[flagged]
terminate a 20+ week old fetus, unilaterally: okay
screen an embryo for desirable traits, with consent from both parents: NOT okay
US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Okay then that's pretty much a single-generation effect in practice.
A lot of people don't understand that by the early to mid 1930s it was realized that the "propaganda version" of eugenics was not going to work, and if sterilization was going to be your tool, it would have to continue forever, and would need to happen to quite a lot of people.
Many geneticists said something like, "okay, then expand the programs".
Yeah, if everything undesirable was ruled by a limited number of "garbage" recessives that never did anything on their own, and you could more or less track traits with Punnett squares (or even fuzzier multi-gene threshold charts) then maybe it would work, but it doesn't.
Assortive mating of high intelligence people and/or continual, quite large scale sterilization of people with GWAS-rated "bad" genes would work, but it's not what a single-generation-only use of this company does.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#13I'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.
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.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.
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.
Yes, but practically speaking if you constrain to the set of people who would go through with assortive mating in today's society, AND are high IQ (and don't think it's a fluke, i.e. they think it's heritable), AND have no relatives that are autistic, AND aren't related to certain Jewish populations, how many candidates are you going to have left?
And I'm not talking about diagnosed autism either, e.g. do you have/did you have a weird uncle?
Edit: uh, the Jewish part's for Tay-Sachs and some other traits, that should have been obvious from the "certain Jewish populations" part.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#15Gataca was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#16My 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 thought myopia has a significant environmental component, eg doing most of our development indoors instead of outside in bright sunlight?
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#17Gataca was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
Torment nexus theory of startup founders.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.
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.
Sure, but embryos are not.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely is backlash against screening for autism, as absurd as that is.
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.
so are people with any other mental or physical abnormalities. embryos and fetuses are not people, however - they're just bundles of cells ;)
policing human reproduction at embryo stage is absurd in the world where abortion is legal and acceptable for any reason or no reason at all.
Re: US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'
#20I'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.
The danish eugenicized nearly 100% of downs folks with these methods (which state requires testing wise).