High iq people aren’t smart enough to reproduce, so this might not work out in the long run.
Eugenics and HN. Name a more classic combination.
US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not absurd, once you remember that autistic people are human beings with feelings. Edit: Sort of shocked that I am having to spell this out to all the "but embryos..." posters, but the backlash is coming from autistic human people with feelings. I was not insinuating some anti abortion sentiment.
I am a diabetic. It doesn't make me a worse person, but it does make my life more difficult. If I had the ability to screen for diabetes for my child, I would do so. Because the fewer things that make my child's life harder, the better. Same thing.
Being a woman is objectively harder in America than being a man is. Would you screen for that?
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone has an optimistic view of eugenics in practice when it comes to mate selection. How is embryo selection any different?
The difference is selecting for or against specific alleles vs playing the 50-50 haploid game.
Some of us think nurture matters more than nature, too.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a diabetic. It doesn't make me a worse person, but it does make my life more difficult. If I had the ability to screen for diabetes for my child, I would do so. Because the fewer things that make my child's life harder, the better. Same thing.
Being a woman is objectively harder in America than being a man is. Would you screen for that?
That's disputable, but it would be a really bad idea for obvious reasons either way. Think the incel problem is bad now?
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#45Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.
I wonder if it's similar to the deaf community's outcry against cochlear implants? People love their subcultures; seeing new medical technology wipe out their culture probably feels like genocide[0] to them (even if the majority population perceives it as a good thing). [0] One of the UN-recognized forms is "preventing births within a population"
That and the fact that in many cases, the symptoms are very mild, and the problem could be reasonably seen to actually lie in the society's sometimes really far-reaching demands for homogenity. And extreme homogenity is bad for innovation.
It might very well be that a double-digit percentage of the population has a some sort of neurodevelopmental disorder[1], and the extermination of such a lot of unborn people is going to be a considerable burden for industrialized countries already struggling with low birthrates, and being totally unprecented, may lead into all kinds of unintended consequences.
1) https://dceg.cancer.gov/about/diversity-inclusion/inclusivit...
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a diabetic. It doesn't make me a worse person, but it does make my life more difficult. If I had the ability to screen for diabetes for my child, I would do so. Because the fewer things that make my child's life harder, the better. Same thing.
Being a woman is objectively harder in America than being a man is. Would you screen for that?
You're making an argument just to make an argument. Being a woman has both positives and negatives; there's tradeoffs. The same is not true of being a diabetic. My guess would be that most people believe there are very few benefits to being autistic to offset the negatives.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#48> [Dr. Jonathan] Anomaly is a well-known figure in a growing transatlantic movement that promotes development of genetic selection and enhancement tools.
Nominative determinism is real.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it's similar to the deaf community's outcry against cochlear implants? People love their subcultures; seeing new medical technology wipe out their culture probably feels like genocide[0] to them (even if the majority population perceives it as a good thing). [0] One of the UN-recognized forms is "preventing births within a population"
That and the fact that in many cases, the symptoms are very mild, and the problem could be reasonably seen to actually lie in the society's sometimes really far-reaching demands for homogenity. And extreme homogenity is bad for innovation. It might very well be that a double-digit percentage of the population has a some sort of neurodevelopmental disorder[1], and the extermination of such a lot of unborn people is go…
No it's not, even with only 4 embryos to select you'd generally expect at least one to be fine.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.
What business is it of the government what parents choose to screen for? Even more pointedly, how can one support elective abortion and not support genetic screening for whatever the parents want to screen for?
Note: The following is for a world where genetic screen is cheap and can screen for basically anything that is influenced by genetics. That's way more than we can do now, so if your question is about whether it should be the government's business now then never mind. :-)
It's not clear that it makes sense to compare abortion policy and genetic screening policy. People consider abortion to control the number of children they produce or the timing of their production of children, whereas they would use genetic screening to control the types of children they produce.
As for why the government might have an interest in what people can screen for, consider what happens if people start screening for aesthetic reasons. That could be strongly influence by fashion.
You could get a generation where most children were selected for some specific body properties because that's what some big star had. Often bodily features favored by fashion aren't actually good for the person who has them.
For example suppose there we have a few years where extremely thin people became the fashion rage, and people who want children during that time start screening for babies that will be prone to anorexia or other eating disorders.
I can see the government having a legitimate interest in shutting that down.