Genetic Testing For Geekiness? 861
Paul Johnson writes "MSNBC is carrying an article wondering about how to handle a possible future genetic test for autism. Raising a severely autistic child is a heartbreaking grind, and many people (and legal systems) consider termination to be a reasonable choice where the fetus carries other genetic disorders such as Downs Syndrome. But this might also prevent the birth of future geniuses too. The article flippantly uses Bill Gates as an example (Gates is widely thought to have Asperger's syndrome), although Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison are also thought to have been similarly "different". And there is some reason to believe that "geekiness" in general is actually the place where autism shades into 'normal'."
best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:5, Funny)
Advances in prenatal genetic testing pose tough questions
Gratuitous Dilbert - THE KNACK! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gratuitous Dilbert - THE KNACK! (Score:2)
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be some truth in an argument that "culling all people with 'Gene A' before they're born" (with the natural assumtpion that there will be other people born in their place) may have downsides if 'Gene A' has some positive side affects that aren't widely considered. But "would you have allowed (insert person here) to be born?" is a fallacy.
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Insightful)
a) the aforenamed are responsible for their actions
b) equally mad men could have arisen in their circumstances; their elimination would not guarantee much
In summary, omniscience would seem to be a requirement prior to making adjustments.
Re:Genetics and Free Will are Mutually Exclusive (Score:4, Insightful)
I call BS.
Re:Genetics and Free Will are Mutually Exclusive (Score:3, Interesting)
Sex out of wedlock.
Paying for sex out of wedlock.
Sex out of wedlock with someone of the same gender.
Marrying someone of the same gender.
Polygamy/Polyandry.
Purchasing a "mail order bride".
Teaching students that sex using a condom can protect against some STDs and help prevent unwanted children.
Aborting a fetus that would normally survive but be crippled mentally or physically.
Aborting a fetus that would not normally survive, but would cost hundreds of tho
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're presuming that life is always worth living, regardless of circumstance.
Of course, you're not the one living with constant pain, outcast from most of society, and knowing that you'll die at a very young age.
So before you go spouting off again how life is always worth living, consider some worse cases, and at least consider tha
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an oversimplification. If it were true, those people would be rationally attempting suicide, instead of struggling to keep living as long as they can.
The question is not whether it is in the individual best interests of a genetically crippled person to be born, but whether allowing the birth is better for enjoyable human life for everyone.
When it is considered that most parents considering abortion over a major congenital defect w
Genetic diversity. (Score:3, Interesting)
1. how the gene may mutate in the future (i.e. it may produce beneficial effects - this is key.)
2. how the gene will manifest in adulthood.
3. the effect of the gene on the person's activity as a whole, and thereby, on society.
etc.
The only cases in which I would support aborting babies with specific genes would be if so many people with a severe problem are born that it becom
Re:Genetic diversity. (Score:3, Interesting)
Even better than your accountant example, what happens when there is no longer a food surplus and the obesity gene suddenly comes in handy. One thing I think is often overlooked in our current "obesity epidemic" is that a hundred or so years ago a skinny person (male or female) was not considered attractive. There wasn't a McDonalds on every corner,
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, to extend the above economist's logic, why should we stop at merely encouraging abortions among those whose cultural and socioeconomic characteristics make their children more likely to be criminals? Sterilizing everybody in the inner cities would certainly reduce crime for the same reason that encouraging inner city residents to have abortions does. Should it be done?
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose my wife and I have a medical test result which gives X% of a chance to have a child with autism -- no, that's too hard, since autism is a spectrum disease. Let's make it something genetically definite, like hermaphrodism -- are we then justified in deciding that "this life is not worth living", and killing off the baby?
To do so places us in the position of arguing from the probability of a problem to a definite, terminal solution: kill the baby. But other possibilities exist, even if the problem is as severe as projected.
The "would you have allowed (X person) to be born?" argument simply exposes the fallacy of arguing from a probability of lower quality of life to a definite conclusion: "terminate" the life.
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Interesting)
There are rich people who are so unhappy they even kill themselves.
Getting back to Billyboy, if he was truly happy, would he be so ruthless even though he is already so rich.
Heck, I'd be happy with only $5 billion.
Re:best ever headline on msnbc ! (Score:3, Interesting)
You want impact? Try CPUs. The impact from the creation of a single P4 is probably quite a bit greater than all of the rest. Low yield batches with extremely hazardous chemicals just so we can post on
-WS
What about gay children? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about gay children? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about gay children? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about gay children? (Score:2)
Re:What about gay children? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about gay children? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people say it's a choice.. Well, I never made the choice to be hetereosexual, that's just the way it was. And for those few gay kids that I went to school with, it wasn't their choice either, that's just the way they were. A gene causes this? No clue, I don't think it matter except to the religious & bigotted.
Re:What about gay children? (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming there is a gay gene, then of course not, but you're ignoring huge social factors that have made passing that trait forward quite likely. And again, assuming this gene exists, if it were not for tyrannical religious groups, this gene may have faded away thousands of years ago. If the church really wants this gay 'disease' to go away, they should encourage early marriage for gay teens.
3) By its nature,
Re:Nuclear Family is better than non-traditional. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not true at all. Children actually do better when raised in extended families: families that include the active participation of grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc... living in close proximity. These additional family members take a lot of the burden off of the parents, especially in the early years and provide a wealth of expirience to help said parents deal with problems that come up.
The "mother, father, 2.5 kids and the dog" traditional family is anything but traditional and is the product of post-WWII America. A short-lived Traditional America where white men were in charge, the women stayed at home, children were the property of their parents, those pesky minorities knew their place, those homos stayed in the closet or were beaten to death and everyone was a propper God-fearing Christian. An America that never was.
Gay/Straight matters to those who are concerned about kids's welfare.
How? What does it matter if someone is gay or straight? If they are allowed to live normal lives and are happy then their orientation is of no matter. I do know that the "for the children's sake" is an argument frequently used to stifle ideas offensive to conservatives who consider everything outside their narrow point of view to be evil.
Re:What about gay children? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, maybe not. Maybe you were 8-10. That cute girl in class, you see her, and you think "ok brain, feel fuzzy now. Heart, you race." Right? You made the conscious and rational decision to ha
Re:What about gay children? (Score:2)
Me? I was genetically programmed to prefer Duracell over Energizer.
Re:What about gay children? (Score:3, Insightful)
The same is true for most inventors and scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Genetic testing will probably cause more harm than good - we need to have it screened for medical uses only, such things as fatal diseases, not What's Hot This Week
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:2)
In my experience, any party that ends up with me not wearing pants is generally a good one.
m-
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:2)
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:3, Interesting)
-In a related note
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree.
Next, genetic testing before an insurance company will sell you health insurance.
Science is not perfect, it never was. I remember 20 years ago the HUGE butter scare. Scientific test after test came out saying butter caused heart attacks, and to switch to margerin. A few years ago, studies came out saying that margerin is unhealthy, and butter is better? If people listen to science or their studies, they will be eatting eggs one year, avoiding them like the plauge the next year, and then drinking them raw the next.
And like the above example, it was the margerin industry that funded those early scientific studies. They wanted to increase their sales, so they labled butter unhealthy.
Now extend this one step further. Someone HATES jews, there are tons of people out there who are racist. They decide that certian genes, only found in the jewish population, lead to certain disorders. They then use this as an excuse for terminating these pregnecies.
Next... "We think your baby has an abnormally high chance for sickle cell anemia, we reccomend termenating your pregnancy".
Meanwhile... "Yes Mr. Forbes, we agree, if we lighten the shade of your babys hair, it will bring out his eyes, and we'll make sure to add the genes which increase muscle mass, and the genes that increase IQ".
Now, which one will be the more ethical and better human being? That is something science is incapable of prediciting.
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Who else will punish and ostracize the geeks? If I wasn't ostracized in high-school, I'd never have learned to program, or have done my homework. I'd have been getting stoned, and having sex. Things which rightfully belong to my college years.
2) Who will distract the TV watching, Dorito-stuffing, SUV-driving masses? I mean, we all could be rioting on Pennsylvania Ave right now, fighting for our rights, but, wait, TheBigGame/Sitcom81-g/MovieWithExplosions#2118 is o
Re:The same is true for most inventors and scienti (Score:3, Insightful)
And how are you going to do that? The technology is not that complicated. Are you going to prohibit people from owning a PCR machine (which is really just a precisely controlled hotplate)? Or make thermostable polymerase an illicit substance? Pretty soon, anybody will be able to test for any gene sequence they choose.
Let the State decide (Score:5, Funny)
wrong (Score:2)
This is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
So, science is so good now that we can predict with 100% accuracy if someone will be able to contribute OR OR OR live a happy life?
I know so many people with IQ's over 110, well educated, well employed, good citizens who are miserable. I also know one girl who is in a wheel chair, she has some genetic disorder, and she lights up a room with her smiles and laughs.
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it does take money to avoid all the things that make for unhappiness
like starvation, infection, homelessness and so on.
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
probably not as many as you think, or as many as they think.
As someone who sas scored over 160 on IQ tests many times, I can honestly say IQ is crap.
Motivation is the key to innovation and success.
I find it interesting that just because she is in a wheel chair you assume her IQ is less.
Re:This is wrong (Score:2)
Motivation is the key to innovation and success. - and I can attest to that.
Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Also this entire topic is hilarious. Linking autism to geekiness?
I can only assume most people have never genuinely encountered an autistic or person with aspergers.
They don't function well, and if newton or einstien had it, it is to their credit they achieved what they did, inspite of their condition.
Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother is a special education teacher. I've met her students.
You're right, autistic people tend to be less functional in society (loud noises or changes to routine cause them to freak out). On the other hand, they tend to be amazingly knowledgeable about a few specific things. They may not be able to carry out a conversation, but they could write research papers on dinosaurs or whatever their personal interest is (and this is in elementary school).
Autistic people have an extremely strong and narrow focus and tend to think logically. This gives them an advantage in scientific fields.
"Geekiness" does have certain common characteristics with autism (especially milder forms like aspergers). Autistic people have trouble recognizing social cues, causing them trouble socializing normally. They also can adhere to either excessive cleanliness, or its opposite.
They also show a certain social apathy, not showing appropriate interests in other people.
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Your description of the difficulties in social functioning for PDD spectrum children was spot on.
-
Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Current estimates place someone with Asperger's Syndrome in every few hundred people. TFA doesn't do a good job of pointing out that Asperger's is what they call "high functioning autism", meaning that most of those with it can function and blend in with society if they choose to.
The correlation seems so reasonable to me, it's barely worth mentioning. I would speculate that a typical layperson definition of geek would be "An intelligent, but socially awkward person. A loner." Autism literally means self-ism. "One who is drawn into one's self."
Given the site you're reading now, I'd say odds are pretty good that you're working with someone that has some form of autism. They probably forgot to mention it to you.
Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Where? (Score:5, Insightful)
The parents I've meet with Downs and autistc children have commented on how rewarding it is. "Hearbreaking grind" is very judgemental and not necessarily true (although for some it might be).
Anyway, what legal systems consider termination to be a reasonable choice? Do they actually spell out different reasons for abortion?
Re:Where? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where? (Score:2)
I thought I'd read that parents of autistic kids tend to never have children again?
Re:Where? (Score:3, Informative)
The "Geek Syndrome" Wired article [wired.com] even gives the tendency a name: "stoppage".
The Problems.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Einstein: Leave me alone, i'm depressed!
Re:The Problems.. (Score:2)
Who knows what would have happened, but shying away from druges just becasue Einstein didn't take them is fool hardy.
Not I am not saying you shuld take drugs willy nilly, and without research, I am saying the Einstein anolgy is crap.
Over the Undermen (Score:2)
Social awkwardness != genius (Score:5, Insightful)
And this goes hand in hand with every kid who can stack blocks by the age of 3 being 'gifted'. Of course, there's a whole industry dedicated to 'helping' (read: profiting off of) parents who believe their child is gifted.
Re:Social awkwardness != genius (Score:3, Interesting)
All too often folks who are clearly of genius level inteligence are ignored in favour of quick witted kids who can make trucks with lego at age 2
Genius though is an off title in many terms
Einstein was not your model High IQ student , the same can be said for many
Austism is not a mesure of IQ
Re:Social awkwardness != genius (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right, though, IQ is not equal to genius. (Which makes me wonder how you were "classified as a genius" except via an IQ test - unless you're a MacArthur recipient.) G
Evidence and Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
Learning anything requires time. Geeks are notorious for spending their time doing "geeky" things which are also notable because they generally fail to cultivate social skills (but do cultivate a different skillset, just like the music analogy).
While I don't necessarily disagree (there are activities which seem to do nothing (mindlessly playing solitaire for hours
bill gates' genes (Score:2)
Hey. (Score:3, Funny)
tending his private logs of baseball statistics
That is perfectly normal for a four year old, so back off!
/gonna get my gumdrops yet, I tell you
Not only Gates (Score:2)
Guess the Asperger has a light and a dark side, too...
Reductio Ad Gatesum (Score:2)
Clearly most of us would be happy if he didn't exist, right?
Gates eats food. I guess food is bad. He lives in a house. I guess houses (at least, houses that look like giant crappy convention center/shopping malls) are bad too.
Using Gates as the lead-in to an article is likely to lead to a flamefest.
Don't know about Einstein (Score:2, Insightful)
He didn't show any typical traits such as repetetive behaviour or social oddities. He was a loner, but that doesn't necessarily make him autistic.
Re:Don't know about Einstein (Score:3, Funny)
Possible autism gene? (Score:2)
Deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is a complicated thing, made even more difficult when the best a genetic councilor can say that there's a chance that th
That's the doctors for you. (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's enough to make me spitting mad.
Executive summary: don't kill your children. They are more important than you.
Lacking Moral Compass (Score:2)
Ignorance is bliss? (Score:2)
The catch is that people have to make decisions. They can choose not to have all the information, which makes things simpler but more likely to be the "wrong" decision.
I err on the side of giving as much information as possible to people, hoping that they'l
Oh come on, give us some proof... (Score:2)
Why? He doesn't seem that antisocial to me. He seems to be able to understand things outside the literal. He seems to be able to excel in more than one specific area (programming *and* business)...
He came from exceptionally intelligent and wealthy stock. Just because he was able to get into computers and ride the first "boom" means that he could only do so because of some syndrome?
Most people with AS are of *normal* intelligence but they have extrem
Re:Oh come on, give us some proof... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago (early 80's), I worked for Tandy Corporation. We had a meeting with Bill and a few other folks from Microsoft. Bill spent most of the meeting sitting sideways in his chair, rocking back and forth, chewing on the leather band of his wristwatch. He seemed to not be paying any attention, but it was obvious from the questions he asked that he was listening to everything.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so sad (Score:3, Interesting)
We were in a situation with our second daughter where there was a one-in-twenty chance she might be born with Down's Synd
Re:so sad (Score:5, Interesting)
not all of us believe that that cluster of cells which has implanted itself in a woman's uterus has a soul, or is even yet a human being with all the rights that accompany such status, and would rather stop a frustrating and problematic situation before it develops into an irreversible one.
don't get me wrong- i respect your choice. it's noble, and all that. but nobody should be forced to live with an avoidable anomalous situation and accept it as "god's will", as not everyone believes that.
Re:so sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:so sad (Score:3, Insightful)
honestly- why should i believe that they do? why should i believe that anyone has a soul? because the bible says so?
from what i understand, good science now indicates that most life, including human behavior, can be measured and described as the result of a highly complex but clearly logical organic computational phenomenon occurring in not only the human mind, which is clearly i
Re:so sad (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the point of having children, and really anything else we do here if it is not to make every effort to maximize our long-term survival and prosperity as a species?
Perhaps I should ask why you care so much about your specific genetic line. Unless you can prove that your genetic line will be advantageous in the future (which you can't)
Nobody's saying anyone can prove a geneti
My nephew has Down Syndrome (Score:3, Informative)
Today he's a sixth-grader working at grade level in all subject
geekiness is overrated (Score:4, Insightful)
an average iq kid who has a high social intelligence will go on to make $40 million, and the high iq, low social intelligence asperger type we're talking about here will wind up working for him for $30K/ year.
if the point of this slashdot story is to bring attention to the preciousness of autism/ asperger's and its role in high iq people, then i respond with a big "so what".
genius doesn't matter if it can't be communicated.
a mediocre idea well-communicated is worth 10,000x more than a genius level idea that stays locked up in someone's skull.
so enough of the cult of asperger's. it's overrated. social intelligence is the real deal.
Future whoevers (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument "in doing this, you might stop the next genius from existing", whether applied to medication or abortion, is not simply the last word. It is something to take into consideration.
The parents who have to raise the child are the ones making these decisions. It's true, "he just might be the next Einstein", but it's much more likely that his parents will go through their lives not being able to speak to him, having him attack you for no reason, and not being able to see him ever live on his own.
Asperger's, a mild variety of autism, is a mixed bag. It breaks my heart to see my cousin's family torn apart by their son's inability to control himself, and he's relatively high-functioning. A test for autism would be a tremendous boon for parents facing the prospect of raising a child who will be forever locked away from them, and they from him. High-minded ideals about future genuises are not what they want to hear.
Summary: Serious autism is terrible. Only a small fraction of autistic children are able to lead productive lives. Borderline cases like [famous person here] are extremely high-functioning, if in the spectrum at all, and probably wouldn't fall under any test in the near future.
Re:Future whoevers (Score:2)
Can you say "clueless"? (Score:2)
Gates a genius? (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you have allowed Bill Gates to be born? (Score:2)
I probably would have been aborted (Score:5, Insightful)
Am a decently successful human being, I run my own business, have held numerous significant jobs, have an advanced college degree.
But, I was born with a small level of Cerebral Palsy.
Just enough to make me limp and trip occasionally.
And other than constantly overhearing 4 year olds asking their parents why does that man walk that way in public I am just as "normal" as the next guy. Ok, normal might be too nice:-) But I'm trying.
When I entered pre-school I was automatically placed in the "special education" (that's what it was called then) class. Not one question was asked of my parents as to my cognitive abilities, etc. My Dad was livid to say the least.
But, what if I had been diagnosed in the womb with my CP would I even exist? Would a doctor have "convinced" my parents to abort?
The kind of testing described should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned.
We have already seen what happened in China, I believe it was, or was it India, when people started getting ultrasounds to determine if they were having a girl or a boy, then aborting the girl fetuses.
It's just a place society shouldn't go, at all.
Why? (Score:2)
Everyone knows, Autistic kids ROCK!
The wonder of slashdot... (Score:2)
If Geeks were selected out of existence (Score:2)
Or, something bad could happen.
I've been accused... (Score:2)
Autism is a genetic vulnerability to immigration (Score:3, Informative)
Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:
Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita [laboratory...states.com]
(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)
Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.
See this link [laboratory...states.com].
(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)
Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.
See this link [laboratory...states.com].
MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates [laboratory...states.com]. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.
Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism [laboratory...states.com].
Re:bill gates, genius? (Score:2)
Re:bill gates, genius? (Score:2)
Re:bill gates, genius? (Score:2)
I once had a conversation with someone who claimed John Travolta was super intelligent.
I asked why. The response was, that he was rich and famous and could fly his own plane.
The mind boggles.
Re:bill gates, genius? (Score:2)
Re:bill gates, genius? (Score:3, Funny)
That said, it is a "popularly held" belief, yeah.
Re:ah, Asperger's syndrome (Score:3, Funny)
Syphilis?
Re:Let's get something straight: GEEK != AUTISTIC! (Score:4, Funny)
For future reference, this may not be the best tone to take when attempting to convince others that you're psychologically normal.