Like another comment said, cancer, but that's probably one of the better ones on the list of possibilities.
Neurogeneration, mutation of gametes, accidental sterilisation. Let me be very clear - I'm NOT promoting an anti-science viewpoint here or saying that progress is a bad thing. I'm simply stating that we're in possession of powerful new tools and if we aren't careful, we're going to end up with more Thalidomide babies or worse.
Applying this new technology on people and then measuring the outcome is not an appropriate or ethical strategy. It's not appropriate because the consequences could be very hard to detect or not present themselves for decades. And it's not ethical because it's harder to predict what could go wrong.
This is an “anti-science” viewpoint though- you’re providing a bunch of hypotheses but no evidence for them.
And then you’re throwing in unrelated historical situations “Thalidomide babies” to evoke the “think of the children” argument, provoking moral outrage.
Finally you throw up a straw man to imply that science doesn’t generally use ethical practices, of which you provide no evidence for.
You mean 'I've personally seen no evidence for them'. Pharmaceutical companies are science companies big time. They do science and the stack of proven unethical practices connected with them is extensive as a spot of searching reveals. No implication necessary, We know they often don't
conduct themselves in a proper manner and often in a criminal manner.
To which we can add Eli Lilly, Amgen, Astrazenica, Actelion, Purdue Pharma all of whom have been fined upwards of $200 million. And these are only the big fish. Of course most scientific activity takes place such that ethical considerations don't arise. When they do however, it would seem that making a default judgment of their ethical probity is definitely problematic.
When you say "no evidence", what sort of evidence do you expect? The reason we generally run trials for many years is to gather evidence.
There was "no evidence" for the vaccines causing Myocarditis when they were rolled out. Now there's strong evidence and the concerns are growing. This trial reported Myocarditis rates at 1:1000 in a group with median age 33:
As for neurodegeneration, there is a concern that Codon-optimization[2] used for mRNA vaccines[3] can trigger it. It's simply not possible to gather evidence of that in the current approval timeframe, we just assume that the risk outweighs the benefit, come hell and high water. That may be a reasonable assumption for at-risk groups, but not for everyone.
The quality and the ethics of any scientific endeavor are orthogonal attributes. To me it seems that gp is simply stating that they are concerned that the power of these tools to solve problems could push society to adopt them at a rate that doesn’t allow for the longer term implications to be realized.
Thalidomide may be unrelated pharmaceutically, but the EUA for Moderna was issued almost exactly 9 months after the very first phase 1 trial started. How many pregnancies were brought from conception to full-term through that testing? CRISPR has the ability to modify genetic material in reproductive cells, causing heritable germline modifications. How do we test that?
Unfortunately the pandemic is distorting this conversation. There are too many subtexts around widespread rapid adoption, conflict around mandatory vaccination, avoidance of severe societal hazards, etc.
Neurogeneration, mutation of gametes, accidental sterilisation. Let me be very clear - I'm NOT promoting an anti-science viewpoint here or saying that progress is a bad thing. I'm simply stating that we're in possession of powerful new tools and if we aren't careful, we're going to end up with more Thalidomide babies or worse.
Applying this new technology on people and then measuring the outcome is not an appropriate or ethical strategy. It's not appropriate because the consequences could be very hard to detect or not present themselves for decades. And it's not ethical because it's harder to predict what could go wrong.