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US doctors rewrite DNA of infant with severe genetic disorder in medical first (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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Doctors in the US have become the first to treat a baby with a customised gene-editing therapy after diagnosing the child with a severe genetic disorder that kills about half of those affected in early infancy.

KJ was born with severe CPS1 deficiency, a condition that affects only one in 1.3 million people. Those affected lack a liver enzyme that converts ammonia, from the natural breakdown of proteins in the body, into urea so it can be excreted in urine. This causes a build-up of ammonia that can damage the liver and other organs, such as the brain.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the doctors described the painstaking process of identifying the specific mutations behind KJ’s disorder, designing a gene-editing therapy to correct them, and testing the treatment and fatty nanoparticles needed to carry it into the liver. The therapy uses a powerful procedure called base editing which can rewrite the DNA code one letter at a time.

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[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works -2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It is the single greatest correlate for life outcomes. Higher income, longer lifespan, lower addiction, higher employment, higher wealth, lower crime, better physical health on every metric, and lower rates of fatherlessness. These effects all compound the next generation too. There is nothing else in sociology which comes even close to IQ in predicting life outcomes. Not income, race, location, education, or fatherlessness.

Of course nothing guarantees a “better” life.

[–] Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Well that's just bullshit and I looked it up to be sure it was.

Income is the best life outcome. I did find that high IQ is more correlated with depression and suicide however.

[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Did you look it up on Instagram? Which part is bullshit? Be specific so I know which evidence you’d like me to produce.

Let’s start with income. Here are dozens and dozens of citations showing that IQ is the single most important correlate for income. Do you know what income is highly correlated with? Low crime, high employment, long life span, better health, and a hundred other important quality of life factors. Are you disputing that too?

I’m not sure if you don’t understand what I’m writing or if we’re talking past each other. To put it plainly, IQ is the single greatest determinant of income. Income is one of the (and arguably the) greatest determinant of a host of other life outcomes.

[–] Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

... Did you read your own link?

Not only are mostly all of the "citations" (hyperlinks) to this random website you linked just news articles (many of which don't have actual citations or referenced research papers that are from the 21st century, or are articles from the 20th century), but some are heavily biased (quoting Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post, which he owns).

Even the website auther themselves sometimes admit to their flawed analysis, such as equating SAT scores to IQ rather than an actual IQ test. Quote:

Cognitive ability: For the first time ever, we just happen to have publicly known IQ data on every single living self-made person who was ever ranked as the richest American. As mentioned above, Bill Gates reportedly scored 1590 on the pre-1995 SAT, equating to an IQ of 170 (see chart at bottom of this article).

Jeff Bezos told The Washington Post he scored 1450, which equated to an IQ of 146.
According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk scored 1400 on the pre-recentered SAT, equating to an IQ of 142.

According to his sister Doris, a woman administered an IQ test to Buffet at age 10 and he scored a couple points above 150. However back in 1940, most IQs were still calculated using the age ratio method meaning a 10-year-old who performed as well as the average 15.2-year-old, was developing at 152% his chronological age and thus assigned an IQ of 152. Although this method (normed entirely on whites) formed a Gaussian curve from IQ 50 to 150, the mean and SD were 101.8 and 16.4 respectively, a little higher than on most modern scales where the mean is set at 100 and the SD at 15.
Converting to the modern scales gives Buffet an IQ of 146 (U.S. white norms; also 146 on U.S. norms).

Or here, quoted:

But Stanley suspected a self-reporting bias was inflating the numbers since “A students” were more likely to recall their score than “C students”.

But most damming of all, is that this whole weird blog website is talking about a correlation between income and IQ, NOT that IQ determines income.

Correlation isn't causation. And it's no surprise that people who can go to good schools, don't have to worry about food, etc, do better on a test, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are inherently biologically more intelligent.