@@nm9864 No. He doesn't. All American media, including John Oliver's LWT, do a poor job on reporting scientific issues. Fox News does it a lot worse, but that means little when everyone else still does such a poor job. If everyone is getting a D- and one person gets an F, you can't really say everyone else did well because they didn't get an F.
When he said "can meat be too cold" I'm amazed he didn't then mention how, when air conditioning was first invented, it freaked H.P. Lovecraft out so hard he wrote a novella about it
As an Australian ITS TRUE. WE FUCKING HATE THOSE THINGS. I didn't know this guy existed tho so even I was shocked by the number on that road and the sound of them being run over. However, it was both disturbing and cathartic.
As someone who’s family has a lot of diabetes, heart problems, and Alzheimer’s disease, if there was a way to eliminate those problems I would be first in line.
Duck Soup hey man, fuck you. Any time you read that someone’s family has a lot of genetic issues, don’t fucking make a joke about it. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. My grandmother will be the 8th of her siblings to die from Alzheimer’s and my mom is terrified she will develop it. So yeah if there was a way to prevent it I would be the first in line. Fuck. You.
@@IdealConflict Natural selection stopped when modern medicin was introduced. If you like it or not, now a much larger percentage of people will survive to reproduce, even people who are stupid enough to respond with "natural selection" when somebody mentions family members dying from genetic deceases.
@@marandaward1663 And while I be supicious of any mega corp , goverment ,or cults to abuse tech that science made practical.. I think this research is overdue , its always been a question of spreading knowledge and use it with responsibility...as idiots will be idiots and only with other people having the same knowledge can it be counterd. but that sucks you and your family should be first in line for any safe procedure for gene treatment to combat those things specialy alzheimers..it can be such a cruel way to wither away....and for the idiots going 'natural selection' ye...fuck him ,intelligence is naturaly selected for and its what leets uss explore genes.
@@IdealConflict Inteligence have become homo sapiens one and only advatange for survival..because of natural selection , dont like how its used ? tough luck....100% of evrything you depend on to survive only exists because of inteligence....want to deny people the chance to replace none functioning chemicals so ther children can be born fully 'fuctional' ? then get rid of evrything you own ,including your cloths and find some wilderness without any humans for hundreds of miles....and try survive ala 'claws and fangs' style.
Rather than eugenics I’m more afraid of the social gap that gene editing would create. I mean, obviously, the affluent would have more access to make their descendants, faster, smarter, stronger, more resilient, even longer living than the ones who can’t afford the mods. Gattaca, anyone?
@@keskonriks710 7:07 A couple of hundred dollars is stupidly cheap for *GENE EDITING* and that's the first of it's kind it will get so much cheaper. The point is that when we get to a level where a gap could be created it will be so cheap that even the poorest person with a tiny kit could do it. There are already malaria test that cost less then a dollar and are made of cardboard ua-cam.com/video/Qf-D1Upn-KU/v-deo.html
And, the fact we could all be dead in a 100 years, the idea of generations could be resilient enough to survive would be great. I personally lost family members to cancer some at 16 yo, the idea of cutting out cancer would be great.
I’m a biological engineering student, and I highly doubt that would ever happen. At least I really hope it won’t. For one, there are ethics committees that have to approve experiments with human beings or experiments of that magnitude. Most genetic engineering happening now is gene therapy with recombinant DNA, and making medications like insulin or certain antibiotics. But it is still something that we have to be very careful with bc I’m sure there will be some dictator one day that will want to abuse it
Perfectly put. It's a good starting place for further research but a great place for late night comedy and discovering what may not have been under your radar.
It would have been amazing if my epilepsy could have been prevented like this, considering it is a stressful, stress triggered horrible cycle of falling, spasms, and memory loss. Some genetic differences are viewed as disabilities by those who have them.
I don't consider my being autistic and having ADHD to be a disability...but the bipolar one sure is. Plus I have long term weakness in the right side of my body from meningitis...IIH creates high cerebrospinal fluid which makes it hard to walk, temporary paralysis, memory loss. Some of these things I really wish could be cured (the last two), I honestly don't know what it would be like to not have autism or ADHD. I know what you are talking about Desiree. I'm mainly considered about the potential eugenics aspect.
@@2126Eliza yeah, because all Hitler wanted to do was preform safe treatments on consenting individuals to only treat the severely disabled and fatally diseased. There's absolutely no reason for people to be scared that they might be systematically wiped out and medically experimented on over meaningless genetic differences they can't change without their consent. None at all, it's pure delusional hysteria. (/s)
When it comes to disruptive behavior, it's often because a need is not being met. In most Spec-ed classes, they only focus on verbal communication and not so much on emotional regulation and alternative communication. Maybe since only verbal communication is encouraged and expected despite other forms that would be easier, that this person is left with little options of communication. So yeah, it's not a surprise that this person was constantly screaming, crying, or disrupting class. Implying that this person is suffering simply because of Autism takes out a major part of the equation which is, how do we view and treat autistic people? Because they "couldn't properly speak" or drool or flap around, is their quality of life is lesser? The reason that quality of life for people with this kind of Autism is not great is because of the standards of non-autistic behavior are forced upon, and that deviations from that mean that a person is suffering, lesser, or less capable. How non-autistic people treat autistic people is a major factor in quality of life.
I’m so happy someone actually is talking about CRISPR and current developments in genomics. It’s like the most amazing change in biology in recent decades, but barely anyone talks about it.
Alice Suhina unless you're in the science community and that's all you hear about haha another perspective is that there's so much talk that John Oliver who's not in science got wind of it. It's great though, it's a really controversial subject and I'd trust John to talk about it over any other talkshow.
was that sarcastic? its all over the place since 2015. its so over used and mentioned i am getting more bored then anything else when the topic comes up.
The problem is, as with many new technologies like this is lay people get excited/scared/anxious/obsessed with it without understanding the underlying science behind it. CRISPR is NOT A PANACEA, it is just another tool in the molecular genetics tool box, yes it is somewhat novel and revolutionary in it's mechanism, but it's actual real world application utility is for the most part untested. So when i hear stories on NPR about CRISPR and the dawn of "designer babies" it makes me fucking CRINGE, because it completely undervalues the insane complexity involved.
My biggest worry about CRISPR being used to modify humans is how the technology is obviously going to benefit wealthy people first. At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is pushing us towards economic collapse technology like this will only further the divide.
Vospader21 There's a cure for HepC now. Big pharma doesn't want to make it available because curative medicene doesn't make money. Some groups are even fighting against 3D printing organs using the patient's DNA because transplants are infinitely more lucrative. Same with HIV, many cancers, and a slew of other things. IF it is available it won't be for the poor, AND never in America.
Same with HIV? What on earth are you on about? It's not possible to cure HIV currently, except for very specific circumstances where a functional cure can be achieved through CCR5_Δ32 hemoatopietic stem cell transplantation, which is rarely possible or feasible. There's no other way.
Viscera Trocar The HepC treatment is widely available. My sister went through treatment, via the public health system, in 2010 and has been free from the disease since 2011.
That is the case with almost every single technology, though. Would you argue against cars based on the fact that poor people can not afford to buy cars today? How about airplanes or trucks? Vaccines? Every single type of medicine is first available to the people who can pay for it, and then later on to governments and poorer people when the medicine becomes cheaper. How about electricity? A significant proportion of today's population lives without stable access to electricity. That is not an argument AGAINST electricity, it is an argument for MORE electricity. Many, many breakthroughs in science are very expensive at first, and therefore rich people are the first beneficiaries. But those breakthroughs (usually both paid by, and benefiting the rich) are then the stepping stone for even being able to ask "So now that we have this technology, how do we make it cheaper and more available to everyone?
The Chinese scientist wasn't being blase about gene editing so much as he was being uncomfortable with the interviewer invoking God. The combined effects of colonialism, the Enlightenment, and recent history means scientific professionals in China observe a strict separation between religion and science. Talking about God, especially the Abrahamic one, especially by people representing the West, makes alarm bells go off in a similar way over there as talking about Nazis in America. So don't blame the Chinese scientist. His interviewer didn't phrase his question well for a subject whose primary language isn't English.
@@redsnowpenguin well I agree with your arguement, but it can also be in chinese traditional culuture. Chinese people looks like lacking in awe of the gods because of political and economic development. And in thsi era, a well-educated scientist needs to take on greater responsibility，instead of letting prejudice continue
I think you reading too much into this. I don't think anyone can deny that some scientists are driven by discovery and not ethics. I mean, fuck jesus, but the interviewer was Asian as well and wasn't what he was going for.
@@marinaproger2324 The reporter, Adam Yamaguchi, is Japanese-American. #NotAllAsians are the same :-) America is strong in Adam. But more importantly, the clip just seemed like a case of cultural contexts not matching up. Yamaguchi was fumbling a little bit with wording, or in any case it looks that way to me. In America we have a shared language around Christianity where people understand that an ambiguous reference to higher powers in ethics discussions don't necessarily, literally, mean God. But the scientist he interviewed clearly didn't take the question that way, for reasons I already mentioned. LastWeekTonight is not wrong that there are cases of highly problematic gene-editing experiments from China. But unless they know something about the scientist interviewed in the clip, it's not right to characterize the clip as Chinese Scientist Laughing at Ethical Concerns.
As a disease ecologist, I want to say that the mouse and tick segment is one of the best demonstrations I have ever seen of these important principles in the evolutionary ecology of infection Disease.
I was born with a cleft lip and palette. I wouldn’t want any other baby or parents have to go through that. That stuff costs so much extra money. So much extra visits to the doctor or orthodontist. It’s a birth defect. If we can fix it, we definitely should.
Jack Heathen: No it wasn't, as long as you are not actively trying to "infect" him and only trying to make a point. Oh - not the answer you expected? Well - there are people out there that can accept death by illness as a part of life. Nature is "cruel" and culture has dampened many things that could have killed us, but we are only surprisingly fragile creatures. Now yes - it still sucks and is probably a loss for a few people, but it is not the end of the world. Hmm.. where was i going with this? I guess i got "unemotional" with that topic because its my coping mechanism, but i don't think rational thinking is always a bad thing.
Unfortunately cleft palette is not a genetic error, it's usually a formation error as parts of the mouth fuse enutero (basically the issue doesn't all connect were it is supposed to). Improved nutrition and avoidance of substances that can trigger birth defects like a cleft palette, but it does not remove all risk. Also, sorry for your suffering, I hope you have completed your surgeries by now and that they went well.
As someone with epileptic family and wants kids one day, gene editing could be a dream for me. To not be afraid of passing an epileptic gene down to my future son or daughter, would be such a relief. I hope it is better in the future and can potentially help me or my children if they have seizures.
you are clearly bigoted, you should be happy that you are different and unique! Removing those diseases would be pure eugenics! They wouldn't suffer from seizures, they would suffer from how society treats them! /s
My father had AML which is a variant of that sweet english baby girl's ALL. For the past few decades since he died, my family and I have been trying to raise $ for research and patient support in his memory. This baby girl being helped at all is very encouraging and wonderful.
I used the information from this main story in my Biology class and impressed the hell out of my professor. I almost shouted 'THANK YOU JOHN OLIVER' in the middle of class!
If I'd cited this in a middle school my paper would have been returned with a big fat "F--please use correct citation" on it. If I'd cited it in college they would have made me take a a remedial class about acceptable sources.
@@mnschoen I didn't have to cite it. It was literally for an answer during a lecture that my professor asked us. It wasn't for some sort of research paper...
"You don't have to spend the next 2000 years worshipping the scientists, you just have to be like... thanks!" One of the best lines he's ever spoke, :D.
I love the woman with Dwarfism. Many in the Autistic community feel the exact same way. I don't suffer from Autism. I suffer from the way society treats me. A lot of who I am as a person is because of my Autism and I wouldn't want to be any other way.
Isn't the "autism community" mainly made up of Asperger ? Lucky you, guys, I'm glad you enjoy your comparatively benign condition, but you make up 2% of all the recorded cases on the autism spectrum. My own little brother is an autistic young man (with the usual difficulties socializing, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hierarchizing environmental information, and the corollary linguistic and logical underdevelopment,...) and it definitely is a huge disability. So please, either rebrand yourselves or stop pretending you speak in general for autistic people, most of whom conveniently can't speak at all.
I'd like to see the next minute of that Chinese scientist clip, because it seemed like he was laughing at the god reference, not the serious repurcussions of gene editing. It'd be like somewhere worrying about Thor's reaction to a new meteorological tool. If it's a metaphor fine, but why would that chinese scientist know the 'role of God' metaphor? Weird clip to use, and interesting place to cut it off before the scientist really says anything...
@@PropheticShadeZ Except China is now more capitalist than communist (they have 1 million millionaires) but yes, China keeps a close eye on all religions to make sure people are not becoming extremists, or political, like they are in the US which is unconstitutional. Time to strip tax-exemption from churches that are pushing politics. The US should start doing some of that b/c there are too many people in the US who just want to "kill" science and there are religious groups in the US that are STILL abusing and oppressing women/girls. The Chinese are laughing at how absurd we've become! They are much more advanced in biotechnology than the US now because religious groups in the US are causing us to fall behind in biotechnology and many other areas of science. China just invested $350 billion into biotechnology. Thank George H.W. Bush, who banned stem cell research in 2001, for setting the US back a generation or two! We could be much further advanced if religion would just stay away from scientific research! There was a PhD student at Vanderbilt who was growing tiny hearts, life-saving work, inside of mice. His goal was to get rid of the shortage of organs for transplant. The religious people in that state shut down his work! He had to find a University to continue his work. It's a losing battle for those people b/c even if they kick science out of their state b/c of "beliefs," people will go to another state. I'm starting to be jaded by "state's rights." We should become like a normal country and not have 50 different laws. It's starting to get out of hand. People shouldn't have to move from the state they've lived in their whole lives just so they can stop their child's seizures with medical cannabis, or move b/c they want to die with dignity, or force women to have to go to another state for a safe abortion. z
Jae Lynn while i agree that the us has problems, and china does have advantages, i think the most important difference is that the us is able to debate and discuss the gov policy, while that freedom of information hinders complex debating. Hurting the countries ability to change. In america accountability is a constantly strived for goal, china has recently become an example of how totalitarian thinking can oppress 20% of the human race under the nose of democratic nations
Gene editing, like kitchen knives, is a tool. And just like knives they can be useful or dangerous. But just because irresponsible usage can cut our finger, it does not mean we should never chop an onion.
EE Ehrenberg Only that a kitchen knive is such a primitive tool in comparison that this analogy is very weak as an argument. Nothing you do with your kitchen knive will have implications for the ecosystem or the planet as a whole.
EE Ehrenberg: But after cutting ourselves, we expect our fingers to heal. Also, given only 10 fingers, that are located in our extremities, there is a limit to the damage to your organism if you lose a finger. But they're not talking fingers, they are talking cells. If you use a "knife" to make a failed cell, and if that failure doesn't prevent replication, your organism wastes resources making failed cells. Your failed cell might not play well with others. It might form compromised tissues;it might fail to produce a necessary protein; it might make a protein that isn't useful, etc. That's my simple way of looking at this. You might make someone sick, and unlike text editing, there's no way to "undo" the mistake. Some scientists are using CRSPR and they know what they are doing, they have high quality laboratories where they can carefully control the environment, and they probably are doing quality checks to verify they get what they expect. Right now, I believe there are strict laws about using CRSPR on human cells. I personally wouldn't look for a robust solution from a person who uses the verb hacking in the same sentence as CRSPR.
NO! Anyone with an IQ over 60 can look at a knife and know exactly how it work and accurately predict the out come of using it without risking an entire ecosystem and starting a trend that will change the very nature by which people ordered in society.
my fear as a biologist, is that genes are extremely complicated. multiple genes can affect one epigenetic expression, and one gene can affect several expressions. (to put it in simplest terms I mean) for example, those belonging to haplogroup J2 (there are other haplogroups who also contain the same genetic trait I'll be talking about, but for now, let's just use J2 - Sicilians, Greek, Mediterranean, etc - for our example) have a higher propensity to develop one of the various Thalassemia conditions, which is bad, however, with that mutation comes an increased resistance to Malaria. Its a mutation developed through microevolution, though the mutation that brings good benefits (resistance to Malaria) is controlled by the same genes that cause the Thalassemia traits as well. (technically, it's a lot more complicated than that. People with alpha Thalassemia have smaller red blood cells, and it's mainly due to the distribution of small amounts of hemoglobin in larger quantities of cells. So it's not like they block malaria, just that the mutation mitigates the damage until the immune system handles the rest. But I'm getting off topic...) In short, no single gene acts alone, and we wont be able to affect change with one part without possibly causing other potential defects or changes. And not all defects are just negatives. Sometimes those smaller negatives arose to mitigate a larger negative. Erasing those smaller negative make us vulnerable to those larger ones again.
People need to drop the god argument when talking to scientists if they want to be taken seriously. There are many better arguments to make against unrestrained gene editing.
That is not the God argument, it means omniscience or knowing the consequences of one's actions. What people really mean is that when you're making such drastic changes which have happened naturally over millions of years in organisms through evolution while maintaining balance with the environment then you better know what you're doing. At this stage the scientists are in no position to truly understand how this will affect the environment, that level of understanding is only possessed by Nature (or God or higher power whatever your religious inclination is). So it is best to proceed with extreme caution as the scientist experimenting in Nantucket island shows.
OHM-968692 -Thank 🙌 U. Da very people Dat into(+) da world 2 jesus R da very people using our ($) 2 fund(-) experiments HELLO sumthing (=) about getting scammed da MASSES love
There's something so fascinating about these moral and philosophical quandaries about who we are fundamentally, and what power is okay to hold over another human.
I, along with both my siblings and at least one of their children, have a single mutated gene which has the potential to cause organ failure along with inherited COPD. My hope is that with time and more study gene editing could help save my nephew from the problems I am facing. However, I fully admit that the misuse of the technology is troubling.
Idk I feel like some people who talk about “playing God” don’t mean it in the literal sense. They’re just being figurative. They’re point is more about being arrogant and thinking you can mess with whatever you want without making huge mistakes or causing a huge downfall.
57goku - Then they shouldn’t eat anything that contains GMOs. Humans have been messing with the genetics of things for a long time including the plants and animals that most of us eat daily. Most of those who use God as a defense are hypocrites who don’t apply what they say to all aspects of their lives.
Pygmy Norton alright? Who’s to say they’re okay with eating genetically modified foods? And everyone has different ideas of when we’re going too far. My point is they just want to feel like people aren’t being reckless when they say that phrase. You’re being mad extra, I don’t want to debate what’s a valid thing to be against
Meanwhile the people are so opposed to human gene editing because it is "playing god", praise others for getting IVF or sperm donations when "god" is clearly yelling: "YOU BETTER NOT F**KING REPRODUCE!!!"
To be fair, its almost impossible for that Zayner quack to edit anything by just injecting CRISPR/Cas9 into the blood stream. Cells don't just pick up anything that floats in the blood, you'd need an actual delivery system to get the CRISPR/Cas9 into human cells, preferably one that is actually specific to the tissue you want to edit. The only possible way to do this outside of a petri dish is with a modified viral delivery system, meaning you edit a virus to deliver guide RNAs and genes that code for the Cas9 protein. Thankfully, selling viruses out of a garage is bioterrorism, so nothing this guy sells can actually do anything to people, its just pseudoscience and placebo.
Just to be fair, "real scientists" are idiots educated, they doesn't want the cure for diseases or make mankind better than before, they are always feeding the pharmaceutical industry who doesn't want purchase the discovery to cure diabetes or something. Because they know, if someone discover the cure of whatever they'll need to lose billions to put on the shelves of their pharmacy. To be fair, no one should suffer for something they don't asked for like being too short or too tall, too thin or too fat, black mainly or white, man or woman and etc... If someone can revert this natural state to something you want like transgenderism which isn't realistic, but can actually remove an entire reproduction system to what you ever wanted. Some mofos are afraid of this because it can take out his post of privilege, making a perfect world or idealizing one. Would wash this prejudice, hate and everything. No one would be more or less, everybody on the same pattern.
Your biggest concern as an American citizen should be the moment insurance companies begin to lobby for the use of genetic testing prior to offering coverage to people. They'll be able to charge whatever they like based on your DNA and your chances of developing certain ailments. It has already begun with pharmaceutical companies offering "personlized" medicine.
Additionally, companies that test for ancestry have no obligation to destroy your DNA once tested and are free to monetize it and sell it to their partners.
well maybe you wont need medicine or insurance anymore after you updated yourself. we have to make sure they dont regulate it or they will force us to buy the intermediate steps (drugs,treatments) i want the free market 1 stop update solution. but fearmongerers and politicians will prevent that.
Science creates wonderful tools, some ideas not worth exploring, others just plain stupid. But that doesn't stop the servile scientist of a corrupt government or corporation to do whatever they wish for more control and power i.e. government/politicians or for more profit, i.e. CEO of some corporate conglomerate who only exploit people and damage the environment.
I've said this before, I'll say it again: John Oliver makes videos over topics that seem boring or uninteresting at first, but later seem important for us to know and motivate us to do something about the issue! Update after reading replies: The 1 subject I never found interesting and barely passed in school and college was science, so I went into this video not initially interested in the subject, but because it's a John Oliver video I had I feeling he would make it entertaining to watch.
Its true, i seriously never cared about the mouse who finds a tick on tender but maybe we could figure out some sort of support group for them so they dont get so desperate.
I have to disagree with the LP woman. If dwarfism can be eliminated, that would be a good thing. Dwarfs suffer from organ failure, bone malformations, joint problems, and seldom live an average lifespan.
Not to infer that they are "less than" an average person. But if science can eliviate them from these burdens, or prevent children from having to deal with complications, how is that not the moral choice?
You should read Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon. It provides a much more nuanced look into the possible elimination of these conditions and the impact that may have on our society.
@@amandadavenport2020 "Diversity is good for society" is a bad argument for not eliminating medically harmful or disadvantaging conditions. No one owes it to society to live in pain, have a shortened average lifespan, or have to accept some other detrimental condition for everyone else's benefit.
After studying genetics for the last 4 years, I am glad to see this. Bioethics was a big focus on the program for a reason. It is a fine line we will have to address with a moral lens. With that... it is a very promising field, but we are still roughly 10-15 years out before we can really harness the power of genetic editing in human health. Side note, how CRISPR works isn't too complicated, a big reason it is popular right now is because it is way simpler and has higher specificity than zinc fingers or TALENs. I highly recommend educating yourself on it, it is super interesting!
Cannon Gardner agreed. And it's super cheap compared to other methods. We've been able to do a few studies here at the University I work at as a junior researcher using microbes. The outcomes are amazing! This is why I love science. Yet we still need to look into the ethical implications it might have, because we all know there will be those who take it too far.
Yes, it is more specific and promising. But there is still a high chance that severe side effects occur in clinical use. In a bioinformatic course at university I wrote about bioinformatic aproaches to predict potential offtarget cleavage sites of RNA-guided Nucleases. There is still a huge discrepancy between predictions and experimental evaluation. Sequence based algorithms do not work at all. Maybe machine learning aproches could work better. Also experimental evaluation shows that there are even very low-frequent offtarget events. Shure, CRISPR-CAS is promising but there is still a lot of work to do.
The part at the end: OK, I get not wanting to think of your condition as a "condition" because you don't want to be thought of as flawed but let's be real here. It *is* a condition, one that tends to come with a whole slew of health problems. My cousin has dwarfism. He's a great guy and perfectly happy with his life, even found a loving wife... only he's often in the hospital for various joint and respiratory problems and his wife has been wheelchair-bound for the past decade. All of those problems are tied directly to their dwarfism. You bet your ass they'd rather have been born without it, just like someone with cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis would prefer not to have those things. It doesn't mean those conditions define who you are or that they're something to be ashamed of. It just means that they objectively lower a person's quality of life.
There are a few with dwarfism that don't experience these issues at least with the same level of severity. Those are usually the ones fighting trying to pretend it something that should be preserved. It is honestly pretty sick wanting your kid to be a dwarf.
Troy Warren exactly. For a much less severe version, I'm really nearsighted. Without my glasses, all I can see beyond about 20 feet is vague blurry shapes. Thankfully, I can compensate with my glasses and not be hindered in any significant way. That doesn't change the fact that I'd be better off with naturally 20/20 vision and, given the option, I'd rather not pass my poor vision on to my kids. Though I think "person with dwarfism" is a preferable term to "dwarf" because it emphasizes the fact that dwarfism is something you have, not something you are.
Element115 What is a "normal human"? We very so greatly around the globe that very little room for "normal" exists. While I understand the urge to change a future child's life by removing a disability, I also fear that it could be used to erase certain communities with their own cultures. There are many people with Autism (like myself) who cope with it and move on. I feel like erasing the chance for my child to have Autism is just as bad as having killed it for being born with Autism. Many other people with disabilities feel the same way.
Maybe you didn't know this, but there are people without dwarfism that have those problems too. It is not up to you to decide what is "normal," this is precisely why eugenics isn't just morally outrageous, it is also an outright pseudoscience.
Heraclitus Blacking You can discuss all day about what is considered normal, but that isn't going to change the fact that people with certain conditions like dwarfism have considerable disadvantages compared to those who don't. It's great that those people learn to cope with those disadvantages, but it's still morally outrageous for some of them to want their children to have those disadvantages too, IF there was a reasonable option to prevent it. Also, just because some people have similar symptoms without dwarfism, doesn't make the condition of those who's symptoms come from dwarfism less bad.
Passport "Being ableist isn't cool, man. That's why I'm recommending eugenics to remove you from the gene pool" The irony doesn't get much juicier than that
the scientic method is a morally neutral prosses, while journalism a political comentary, by definition it has a moral stance, people call thing unbias when they dont agree with their jugments, but i non-jugmental political comentary is definitionally imposible, call of bias are basically saying i gave a diferent opinion than you, with the imply asumption that the reason why that is is because the other person is being dishonest, is silly ideological nonsense
There once was a man from Nantucket Who gathered some mice in a bucket He altered those mice Engineered with a splice And now aLL oF tHe SeAguLLs aRE dEad
There once was a man who came from Nantucket Who gathered some mice which he kept in a bucket He altered those mice Engineered with a splice So a mouse won't get Lyme's when a tic would fuck it.
Jason Is Awesome! Actually, Chinese scientific establishment lags in the field of bioethics. Thats a structural problem, going back decades... this problem also affects Russian scientific community, since the USSR was much more focused on results as dictated by the Party demands. Not saying that they are devoid of morals, or that the Western scientists are very ethical, but there are different ingrained cultures regarding what is and what is not prioritised in each academic/scientific circles.
Unfortunately for Russia, there has been major national losses for ignoring bioethics/morality. We as a peoples(species) keep morality around because it is more optimal than being a Saturday cartoon villain or some bbeg, for large majority of situations considering physical limits of being human in general. ua-cam.com/video/SQCfOjhguO0/v-deo.html
the_rugged it seemed to me that it was more of a language issue. Here in the US, you don’t necessarily have to use that phraseology rigidly - it can just mean that you’re screwing with something that you don’t necessarily understand the consequences of. I think the scientist was genuinely scoffing at the potential belief that someone thinks that gene editing ought to be left with gods. I think the statement was poorly represented, and can understand how people might take it literally. Whether or not China or the USSR have thoroughly developed their ethical standards for science is a separate argument. Although, if ours is more developed, it might explain why we (in the West) have moral reservations when we discuss gene editing.
There is no GOD. That's why the asian scientist was laughing... and also the fact that there would be peoiple that would rather let others suffer orbe diffrent just becouse they think some higher being wants them to.
Scientist: "We have developed a treatment that cures cancer in 40% of mice" Media: "Scientists cure cancer!" Scientist: "No, its not a cure, but we are now a little closer to a cure in the future" Media: "Scientists invent Time Machine!" Scientist: "Fuck you!" Media: "Scientist rapes journalist!"
@@finmin2k it does benefit the cells that are cancerous, though. So it is a horrible disease for the group of cells we know as the organism, but it is a savior for the group of cells that have become oncogenic. True to nature, it is a matter of two groups of cells fighting to survive. We happen to advocate for the human side.
@@CadDriftarus Yeah, but when I say "fight to survive" I mean it in a more metaphoric sense as the cells don't have consciousness to be able to fight for anything. So in cancer the cells grow and never die even as they become damaged (usually cells commit suicide when needed). So cancer will grow on its own just because the feature of cell suicide has been irreparably damaged due to mutation. So it's true that cancer cells don't persist generationally like a parasite might, which begs the question how did cancer survive a billion years of evolution? Obviously parasites propagate their gene pool by laying eggs prior to killing the hosy--if they kill the host all. But cancer cells have no gene pool to propagate, as the cancerous designation comes from genetic mutation via sheer chance (over time) or radiation/other similar external factors. The original cell just grows and multiples are a ridiculous rate, never stopping, until the outsized growth fucks something up in your body. There is thus not really any natural selection for the survivability of cancerous cells, because while they do multiply on their own, there exists another source of cancer that will allow cancer to persist its existence over millenia and millenia into the future, because of environmental factors and the sheer design of gene replication in cells. Unlike the parasite that is reliant on a host to reproduce and is subject to typical biological evolutionary constraints, cancer is really a state of being rather than a disease per se, since there is no infectious pathogen. Cancer is to the human body what potholes are to roads I suppose. So there will always be potholes; it's just a sad inevitable truth of physics that asphalt will eventually crumble and break over time. It's just a truth of biology that our cell will eventually mutate and become cancerous given enough time, even in ideal circumstances. This is why cancer cells have not been much selected upon for survivability of the cancer cell.
It reminded me of some terrifying late-game unicorn-like creatures in Salt & Sanctuary. They charge at you, stick their horn in you, and then in all probability they'll suck all the life out before you can free yourself.
I have no issues with people being cautious around Gene editing. It's a thing that does need to be looked at and there's a bucketful of things to worry about. That being said, we need to be cautious around the right things. If your worry is about "playing god" I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you. We won't *stop* Gene editing because you feel that we are moving closer to becoming some holy figure you believe in. That Asian guy seemed blase less about Gene editing and more blase about offending people who hate Gene editing just because it's new. And that's what this is. Especially in the US, where scientists are looked at with suspicion, a lot of the issues people take up isn't because they've looked up Gene editing and had some concerning questions. Its because they heard "new science thing", thought it was bad with a gut feeling, and just went with their gut. Which, whatever. Be mad. But we're not going to halt scientific progress because your gut feels funny. And that isn't to say there isn't anything to criticize. It's the same issue that is see when I see people who hate driverless cars flat out. Sure, there are a host of good questions that need to be asked and answered when moving down that path, but just not liking a thing doesn't mean it's bad. And I'm not a scientists. I don't think you *need* to have a degree to engage in the "gene editing* conversation. But you should have at least researched the damn thing farther than 20 minutes with Jon Oliver once. RadioLab has multiple podcast episodes on it where they interview actual scientists. Stuff You Should Know also has a podcast episode on Crispr. Use these guys if you don't want to read. There are plenty of books on the subject. Read up on a thing before you decide it's bad and educate yourself before you ask a man with a fucking degree whether we can make unicorns or not.
I feel if there is a concern about this process it would be about this venture somehow taking a dark road. Like the old saying goes, " The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Just my opinion of course.
"Playing God" Dont read into it to literally it's just a saying And the concerns are pretty straight foward. We not be God can not create some sort of divine for our nor can we create any sort of model for how this will play out. Doing something that will dramatically effect society with no clue as to what direction will go is bad. It's not gut feeling thing. It's want to hedge your bet for the continuation of humanity as we know it.
God, no God... we've more than enough examples from history where mankind rushed to screw with life, and the result was Australia being devoured by toads. Australia, a poisonous desert hellscape, was ruined by mankind not thinking enough about "well toads eat bugs - that oughta do it!" CRISPR could be infinitely, infinitely, *infinitely* worse if it goes wrong. So yes, while I do support how this science could potentially redefine the entire human experience for the better, and pray for the day we can file horrors like Alzheimer's in the same category as Small Pox and Polio... No one wants to see the world fall into a Dr. Moreau themed apocalypse. This is one of those sciences where the potential risks keep up with the rewards. To that end... When researching and experimenting (none of these distinguished scientists should ever be accused of "playing") in "God's Domain," just be careful not to accidentally science up a plague of burning locusts. That Nantucket Mouseologist definitely has the right idea is what I'm saying.
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Jurassic Park: Cloning isn't great Jurassic World: Gene Editing isn't Great. Joking aside, there was a movie all about this that came out in 97. Gattaca.
He makes us understand how fucked a certain aspect of society is, that maybe we have not considered before. But he also gives us a little bit of hope and maybe a good direction to take.
I'd greatly appreciate it if some fellow John Oliver fans/concerned citizens would check out my acoustic piano & vocal covers of various 80s/90s classic songs on my channel. Covers include Sting, George Michael, Billy Joel, Pete Townshend, Tom Petty, GooGoo Dolls, Steely Dan, Counting Crows, Phil Collins, and some lesser known 1-hit artists. Live acoustic with no autotune. Thanks and peace.
There once was a man from Nantucket. Who gathered some mice in a bucket. He altered the mice, engineered with a splice and now all of the seagulls are dead...
If God is a cane toad, most Australians who have lived in the more northerly regions during summer, myself included, are going to hell. We treated cane toads in much the same way people treat flies & mosquitoes. In fact, returning home to Queensland after years in America, I was blown away by how quickly and almost unconsciously I reacted to the sight of a cane toad on a humid summer night. I saw it, I killed it. Bing bang boom.
17:25 I think John Oliver has probably misunderstood the scientist's reaction here. I think he's probably just agnostic/atheist and thinks the idea of a conscious creator is itself laughable.
As an atheist myself, I had the same reaction towards the idea that humans shouldn't "play god." And atheism is actually highly common in China, due to their communist history.
@@TheUrbanGaze saying atheism is common in China is a bit misleading, because traditional East Asian culture have different way to see religions. While western view see religion as this single spiritual ideological school of thought that a person believe in, East Asian culture tend to practice everything without really identifying with a single ideology. So someone can have a Buddhist funeral, do ancestral worship, and go to Confucian temple during new year to give offering, but when asked what religion they have, they can't really answer it. The same with Japan, you have Shinto birth ceremony, got married in a church, and have a Buddhist funeral. One of the biggest issues European missionary faced in Japan was when newly baptised Japanese were confused why they were not allowed to do Buddhist and Shinto rituals anymore.
artcom Nobody should “play God” if that’s what one believes, but one doesn’t have to follow conventional morality if they have the ability to ignore it. Also if it gets excellent results nobody will care about the morality.
Intelligent effort, hacking. Intelligence beats everything. Raw power or repetition does nothing. Genetic modifications in Gattaca hadn't touched intelligence much, Limitless explores it much better even without gene editing per se
I can understand the Chinese guy's reaction to the specific qualm being about the "playing god" aspect. He sees that as an independent criticism as asinine because essentially the conceit of that argument, without any further context, as "this is wrong/immoral because humans were never meant to mess with that". And that context definitely doesn't come through with a language barrier like that. Trying to condemn scientific discovery because of the power it puts in our hands is as asinine as his reaction portrays it to be.
I agree with you. I was intrigued by the debate on disabilities. I personally am on the autism spectrum and wouldn't want the way I think modified. I would love however to remove the downside of sense sensitivity and the lack of that comes with it. For me this has a large impact on my home life as I sit in my room to avoid television and the pain it causes me to listen to it and focus on something else. For context on that you can look up auditory disabilities (I forgot the name/term used for mine). However I am looking to try what is called AIT therapy (I think?) to help with that.
fun fact actually. Autism looks like it’s going to be the next stage of human evolution. As for the whole ‘we can’t do this because something something god’ argument. If it wasn’t something we were to do, why are we able to do it?
I dont think works should be discredited as much as they are though. They exist as a way of imagining the consequences of certain future possibilities. Black Mirror is all hypothetical but it shows a very possible reality of certain advancements that people may not think twice about at the time of creating such an advancement. Before movies and shows, it was books. people seem perfectly okay citing works such as 1984 in discussion related to hypothetical future consequences. Also this isnt me taking one side or another on the actual issue brought up in John Oliver's video
As I remember it, and as the start of the Wikipedia plot summary indicates (tl;dr), Gattaca wasn't about gene editing, but about the eugenics society resorted to because they apparently lacked the technology to edit genes. There's no real need to _pretend_ that you have your brother's genes if you could use gene editing to actually _acquire_ those genes. So they should've shown the movie Gattaca as a great artistic (fictional) example of problems that gene editing could solve?
@@gusg6197 Yup, that's the human psychology, we like to feel good, we hate responsibilities, so we feel better convincing ourselves that God is responsible for all things.
Philip Ehusani ...heh. I’m just a weirdo, but the main comforts I draw from the possibility (since I’m agnostic, though identifying as Presbyterian) is: that death won’t be the end, and that bad people will be held to account.
Brian F Considering a lot of people believe in God, it’s not a meaningless statement. Just because you don’t believe in one doesn’t nullify the entire implication and meaning of “playing God”. I’d imagine you can still comprehend what that phrase means without being religious yourself.
@Liz T I agree with Brian, I think it's kind of meaningless without the context of religion. When you say it assuming God is real, you mean it in a way that implies it's a bad thing, because we cannot be so "arrogant" I guess, to defy God's will? Or some shit like that. It's stupid if you consider that there is no God, because that just means we are trying to improve upon the random shit that happened naturally, which is sometimes disadvantageous to us, so of course we want to fix it. If we can fix something that's bad, we should do it, and saying it's "playing God" is just a bullshit argument that has no meaning in a rational society. Edit: And of course, I'm not saying that there are no risks, far from it, but "Don't play god" is not a good way to warn a scientist against the potential risks of something, it's something that people say because they are afraid of god, not because they concluded rationally that such a thing could be risky.
Liz T the problem is that they use the term "playing god". when you could say "playing mother nature" and mean the same thing yes, you could argue that it's arrogant for humans to think we understand nature so much that we can message with it and know the results, but in the end, from the day we started selectively breeding livestock we have been screwing with nature
0:45 The name Rampage comes from a series of video games of the same name. In these games, you play a giant gorrila, giant wolf, and giant lizard and destroy buildings and stuff.
As someone with a horible genatic condition that could kill me or my children(if I have any) young. I fully 100% support gene editing and am anoyed by pepole that are so anti it. Currently my plan is to never have my own kids and to adopt instead.
yeah, and its usually always those who did not have to deal with a child who has some dire genetic disposition. The girl in this video was a good example. Who in their Right mind wants children to be born with genetic dispositions which will let them suffer nonstop until they die before even making it to preschool. Natural selection has been mostly eradicated amongst humans thanks to social support and medicine. I'm glad that that is the case, but if we do not want the human gene pool to "degenerate", where all future humans will be dependant on pills and machines to be able to live, then we need to repair those "defects" before they can spread in the wider population.
theendofit but you wouldn't be *you* if you weren't so horribly sick, and we know that that's the most important thing in the world: that you feel unique and that you protect that uniqueness!!! Yeah, I also have some incurable, degenerative shit wrong with me, and would also likely adopt, as most traits I care about are hereditary, but not particularly genetically determined (meaning environment). Plus, I would gladly have a life without these hurdles, because I'm not terminally scared of the problem of consciousness and don't value suffering.
I worry about that too. I have schizophrenia, which is highly heritable. I’m thinking of adopting, so as to avoid passing it on. It’s kinda hard to live with, and I’m one of the truly functional ones
I don’t WANT someone to be able to edit my autism. I love the way I think, and I wouldn’t want that to be able to be taken away. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
@@dingkong5034 science and biology are the tools, you're making a philosophical argument here, not a scientific one. Disabled people should have the right to self determination, and not have our futures decided by some eugenicist fools.
@@dingkong5034 Grandin Temple would like to have a few words with you. Also, at least 16% of STEM majors. Get back to me when someone else not only cares about animal welfare, but also singlehandedly redesigns an entire industry around it, and dramatically reduces accidents and deaths regarding livestock.
For the Chinese scientist part I can't honestly blame him for his reaction. You act as though his dismissal was unreasonable but forget to put emphasis on the way the question was posed to him. It's perfectly justifiable to dismiss a concern that posits we shouldn't do something because that's for "god" or a "higher power". He wasn't asked a ethical quandry or a moral question he was asked if someone's imaginary friend would approve of his actions. Perhaps, if we're sincere about drawing a line and hashing out the ethics of this technology we should drop theology and pick up some actual philosophy.
Lol what? Nobody should be fine with unregulated gene therapy regardless of their religious beliefs. The horrors that can be done to the world are endless. And it's pretty easy to understand why people could think God wouldn't be okay with humans changing their basic building blocks given that if you are Christian you believe God made those selfsame building blocks. Also do you really think that just because a story dealing exactly with a modern moral quandary isn't in the bible, it must mean that God doesn't care about it? That if the bible doesn't specifically address it then it absolutely must be okay? Like there is zero room for thought?
Wesley Brock Maybe if he had worded more like “aren’t you worried about the impact of going against the laws of nature itself?” That would at least be more reasonable to the scientist.
"Nobody should be fine with unregulated gene therapy regardless of their religious beliefs." I agree. We shouldn't have wholly unregulated gene therapy, manipulation, or editing. In fact my position favors regulation which is why I went on to say that we should, if we're serious about this use philosophy to determine where we draw the line in the sand. Furthermore, it's not obvious that the Chinese scientist in question was in favor of unregulated editing because the question posed to him was not about that but about whether we're stepping on god's toes. "And it's pretty easy to understand why people could think God wouldn't be okay with humans changing their basic building blocks given that if you are Christian you believe God made those selfsame building blocks." Sure it's easy to understand why Christians who believe that might be against gene editing but it's also easy to understand why someone who thinks Rampage is a documentary would be against gene editing too. That I can understand the chain of logic they used to arrive at their conclusion doesn't mean I think they've reached a cogent conclusion. You think god would be upset with gene editing? As far as I can tell Christians have failed to even prove their god exist so to make claims about his desires are putting the cart way before the horse. "Also do you really think that just because a story dealing exactly with a modern moral quandary isn't in the bible, it must mean that God doesn't care about it?" Yeah that's exactly what I think. Because an omniscience god doesn't really have any excuse to leave it out if he has any concerns about it. Leaving us to guess at what he gives a fuck about is not really the best or even a good way to go about it. And since new additions to the "true word of god" are less then forthcoming and we'd have no real way to discern fakes from the authentic I do think we should either assume god doesn't have a material opinion on the matter hence why he never felt the need to address it in his last word to mankind or that god is so fucking incompetent that we shouldn't care what he thinks on the matter. All of this of course granting that the fucker even exist which, and this may come as no surprise to you, I happen to think is the most likely scenario making the whole matter moot.
The intent is still clear even if you take God out of the equation. A higher power could simply be nature or evolution instead of an actual deity it could be something we humans have little control over. The question is do we really think we can mess around with the very essence of life without having unforeseen negative consequences?
I love that haughty chuckle from the Chinese scientist when the other dude said "up to god." Come on, guys, there might be reasons we should be careful, but "god would rather do it" is a dumb reason.
We are raised so entrenched in religion in, America, that it can be difficult to see a point of view that does not fear the phrase 'playing God'. The fact that I am an atheist and still I instinctively capitalized that 'g' in God is just one example of our lifelong programming. I no longer feel bitter toward religion as a whole but still find it frustrating when religious beliefs interfere with scientific advancement. 'Playing God' is what humanity has always done. That is the free will we supposedly have.
How that dialogue from John Betancourt's Amber prequels went? Something like this: “So you've retaken Juniper,” I said. “Doesn't that leave us with, ah, a slight troll problem?” “Half a million troll problems,” Freda said. “We can bring in giants to take care of the trolls,” Aber said. “And then dragons, I suppose, to take care of the giants?” I said with a annoyed snort. “Now you're getting the idea!”
Robots won't be a problem. The self-checkout at the local grocery store couldn't tell whether I was sticking my debit card in to pay, or if I was robbing the store. Also my buddy owns a self-parking car that couldn't self-park in an empty parking lot because there wasn't enough space for it to maneuver.
This already happened in the 70's. Killer cars got loose and we made 50 foot cats to stomp on them all but the cost was simply too high. And that's why London bans all laser projectors within a 10 mile radius.
18:00 No John, he seems tickled at the idea that modern Americans are making decisions about science based on ancient religious beliefs rather than, you know, reality.
Exaaactly. I can't believe he would misread someone like that without reason though. He's not stupid. Its damn obvious he's bemused at the religious spin on the question, yet John intentionally altered the context of it and tossed in an unrelated distraction.
ath*shitism has no grounds in reality, LMAO, every nation that tried ath*shitism has collapsed and china isn't too far behind with their communism. Religion on the other hand has built countless great civilizations and golden ages, what has ath*shitism done besides the communist dark ages and a cold war?
Exactly jurassic park, they wouldn't look exactly like the originals, although we DO have mammoth DNA and none of dinosaurs. Biggest challenge is birth.
There is no point in cloning extinct animals even if we could do it (and in case of dinosaurs, no we can't and never will, the DNA is too shredded and degraded after millions of years of exposure to cosmic radiation), if their habitat is gone. Often, the reason why a species went extinct is the destruction of their habitat! And even if the habitat is still more or less there (which includes the entirety of the ecological web, plants, animals, their food as well as predators that used to prey on the species we want to clone), once a species is gone entirely, even if we preserved egg cells and sperm, a cloned animal bred in a womb of a different species, lacks the symbiotic bacterial holobiome which every multicellular plant, fungus and animal needs to thrive and (in some cases) to survive. The holobiome is no longer there. You might be able to establish a new one and feed the cloned Mammuth contemporary plants, but don't get mad if, once you have a herd that breeds, natural selection will affect these former ice-age animals and cull the ones with the long thick hair that causes them overheating, and over the span of generations you will end up with mammuth that look quite different from what you wanted. And saying "oh we will put the mammuths and wooly rhinos into actic theme parks where rich hunters can hunt them to prevent overpopulation"... well no, apart from it being unethical, the real ice-age plant eaters didn't live on glaciers up in Spitzbergen... they lived all over Europe, down to Southern Europe, where despite the colder overall climate the seasonal day and night cycles were the same as they are now, as those depend on global latitude, which affects plant growth.
It will happen at some point with "recently" extinct animals. Especially from todays standpoint exotic animals, like saber tooth tiger and mammuth, will make up for a very fancy park and therefore money. Life... finds a way
Most people can't even move an image in Microsoft Word without having the whole document turn into a Picasso. So people are going to have this Krispy Kreme kit delivered from Guy Fieris weird cousin?!?! All righty then.
What blows me away here is that apparently, there's a weirdo out there who seems to think that the Gatherer's Gardens were a brilliant idea and that all the insane mutants were completely unrelated.
Well, suppose they do turn their DNA into a picasso painting! What's the worst that could happen?^^ ...Oh right... unimaginable body horrors with a potentially contagious level of instability.
why would you want genetic manipulation to be as freely accessible as an app for your phone? Really goes to show he has no idea of the repercussions CRISPR could have.
Also, not knowing how apps work puts you at risk of downloading spyware and viruses. Imagine what injecting a CRISPR analogy of a computer virus could do....
Arrakiz666, for once, there's no uninstall function for CRISPR (yet). There's also some security measures done when you install an app (sandbox, permissions, etc), no such thing on CRISPR. And of course if you brick your phone you can always get a new one. If you brick your body, well you just bricked yourself.
Dude this is exactly how people are with new technology. I want to have freedom to do whatever I want to my body, it’s a free country. Tyrant nations and dictators always try to keep technology away from their subjects to “protect” them. Lets not be like them.
Regardless of your view on religion the interviewer points out the vast influence and power humanity gains through gene editing and he questions how and whether we are capable of dealing with this responsibility. So if you don't take his question too literal I find it extremely relevant indeed.
I don't think the main issue behind the "God Argument" is that "oh let's not piss off god" its the idea of "let's not play god" or just falling into being overconfident with power and not really being able to control it.
two graphic designers that went to school together meet at a bar. first desiner says "so I worked on some of the avengers movies, what are you doing?" the second takes a drink and then replies "well I put together a series with an alchohalic mouse getting banged by a tick in the shower" the first one looks horrified "dear god why?" the second one says "well I work for John Oliver." they both nod and sip their drinks.
You're absolutely right, we should create them NOW. I mean, let's be honest, horse populations are pretty easy to control, so unicorns wouldn't get out of hand. On the other side, they could ignite the curiosity of little kids to go into life sciences, or science in general.
I'm a recovering alcoholic, with clear genetic alcoholism (the allergy whereby the chemicals aren't all broken down in the liver, and instead go to the brain, further breaking down into the crystalline structure utilized by the beta (alcohol dopamine) receptacles, AND into a crystalline structure equal to an opiate (hence utilized in the opiate receptors) thereby creating the 'best experience ever' the first time tasting the poison). I would love to genetically modify this out of my children, as I'm in my mid thirties and sober, but unwilling to have children as I fear passing this gene. While it's a fine line that must be walked, I'm sure there are other alcoholics who believe that this disease is best not passed down...
@@jaelynn7575wow! We are definitely in the future. Just to see a question like that. We are like 500 manhattan projects from having a small clue what to do to counter many of the most basic and least subtle effects of biology I´m guessing,.. that means like 5 years if we wanted to, but 20 years if we allow the army and private market to be the only ones on it, which seems most likely. Did I make any sense or should I just go CRISPR my self?
There once was a man from Nantucket Who gathered some mice in a bucket. He altered those mice Engineered with a splice And now all of the seagulls are dead.
Disappointed at that one. It just sounds like basic anti-GMO fearmongering we've been hearing for decades, yet the genetic apocalypse is nowhere to be seen.
GOOD. Seagulls are assholes anyway. Have you ever caught yourself feeding a Seagull totino pizza rolls? They pester you while doing a show ad nauseam until they get hungry enough to eat newly hatched baby sea turtles. Of which they actually do. Fuck seagulls. not in the mice/tick way.
I assumed when you started the sentence with "furries of the world, this is how -", that you were going to end by saying "you will be edited out of future generations" 🤷
1) turning somebody into a wolf-man is probably something that has to be done from birth and not something you can do at a whim, raising all the ethical concerns of designer babies with the added horror of condemming a child to be a socially outcast sex object 2) this comment has 69 likes, how appropriate 3) laura the bot has become sentient, knowning that y'all need the soundproof curtains, i know you want them, buy them bitch
@@ArgueWithTheMajority You played the first game, right? Sure, your guide is talking about splicers, but he never once says splicers, he says sploicers.
If the world was more serious about science we would have underground completely functional artificially produced ecological systems surrounded by impenetrable materials in all directions, Imagine a forest inside a single room of a bunker with a kill switch that incinerates everything inside. As it is that scientist and many others are doing the best they can with all the funding they should be getting going towards athletes and armies.
1) its a scientist not some dipshit with zero medical training who does not know shit, and the thing he is doing can negatively affect a way larger amount of organisims than just a single prisoner society has already deemed worthy of death how the fuck is that suprising 2) liam your biodome idea sucks ass and there is no such thing as an inpenetrable material
17:09 Eugene and Eugenics both come from the Greek ευγένιος: good kind / type or noble. So one can see Levy's parents' point, but also the unspoken goal of the Botany Bay scientists in *Wrath of Khan*.
Scientist: "My findings are meaningless if the media takes them out of context"
Media: "Scientist says, 'My findings are meaningless'"
Gawd hamit media.
You mean Fox News.
@@timmtheilig6827 well it certainly is not wrong
@@nm9864 No. He doesn't. All American media, including John Oliver's LWT, do a poor job on reporting scientific issues. Fox News does it a lot worse, but that means little when everyone else still does such a poor job. If everyone is getting a D- and one person gets an F, you can't really say everyone else did well because they didn't get an F.
@@MrSen4lifE What would be a good way to report scientific issues?
When he said "can meat be too cold" I'm amazed he didn't then mention how, when air conditioning was first invented, it freaked H.P. Lovecraft out so hard he wrote a novella about it
cool air my beloved 🤩
What was it called?
@@JaylaStarr en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Air
@@francookie9353 thx dear
@@JaylaStarr you're welcome, sweetie. 😊❤️
Oh my god the popping sound during that cane toad clip...
riiigt? I cringed soooo hard.
I had to looked away. Now anytime I see a frog(I know it’s a toad but I’ve never seen one in the wild) all I’ll think about is that popping noise
As an Australian ITS TRUE. WE FUCKING HATE THOSE THINGS. I didn't know this guy existed tho so even I was shocked by the number on that road and the sound of them being run over. However, it was both disturbing and cathartic.
@@PEASGaming64 i can second that
Imagine a steam roller
Imagine being this guy’s graphic design team. “Yes, that’s correct. I want an image of a mouse f**king a tick in a shower.” XD
I agree. A mouse and a tik would NEVER do it in a shower. They're enviromentally contious!
“And the mouse LOVES it”
makes me want to go into graphic design.
or matchmaking.
“Grandma Feathers didn’t look anything like that!!”
I want that job
I'm laughing so much at the designer babies comment. Just imagine being with your kid:
"Oh, your kid is cute!"
"Thanks, is a Chanel"
Kind of fits, since Coco was a Nazi supporter who were also fans of eugenics.
ⵉⵜⵔⵓⵏⴰⵓⵜ
She wasn’t with them because she was a Nazi, France got occupied and she was a greedy b**** to not to use it)
@@margaritam.9118 She was a fucking Nazi
Margarita M. Whether is a full Nazi member or not, her activities during the war is that of a symphtizer at best a collaborator at worst.
There's a movie with puma therman and ewan McGregor where people make "designer" children
Genes should be edited so we can be tall enough to punch giraffes. Retribution can begin
AlternateHistoryHub I did not expect that comment from you. 🤣
AlternateHistoryHub what are you doing up this late?
AlternateHistoryHub ya and you like jon oliver to
AlternateHistoryHub
oh my God, your here!? That's interesting.
Our goals should be more noble than that.
We just need to be tall enough to punch those filthy, abominable tall foxes.
#NoTallFoxes
As someone who’s family has a lot of diabetes, heart problems, and Alzheimer’s disease, if there was a way to eliminate those problems I would be first in line.
Natural selection.
Duck Soup hey man, fuck you. Any time you read that someone’s family has a lot of genetic issues, don’t fucking make a joke about it. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. My grandmother will be the 8th of her siblings to die from Alzheimer’s and my mom is terrified she will develop it. So yeah if there was a way to prevent it I would be the first in line. Fuck. You.
@@IdealConflict Natural selection stopped when modern medicin was introduced. If you like it or not, now a much larger percentage of people will survive to reproduce, even people who are stupid enough to respond with "natural selection" when somebody mentions family members dying from genetic deceases.
@@marandaward1663 And while I be supicious of any mega corp , goverment ,or cults to abuse tech that science made practical.. I think this research is overdue , its always been a question of spreading knowledge and use it with responsibility...as idiots will be idiots and only with other people having the same knowledge can it be counterd. but that sucks you and your family should be first in line for any safe procedure for gene treatment to combat those things specialy alzheimers..it can be such a cruel way to wither away....and for the idiots going 'natural selection' ye...fuck him ,intelligence is naturaly selected for and its what leets uss explore genes.
@@IdealConflict Inteligence have become homo sapiens one and only advatange for survival..because of natural selection , dont like how its used ? tough luck....100% of evrything you depend on to survive only exists because of inteligence....want to deny people the chance to replace none functioning chemicals so ther children can be born fully 'fuctional' ?
then get rid of evrything you own ,including your cloths and find some wilderness without any humans for hundreds of miles....and try survive ala 'claws and fangs' style.
Rather than eugenics I’m more afraid of the social gap that gene editing would create. I mean, obviously, the affluent would have more access to make their descendants, faster, smarter, stronger, more resilient, even longer living than the ones who can’t afford the mods. Gattaca, anyone?
With how cheap it is all you need to know is what genes to edit and how. So everyone could do it.
@Marshmellow Moon Things that might be cheap for people in america and Europe mitht not be so cheap for people in, for example, africa
@@keskonriks710 7:07 A couple of hundred dollars is stupidly cheap for *GENE EDITING* and that's the first of it's kind it will get so much cheaper. The point is that when we get to a level where a gap could be created it will be so cheap that even the poorest person with a tiny kit could do it. There are already malaria test that cost less then a dollar and are made of cardboard ua-cam.com/video/Qf-D1Upn-KU/v-deo.html
And, the fact we could all be dead in a 100 years, the idea of generations could be resilient enough to survive would be great. I personally lost family members to cancer some at 16 yo, the idea of cutting out cancer would be great.
I’m a biological engineering student, and I highly doubt that would ever happen. At least I really hope it won’t. For one, there are ethics committees that have to approve experiments with human beings or experiments of that magnitude. Most genetic engineering happening now is gene therapy with recombinant DNA, and making medications like insulin or certain antibiotics. But it is still something that we have to be very careful with bc I’m sure there will be some dictator one day that will want to abuse it
I love how this show introduces you to new topics, captivating you with good humour and leaving you knowing enough to thinkfor yourself
Dolly Parton played an important role in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine with a $1 million donation: ua-cam.com/video/CtlXWEo9u0w/v-deo.html
Yeah man. Not just the same old talking points. This is the best show
Perfectly put. It's a good starting place for further research but a great place for late night comedy and discovering what may not have been under your radar.
They are not new topics. Most if not all topics have been spoken about for generations.
@@andrellana8838 "new topics" was not the correct term yes. Maybe topics on a new scope, new stand, ahh dang it, eng's not my main language
_Rock “The Dwayne” Johnson_
Should've called him
The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock
I’m calling him this now
I was looking for this comment.
Rock Johnson is his name......!😁
@@karpmanlarpman The 2nd Law 👀
Dzaid Din dock the Rayne jinsin
It would have been amazing if my epilepsy could have been prevented like this, considering it is a stressful, stress triggered horrible cycle of falling, spasms, and memory loss. Some genetic differences are viewed as disabilities by those who have them.
I don't consider my being autistic and having ADHD to be a disability...but the bipolar one sure is. Plus I have long term weakness in the right side of my body from meningitis...IIH creates high cerebrospinal fluid which makes it hard to walk, temporary paralysis, memory loss. Some of these things I really wish could be cured (the last two), I honestly don't know what it would be like to not have autism or ADHD. I know what you are talking about Desiree. I'm mainly considered about the potential eugenics aspect.
You mean you don’t want to be a martyr for a group that can’t accept their limitations, you must be Hitler.
I hope they can prevent epilepsy someday and do the process well.
@@2126Eliza yeah, because all Hitler wanted to do was preform safe treatments on consenting individuals to only treat the severely disabled and fatally diseased.
There's absolutely no reason for people to be scared that they might be systematically wiped out and medically experimented on over meaningless genetic differences they can't change without their consent. None at all, it's pure delusional hysteria. (/s)
When it comes to disruptive behavior, it's often because a need is not being met. In most Spec-ed classes, they only focus on verbal communication and not so much on emotional regulation and alternative communication.
Maybe since only verbal communication is encouraged and expected despite other forms that would be easier, that this person is left with little options of communication. So yeah, it's not a surprise that this person was constantly screaming, crying, or disrupting class. Implying that this person is suffering simply because of Autism takes out a major part of the equation which is, how do we view and treat autistic people? Because they "couldn't properly speak" or drool or flap around, is their quality of life is lesser? The reason that quality of life for people with this kind of Autism is not great is because of the standards of non-autistic behavior are forced upon, and that deviations from that mean that a person is suffering, lesser, or less capable. How non-autistic people treat autistic people is a major factor in quality of life.
Watching this 4 years later makes me realize how far we've come and also has me screaming 'that's not how that works!!' at the biohacker
You've just described me watching most scifi movies lol!
Next you'll tell me injecting myself with apple juice won't turn my blood to apple juice. How about you stick to your lane?
I’m so happy someone actually is talking about CRISPR and current developments in genomics. It’s like the most amazing change in biology in recent decades, but barely anyone talks about it.
Alice Suhina unless you're in the science community and that's all you hear about haha another perspective is that there's so much talk that John Oliver who's not in science got wind of it. It's great though, it's a really controversial subject and I'd trust John to talk about it over any other talkshow.
kurzgesacht has some nice videos on it.
No, a lot of people talk about it, but unfortunately they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
was that sarcastic? its all over the place since 2015. its so over used and mentioned i am getting more bored then anything else when the topic comes up.
The problem is, as with many new technologies like this is lay people get excited/scared/anxious/obsessed with it without understanding the underlying science behind it. CRISPR is NOT A PANACEA, it is just another tool in the molecular genetics tool box, yes it is somewhat novel and revolutionary in it's mechanism, but it's actual real world application utility is for the most part untested. So when i hear stories on NPR about CRISPR and the dawn of "designer babies" it makes me fucking CRINGE, because it completely undervalues the insane complexity involved.
My biggest worry about CRISPR being used to modify humans is how the technology is obviously going to benefit wealthy people first. At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is pushing us towards economic collapse technology like this will only further the divide.
Vospader21 There's a cure for HepC now. Big pharma doesn't want to make it available because curative medicene doesn't make money. Some groups are even fighting against 3D printing organs using the patient's DNA because transplants are infinitely more lucrative. Same with HIV, many cancers, and a slew of other things. IF it is available it won't be for the poor, AND never in America.
Same with HIV? What on earth are you on about? It's not possible to cure HIV currently, except for very specific circumstances where a functional cure can be achieved through CCR5_Δ32 hemoatopietic stem cell transplantation, which is rarely possible or feasible. There's no other way.
CRISPR is too cheap, most likely the wealthy will just try to keep it a secret.
Viscera Trocar The HepC treatment is widely available. My sister went through treatment, via the public health system, in 2010 and has been free from the disease since 2011.
That is the case with almost every single technology, though. Would you argue against cars based on the fact that poor people can not afford to buy cars today? How about airplanes or trucks? Vaccines? Every single type of medicine is first available to the people who can pay for it, and then later on to governments and poorer people when the medicine becomes cheaper. How about electricity? A significant proportion of today's population lives without stable access to electricity. That is not an argument AGAINST electricity, it is an argument for MORE electricity. Many, many breakthroughs in science are very expensive at first, and therefore rich people are the first beneficiaries. But those breakthroughs (usually both paid by, and benefiting the rich) are then the stepping stone for even being able to ask "So now that we have this technology, how do we make it cheaper and more available to everyone?
The Chinese scientist wasn't being blase about gene editing so much as he was being uncomfortable with the interviewer invoking God. The combined effects of colonialism, the Enlightenment, and recent history means scientific professionals in China observe a strict separation between religion and science. Talking about God, especially the Abrahamic one, especially by people representing the West, makes alarm bells go off in a similar way over there as talking about Nazis in America. So don't blame the Chinese scientist. His interviewer didn't phrase his question well for a subject whose primary language isn't English.
Your view is a little one-sided
@@殷小乙 What is your disagreement, friend?
@@redsnowpenguin well I agree with your arguement, but it can also be in chinese traditional culuture. Chinese people looks like lacking in awe of the gods because of political and economic development. And in thsi era,
a well-educated scientist needs to take on greater responsibility，instead of letting prejudice continue
I think you reading too much into this. I don't think anyone can deny that some scientists are driven by discovery and not ethics. I mean, fuck jesus, but the interviewer was Asian as well and wasn't what he was going for.
@@marinaproger2324 The reporter, Adam Yamaguchi, is Japanese-American. #NotAllAsians are the same :-) America is strong in Adam.
But more importantly, the clip just seemed like a case of cultural contexts not matching up. Yamaguchi was fumbling a little bit with wording, or in any case it looks that way to me. In America we have a shared language around Christianity where people understand that an ambiguous reference to higher powers in ethics discussions don't necessarily, literally, mean God. But the scientist he interviewed clearly didn't take the question that way, for reasons I already mentioned.
LastWeekTonight is not wrong that there are cases of highly problematic gene-editing experiments from China. But unless they know something about the scientist interviewed in the clip, it's not right to characterize the clip as Chinese Scientist Laughing at Ethical Concerns.
As a disease ecologist, I want to say that the mouse and tick segment is one of the best demonstrations I have ever seen of these important principles in the evolutionary ecology of infection Disease.
I was born with a cleft lip and palette. I wouldn’t want any other baby or parents have to go through that. That stuff costs so much extra money. So much extra visits to the doctor or orthodontist. It’s a birth defect. If we can fix it, we definitely should.
Cantaloupa. Most people that oppose it dont have health issues. But the second they get cancer they suddenly change their minds.
Hey, sometimes cancer can be a better population control method than China can.
KADH99 Hey I hope you get it. Oh damn was that cruel? Sometimes I don't know where the line is when playing devils advocate.
Jack Heathen: No it wasn't, as long as you are not actively trying to "infect" him and only trying to make a point. Oh - not the answer you expected? Well - there are people out there that can accept death by illness as a part of life. Nature is "cruel" and culture has dampened many things that could have killed us, but we are only surprisingly fragile creatures.
Now yes - it still sucks and is probably a loss for a few people, but it is not the end of the world. Hmm.. where was i going with this? I guess i got "unemotional" with that topic because its my coping mechanism, but i don't think rational thinking is always a bad thing.
Unfortunately cleft palette is not a genetic error, it's usually a formation error as parts of the mouth fuse enutero (basically the issue doesn't all connect were it is supposed to). Improved nutrition and avoidance of substances that can trigger birth defects like a cleft palette, but it does not remove all risk. Also, sorry for your suffering, I hope you have completed your surgeries by now and that they went well.
As someone with epileptic family and wants kids one day, gene editing could be a dream for me. To not be afraid of passing an epileptic gene down to my future son or daughter, would be such a relief. I hope it is better in the future and can potentially help me or my children if they have seizures.
you are clearly bigoted, you should be happy that you are different and unique! Removing those diseases would be pure eugenics! They wouldn't suffer from seizures, they would suffer from how society treats them!
/s
My father had AML which is a variant of that sweet english baby girl's ALL. For the past few decades since he died, my family and I have been trying to raise $ for research and patient support in his memory. This baby girl being helped at all is very encouraging and wonderful.
I'm so glad you may see the cure of this disease in your lifetime!
I’m sorry for the loss of your father.
@@Sybildiscontent thank you, he was a great Dad.
Hi Laura, I am sorry for your loss
I used the information from this main story in my Biology class and impressed the hell out of my professor. I almost shouted 'THANK YOU JOHN OLIVER' in the middle of class!
If I'd cited this in a middle school my paper would have been returned with a big fat "F--please use correct citation" on it. If I'd cited it in college they would have made me take a a remedial class about acceptable sources.
@@mnschoen I didn't have to cite it. It was literally for an answer during a lecture that my professor asked us. It wasn't for some sort of research paper...
"You don't have to spend the next 2000 years worshipping the scientists, you just have to be like... thanks!"
One of the best lines he's ever spoke, :D.
It almost makes me feel... euphoric.
🙄 there are tons of people who treat scientists like they're gods
Same with doctors... If a doctor saves your life you really shouldn't be thanking a god
Meh. Kinda short on respect.
But long on rational thinking.
"You don't have to spend 2,000 years worshiping the scientists, you can just be like...thanks."
Thanks John.
Trevor Lol that joke killed me 😂😂
Lmao like I’ve always wanted to be worshipped for 2000 years
The tools used for gene editing come from bacteria. So we do have to thank God for it.
Qamaruddin Paykargar,
Salaam. You are right. I will thank Allah for this blessed technology.
Trevor Taylor even though I’m a practicing Christian, I laughed pretty hard at this joke. Good one Jon
If only they hadn't used beagles... They could've had Jacked Russell Terriers.
WOW. Just WOW.👏👏👏
Beagles are the goto lab dogs
@@MrDanisve I'm pretty sure Labs are the goto lab dogs.
@@SteveCary55 Only if they are golden retreived
other breeds will become jealous causing perhaps a Boxer rebellion
I love the woman with Dwarfism. Many in the Autistic community feel the exact same way. I don't suffer from Autism. I suffer from the way society treats me. A lot of who I am as a person is because of my Autism and I wouldn't want to be any other way.
As an autistic person i completely agree. Sadly too many allistics would prefer to get rid of us instead of just accomodating us
@@evexx1540 I'm Autistic and I'd get myself cured in a heartbeat
@@johnhughes2124 too bad the only cures death huh
Isn't the "autism community" mainly made up of Asperger ? Lucky you, guys, I'm glad you enjoy your comparatively benign condition, but you make up 2% of all the recorded cases on the autism spectrum. My own little brother is an autistic young man (with the usual difficulties socializing, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hierarchizing environmental information, and the corollary linguistic and logical underdevelopment,...) and it definitely is a huge disability. So please, either rebrand yourselves or stop pretending you speak in general for autistic people, most of whom conveniently can't speak at all.
Let's be practical here. Autism is a disease and gene therapy would be amazing
Damn those beagles are stacked bruv.
Blaze Absolute unit
dumb thicc
They're getting all the bitches
SWOLL BOIS
Guess what the Chinese scientists are eating at the table
I'd like to see the next minute of that Chinese scientist clip, because it seemed like he was laughing at the god reference, not the serious repurcussions of gene editing. It'd be like somewhere worrying about Thor's reaction to a new meteorological tool. If it's a metaphor fine, but why would that chinese scientist know the 'role of God' metaphor? Weird clip to use, and interesting place to cut it off before the scientist really says anything...
Ross Howard-Hildige it also might be because of the communist party's policy on religion, its a different world in china
@@PropheticShadeZ Except China is now more capitalist than communist (they have 1 million millionaires) but yes, China keeps a close eye on all religions to make sure people are not becoming extremists, or political, like they are in the US which is unconstitutional. Time to strip tax-exemption from churches that are pushing politics.
The US should start doing some of that b/c there are too many people in the US who just want to "kill" science and there are religious groups in the US that are STILL abusing and oppressing women/girls. The Chinese are laughing at how absurd we've become!
They are much more advanced in biotechnology than the US now because religious groups in the US are causing us to fall behind in biotechnology and many other areas of science. China just invested $350 billion into biotechnology. Thank George H.W. Bush, who banned stem cell research in 2001, for setting the US back a generation or two! We could be much further advanced if religion would just stay away from scientific research!
There was a PhD student at Vanderbilt who was growing tiny hearts, life-saving work, inside of mice. His goal was to get rid of the shortage of organs for transplant. The religious people in that state shut down his work! He had to find a University to continue his work. It's a losing battle for those people b/c even if they kick science out of their state b/c of "beliefs," people will go to another state. I'm starting to be jaded by "state's rights." We should become like a normal country and not have 50 different laws. It's starting to get out of hand. People shouldn't have to move from the state they've lived in their whole lives just so they can stop their child's seizures with medical cannabis, or move b/c they want to die with dignity, or force women to have to go to another state for a safe abortion.
z
Jae Lynn while i agree that the us has problems, and china does have advantages, i think the most important difference is that the us is able to debate and discuss the gov policy, while that freedom of information hinders complex debating. Hurting the countries ability to change. In america accountability is a constantly strived for goal, china has recently become an example of how totalitarian thinking can oppress 20% of the human race under the nose of democratic nations
Only the US anyone cares about god these days :P And yea, horrible reference. Most of modern people are not religious except in the US
MrDanisve religion is still all over the world dumbass 😒
Gene editing, like kitchen knives, is a tool. And just like knives they can be useful or dangerous. But just because irresponsible usage can cut our finger, it does not mean we should never chop an onion.
EE Ehrenberg Only that a kitchen knive is such a primitive tool in comparison that this analogy is very weak as an argument. Nothing you do with your kitchen knive will have implications for the ecosystem or the planet as a whole.
EE Ehrenberg: But after cutting ourselves, we expect our fingers to heal. Also, given only 10 fingers, that are located in our extremities, there is a limit to the damage to your organism if you lose a finger. But they're not talking fingers, they are talking cells. If you use a "knife" to make a failed cell, and if that failure doesn't prevent replication, your organism wastes resources making failed cells. Your failed cell might not play well with others. It might form compromised tissues;it might fail to produce a necessary protein; it might make a protein that isn't useful, etc. That's my simple way of looking at this. You might make someone sick, and unlike text editing, there's no way to "undo" the mistake. Some scientists are using CRSPR and they know what they are doing, they have high quality laboratories where they can carefully control the environment, and they probably are doing quality checks to verify they get what they expect. Right now, I believe there are strict laws about using CRSPR on human cells. I personally wouldn't look for a robust solution from a person who uses the verb hacking in the same sentence as CRSPR.
NO!
Anyone with an IQ over 60 can look at a knife and know exactly how it work and accurately predict the out come of using it without risking an entire ecosystem and starting a trend that will change the very nature by which people ordered in society.
my fear as a biologist, is that genes are extremely complicated. multiple genes can affect one epigenetic expression, and one gene can affect several expressions. (to put it in simplest terms I mean)
for example, those belonging to haplogroup J2 (there are other haplogroups who also contain the same genetic trait I'll be talking about, but for now, let's just use J2 - Sicilians, Greek, Mediterranean, etc - for our example) have a higher propensity to develop one of the various Thalassemia conditions, which is bad, however, with that mutation comes an increased resistance to Malaria. Its a mutation developed through microevolution, though the mutation that brings good benefits (resistance to Malaria) is controlled by the same genes that cause the Thalassemia traits as well. (technically, it's a lot more complicated than that. People with alpha Thalassemia have smaller red blood cells, and it's mainly due to the distribution of small amounts of hemoglobin in larger quantities of cells. So it's not like they block malaria, just that the mutation mitigates the damage until the immune system handles the rest. But I'm getting off topic...)
In short, no single gene acts alone, and we wont be able to affect change with one part without possibly causing other potential defects or changes. And not all defects are just negatives. Sometimes those smaller negatives arose to mitigate a larger negative. Erasing those smaller negative make us vulnerable to those larger ones again.
Despite some of the other replies, I think this is a perfect and simply analogy.
*Giant Wolf Leaps at Character*
Billy Corgan: "The world is a vampire."
Me: *visibly confused*
Exactly, everyone knows its werewolves, not vampires
People need to drop the god argument when talking to scientists if they want to be taken seriously.
There are many better arguments to make against unrestrained gene editing.
OHM-968692 but many can be stemmed from the god argument
That is not the God argument, it means omniscience or knowing the consequences of one's actions. What people really mean is that when you're making such drastic changes which have happened naturally over millions of years in organisms through evolution while maintaining balance with the environment then you better know what you're doing. At this stage the scientists are in no position to truly understand how this will affect the environment, that level of understanding is only possessed by Nature (or God or higher power whatever your religious inclination is). So it is best to proceed with extreme caution as the scientist experimenting in Nantucket island shows.
Random User yes, you can just ask about omnipotence and its moral aspects, instead of saying are they want to be Gods? or Does God allow.
OHM-968692 -Thank 🙌 U. Da very people Dat into(+) da world 2 jesus R da very people using our ($) 2 fund(-) experiments HELLO sumthing (=) about getting scammed da MASSES love
Bas Rensen 😁 they gave u jesus while they do not believe n use ur money to experiment
There's something so fascinating about these moral and philosophical quandaries about who we are fundamentally, and what power is okay to hold over another human.
This is how you get very, very angry Krogans, and at least one dead Salarian scientist.
Had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong...
That was fixed.
He just made them steaks, I don't know why they hated him so much...
The scientist can be saved
(Just saying)
Or just let the dumb korgan take over, save the salarian scientist and destroy the cure!
As a stunning younger Jeff Goldblum said before, "You were so blinded by the fact that you could, you never stopped to ask if you should".
Obviously , only someone with the most desirable genes would say that
I, along with both my siblings and at least one of their children, have a single mutated gene which has the potential to cause organ failure along with inherited COPD.
My hope is that with time and more study gene editing could help save my nephew from the problems I am facing. However, I fully admit that the misuse of the technology is troubling.
Damnit morty, now we've got to go to a different dimension cause you screwed this one up.
'Love is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed'
Kyle Li ah jeez
Lol, best comment here!
So I guess Dr. Sanchez just accidentally turned on Fox News?
The fucking squirrels!
Idk I feel like some people who talk about “playing God” don’t mean it in the literal sense. They’re just being figurative. They’re point is more about being arrogant and thinking you can mess with whatever you want without making huge mistakes or causing a huge downfall.
57goku - Then they shouldn’t eat anything that contains GMOs. Humans have been messing with the genetics of things for a long time including the plants and animals that most of us eat daily.
Most of those who use God as a defense are hypocrites who don’t apply what they say to all aspects of their lives.
Pygmy Norton alright? Who’s to say they’re okay with eating genetically modified foods? And everyone has different ideas of when we’re going too far.
My point is they just want to feel like people aren’t being reckless when they say that phrase. You’re being mad extra, I don’t want to debate what’s a valid thing to be against
Meanwhile the people are so opposed to human gene editing because it is "playing god", praise others for getting IVF or sperm donations when "god" is clearly yelling:
"YOU BETTER NOT F**KING REPRODUCE!!!"
You know your research is risky when you're having dreams about PigHitler that sound like an author getting a little heavy-handed with the symbolism
The symbolism of PigHitler was a bit on the upturned nose lol
Sounds like some actual Lord of the Flies shit
To be fair, its almost impossible for that Zayner quack to edit anything by just injecting CRISPR/Cas9 into the blood stream. Cells don't just pick up anything that floats in the blood, you'd need an actual delivery system to get the CRISPR/Cas9 into human cells, preferably one that is actually specific to the tissue you want to edit. The only possible way to do this outside of a petri dish is with a modified viral delivery system, meaning you edit a virus to deliver guide RNAs and genes that code for the Cas9 protein. Thankfully, selling viruses out of a garage is bioterrorism, so nothing this guy sells can actually do anything to people, its just pseudoscience and placebo.
You really aren't educated when it comes to pseudoscience you moron.
Just to be fair, "real scientists" are idiots educated, they doesn't want the cure for diseases or make mankind better than before, they are always feeding the pharmaceutical industry who doesn't want purchase the discovery to cure diabetes or something. Because they know, if someone discover the cure of whatever they'll need to lose billions to put on the shelves of their pharmacy. To be fair, no one should suffer for something they don't asked for like being too short or too tall, too thin or too fat, black mainly or white, man or woman and etc... If someone can revert this natural state to something you want like transgenderism which isn't realistic, but can actually remove an entire reproduction system to what you ever wanted. Some mofos are afraid of this because it can take out his post of privilege, making a perfect world or idealizing one. Would wash this prejudice, hate and everything. No one would be more or less, everybody on the same pattern.
Your biggest concern as an American citizen should be the moment insurance companies begin to lobby for the use of genetic testing prior to offering coverage to people. They'll be able to charge whatever they like based on your DNA and your chances of developing certain ailments. It has already begun with pharmaceutical companies offering "personlized" medicine.
Additionally, companies that test for ancestry have no obligation to destroy your DNA once tested and are free to monetize it and sell it to their partners.
well maybe you wont need medicine or insurance anymore after you updated yourself. we have to make sure they dont regulate it or they will force us to buy the intermediate steps (drugs,treatments) i want the free market 1 stop update solution. but fearmongerers and politicians will prevent that.
Science creates wonderful tools, some ideas not worth exploring, others just plain stupid. But that doesn't stop the servile scientist of a corrupt government or corporation to do whatever they wish for more control and power i.e. government/politicians or for more profit, i.e. CEO of some corporate conglomerate who only exploit people and damage the environment.
I've said this before, I'll say it again: John Oliver makes videos over topics that seem boring or uninteresting at first, but later seem important for us to know and motivate us to do something about the issue! Update after reading replies: The 1 subject I never found interesting and barely passed in school and college was science, so I went into this video not initially interested in the subject, but because it's a John Oliver video I had I feeling he would make it entertaining to watch.
It's not easy to incorporate a minute long story about a mouse fucking a tick in the middle of a gene editing deep dive...yet somehow, he does it!
You know what some may call him a maverick some may call him an anchor some may call him an adult ....... *chuckles* haaaaaa
What do you find interesting if you think gene editing is boring? Just out of curiosity.
Dominika circles and math... mostly squares..................... *Not troll comment I swear*
Its true, i seriously never cared about the mouse who finds a tick on tender but maybe we could figure out some sort of support group for them so they dont get so desperate.
I like the skills John has that couldn't be predicted like doing a good Australian Toad God's accent.
I have to disagree with the LP woman. If dwarfism can be eliminated, that would be a good thing. Dwarfs suffer from organ failure, bone malformations, joint problems, and seldom live an average lifespan.
Not to infer that they are "less than" an average person. But if science can eliviate them from these burdens, or prevent children from having to deal with complications, how is that not the moral choice?
Yeah but the bad thing is we won't be able to remake Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Austin Powers.
Dan “not to “imply””. Infer is the message someone else takes from reading your comment, while imply is the message you are trying to put across.
You should read Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon. It provides a much more nuanced look into the possible elimination of these conditions and the impact that may have on our society.
@@amandadavenport2020 "Diversity is good for society" is a bad argument for not eliminating medically harmful or disadvantaging conditions. No one owes it to society to live in pain, have a shortened average lifespan, or have to accept some other detrimental condition for everyone else's benefit.
After studying genetics for the last 4 years, I am glad to see this. Bioethics was a big focus on the program for a reason. It is a fine line we will have to address with a moral lens. With that... it is a very promising field, but we are still roughly 10-15 years out before we can really harness the power of genetic editing in human health. Side note, how CRISPR works isn't too complicated, a big reason it is popular right now is because it is way simpler and has higher specificity than zinc fingers or TALENs. I highly recommend educating yourself on it, it is super interesting!
Cannon Gardner agreed. And it's super cheap compared to other methods. We've been able to do a few studies here at the University I work at as a junior researcher using microbes. The outcomes are amazing! This is why I love science. Yet we still need to look into the ethical implications it might have, because we all know there will be those who take it too far.
Yes, it is more specific and promising. But there is still a high chance that severe side effects occur in clinical use. In a bioinformatic course at university I wrote about bioinformatic aproaches to predict potential offtarget cleavage sites of RNA-guided Nucleases. There is still a huge discrepancy between predictions and experimental evaluation. Sequence based algorithms do not work at all. Maybe machine learning aproches could work better. Also experimental evaluation shows that there are even very low-frequent offtarget events. Shure, CRISPR-CAS is promising but there is still a lot of work to do.
The part at the end: OK, I get not wanting to think of your condition as a "condition" because you don't want to be thought of as flawed but let's be real here. It *is* a condition, one that tends to come with a whole slew of health problems. My cousin has dwarfism. He's a great guy and perfectly happy with his life, even found a loving wife... only he's often in the hospital for various joint and respiratory problems and his wife has been wheelchair-bound for the past decade.
All of those problems are tied directly to their dwarfism. You bet your ass they'd rather have been born without it, just like someone with cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis would prefer not to have those things. It doesn't mean those conditions define who you are or that they're something to be ashamed of. It just means that they objectively lower a person's quality of life.
There are a few with dwarfism that don't experience these issues at least with the same level of severity. Those are usually the ones fighting trying to pretend it something that should be preserved. It is honestly pretty sick wanting your kid to be a dwarf.
Troy Warren exactly. For a much less severe version, I'm really nearsighted. Without my glasses, all I can see beyond about 20 feet is vague blurry shapes. Thankfully, I can compensate with my glasses and not be hindered in any significant way. That doesn't change the fact that I'd be better off with naturally 20/20 vision and, given the option, I'd rather not pass my poor vision on to my kids.
Though I think "person with dwarfism" is a preferable term to "dwarf" because it emphasizes the fact that dwarfism is something you have, not something you are.
Element115 What is a "normal human"? We very so greatly around the globe that very little room for "normal" exists. While I understand the urge to change a future child's life by removing a disability, I also fear that it could be used to erase certain communities with their own cultures. There are many people with Autism (like myself) who cope with it and move on. I feel like erasing the chance for my child to have Autism is just as bad as having killed it for being born with Autism. Many other people with disabilities feel the same way.
Maybe you didn't know this, but there are people without dwarfism that have those problems too. It is not up to you to decide what is "normal," this is precisely why eugenics isn't just morally outrageous, it is also an outright pseudoscience.
Heraclitus Blacking You can discuss all day about what is considered normal, but that isn't going to change the fact that people with certain conditions like dwarfism have considerable disadvantages compared to those who don't. It's great that those people learn to cope with those disadvantages, but it's still morally outrageous for some of them to want their children to have those disadvantages too, IF there was a reasonable option to prevent it.
Also, just because some people have similar symptoms without dwarfism, doesn't make the condition of those who's symptoms come from dwarfism less bad.
Just wanted to say that Cane Toad documentary is high key one of my fav docu's ever. Highly recommend, it is a trip.
I love this neutral approach with well based research.
total unbiasness is imposible tbh this is as good as it gets
I thought the exact opposite. I thought he went so far out of his way to talk about the risks that he resorted to retarded points like "playing god".
Passport "Being ableist isn't cool, man. That's why I'm recommending eugenics to remove you from the gene pool"
The irony doesn't get much juicier than that
the scientic method is a morally neutral prosses, while journalism a political comentary, by definition it has a moral stance, people call thing unbias when they dont agree with their jugments, but i non-jugmental political comentary is definitionally imposible, call of bias are basically saying i gave a diferent opinion than you, with the imply asumption that the reason why that is is because the other person is being dishonest, is silly ideological nonsense
Passport
Well, I think they also made fun of that biohacker dude enough to buffer that 'warmth' or 'atheistic view'
"Kramer, what the hell are you talking about?"
"A pig-man! Half man, half PIG!"
TimeandMonotony add some bear in there...
Excelsior!
Justin Kincaid I'm super cereal
all I could think about when he said that
ManBearPig. Half man, half bear, half pig.
JR Gracie manbearpig!!!
Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson is now The Rock's official name
I giggled when he said that. It was perfect.
bill bill heard it first on wrestletalk
Dwayne “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson” Johnson
Oli from Wrestletalk said has been using it for years!
"I'm going to get drunk and crispr myself"
oh sweet Jesus.
Clearly an alcoholic.
I love that the "Eugenics" Eugene Levy book has the foreward by Jason Biggs 16:58
Ah yes! Jason "Pie-Fucker" Biggs
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who gathered some mice in a bucket
He altered those mice
Engineered with a splice
And now aLL oF tHe SeAguLLs aRE dEad
There once was a man who came from Nantucket
Who gathered some mice which he kept in a bucket
He altered those mice
Engineered with a splice
So a mouse won't get Lyme's when a tic would fuck it.
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who gathered some mice in a bucket
He altered those mice
Engineered with a splice
Because you know what, fuck it
are served with rice
You forgot the zalgo.
I dont think that Chinese guy was brushing off the moral questions but more of the religious notion behind the statement.
Jason Is Awesome! Actually, Chinese scientific establishment lags in the field of bioethics. Thats a structural problem, going back decades... this problem also affects Russian scientific community, since the USSR was much more focused on results as dictated by the Party demands. Not saying that they are devoid of morals, or that the Western scientists are very ethical, but there are different ingrained cultures regarding what is and what is not prioritised in each academic/scientific circles.
Unfortunately for Russia, there has been major national losses for ignoring bioethics/morality. We as a peoples(species) keep morality around because it is more optimal than being a Saturday cartoon villain or some bbeg, for large majority of situations considering physical limits of being human in general.
ua-cam.com/video/SQCfOjhguO0/v-deo.html
the_rugged it seemed to me that it was more of a language issue. Here in the US, you don’t necessarily have to use that phraseology rigidly - it can just mean that you’re screwing with something that you don’t necessarily understand the consequences of. I think the scientist was genuinely scoffing at the potential belief that someone thinks that gene editing ought to be left with gods. I think the statement was poorly represented, and can understand how people might take it literally.
Whether or not China or the USSR have thoroughly developed their ethical standards for science is a separate argument. Although, if ours is more developed, it might explain why we (in the West) have moral reservations when we discuss gene editing.
There is no GOD. That's why the asian scientist was laughing... and also the fact that there would be peoiple that would rather let others suffer orbe diffrent just becouse they think some higher being wants them to.
Jason Is Awesome! People without faith are the most dangerous creatures. That's why China under CCP's rule can do harm to the whole world.
Scientist: "We have developed a treatment that cures cancer in 40% of mice"
Media: "Scientists cure cancer!"
Scientist: "No, its not a cure, but we are now a little closer to a cure in the future"
Media: "Scientists invent Time Machine!"
Scientist: "Fuck you!"
Media: "Scientist rapes journalist!"
@8alot4t cancer does not benefit the organism in which it inhabits. Stop advocating for cancer.
@@finmin2k it does benefit the cells that are cancerous, though. So it is a horrible disease for the group of cells we know as the organism, but it is a savior for the group of cells that have become oncogenic. True to nature, it is a matter of two groups of cells fighting to survive. We happen to advocate for the human side.
@@georgebrantley776 To be fair though, wouldn't the cancerous cells be endangering themselves by retroactively killing the human they're a part of?
@@CadDriftarus Yeah, but when I say "fight to survive" I mean it in a more metaphoric sense as the cells don't have consciousness to be able to fight for anything. So in cancer the cells grow and never die even as they become damaged (usually cells commit suicide when needed). So cancer will grow on its own just because the feature of cell suicide has been irreparably damaged due to mutation. So it's true that cancer cells don't persist generationally like a parasite might, which begs the question how did cancer survive a billion years of evolution? Obviously parasites propagate their gene pool by laying eggs prior to killing the hosy--if they kill the host all. But cancer cells have no gene pool to propagate, as the cancerous designation comes from genetic mutation via sheer chance (over time) or radiation/other similar external factors. The original cell just grows and multiples are a ridiculous rate, never stopping, until the outsized growth fucks something up in your body. There is thus not really any natural selection for the survivability of cancerous cells, because while they do multiply on their own, there exists another source of cancer that will allow cancer to persist its existence over millenia and millenia into the future, because of environmental factors and the sheer design of gene replication in cells. Unlike the parasite that is reliant on a host to reproduce and is subject to typical biological evolutionary constraints, cancer is really a state of being rather than a disease per se, since there is no infectious pathogen. Cancer is to the human body what potholes are to roads I suppose. So there will always be potholes; it's just a sad inevitable truth of physics that asphalt will eventually crumble and break over time. It's just a truth of biology that our cell will eventually mutate and become cancerous given enough time, even in ideal circumstances. This is why cancer cells have not been much selected upon for survivability of the cancer cell.
Stupid
I thought jean editing was when you used scissors to turn your jeans into jorts.
PowahSlap Entertainmint i hate you
PowahSlap Entertainmint I hate you too, well done
you spelled gene wrong
Really? I transformed my jeans into a denim jacket.
No, that's a far worse crime than eugenics
The "Please kill me" reminded me of Ms. Tucker from Full Metal Alchemist :(
It reminded me of when Bart creates a horrible creature while learning magic.
I knew I could find Nina in the comments
It reminded me of some terrifying late-game unicorn-like creatures in Salt & Sanctuary. They charge at you, stick their horn in you, and then in all probability they'll suck all the life out before you can free yourself.
Can we go one day without mentioning the damn chimera?!?!
@@Crazyashley42 her name was Nina!!!
I have no issues with people being cautious around Gene editing. It's a thing that does need to be looked at and there's a bucketful of things to worry about.
That being said, we need to be cautious around the right things. If your worry is about "playing god" I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you. We won't *stop* Gene editing because you feel that we are moving closer to becoming some holy figure you believe in. That Asian guy seemed blase less about Gene editing and more blase about offending people who hate Gene editing just because it's new.
And that's what this is. Especially in the US, where scientists are looked at with suspicion, a lot of the issues people take up isn't because they've looked up Gene editing and had some concerning questions. Its because they heard "new science thing", thought it was bad with a gut feeling, and just went with their gut. Which, whatever. Be mad. But we're not going to halt scientific progress because your gut feels funny.
And that isn't to say there isn't anything to criticize. It's the same issue that is see when I see people who hate driverless cars flat out. Sure, there are a host of good questions that need to be asked and answered when moving down that path, but just not liking a thing doesn't mean it's bad.
And I'm not a scientists. I don't think you *need* to have a degree to engage in the "gene editing* conversation. But you should have at least researched the damn thing farther than 20 minutes with Jon Oliver once. RadioLab has multiple podcast episodes on it where they interview actual scientists. Stuff You Should Know also has a podcast episode on Crispr. Use these guys if you don't want to read. There are plenty of books on the subject. Read up on a thing before you decide it's bad and educate yourself before you ask a man with a fucking degree whether we can make unicorns or not.
Commander Shepard This. Absolutely this.
I feel if there is a concern about this process it would be about this venture somehow taking a dark road. Like the old saying goes, " The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Just my opinion of course.
"Playing God" Dont read into it to literally it's just a saying
And the concerns are pretty straight foward. We not be God can not create some sort of divine for our nor can we create any sort of model for how this will play out. Doing something that will dramatically effect society with no clue as to what direction will go is bad. It's not gut feeling thing. It's want to hedge your bet for the continuation of humanity as we know it.
God, no God... we've more than enough examples from history where mankind rushed to screw with life, and the result was Australia being devoured by toads. Australia, a poisonous desert hellscape, was ruined by mankind not thinking enough about "well toads eat bugs - that oughta do it!"
CRISPR could be infinitely, infinitely, *infinitely* worse if it goes wrong.
So yes, while I do support how this science could potentially redefine the entire human experience for the better, and pray for the day we can file horrors like Alzheimer's in the same category as Small Pox and Polio... No one wants to see the world fall into a Dr. Moreau themed apocalypse. This is one of those sciences where the potential risks keep up with the rewards.
To that end... When researching and experimenting (none of these distinguished scientists should ever be accused of "playing") in "God's Domain," just be careful not to accidentally science up a plague of burning locusts. That Nantucket Mouseologist definitely has the right idea is what I'm saying.
ALL COMMENTS ARE RUSSIAN BOTS! DONT BELIEVE ME, CHECK THE PROFILES! UA-cam CHANNELS PLEASE DISABLE COMMENTS, OUR DEMOCRACY DEPENDS ON IT! NOTICE THE RESPONDS!!! THEY ARE ALL BOTS! THEY ARE MAKING US FIGHT AGAINST OURSELVES!!! WAKE UP AMERICA!
Jurassic Park: Cloning isn't great
Jurassic World: Gene Editing isn't Great.
Joking aside, there was a movie all about this that came out in 97. Gattaca.
StealthMaster86 That's a hidden gem, right there.
Was hoping someone mentioned this. I am not disappointed- well done.
Also, great movie.
I actually watched that movie in a human genetics class. Shit was great.
YES. Thank you for bringing this up!
Watched it last month what a coincidence!
Every time I watch LWT somehow I get depressed but at the same time I feel better. weird...
duchesswannabe think that's the vibe he's going for
just like complimisults
He makes us understand how fucked a certain aspect of society is, that maybe we have not considered before. But he also gives us a little bit of hope and maybe a good direction to take.
I'd greatly appreciate it if some fellow John Oliver fans/concerned citizens would check out my acoustic piano & vocal covers of various 80s/90s classic songs on my channel. Covers include Sting, George Michael, Billy Joel, Pete Townshend, Tom Petty, GooGoo Dolls, Steely Dan, Counting Crows, Phil Collins, and some lesser known 1-hit artists. Live acoustic with no autotune. Thanks and peace.
Sports will not be the same. The chinese want gene editing so that they can play like kobe, ronaldo, and jordan 😰
There once was a man from Nantucket.
Who gathered some mice in a bucket.
He altered the mice, engineered with a splice
and now all of the seagulls are dead...
oh fuck it
I don't care much about the seagulls - kill them all!!
If God is a cane toad, most Australians who have lived in the more northerly regions during summer, myself included, are going to hell. We treated cane toads in much the same way people treat flies & mosquitoes.
In fact, returning home to Queensland after years in America, I was blown away by how quickly and almost unconsciously I reacted to the sight of a cane toad on a humid summer night. I saw it, I killed it. Bing bang boom.
Couldn’t read all comments but the one i read didn’t mention this. Rock “The Dwayne” Johnson.
Kishor Kafle thank you for stepping up to the plate, I was searching for the same thing! ;)
17:25 I think John Oliver has probably misunderstood the scientist's reaction here. I think he's probably just agnostic/atheist and thinks the idea of a conscious creator is itself laughable.
Exactly!
As an atheist myself, I had the same reaction towards the idea that humans shouldn't "play god." And atheism is actually highly common in China, due to their communist history.
@@TheUrbanGaze saying atheism is common in China is a bit misleading, because traditional East Asian culture have different way to see religions. While western view see religion as this single spiritual ideological school of thought that a person believe in, East Asian culture tend to practice everything without really identifying with a single ideology. So someone can have a Buddhist funeral, do ancestral worship, and go to Confucian temple during new year to give offering, but when asked what religion they have, they can't really answer it. The same with Japan, you have Shinto birth ceremony, got married in a church, and have a Buddhist funeral. One of the biggest issues European missionary faced in Japan was when newly baptised Japanese were confused why they were not allowed to do Buddhist and Shinto rituals anymore.
yeah, in a culture that recently starved the hell out of itself, taking control of things probably looks pretty good.
artcom Nobody should “play God” if that’s what one believes, but one doesn’t have to follow conventional morality if they have the ability to ignore it. Also if it gets excellent results nobody will care about the morality.
Anyone else notice the scientist lady's last name literally ends in *DNA* 2:42
Mark the time.
Brainbuster my bad lol
Um, no? Not like it would matter, but you're wrong. Born female, and she has that last name because her parents had that last name.
Illuminati confirmed!
Raf Jesus Christ it's her last name as well
THE CANE TOADS POPPING. I WILL NEVER UNHEAR THAT.
GATTACA! GATTACA! GATTACA!
Surprising how there's not a single reference to the most obvious movie regarding this issue...
The main character is avoiding scanning, but the person he's pretending to be was edited.
You do know that at the end the moral of the movie was that effort beats (genetically altered) talent
You do know ... IT WAS A MOVIE?!? It's fiction. Science *fiction*. Gah!
Intelligent effort, hacking. Intelligence beats everything. Raw power or repetition does nothing. Genetic modifications in Gattaca hadn't touched intelligence much, Limitless explores it much better even without gene editing per se
I can understand the Chinese guy's reaction to the specific qualm being about the "playing god" aspect. He sees that as an independent criticism as asinine because essentially the conceit of that argument, without any further context, as "this is wrong/immoral because humans were never meant to mess with that". And that context definitely doesn't come through with a language barrier like that. Trying to condemn scientific discovery because of the power it puts in our hands is as asinine as his reaction portrays it to be.
I agree with you. I was intrigued by the debate on disabilities. I personally am on the autism spectrum and wouldn't want the way I think modified. I would love however to remove the downside of sense sensitivity and the lack of that comes with it. For me this has a large impact on my home life as I sit in my room to avoid television and the pain it causes me to listen to it and focus on something else. For context on that you can look up auditory disabilities (I forgot the name/term used for mine). However I am looking to try what is called AIT therapy (I think?) to help with that.
fun fact actually.
Autism looks like it’s going to be the next stage of human evolution.
As for the whole ‘we can’t do this because something something god’ argument. If it wasn’t something we were to do, why are we able to do it?
He didn’t mention the movie GATTACA? That is basically a movie showing the problems with gene editing and Eugenics! It’s a great artistic example.
Was waiting for such comments hahahha. Love that movie and Uma Thurman
I dont think works should be discredited as much as they are though. They exist as a way of imagining the consequences of certain future possibilities. Black Mirror is all hypothetical but it shows a very possible reality of certain advancements that people may not think twice about at the time of creating such an advancement. Before movies and shows, it was books. people seem perfectly okay citing works such as 1984 in discussion related to hypothetical future consequences. Also this isnt me taking one side or another on the actual issue brought up in John Oliver's video
As I remember it, and as the start of the Wikipedia plot summary indicates (tl;dr), Gattaca wasn't about gene editing, but about the eugenics society resorted to because they apparently lacked the technology to edit genes.
There's no real need to _pretend_ that you have your brother's genes if you could use gene editing to actually _acquire_ those genes. So they should've shown the movie Gattaca as a great artistic (fictional) example of problems that gene editing could solve?
Jesse McDonald I don't think he meant it should discredit it at all, just that it raises some interesting talking points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Amazing movie.
I don’t think I’ve seen anything more Australian than a guy swerving all over the road to kill as many frogs as possible
*toads.
We love frogs.
That Asian science guy might have been laughing more about the higher power thing than the caution needed for gene editing.
Agreed, he finds it fascinating that in this day and age, people still believe such things.
Philip Ehusani
In this day and age, belief in the unprovable still makes people feel better.
@@gusg6197 Yup, that's the human psychology, we like to feel good, we hate responsibilities, so we feel better convincing ourselves that God is responsible for all things.
It helps that he lives in China, which as a (former?) Communist state, isn’t big on religion.
Philip Ehusani
...heh. I’m just a weirdo, but the main comforts I draw from the possibility (since I’m agnostic, though identifying as Presbyterian) is: that death won’t be the end, and that bad people will be held to account.
The Chinese scientist is not being flip about gene editing. He's reacting to the interviewer's suggestion a 'god' is involved in human biology.
"Playing god" is a meaningless analogy, since gods do not exist.
@Forx_o That's not edgy, he's just stating a fact. At least regarding "Gods" as defined by religions.
Brian F Considering a lot of people believe in God, it’s not a meaningless statement. Just because you don’t believe in one doesn’t nullify the entire implication and meaning of “playing God”. I’d imagine you can still comprehend what that phrase means without being religious yourself.
@Liz T I agree with Brian, I think it's kind of meaningless without the context of religion. When you say it assuming God is real, you mean it in a way that implies it's a bad thing, because we cannot be so "arrogant" I guess, to defy God's will? Or some shit like that.
It's stupid if you consider that there is no God, because that just means we are trying to improve upon the random shit that happened naturally, which is sometimes disadvantageous to us, so of course we want to fix it.
If we can fix something that's bad, we should do it, and saying it's "playing God" is just a bullshit argument that has no meaning in a rational society.
Edit: And of course, I'm not saying that there are no risks, far from it, but "Don't play god" is not a good way to warn a scientist against the potential risks of something, it's something that people say because they are afraid of god, not because they concluded rationally that such a thing could be risky.
Liz T the problem is that they use the term "playing god". when you could say "playing mother nature" and mean the same thing
yes, you could argue that it's arrogant for humans to think we understand nature so much that we can message with it and know the results, but in the end, from the day we started selectively breeding livestock we have been screwing with nature
Ahhhhh, they used Vanessa Hill from Braincraft! Fantastic series, so underrated. Thanks for showing it!
Captions said the guy was selling DIY CRISPR kids out of his garage. Turn on captions. They get funny sometimes.
Re-watching after learning crispr babies from China. Oliver is a prophet.
0:45 The name Rampage comes from a series of video games of the same name. In these games, you play a giant gorrila, giant wolf, and giant lizard and destroy buildings and stuff.
I was waiting for someone to say this!
As someone with a horible genatic condition that could kill me or my children(if I have any) young. I fully 100% support gene editing and am anoyed by pepole that are so anti it.
Currently my plan is to never have my own kids and to adopt instead.
yeah, and its usually always those who did not have to deal with a child who has some dire genetic disposition.
The girl in this video was a good example. Who in their Right mind wants children to be born with genetic dispositions which will let them suffer nonstop until they die before even making it to preschool. Natural selection has been mostly eradicated amongst humans thanks to social support and medicine. I'm glad that that is the case, but if we do not want the human gene pool to "degenerate", where all future humans will be dependant on pills and machines to be able to live, then we need to repair those "defects" before they can spread in the wider population.
I have a friend with DMD, and... yeah, no, letting him die because we’re squeamish is neither moral nor just.
theendofit but you wouldn't be *you* if you weren't so horribly sick, and we know that that's the most important thing in the world: that you feel unique and that you protect that uniqueness!!!
Yeah, I also have some incurable, degenerative shit wrong with me, and would also likely adopt, as most traits I care about are hereditary, but not particularly genetically determined (meaning environment). Plus, I would gladly have a life without these hurdles, because I'm not terminally scared of the problem of consciousness and don't value suffering.
I worry about that too. I have schizophrenia, which is highly heritable. I’m thinking of adopting, so as to avoid passing it on. It’s kinda hard to live with, and I’m one of the truly functional ones
First of all, good for you for choosing to adopt! Second, I think the editing the human genome should stop past life threatening illnesses.
I don’t WANT someone to be able to edit my autism. I love the way I think, and I wouldn’t want that to be able to be taken away. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
My concern precisely
You may think it isn't a bad thing, but science and biology says otherwise.
@@dingkong5034 science and biology are the tools, you're making a philosophical argument here, not a scientific one. Disabled people should have the right to self determination, and not have our futures decided by some eugenicist fools.
@@dingkong5034 Grandin Temple would like to have a few words with you. Also, at least 16% of STEM majors. Get back to me when someone else not only cares about animal welfare, but also singlehandedly redesigns an entire industry around it, and dramatically reduces accidents and deaths regarding livestock.
For the Chinese scientist part I can't honestly blame him for his reaction. You act as though his dismissal was unreasonable but forget to put emphasis on the way the question was posed to him. It's perfectly justifiable to dismiss a concern that posits we shouldn't do something because that's for "god" or a "higher power". He wasn't asked a ethical quandry or a moral question he was asked if someone's imaginary friend would approve of his actions.
Perhaps, if we're sincere about drawing a line and hashing out the ethics of this technology we should drop theology and pick up some actual philosophy.
Lol what? Nobody should be fine with unregulated gene therapy regardless of their religious beliefs. The horrors that can be done to the world are endless.
And it's pretty easy to understand why people could think God wouldn't be okay with humans changing their basic building blocks given that if you are Christian you believe God made those selfsame building blocks.
Also do you really think that just because a story dealing exactly with a modern moral quandary isn't in the bible, it must mean that God doesn't care about it? That if the bible doesn't specifically address it then it absolutely must be okay? Like there is zero room for thought?
Wesley Brock Maybe if he had worded more like “aren’t you worried about the impact of going against the laws of nature itself?”
That would at least be more reasonable to the scientist.
"Nobody should be fine with unregulated gene therapy regardless of their religious beliefs."
I agree. We shouldn't have wholly unregulated gene therapy, manipulation, or editing. In fact my position favors regulation which is why I went on to say that we should, if we're serious about this use philosophy to determine where we draw the line in the sand. Furthermore, it's not obvious that the Chinese scientist in question was in favor of unregulated editing because the question posed to him was not about that but about whether we're stepping on god's toes.
"And it's pretty easy to understand why people could think God wouldn't be okay with humans changing their basic building blocks given that if you are Christian you believe God made those selfsame building blocks."
Sure it's easy to understand why Christians who believe that might be against gene editing but it's also easy to understand why someone who thinks Rampage is a documentary would be against gene editing too. That I can understand the chain of logic they used to arrive at their conclusion doesn't mean I think they've reached a cogent conclusion. You think god would be upset with gene editing? As far as I can tell Christians have failed to even prove their god exist so to make claims about his desires are putting the cart way before the horse.
"Also do you really think that just because a story dealing exactly with a modern moral quandary isn't in the bible, it must mean that God doesn't care about it?"
Yeah that's exactly what I think. Because an omniscience god doesn't really have any excuse to leave it out if he has any concerns about it. Leaving us to guess at what he gives a fuck about is not really the best or even a good way to go about it. And since new additions to the "true word of god" are less then forthcoming and we'd have no real way to discern fakes from the authentic I do think we should either assume god doesn't have a material opinion on the matter hence why he never felt the need to address it in his last word to mankind or that god is so fucking incompetent that we shouldn't care what he thinks on the matter. All of this of course granting that the fucker even exist which, and this may come as no surprise to you, I happen to think is the most likely scenario making the whole matter moot.
Wesley Brock thank you for writing that I was thinking of that
The intent is still clear even if you take God out of the equation. A higher power could simply be nature or evolution instead of an actual deity it could be something we humans have little control over. The question is do we really think we can mess around with the very essence of life without having unforeseen negative consequences?
I love that haughty chuckle from the Chinese scientist when the other dude said "up to god." Come on, guys, there might be reasons we should be careful, but "god would rather do it" is a dumb reason.
We are raised so entrenched in religion in, America, that it can be difficult to see a point of view that does not fear the phrase 'playing God'. The fact that I am an atheist and still I instinctively capitalized that 'g' in God is just one example of our lifelong programming. I no longer feel bitter toward religion as a whole but still find it frustrating when religious beliefs interfere with scientific advancement. 'Playing God' is what humanity has always done. That is the free will we supposedly have.
Yeah, I'm surprised John didn't address how the interviewer portrayed the west as religious nuts, when this is hardly the case (specially EU)
I don't care as long as whoever is doing it accepts full responsibility for the outcome.
Well we are going to need 30 foot mutant wolves to fight against all the robots that uprisen against us.
How that dialogue from John Betancourt's Amber prequels went? Something like this:
“So you've retaken Juniper,” I said. “Doesn't that leave us with, ah, a slight troll problem?”
“Half a million troll problems,” Freda said.
“We can bring in giants to take care of the trolls,” Aber said.
“And then dragons, I suppose, to take care of the giants?” I said with a annoyed snort.
“Now you're getting the idea!”
Make a movie of this. Its golden.
Robots won't be a problem. The self-checkout at the local grocery store couldn't tell whether I was sticking my debit card in to pay, or if I was robbing the store.
Also my buddy owns a self-parking car that couldn't self-park in an empty parking lot because there wasn't enough space for it to maneuver.
The furries will save us.
This already happened in the 70's. Killer cars got loose and we made 50 foot cats to stomp on them all but the cost was simply too high. And that's why London bans all laser projectors within a 10 mile radius.
“with a foreword by By Jason Biggs” …
Perhaps my all-time favorite combination of English words.
18:00 No John, he seems tickled at the idea that modern Americans are making decisions about science based on ancient religious beliefs rather than, you know, reality.
Lord Hephaestus fuck religion #atheismmemes
Exaaactly. I can't believe he would misread someone like that without reason though. He's not stupid. Its damn obvious he's bemused at the religious spin on the question, yet John intentionally altered the context of it and tossed in an unrelated distraction.
Ironic for a communist, making decisions that restrict the free market and oppress people. Pretty much begging for a revolution.
ath*shitism has no grounds in reality, LMAO, every nation that tried ath*shitism has collapsed and china isn't too far behind with their communism. Religion on the other hand has built countless great civilizations and golden ages, what has ath*shitism done besides the communist dark ages and a cold war?
You don't have to be religious, but you don't need to be a total dick about it.
The mammuth story was quite impressive though, i didn't know they made these babysteps yet!
Que the Jurassic Park music.
Exactly jurassic park, they wouldn't look exactly like the originals, although we DO have mammoth DNA and none of dinosaurs.
Biggest challenge is birth.
There is no point in cloning extinct animals even if we could do it (and in case of dinosaurs, no we can't and never will, the DNA is too shredded and degraded after millions of years of exposure to cosmic radiation), if their habitat is gone. Often, the reason why a species went extinct is the destruction of their habitat! And even if the habitat is still more or less there (which includes the entirety of the ecological web, plants, animals, their food as well as predators that used to prey on the species we want to clone), once a species is gone entirely, even if we preserved egg cells and sperm, a cloned animal bred in a womb of a different species, lacks the symbiotic bacterial holobiome which every multicellular plant, fungus and animal needs to thrive and (in some cases) to survive. The holobiome is no longer there. You might be able to establish a new one and feed the cloned Mammuth contemporary plants, but don't get mad if, once you have a herd that breeds, natural selection will affect these former ice-age animals and cull the ones with the long thick hair that causes them overheating, and over the span of generations you will end up with mammuth that look quite different from what you wanted. And saying "oh we will put the mammuths and wooly rhinos into actic theme parks where rich hunters can hunt them to prevent overpopulation"... well no, apart from it being unethical, the real ice-age plant eaters didn't live on glaciers up in Spitzbergen... they lived all over Europe, down to Southern Europe, where despite the colder overall climate the seasonal day and night cycles were the same as they are now, as those depend on global latitude, which affects plant growth.
It will happen at some point with "recently" extinct animals. Especially from todays standpoint exotic animals, like saber tooth tiger and mammuth, will make up for a very fancy park and therefore money.
Life... finds a way
Yep. How do you impregnate the right evolutionary ancestor with a genetically modified sperm? And how much would it resemble the mother?
As one of many with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, i believe this would be a life saver.
there literally was. Lovecraft wrote a horror story about refrigeration
Was it about how scary black people would freeze people?
@@XxXNOSCOPEURASSXxX I think he might be talking about the story where a dead doctor keeps himself from decomposing in a super cold apartment.
Most people can't even move an image in Microsoft Word without having the whole document turn into a Picasso. So people are going to have this Krispy Kreme kit delivered from Guy Fieris weird cousin?!?! All righty then.
What blows me away here is that apparently, there's a weirdo out there who seems to think that the Gatherer's Gardens were a brilliant idea and that all the insane mutants were completely unrelated.
Well, suppose they do turn their DNA into a picasso painting! What's the worst that could happen?^^
...Oh right... unimaginable body horrors with a potentially contagious level of instability.
YES!!
Just use Latex instead.
why would you want genetic manipulation to be as freely accessible as an app for your phone? Really goes to show he has no idea of the repercussions CRISPR could have.
It's better to have widely available than it being elitist.
Also, not knowing how apps work puts you at risk of downloading spyware and viruses. Imagine what injecting a CRISPR analogy of a computer virus could do....
Arrakiz666, for once, there's no uninstall function for CRISPR (yet). There's also some security measures done when you install an app (sandbox, permissions, etc), no such thing on CRISPR. And of course if you brick your phone you can always get a new one. If you brick your body, well you just bricked yourself.
Arrakiz666 only if you want some student to develop a virus that kills us all.
Dude this is exactly how people are with new technology. I want to have freedom to do whatever I want to my body, it’s a free country. Tyrant nations and dictators always try to keep technology away from their subjects to “protect” them. Lets not be like them.
The Chinese scientist had exactly the right reaction because that was an objectively bad reason to oppose gene editing.
Yea, I don't know what response John Oliver was expecting from a scientist on a question like that.
I loved his reaction, he was almost laughing at our society and how we prevent a technology because, "Oh no! It challenges our god."
Out of all the things in gene-editing people can be scared of,
They choose an imaginary person
Regardless of your view on religion the interviewer points out the vast influence and power humanity gains through gene editing and he questions how and whether we are capable of dealing with this responsibility. So if you don't take his question too literal I find it extremely relevant indeed.
I don't think the main issue behind the "God Argument" is that "oh let's not piss off god" its the idea of "let's not play god" or just falling into being overconfident with power and not really being able to control it.
Hearing "messing with ecosystems can cause unintended consequences" from John Oliver's beak made me let out a long happy sigh
two graphic designers that went to school together meet at a bar. first desiner says "so I worked on some of the avengers movies, what are you doing?" the second takes a drink and then replies "well I put together a series with an alchohalic mouse getting banged by a tick in the shower" the first one looks horrified "dear god why?" the second one says "well I work for John Oliver." they both nod and sip their drinks.
As a graphic design student, I really appreciate this haha
hey me too ^.^ former though
Hilarious!
thank you :)
Menbearpig. Half man, half bear, half pig. I'm super cereal.
HA! Gave me a good chuckle there
Will we be able to create unicorns with gene editing in the future? Yes.
Should we create unicorns with gene editing in the future? Not right away.
Epicmonk117 I dont fucking get the point of unicorns, I like my horses like I like my comments; pointless.
The point of a unicorn is to be magical. Can gene editing make them magical? No? Then move the fuck on!
"Let's put horns on horses" is like saying "let's make venomous rats" or "let's make seagulls that breathe fire."
You're absolutely right, we should create them NOW.
I mean, let's be honest, horse populations are pretty easy to control, so unicorns wouldn't get out of hand. On the other side, they could ignite the curiosity of little kids to go into life sciences, or science in general.
Scotland Dobson i think that was the point:p
15:51 so hitler from that one episode of the twilight zone
I'm a recovering alcoholic, with clear genetic alcoholism (the allergy whereby the chemicals aren't all broken down in the liver, and instead go to the brain, further breaking down into the crystalline structure utilized by the beta (alcohol dopamine) receptacles, AND into a crystalline structure equal to an opiate (hence utilized in the opiate receptors) thereby creating the 'best experience ever' the first time tasting the poison).
I would love to genetically modify this out of my children, as I'm in my mid thirties and sober, but unwilling to have children as I fear passing this gene.
While it's a fine line that must be walked, I'm sure there are other alcoholics who believe that this disease is best not passed down...
I haven't heard of that! I wonder if there is a correlation to mental disorders like schizophrenia, b/c they tend to self-medicate with alcohol a lot.
@@jaelynn7575wow! We are definitely in the future. Just to see a question like that. We are like 500 manhattan projects from having a small clue what to do to counter many of the most basic and least subtle effects of biology I´m guessing,.. that means like 5 years if we wanted to, but 20 years if we allow the army and private market to be the only ones on it, which seems most likely. Did I make any sense or should I just go CRISPR my self?
Can you please Kelsey send a link on the subject. Thank you so much. These them must be a one of them neew science eh?
Even if it is one/or just a few specific gene that causes alcoholism what other functions does that gene/s have that would disappear as well?
@@michaelhall5429 you don't get rid of the genes, just replace them with the standard, non-problem-causing variety
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who gathered some mice in a bucket.
He altered those mice
Engineered with a splice
And now all of the seagulls are dead.
Disappointed at that one. It just sounds like basic anti-GMO fearmongering we've been hearing for decades, yet the genetic apocalypse is nowhere to be seen.
GOOD. Seagulls are assholes anyway. Have you ever caught yourself feeding a Seagull totino pizza rolls? They pester you while doing a show ad nauseam until they get hungry enough to eat newly hatched baby sea turtles. Of which they actually do. Fuck seagulls. not in the mice/tick way.
He could have made it rhyme. I get that the joke is supposed to be flat but it's cliche (like most of John's jokes).
My beagle nearly cried watching this.
Furries of the world, this is how you get your werewolf boyfriends. Remember that when deciding whether or not to dismiss gene editing in the future
I assumed when you started the sentence with "furries of the world, this is how -", that you were going to end by saying "you will be edited out of future generations" 🤷
1) turning somebody into a wolf-man is probably something that has to be done from birth and not something you can do at a whim, raising all the ethical concerns of designer babies with the added horror of condemming a child to be a socially outcast sex object
2) this comment has 69 likes, how appropriate
3) laura the bot has become sentient, knowning that y'all need the soundproof curtains, i know you want them, buy them bitch
And thus, Biohackers became the first splicers from Bioshock.
Richy bioshock is better than the cyberman
But I’m hoping it’s more like Harmony in Civ beyond earth
It's spelled sploicer
@@rgderen88 If this is an allusion to something, I honestly don't get it.
@@dekaw9138 Haven't played that yet, but if Bioshock and that game are thematically remotely similar, I'm interested.
@@ArgueWithTheMajority You played the first game, right? Sure, your guide is talking about splicers, but he never once says splicers, he says sploicers.
I feel bad for whoever had to make the images for the mouse/flea bit
Emily E B *mouse/tick bit
You spelled jealous wrong
It was a tick you racist
The scientist from Nantucket seems more prepared and is using more caution than prisons with lethal injections 😶😶
If the world was more serious about science we would have underground completely functional artificially produced ecological systems surrounded by impenetrable materials in all directions, Imagine a forest inside a single room of a bunker with a kill switch that incinerates everything inside. As it is that scientist and many others are doing the best they can with all the funding they should be getting going towards athletes and armies.
1) its a scientist not some dipshit with zero medical training who does not know shit, and the thing he is doing can negatively affect a way larger amount of organisims than just a single prisoner society has already deemed worthy of death how the fuck is that suprising
2) liam your biodome idea sucks ass and there is no such thing as an inpenetrable material
17:09 Eugene and Eugenics both come from the Greek ευγένιος: good kind / type or noble. So one can see Levy's parents' point, but also the unspoken goal of the Botany Bay scientists in *Wrath of Khan*.
Designer Life boutta be so expensive.
hmm yes interesting. BRUH U DIDN'T NOT JUST MAKE THAT JOKE
get single payer healthcare now so in the future everyone can have designer life
better get to work then!
Nah bruh imma pirate that shit
The solution is BRO - cialism