Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally it's not one gene one trait. So altering genes to, say eliminate a specific type of birth defect, might also eliminate something else. Making this up, but say, sense of taste or maybe resistance to some other illness. This change will now be in the gene make-up and therefore propagate through future generations. Since they interact in complex ways, it can be challenging or even dangerous to make these adjustments.

I'm a biologist so I see experiments and results from gene editing somewhat often in presentations and papers. It's not quite the hot thing that it was 10 years ago, but it's still very relevant.

Most discoveries that come out of this sort of work are quite niche, and often discovered using non-human models. Some of that may only now be getting into human models, but I'm not aware of any (I'm not "that" kind of biologist).

Depends on your news sources. If you are subscribed to biotech sources it's every other day. There's breakthroughs, or at least novel applications, all the time. Routine at this point.

If you mean mass media, well, just look at the brainrot that gets shoveled at the 'frontpage'. Everything is optimized for broadest appeal with the most clicks.

The Sutter Bypass and Yolo Bypass in California are examples of prescribed/controlled flooding infrastructure. When the Sacramento River is about to overflow its banks, the bulk of the flow spreads out into the bypasses, keeping the river level low and flooding agricultural areas rather than urban areas.

After Dolly was cloned China enacted stricter ethical guidelines for researchers. Then they didn't clone anymore. I can imagine the same happening in advance now with other ethically challenging topics around this.

And they are probably still working with bacteria or similar, but that makes for less impressive of a headline.

Edit: right, and in polo you can use cloned horses nowadays. It's kind of a rich people thing. Possible also that that makes it more of a quiet topic, because the rich like to stick to each other.

We're too busy dealing with Terminator right now; we don't have the capacity to deal with GATTACA too!

Yeah this is actually one of the main things fueling this massive anti transgender wave we’re seeing now across the world. People were taught there’s xx and xy and that’s it. That’s what makes you one sex or another when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Turns out nothing in nature is black and white. Literally nothing.

A few decades ago when the human genome was first being sequenced, it was assumed that most genes would have a straightforward 1:1 relationship with specific associated traits (so you’d find a “gene for X” and a “gene for Y”). And while there are a few genes like that, it turns out that most genes are part of complex gene regulatory networks that resemble neural networks in that there are complex non-linear relationships between the inputs and outputs. So if you want to make a specific change to a specific trait, you have to edit multiple genes, and each of those genes affects multiple other traits you weren’t intending to change, etc.

IIRC the first attempts at it went poorly so they tend to be a bit more discreet with the PR nowadays (I’m not a scientist tho)

As another poster said there are indeed some advances that are happening

There's a lot of news about gene editing. Anything that references CRISPR is gene editing. CRISPR in particular has become such a common and useful tool, usually in the earlier phases of research, that it's less and less likely to get top booking in the headline. And when it does it's often buried in another term like "GMO".

Controlled flooding gives a place for the water to go when there’s too much. For example I remember reading about dikes along the Mississippi for flood control, but when there was too much water it would flood less inhabited farmland before city areas

When I was a kid, one of the fields at the local park where we used to play football and soccer was lower than the rest and separated by berms. It was designed as a controlled place for water to go when the river flooded every spring with snow melt.

Of course, climate change means we now have a more permanent solution to snow melt

Wouldn't a dam be a form of "controlled flooding"?

I've actually done controlled burns in Northern BC back when I was in forestry. We go in during the winter and burn up dead branches that have fallen during the year. The snow stops the fire from spreading and the burning depletes the excess fuel on the ground, making it harder for fires to grow out of control in the summer. The burning also releases nutrients into the soil and encourages a healthy undergrowth by making space for new plants.

As others have mentioned there are also some trees(usually pine) that require fire to spread seeds. Those controlled burns are usually reserved for public parks where they want the forests to have a more natural look. They are small fires created with drip torches, just enough for the cones to open before being put out. When mass producing those pines trees to replant a logged forest, we use ovens to open the cones instead.

Controlled flooding is also very much a thing we do as humans either to divert water from flooding other areas, or to rehabilitate soil. Its pretty common throughout the world. I would bet that you are unfamiliar with the practice because you live somewhere beavers are already doing it for free.

There’s nothing to be gained by flooding land, it will not prevent future floods or reduce the size or strength of them.

This is incorrect. Controlled flooding is used to mitigate the risk and effect of floods. This is especially common in the Netherlands, where designated areas - "uiterwaarden" - are periodically flooded as needed. These areas are typically used as pasture or for recreation under normal conditions.

Do you mean controlled flooding to prevent natural floods like controlled burns prevent natural fires?

Look to nearby colleges or universities with an agricultural arm. Example, https://snr.unl.edu/academicprograms/prescribed/index.aspx

Why not controlled flooding? Controlled fires are consuming a backlog of available fuel to mitigate the chances of a future uncontrolled fire. A flood wouldn't be relieving any sort of equivalent pressures, they're not analogous.

In the context of controlled burns, there's nothing to gain from flooding land temporarily in a similar fashion. However, rebuilding wetlands is actually a great way to prevent floods in other areas.

Well said.

There's a researcher who in the 80's tried to tell the forest service all this, and they simply wouldn't listen.

There's even a news clip of him from the time.

I'll see if I can find it.

There's nothing to be gained by flooding land, it will not prevent future floods or reduce the size or veracity of them.

This is not entirely true, though the purpose is not the same as controlled burns. We intentionally (re)flood wetlands we've previously dried in order to restore wetland habitats.

Kind of like the fires, though, we learned the hard way that draining all the wetlands is bad, and they're actually very important features of nature.

Roofuskit hid the main answer to your question (within a great commentary on US wildfire): Fires require 3 things, oxygen, fuel, and heat.

Remove the fuel source in front of a fire, and you prevent its spread.

In the western US, this is done to create a fire break - a line which a wildfire can't cross because there's no fuel.

And the rest of what roofus said is very important: US policy around fires for the last 80 years or so has been to suppress ANY fire. This has had the opposite effect of enabling more undergrowth to form, meaning more fuel.

Additionally, California in particular essentially stopped all logging. Logging companies maintained what we commonly call fire roads - those roads were often an unintentional fire break. Those roads overgrew with the kind of growth (low scrub) that is ideal wildfire growth fuel.

Wildire in the western US is a lesson in assuming we understand how natural systems work, and have the ability to control them.

Edit: firefighters in a city/town remove oxygen when using fire suppressant materials. Water is used to remove heat when the fire turns it to steam.

CO2 is largely what's in most consumer fire bottles - it provides an oxygen-free "cloud" to break the cycle of a fire by replacing the available oxygen.

Fires burning brush and forests are natural occurrences. There are even certain trees whose seeds only germinate after a fire. At some point we got it in our heads that all forest fires are bad and we should extinguish every one with extreme prejudice. (I'm looking at you Smokey the Bear.)

After some decades we learned the hard way that this tactic is wildly flawed. Fires require 3 things, oxygen, fuel, and heat. When you never allow ANY fire to burn even in a controlled manner you allow that fuel to build up, and build up, and build up.

What we learned by putting out every single fire is that you are exchanging frequent small fires for infrequent massive, completely uncontrolled, and devastating fires.

There's nothing to be gained by flooding land, it will not prevent future floods or reduce the size or strength of them.

We don’t have the water resources to fight fires with controlled flooding, or energy resources - flooding would come with its own ecological problems, affecting everything from plant life to animal to microbial, it would be an environmental disaster even if we had the resources and technology. Controlled burning is also good for nature, nature evolved for occasional burns, it feeds microbial life, it reboots life, it is necessary for many plants to even reseed. It’s cheap. It’s safe when done properly. It’s efficient compared to water. There are many more reasons, but these are the major ones.

Pain is good for the vast majority. The issue is when things are broken/not normal functioning. So, those are the things that should be addressed rather than using opioid and similar drugs to treat the symptoms of those conditions, IMHO. But there are ways to desensitize, unfortunately, those usually aren't 100% permanent though they do train your brain to be able to withstand it a little better.

Anecdotally, as someone with chronic pain as well as someone who has had to ensure severe pain such as running on progressively severely stress fractures legs, knees, and feet for weeks as well as experiencing migraines that sometimes cluster, issues from nerve damage, etc., while I do have the ability to mask a lot of pain, I actually feel it quite intensely still. But take that with a grain if salt as I am neurodivergent and have a hard time ignoring things or forming habits of any kind based on exposure or repetition like most people. And the damaged nerves that I have may not be able to feel touch or pain very well, but actually acute the pain is often more intense even if chronic pain is numbed.

So it's fairly complex, and, assuming you don't have a medical condition that prevents pain receptors from working properly, the nervous system, including the brain, adapt to ensure that you're able to feel pain when needed to prevent injury. So there's unlikely to ever be a way to "switch on/off" or "dial down" pain that will continue to work long term without your body adapting to it. But damn I wish there were. 🙂

What might be possible in the very far future, outside of drugs that are typically fairly indirect intervention, would be an electronic nervous system interface that could monitor and intercept and adjust signals so that your body doesn't "realize" there's anything "wrong" and doesn't try to adapt or repair it. But that would be pretty complex tech and extremely risky surgery for even cutting edge technology right now.

I agree fully with wat your saying here.

Strains also are limited in their range cannabinoids and smoking of any kind is always bad.

The potential i am seeing in cannabinoids rather then “medicinal marijuana” is that we can isolate and produce new drugs with exactly the amount and combinations needed.

So exactly like the tinctured and pills you mention that are lacking now.

Rather then trial and error we might be able to one day meassure and profile the natural endocannabinoids in individual people, then build a pill that gives them exactly what they need.

Its probabmy more sci-fi then science at this point but it seems reachable. There are some studies that have shown that certain disorders (adhd, some flavors of autism) do produce less natural endocannabonoids on their own. Currently those people often do end up smoking to self medicate. Some proper science on the topic could really help them.

To add on my previous mentioned little fact about breastmilk cause it is analog to this. There is a suggestion that there is a chemical reaction going n during breastfeeding with milk that flows backwards and tells the mother body how to finetune the milk for the babys current needs.