101–110 of 150 posts
Here's the primary piece: > At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelli…
I'm relatively sure the Soviets had a go and got nowhere. I'm hoping this attempt will go about as far.
I'm relatively sure the Soviets had a go and got nowhere. I'm hoping this attempt will go about as far.
I'm relatively sure the Soviets had a go and got nowhere. I'm hoping this attempt will go about as far.
"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points . So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness. ...." https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
" ... every Chinese family ..." This is overstated. Plain IVF today in the US costs tens of thousands of dollars. As a result in 2014 it was around 1.5% of births. Some insurance will cover IVF but is more expensive and there are generally caps. Its only accessible to the relatively well off and that's unlikely to change in the short and medium term. So even if development of embryo selection technology proceeds rapi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you say its unrealistic? Eugenics has been seriously considered in the past, and is likely to be seriously considered in the future. If genetic modification and control becomes 'easy' and relatively safe I don't see why those in power wouldn't try to exercise control over that power. In that future its not hard to imagine lawmakers banning having children who would have inherited known genetic 'defects'. Now i…
Gattaca is unrealistic because (aside from being intended as mass-market entertainment rather than a scientific extrapolation) it is simultaneously too aggressive and too conservative: it envisions a world in which instant genome sequencing can be done effectively for free on a global scale (which, as cheap as genome sequencing has become, does not seem likely to ever happen unless non-chemical-based processes are de…
It seems pretty much inevitable that genome sequencing will use non-chemical (non sequencing-by-synthesis) methods in the future (I've worked for two companies that have developed such techniques with varying degrees of success). In the far-ish future I think we'll see a human genome for 1 to 10USD with a turn-around time of maybe 10 to 20mins. That seems pretty achievable using a solid-state nanopore approach.
I think even novel labeled/SBS approaches might be able to do interesting things here.
Here's the primary piece: > At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelli…
It's a little difficult to summarize what has happened since, since so much has happened. This is a golden age of human genetics which has no precedent, and major new findings are being uploaded to Biorxiv at an almost daily rate. I think the short version would be that the BGI project made a bad bet on a particular genetic architecture of intelligence (rare variants with large boosting effects) which would have impl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by we've confirmed dysgenics? Does that mean humans now are actually more disabled than a century ago?
Population genetics shows harmful mutations tend to accumulate much more than beneficial mutations, but not to a degree that reduces reproduction significantly. So the human genome is degenerating over time.
Then how can it be "harmful"?
Reproduction is the only thing that affects evolution, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you say its unrealistic? Eugenics has been seriously considered in the past, and is likely to be seriously considered in the future. If genetic modification and control becomes 'easy' and relatively safe I don't see why those in power wouldn't try to exercise control over that power. In that future its not hard to imagine lawmakers banning having children who would have inherited known genetic 'defects'. Now i…
Gattaca is unrealistic because (aside from being intended as mass-market entertainment rather than a scientific extrapolation) it is simultaneously too aggressive and too conservative: it envisions a world in which instant genome sequencing can be done effectively for free on a global scale (which, as cheap as genome sequencing has become, does not seem likely to ever happen unless non-chemical-based processes are de…
On the presumption that 99.9% of the people using the system are never going to act on information disclosed by the system in a manner that would not involve returning to the established system as a middleman, it simply cheats. Random samples of DNA are tested and sequenced, and a machine learning system leans heavily on databases of stored information to extrapolate findings that might be of interest to the customer.
Most people of Gattaca don't have a deep understanding of genetics. They just know what the computers tell them.
As such, pretending to be another person with donated biological samples is the low-budget option for evading the system. Those with enough power and resources pay to hack the system itself, such that the ubiquitous sequencers report more favorable results than they otherwise would.
This also means that a lot of the parents buying designer babies were getting placebo. If there was no obvious congenital defect, the docs just left the natural genome alone, and simply told the parents it was the best baby they could possibly have, while marking the genetic samples kept for reference as "valid". Yeah, that's right, I made the dystopia even worse in my own imagination. Not only is the society stratified by money, the foundation is 99% fraud.
I am envious and sad as to how this future will look. China is practicing eugenics to raise the IQ of it's citizens and secure its spot as Earths dominant power; meanwhile, Western nations are practicing the exact opposite by importing migrants under a doctrine of "diversity is strength". Scientifically speaking, we are paying the price: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615... According to thi…