It really sucks that gene therapy is like in such an infant stage we can only treat very basic genetic conditions with it and we're nowhere near regenerative medicine type stuff, let alone therian type stuff. Like not even close. We're way farther off than people think we are. CRISPR is definitely not powerful enough to get us there despite the memes. The good news is, it's not the only gene editing in town.

Basically we need much more targeted gene therapy and to decipher what genes do and how to force cells to become pluripotent or divide in the right ways, just to regenerate organs. To generate new organs, you'd have to figure out the homeobox genes, which are very much not obvious, as well as turn on new tissue growth.

For things like when growth plates are fused, etc. it's difficult to see how we could do things like height/length adjustment at all without even more serious engineering.

Stuff like chromosomal alteration, etc. is way, way farther off, like for gender-affirming chromosomal replacement, I would say maybe not even within my lifetime confidently, because the sheer amount of genetic material that would need to be introduced, and somehow get rid of or totally silence the old chromosomes.

The difficulty level of doing therianthropy affirming type stuff is beyond Nintendo hard. I would say it's probably the hardest problem humans would face, ever, and it's not even close. We would have to engineer entirely new mechanisms to undo what nature has done, and it's not obvious how to safely do this and have it not be completely suicidal, or induce cancer down the line or unintended effects.

And I am talking engineering things which have no precedent in nature, like getting bones to grow/shrink after growth plates have fused, grow an actual human-sized set of cat ears that actually work after the ears have developed, reshape the skull to accommodate the new acoustic hardware, etc.

There is zero precedent for ANY of this.

It took nature MILLIONS of years to evolve things like cats, dogs, anything human shaped, etc. and there's little in biology that literally goes from "full adult" to "completely different form."

I would love there to be though.

@LunaDragofelis @Elizafox that shit's even harder because consciousness is a social construct

I believe it can be done; humans can do just about anything and the genomic code is remarkably flexible. It would be a matter of "how," not "if."

We'd need good genetic and protein simulations as well as models for what happens to cells when we modify them to do these things. This is a big part of what drives my interest in ML and supercomputing.

The question becomes: are humans brave enough?

@Elizafox i presume there’s also an extremely wide spectrum in feasibility

i wouldn’t be surprised if the first transspecies genetic treatment would be something that alters hair growth, grown out of also pie-in-the-sky genetic treatments for hair loss conditions

@LunaDragofelis I think actually whole-brain transplantation/"brain in a vat" is more feasible in the near-ish term (like 20 to 40 years or so out). The real thing is just the rest of the apparatus to keep the brain alive.

You need to feed it glucose, remove waste products (liver/kidneys), supply hormones, clear infections, etc.

I think it's absolutely doable, and we're already doing it on limited scale.

The question is wiring it up to something to process sensory inputs to feed it visual data, audio data, sensory data from other parts of the body, etc.

Now mapping de novo sensory experiences... that would actually take time even if you did this! The brain needs time to adapt to the new "configuration" you've given it. It can do so over time, although you may have occasional phantom human ears or limbs :P. Those are actually CNS originating phenomenon.

@charlotte Yeah there's a spectrum of feasibility/difficulty

Fur would be easiest, or changing hair. Cat ears... CRISPR can't do it despite the memes. It would be a monumental genetic effort.

A tail? probably not in an adult, unfortunately.

@Elizafox
Are ethical humans brave enough?

@kirtai touché