Science Gene editing to end autism - Or how I learned to stop worrying and love CRISPR

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science...nificantly-reduced-breakthrough-gene-editing/

Autism traits may be “edited” out using new genetic techniques, scientists have said, following a successful trial.

Researchers are hailing a breakthrough after they used cutting-edge gene editing to to significantly reduce repetitive behaviour associated with the disorder.

The technique, which was performed on mice, could also be developed to treat conditions ranging from opioid addiction and neuropathic pain to schizophrenia and epileptic seizures.

Scientists injected gold nanoparticles covered in a “forest” of DNA chains to alter the the genetic code of mouse models with a form of autism called fragile X syndrome (FXS).

The technique, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, resulted in in a 30 per cent drop in repetitive digging, and a 70 reduction in leaping, both indicative of autistic behaviour.

Because the editing DNA was introduced attached to gold particles, the team were able to control how much of the crucial Cas9 protein was delivered, in contrast to previous failed attempts using viruses.

"There are no treatments or cures for autism yet, and many of the clinical trials of small-molecule treatments targeting proteins that cause autism have failed," said study leader Hye Young Lee, an assistant professor of cellular and integrative physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.


"This is the first case where we were able to edit a causal gene for autism in the brain and show rescue of the behavioral symptoms."


Autism spectrum disorder is a complex developmental disorder, with a strong genetic component, which manifests during childhood.

It is characterised by deficits in the domain of social interaction and communication, stereotyped behaviour, delayed speech and language and can also be associated with intellectual disability.

There are around 700,000 people on the autism spectrum in the UK - more than one in 100 - and when including families, it is a part of daily life for 2.8 million people.

The results are published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I guess we’re living in the golden age of lolcows.

The new age of transhumanism will create types of lolcows we don't even have names for in the present.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

The thing about autism that makes it cure-worthy is that it limits your intelligence. It's not just a "different way" of thinking, it's an inhibited form of thinking.

Just imagine the sort of super-human powers we could gain from CRISPR. Imagine living way longer, being more athletic, smarter, ect. I'd take CRISPR treatments in a heartbeat if they were perfected.

Autism does not inhibit your intelligence, its a condition marked by a loss of ability to interact with the world and the people around you but not a loss in intelligence in the IQ sense.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Honestly, if anything it would just expose more people as fucking Gompers who just dont know how to behave and are just far to open with there fetishes. Autism has been and is used as a "No Bully plz" shield for a long time, and one of the likelihoods of reaserch like this will be a definitive test for Autisim that a lot of people will not be able to hide behind in personal or public life anymore, as someone upthread said the current diagnosis of Autism is fashionable its this generations ADHD and its over diagnosed because it gains schools money for assisting kids with it, who are at most just socially awquard and are a bit to free to announce they like the idea of getting reamed up the arse by a guy in a Sonic / MLP OC.

Once they dont have that shield watch the numbers of diagnoses and self-diagnosis drop back to normal levels, the next seasons excuse will become fashionable and apart from the genuine cases it will be consigned to the bin of old memes like ADHD, and Asperges syndrome, if anything we are starting to see that happen with some groups as the majority of the ones claiming it are late teens or early to mid twenties on average.

Has anyone ever a-logged a entire disability before?

 

[Bunny Tracks]

This whole thing reminds me of a book called Flowers for Algernon. Don't read it, it's the saddest book ever. To keep it simple, it's basically about a kind-hearted, mentally-challenged man who while happy as he is, still wants to be "smart" like everyone else. So he under goes a surgery to do that. However, it ends working too well and he ends up becoming a genius and an asshole and basically ends up as a completely different person who's still ostracized by everyone. It gets worse from there. Again, don't read it.

See, I don't think people are afraid of a cure. I think they're afraid of what will happen to them after they're cured. Would they really be any better? Any happier? For people with cases of extreme autism I think in the long run, yes, if such a fantastical cure was possible. But like @Ravenor and @vertexwindi have pointed out, would they still be the same person? What do you do in that situation? What happens afterwards? With the cases of extreme autism, would just have to teach them everything again? Would it just be like having an adult baby or would it be like treating someone who's just come out of coma and has forgotten everything?

In either case, this would still put a lot of pressure on the resources, the families, and not to mention the newly cured person, who might even develop another problem during all this. This entire thing is an ethical nightmare and I think we need to figure it out before we start curing anybody. Because if anyone thinks that curing someone of their autism just magically gets rid off all they're problems is really not seeing the big picture here.

Congratulations, we've cured your autism. Now what?

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Autism does not inhibit your intelligence, its a condition marked by a loss of ability to interact with the world and the people around you but not a loss in intelligence in the IQ sense.

You are aware you're on a site that proves this is the exact opposite, right?

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Autism does not inhibit your intelligence, its a condition marked by a loss of ability to interact with the world and the people around you but not a loss in intelligence in the IQ sense.

Then why did Chris-chan have trouble understanding World War 2?

 

[ZehnBoat]

You are aware you're on a site that proves this is the exact opposite, right?

to be fair, we have some lolcows here that need to be watered 4 times a week and they don't have the touch

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Congratulations, we've cured your autism. Now what?

If everyone simultaneously leaped forward in intelligence and met at the same playing field after culling the handicaps, I assume everyone would get along better anyway. I take the guy in Flowers for Algernon was a roaring douche because he was frustrated with everyone else being dumber than him? Besides, most of us are assholes without the high IQ, so what difference would it make for those people?

There's a movie and TV show called "Limitless" about a pill that unlocks the entirety of your intellectual potential all at once (contrary to how the human brain actually does optimize, but I digress) and in the movie, the protagonist eventually develops a deity complex after being on the drug for so long and becomes a politician. Another guy who gets a hold of it, a low ranking thug in a Russian mafia, spends his potential on just rising through the ranks and shaking down the protagonist for more of the drug because in spite of becoming a super-Einstein himself, didn't think of trying to learn chemistry and just remake the pill himself. In the TV show, the protagonist is a loser who squanders his potential on loser college frat boy shit and has to have his potential guided by the FBI, and the protagonist from the movie comments on him wasting his advantages on being a total nobody.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

How credible is the theory that autism is caused by environmental factors, but is dependent on genetic vulnerability to exist in the first place?

There is nothing the "autistic community" hates more than cures for autism.

Death threats against people seeking a cure for something that can make life hellish for the victims? So tolerant. So progressive.

And why do some like grouping people into "communities," even if they've never met and live in different places?

 

[registereduser]

I find myself saying this often in this forum, but

Don't tease me, current year.

You know, while I'm all for this, I can't help but wonder how a cure for autism might help well-adjusted aspies.

I think I'm reasonably well-adjusted. I mean, sure, I ended up as a mod on KF, but I have a decent job, loyal friends, got my own place, lost my virginity to a tranny hooker, all that good stuff. How much of who I am, and what I've accomplished, is because of the tism? How much would I change if I took such a cure? Would I really become a better person? It's kind of scary to think about.

It's been brought up earlier, but a big thing about autism is the developmental delays it causes, even in the higher-functioning cases. So even if you repaired that defective switch in the brain, metaphorically speaking, the damage is still already done. If someone were to be cured, in terms of brain structure or whatever, they'd still need intensive therapy to catch them back uo and to adjust to this new way of thinking both cognitively and emotionally. So I see it theoretically becoming more of a preemptive treatment than a cure for the currently afflicted.
My wonder is if they would be eventually able to alter a person's gametes so that well-adjusted aspies could reproduce without passing on their autistic genes (which often results in their kids having more severe forms of autism).

Autism does not inhibit your intelligence, its a condition marked by a loss of ability to interact with the world and the people around you but not a loss in intelligence in the IQ sense.

While you're technically correct in that there's no inherent link between autism and intellectual functioning (pattern recognition, application of concepts), as measured by IQ, it does make a major impact on how that intelligence can be fostered and utilized. A major part - arguably the majority - of human learning comes from receptive learning by watching and interacting with other humans. Basically our process of knowing things, such as language, comes from bouncing ideas, knowledge, etc. off of one another and building a wider knowledge pool between each other. This is due to what are called mirror neurons, and it has been suggested that autism might be due in part to a disruption or underdevelopment of these neurons. So autism often hinders the learning potential of people who would otherwise be brilliant contributors to society, in the case of autistics with high IQ. I'd argue that IQ is a relatively small part of overall human intelligence, especially when social and emotional intelligence are taken into account. So autism overall, I think, does hinder intelligence, depending on your definition of intelligence.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't a low IQ one of the diagnostic criteria for autism at one point? I know they've changed those four or five times by now though so no idea if it still is.

 

[Thelostcup]

Oh, it will. There is nothing the "autistic community" hates more than cures for autism. They routinely sperg out and send death threats to people like a 70-year old autistic man and parents of autistic children who can barely do anything but have tard rage fits who have done nothing but advocate for a cure for autism.

It probably has to do with a number of them growing up with relatives who thought it could be cured by repeated beatings and other forms of abuse.

 

[Ravenor]

Has anyone ever a-logged a entire disability before?

While I didn't mean it like that I was was more talking about the waggoning that happens when a genuine problem has a spectrum and allows people to hide behind it as an excuse for just being socialy awquard.

 

[RodgerDodger]

So the first step in this plan to eliminate autism through “gene editing” will be the building of the “Soylent Gene” factories to “treat” the unfortunate autists and twitter warriors?

 

[2 litre soda]

Even many users who take medicine for things like depression, schizo, etc. wonder/worry about that. Many say that the medicine lets them be who they are without the illness, while others aren't sure, or even say that it's changed them (usually the latter results in those who have had it for such a long time that it's somewhat part of their identity for them). It's a question that's asked on both sides of the aisle, from both medical practitioners to the users.

Bit of a :powerlevel: here, but can confirm.

Spoiler

I'm a different person on my brain drugs than I am off of them. Drugged me is just a plain old regular asshole. Undrugged me has trouble understanding why I shouldn't just shove a kid into traffic or slice off my hand when I'm cutting up cheese to make a sandwich. It's like there's an entire aspect of my personality that's just Not There. Am I a different person? Yes. Am I a "person to be killed and for a stranger to walk around using their skin as a suit." to quote below? Fuck no.

Here's some autistic REEEEEsonable writing about why a cure for autism would be the equivalent of the Armenian Genocide:

tl;dr: "If I wasn't autistic, I wouldn't love memorizing trivia about comic books and bands, and I wouldn't work well with systems. Also, autistics make better lovers and pet owners. In conclusion, Autism is a land of diversity, and the vast majority of humanity should accommodate itself to me and my needs. "

Trigger warnings on this post for ableism and suicide.

I’ve recently been drawn into a number of arguments about the idea of whether autistic people need to be cured or not.

Now, before I start writing about this, let me explain first of all that I am talking here about people being cured of their autism. Many autistic people have all sorts of comorbid illnesses and disabilities which impair their quality of life, and which could do with being cured. For myself, if I could get rid of the psoriasis, arthritis, anxiety, depression, asthma, migraines, hypertension, and multiple sleep issues I have, I would do so without a second thought. Those things all often go along with autism.

Many autistic people have comorbid learning disabilities (most — though not all — of the people whose parents refer to them as “severely autistic” or similar terms to try to devalue the opinions of supposedly “mildly autistic” people like me (my autism is anything but mild) fall into this category) or epilepsy. I’m not going to take a stand on whether those things should be cured, because that’s a matter for people who have those conditions.

But as far as autism itself… there’s something I’ve tried to explain many times to people who claim that it should be cured, something which most autistic people understand as soon as they realise what the label of “autistic” actually means. This is going to sound disgusting, but it’s literally true:

If you talk about wanting to “cure” an autistic person, what you are asking is for that person to be killed and for a stranger to walk around using their skin as a suit.

Now, this is not to deny that autism sometimes causes problems which I would wish not to have — or, rather, that living in an ableist society which assumes that everyone communicates using the same body language, that everyone has the same sleeping patterns, fine motor skills, level of executive function, tolerance for intrusive sounds and smells, and working memory, causes problems which I would wish not to have. But *every single aspect of my personality* is shaped, utterly and completely, by my autism.

Take my writing for example — people say I’m very good at explaining complex and confusing ideas in a way that gets across the ideas well. To the extent that that’s true, it’s because of two things. The first is that my brain is better at pattern-matching than most people’s. That’s an autistic trait. And the second is that my autism means that any time I want to communicate with anyone at all, I’m trying to talk with people who I can’t rely on to be sharing even my most basic assumptions, because their brains actually work differently, so I’m extremely practiced at breaking down what seem to me like simple concepts.

Or my interests. Autistic people have a tendency to have what get called “special interests” — an enthusiasm about some aspect of the world, or culture, or area of knowledge, that makes us examine every aspect of it, that makes us learn and retain every piece of information about that topic. Goodbye to my interests in DC Comics, or Grant Morrison, or Doctor Who or the Beach Boys or the Monkees, hello to being the kind of person who doesn’t even know the middle names of all the original Beach Boys members (Douglas, Edward, Carl, Dean, Charles, and Lee, in case you were wondering. And Bruce’s is Arthur) or the name of the theremin player on “Good Vibrations”. (Ha! It’s a trick question — it wasn’t a theremin, but an electrotheremin, and it was played by Paul Tanner, who was also the last surviving member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, for whom he played trombone… you see what I mean?)

But even if I didn’t have a “special interest” in those things, surely I’d still like some of them? Plenty of neurotypicals like the Beach Boys or the Monkees, right? True, but they’re not listening to the music for the things I’m listening to, largely. Autistic people don’t have sensory filters the same way everyone else does, and I’m reliably informed that the closest thing to how I listen to music *normally* that a neurotypical person can experience is to take a small dose of mescaline or LSD — not enough to have a full-on hallucination, but just enough to break down those “doors of perception” that Huxley wrote about. My brain, and all autistic people’s brains, is constantly registering details neurotypicals don’t notice, and doing weird things with those perceptions. (A simple example — in my case, I can’t tune a guitar, even though I can play one, because my brain processes pitch and timbre in the same category). So no, my tastes would probably change so much that I wouldn’t love that music any more.

Speaking of love… autistic people make much stronger, much fiercer, attachments than neurotypical people tend to. We can love with a pure, laser-style focus. A cure might therefore mean I stopped loving my wife. That would be such an inconceivable change that I couldn’t even type that for a while, because the concept is so painful.

Or my dog — autistic people tend to find relating to animals much easier than to neurotypical people, because animals tend not to mask their feelings. Admittedly, this would give my Twitter followers some respite from my tweets about the latest cute thing my Jack Russell has done, but I’d rather keep that source of joy.

Or my politics. I might possibly remain a Lib Dem, but my political views are shaped by my autistic love for systems and understanding things in terms of systemic changes rather than individual events (thus for example my desires for constitutional reform and for economic changes that go further than the simple spot patches most mainstream social democrats support), and by my autistic hyperempathy (autistic people tend to have a strong sense of justice and a personal outrage at it).

How about my sense of humour? Well, when I go to see Stewart Lee or Richard Herring or Simon Munnery live, a lot of the audience seem to be men wearing T-shirts advertising IT companies or science fiction TV programmes, and many of them have rather stiff body language. I’m certainly not saying that all of them are autistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was rather more prevalent in those audiences than in the general population.

(And that goes for everything here — I’m not saying that no neurotypical people can share any or all of these traits, I’m saying that when they do it’s not for the same reasons I do, because their brains literally work differently. I am not meaning for this to fall into the autistic supremacy trap that some fall into, and claim that neurotypicals aren’t capable of loving their spouses or pets or anything like that.)

There would, of course, be compensating positives — I’d be able to be on time for things, I’d be sociable rather than introverted, and I’d be able to eat a much wider range of foods and wear a wider range of clothing than I do now, thanks to the lack of sensory things.

But even there — those things would change who I am at least as much as any of the losses would. Ask anyone who knows me, even slightly, what they would think if I came into a room wearing a stylish suit, made casual small talk with people, and then ate a salad, and every last one of them would say that they would assume it was some sort of lookalike or Mirror Universe twin.

And this would be true for every autistic person — a “cure” would make them, literally, become a different person, in the same way that a version of me who didn’t like the Beach Boys or Doctor Who, didn’t love my wife, didn’t support the Lib Dems, ate salad, and didn’t write much would be a different person.

Now, some autistic people hate living in a neurotypical-centred world that they would like a cure anyway, and it’s even tempted me on occasion — but what that is, as many (though not all) would admit, is a desire for a version of suicide that wouldn’t upset their loved ones — because they’d be dead, and someone else would be walking around pretending to be them, but a version of them that their families and friends would find easier to get on with. Living in a neurotypical-centred world can be so painful for so many of us — and can induce such intense self-loathing — that it can seem like a good idea to just stop existing altogether.

But for anyone who actually cares about actual autistic people, just remember this — if you call for a cure for autism, you’re calling for a cure for *us*, and treating human beings like cancer cells. Instead of calling for a cure, maybe call for a world that doesn’t hurt us, instead.

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[protomartyr]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't a low IQ one of the diagnostic criteria for autism at one point? I know they've changed those four or five times by now though so no idea if it still is.

I'm no expert so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I would guess that low IQ and autism have superficially similar "symptoms", so it makes sense that we'd have conflated the two in the past.

 

[Your Sexy Futa Sister]

If they're able to get rid of autism with gene editing, that means they're able to implement autism with gene editing.

You know what this means, right?

Literal weaponized autism.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

If they're able to get rid of autism with gene editing, that means they're able to implement autism with gene editing.

Actually no, CRISPR just deletes. It doesn't add. Inserting genes is much messier. (I know it's a joke, sorry for the :autism: )

 

[Zarkov]

Tumblr is fucked.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Would they just suddenly "wake up" from it like it was a nightmare?

I wonder what it would really feel like to an autistic person to suddenly lose their illness -- say the "wiring" for autism was changed to "normal." Maybe it'd be something like the delirium of a fever subsiding?

Yet as @Your Weird Fetish and @Ravenor said, even if autism were removed, they wouldn't instantly be "normal." Developmental damage would already have been done.

 

[Racist Trash]

"Oh no we fucked up and accidentally made autism a virus and made super autists." and then nukes and we get real autistic fallout.