101–106 of 106 posts
I see a lot of comments underscoring the possible eugenics implication of this, but I am curious as to why everyone always paints it as a negative? Even in our very diversity-conscious institutions we can generally agree that some things are plain bad. You don't want a blind or deaf child. You don't want one with down syndrome or deformities that would just make their life difficult. I wonder if the high level of opp…
Blind or deaf people would probably feel pretty bad hearing "you don't want a blind or deaf kid".
I am legally blind. I would not want my children to have any disability whatsoever because it's difficult and miserable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Use of the pronoun “you” as the impersonal) You’re not curing cystic fibrosis, or any other genetic disease, are you? You’re just stopping disabled people from being born because you’ve decided their lives have no intrinsic value. This can be said to a wide swath of people. Down syndrome people, bipolar people, blue people, people with physical deformities. Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these…
> Why do you get to choose Presumably this "you" is the parent. They get to decide when (or if) they have kids and they can now decide what kind of kids they have. Just like folks can (and should) already screen for certain heritable disabilities. > Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless? They'll either be depressed or they won't feel this way. By definition, the ones that…
No. I explicitly stated that I was using “you” as the impersonal pronoun, which English otherwise lacks (although “one” is often used instead)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what people are worried about is that parents may neglect to take measures they otherwise would based on overconfidence in genetic screening.
Out of curiosity, what other measures might they neglect to take? I feel like I was sort of under the impression that the alternative is going in blind, but in retrospect I guess that's a somewhat silly assumption. Still, how likely is it that better genetic screening would have a net negative effect?
True Positive: non-viable, next embryo/round of IVF
False Positive: non-viable, next embryo/round of IVF
True Negative: Cool, parents move ahead with a healthy (in this regard) child.
False Negative: Parents move ahead with a false confidence.
Going in blind for muscular dystrophy, parents may hedge their bets by ensuring they live close to a school that can deliver against their childs needs, housing that is accessable (no stairs, easily accessable etc.), setting aside money for healthcare.
Of course the testing is only worse off in the case of a False Negative. I have no idea what the odds on that are, but I can imagine it'd be quite the shock for some people. In all I'm very bullish on the good IVF testing has the potential to do.
Anyone know of any unexpected consequences of using this for IVF? It seems to me that we are falling into brave-new-world territory without really trying. I'm sure parents will do this to help their kids but I wonder what the negative issues will be? Gender selection is one but that's already being done by other means. What will this particular technology bring?
The Gattaca premise sounds pretty logical but not unexpected. Presumably they will optimize for what they might view to be "favorable" genes associated with preferred traits (skin/hair/eye color, beauty/symmetry, strength, height, intelligence, disease resistance, aggression, etc.) while attempting to eliminate the others. This will (possibly) convey an increased "genetic" advantage upon the wealthy and privileged, w…
I.e. it is 100% illegal to do genetic testing for anyone other then yourself or your under-aged children. Those tests can only be done by a doctor and cannot be transferred or shared with anyone other than another doctor. Any employer or person that attempts to do a genetic test on someone can face jail-time.
What’s the choke point of scanning an entire genome? Is it purely computational? Imaging? Biological unknowns?
It's very doable, but we only know what a small amount of the genome is actually doing. Whole Exome testing hits the majority of the points people are interested in and is way less computationally expensive, since it's a fraction of the genome.