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whpearson comments on BHTV: Eliezer Yudkowsky & Razib Khan - Less Wrong
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For those interested it seems like $5000 is the lower bound of the cost of sequencing a human genome if you believe this press release. Otherwise people say it is in the $50K region.
So a few years away (a few more halvings, then time for the genome + IQ database to be built up) before the large retrovirus genetic brain modification possibility. Does anyone know of work being done towards making viruses delete specific alleles, so we don't double up when we insert different ones?
If they really had the $5000 genome in any meaningful way they would have won the X Prize already. Complete Genomics said in a bullshit press release that they could have won the X Prize if they really wanted but they are too focused on other things now. I am willing to bet $50 (or less, if someone else prefers) at 1:1 that someone will win the X Prize for genomics within two years. http://genomics.xprize.org/
I've seen some work on this, but it's a long way off before it gets into humans. I think it's only been done in bacteria or simple multicellular organisms, but more complex organisms like humans have a lot of barriers before this works... It's very easy for this to screw up, and it's very difficult to do. You'd have to be certain that it will cut just that DNA region and ligate it back together correctly. Also, there may be issues with chromatin packaging and correctly recognizing the site. It is at the very least 15 years away, and even then you'd have to deal with the FDA being super cautious.
It would probably be easier and safer to insert the genes necessary to tag the protein product of a specific allele for destruction right away, or to use something like RNAi to destroy it right after transcription.
It would seem that finding genes that not only affect IQ but do so in a way that gives benefits even when done on fully developed brain will be an ethical minefield.
You could do tests on chimps and see if the genes associated with chimp IQ are correlated with human IQ. If so, then you could see what introducing them on fully developed chimp brains does.
The other route, is biohackers that hack their own brains. I'm really curious whether the number of people who get their own bioreactors etc will be anything like the number of people who hack electronics today.