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The first early human eggs from stem cells(conception.bio)
83 points by dsr12 3 hours ago | 28 comments
londons_explore 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc.

The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human.

I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation, gut bacteria passing from mother to child, selection of the 'correct' egg or sperm out of millions, or something new and un-discovered etc.

And if those effects are bypassed with artificial conception, we might end up with humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc.

The effect will be small for each generation, but after 5-10 generations of a combination of artificial and natural conception you could end up with meaningful loss of fitness - or perhaps a lack of gain of fitness that would have otherwise occurred.

noosphr 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc.

You'd have a rather different opinion if you had to squeeze out a water melon out of your genitals.

warent 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You’re layering several hypotheticals on top of each other, which leads to progressively distant possibilities. Good on you for caring about humans though

tskj 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think this is decisively the wrong way to think about it. Yes, layering hypotheticals like that means that any one scenario is extremely unlikely to be the thing that gets you, but that doesn't mean the shape of the problem is wrong.

It's like arguing with someone who doesn't believe in using seat belts when driving. "Why should I put them on?" they say, and when you try to explain what might go wrong they won't listen to any explanation that isn't a hyper-concrete hypothetical. So finally you give in and say, "Well, when we get onto the highway, a truck might lose control and hit us", and their response is "I don't think that's very likely, it seems highly improbable that today we will be hit by a truck when getting on the highway".

I agree with OP that this seems like the kind of thing where the unknown unknowns are so great that the correct approach is serious caution, and that any demand to know exactly how or why it will go wrong, falls in the trap where every specific example is very unlikely to be the thing that goes wrong, but still in total there's like an 80% chance that it goes horribly wrong. I don't know if we have the terminology to talk about this kind of failure mode. "You shouldn't play God" maybe? At least you shouldn't ask for specific examples of how things could go wrong, if you're going to turn around and claim each one highly improbable.

zigzag312 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But many of the listed hypotheticals are not dependent (on top) on others, and since there are multiple that actually increases probability of an undesirable outcome.

Davidzheng 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

But it reads to me like the thread parent's point is that there are many unknown risks which can exist? I also wonder about long term effects to the health of the genome from IVF and other forms of fertility treatment as infertility could be acting as some sort of protection mechanism of the genome. But I suppose such objections form a continuum which extends to treatment of all genetic diseases or diseases in general--all of which probably applies some evolutionary pressure towards more healthy individuals but which we as a society have to balance against wellbeing of individuals and their human rights.

tskj 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This seems distantly impossible right now, but for this reason, I predict that any species that survives this kind of "great filter" effect of accidentally messing up their genome long term, will develop a strong taboo against fertility treatments and treatment of genetic diseases.

Like it seems horrible not to help the individual, when we have the technology to; but it's also horrible to hurt your species by selfishly propagating faulty genes. And this seems like the kind of problem cultural taboos are good at solving, and I don't really see any other mechanism by which a species can avoid this filter trap.

londons_explore 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

There is precedent for infertility being beneficial for a species in the animal kingdom. For example the vast majority of ants and bees are infertile. Yet the infertile ones still contribute meaningfully to society.

Humans could easily be successful with a similar model, and did so in the past before fertility treatments.

close04 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

As easily as communism: theoretically sound but undermined by human psychology. Natural evolution is slow and gives the species time to adapt to anything. Artificial evolution by comparison is very fast. But the real issue is that humans have intelligence, individuality, and egotism. We don’t see ourselves as just part of a collective.

gnabgib 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Related (2021) Turning stem cells into human eggs (97 points, 102 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29040823

Schlagbohrer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The origins of stem cells for use in the biosciences and in cosmetics are extremely brutal and should be illegal. Sandra Bullock explains it better than I could: https://youtu.be/PwO3TEj9-5g

misiek08 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How hard you have to work to break scroll on web page? Nice article, but going through it was a technical nightmare.

Can we stop adding unnecessary JS to website to stop global warming by calculating AND ALTERING SCROLL?

happymellon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Odd. It was a designers dream (and a readability nightmare) but I didn't have an issue with scroll.

Firefox on Samsung S23, not exactly a new or a powerful phone but rendered it fine.

tskj 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

Why is it a designer's dream to hijack and control my scrolling experience? The scroll they've implemented is slow to respond, and has a weirdly low capped max speed. I don't understand why that's what a designer dreams of doing to me. I like my scroll (and other computer interactions for that matter) to be responsive and fast. You know, the kind of thing that puts me in control, not the designer.

That being said, the scroll was as smooth as regular webpage scrolls. Usually these JS scrolls aren't able to avoid dropping frames or otherwise introducing judder, but this one does appear to run at a consistent and high framerate, which is technically impressive.

sudo_cowsay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Good idea in theory but terribly impractical in practice.

scotty79 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That can't be good. Life cycle of a human egg is organized around preserving mitochondria to be as young and fresh as possible across generations. Using adult cell, even a stem cell to make an egg probably gives it mitochondrial damage that usually takes hundreds of human generations to accumulate.

Protostome 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mitochondria can be translplanted/replaced. There already therapies and babies born out of these kinds of procedures

scotty79 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you point me to anything about mitochondrial transplants? I'd love to see bat mitochondria transplanted into other mammals. They must have really superior ones given the energy expenditures needed to support flight and their long lifespans.

Protostome an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I will let the experts continue from here :) This review is from 2020, i bet things have progressed since then

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7169912/

type0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't, isn't this the recipe to get IRL Morbius?

Schlagbohrer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Batboy, real at last

treyd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if you could coax cells from the testes back into stem cells to then re-specialize into ovarian cells.

Schlagbohrer an hour ago | parent [-]

Reverse Cremaster cycle?

Jackobrien 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Really interesting point if true. Makes sense to me, and I’m sure the team is trying to solve it

khazhoux 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Instead of just dismissing this and saying this can't possibly work, it would be better to ask: how do they get around problems of mitochondrial damage, or have they not tackled that yet?

Because it is unlikely that you just punched a hole through the plan of the several dozen people in bioengineering, life sciences, and other related fields that are at this company.

rf15 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

genuinely curious: how does any life still exist if this holds true?

scotty79 2 hours ago | parent [-]

When the damage accumulates across generations the natural selection has opportunity to weed out particularly harmful instances. You can get a feeling for how important avoiding the mitochondrial damage is and how hard it is to mitigate, by looking at how fiercely the reproductive process protects them from aging.

shevy-java 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A japanese scientist again (Katsuhiko Hayashi is in Osaka).

Shinya Yamanaka created iPSPs in 2009:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinya_Yamanaka

Guess the japanese excel at micromanaging. Although one could say that the research here in the article is more epic than Shinya's discovery, but I remember having watched one of his presentation and it convinced me of pure epicness, if you understand how his team found the "Yamanaka factors". That was by human (work) consistency. About as epic as Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and her mutant screens, that also involved tons of micro-experiments.