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US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

theguardian.com

1–10 of 53 posts

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#2
I'm not sure how well incentivized these organizations are to correctly use the GWAS data vs just appear to do something and then take your money.

Assortive mating and then maybe screening for stuff like Tay-Sachs and autism would for sure be cheaper (assuming there's not backlash against those screenings too...)

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#3
post #2

I'm not sure how well incentivized these organizations are to correctly use the GWAS data vs just appear to do something and then take your money. Assortive mating and then maybe screening for stuff like Tay-Sachs and autism would for sure be cheaper (assuming there's not backlash against those screenings too...)

There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#5
My embryos were one of the early participants in this startup (at a vastly higher sum haha). My wife lets me try out some of these things for a laugh. In our case, our ethnic backgrounds did not lend themselves well to their program (you’ve got to be well represented in the UK Biobank). But it was good fun.

Ultimately, we’ve still got to feed these children and teach them and raise them to adulthood and I look forward to doing that. It’s nice to have selected from the higher end of the bell curve available to the combination of my wife’s and my DNA.

My genome is public and my parents and siblings have theirs too. My hope is that eventually my genetic group will be so available that the data processing will be readily available to all.

In the future, one could imagine my descendants being myopia-free because the ones who were chosen were so. I look forward to the future of humanity.

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#6

My embryos were one of the early participants in this startup (at a vastly higher sum haha). My wife lets me try out some of these things for a laugh. In our case, our ethnic backgrounds did not lend themselves well to their program (you’ve got to be well represented in the UK Biobank). But it was good fun. Ultimately, we’ve still got to feed these children and teach them and raise them to adulthood and I look forwar…

I'm not sure there's really going to be any improvement at all in their descendants, because I really doubt the company is that aggressive.

How many embryos did they go through? Much of the genome doesn't run on Punnett squares, and even in the parts that do, recessive genes can actually do things.

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#8

My embryos were one of the early participants in this startup (at a vastly higher sum haha). My wife lets me try out some of these things for a laugh. In our case, our ethnic backgrounds did not lend themselves well to their program (you’ve got to be well represented in the UK Biobank). But it was good fun. Ultimately, we’ve still got to feed these children and teach them and raise them to adulthood and I look forwar…

You have a very optimistic view on eugenics in practice

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#9
post #8

My embryos were one of the early participants in this startup (at a vastly higher sum haha). My wife lets me try out some of these things for a laugh. In our case, our ethnic backgrounds did not lend themselves well to their program (you’ve got to be well represented in the UK Biobank). But it was good fun. Ultimately, we’ve still got to feed these children and teach them and raise them to adulthood and I look forwar…

You have a very optimistic view on eugenics in practice

I do, partly because my wife and I are beneficiaries of it already. We had our genomes available in the first place because our embryos are likely to grow into children with congenital conditions (my wife and I are carriers) and pre-implantation testing is what has enabled us to dodge the high-likelihood errors.

Walk into an obstetrics clinic in San Francisco and you’ll find pamphlets for https://www.natera.com/womens-health/spectrum-preimplantatio... there. Many parents like us will have children that are free of conditions the parents carry because of artificial genetic selection.

Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'

#10
post #6

My embryos were one of the early participants in this startup (at a vastly higher sum haha). My wife lets me try out some of these things for a laugh. In our case, our ethnic backgrounds did not lend themselves well to their program (you’ve got to be well represented in the UK Biobank). But it was good fun. Ultimately, we’ve still got to feed these children and teach them and raise them to adulthood and I look forwar…

I'm not sure there's really going to be any improvement at all in their descendants, because I really doubt the company is that aggressive. How many embryos did they go through? Much of the genome doesn't run on Punnett squares, and even in the parts that do, recessive genes can actually do things .

If you’re young you can produce 20+ eggs per run. Post fertilization, you can have 15+ if lucky. Their model then places them on a curve based on parental genomes. That is, given these parents are these the children most likely to be high IQ or not.

The usefulness of that is up to you. The model is black box and you may never know, it’s true.

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