% increased chance of cancer in 50 years is too serious" is not much better than your example, especially considering that in 50 years cancer will most likely be treatable anyway. (for context https://futurism.com/five-couples-crispr-babies-avoid-deafne...)