Scientists Control Human DNA with Electricity in 'Leap Forward', Study Reports
www.vice.com
Breakthrough research represents “the missing link that will enable wearables to control genes in the not-so-distant future,” researchers say.

Researchers used electric stimulation to switch on exact genes involved in regulating insulin. Blood glucose concentrations of model mice returned to normal.

  • NoRodent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2310·
    1 year ago

    Scientists have demonstrated that human genes can be controlled with electricity, a breakthrough that could pave the way toward wearable devices that program genes to perform medical interventions, reports a new study.

    That’s actually fucking scary.

    These scientists definitely didn’t stop to think if they should.

    • kennebel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      1 year ago

      “Sorry, but your credit card declined the monthly charge, we are turning off your insulin until you resolve the payment issue. Customer service hours are …”

      • DistractedDevEnglish
        71·
        1 year ago

        How is that worse than the huge amount of money they have to pay for insulin now?

        • kennebel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          1 year ago

          The current set up is wrong, without any doubt. Giving a remote agent direct access to control your biological functions is more wrong. :)

        • dartos@reddthat.comEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          They can switch to a continuously charging “usage” based model for insulin, the same way GPU time is rented out now.

          any big Pharma people here. I’m available for hire btw ;)

    • DistractedDevEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      We already have tons of terrifying sounding technologies. Almost every technology can be used in good and bad ways. We could use current gene editing to make super viruses that wipe out the entire world population. Gene editing has also given us the power to make way more food than we ever thought was possible. This new tech could create miracles for people with genes that harm them, like diabetes. Nuclear physics gave us the atomic bomb but also gave us an amazing and world changing source of energy. Staying ignorant of some science just because it could theoretically be used for something bad is never the right way to go. We have to learn everything and try to use it for the most good that we can. Plus I doubt this is something they could just randomly do to people. It’ll probably still be a rather complicated procedure only done in certain situations.