The World's First Gattaca Baby Tests Are Finally Here 166
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called "23andMe, but on embryos." The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago. The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it's set to release case studies on its first clients.
Handed report cards on a batch of frozen embryos, parents can use the test results to try to choose the healthiest ones. The grades include risk estimates for diabetes, heart attacks, and five types of cancer. According to flyers distributed by the company, it will also warn clients about any embryo predicted to become a person who is among the shortest 2% of the population, or who is in the lowest 2% in intelligence. The test is straight out of the science fiction film Gattaca, a movie that's one of the inspirations of the startup's CEO, Laurent Tellier. The company's other cofounders are testing expert Nathan Treff and Stephen Hsu, a Michigan State University administrator and media pundit. So far, fertility centers have not leaped at the chance to offer the test, which is new and unproven. Instead, prospective parents are learning about the designer baby reports through word of mouth or news articles and taking the company's flyer to their doctors. "The test (called "LifeView") is carried out on a few cells plucked from a days-old IVF embryo," the report says. "Then Genomic Prediction measures its DNA at several hundred thousand genetic positions, from which it says it can create a statistical estimate, called a 'polygenic score,' of the chance of disease later in life."
Criticism of the company from some genetics researchers has been intense. "It is irresponsible to suggest that the science is at the point where we could reliably predict which embryo to select to minimize the risk of disease. The science simply isn't there yet," says Graham Coop, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and a frequent critic of the company on Twitter.
Handed report cards on a batch of frozen embryos, parents can use the test results to try to choose the healthiest ones. The grades include risk estimates for diabetes, heart attacks, and five types of cancer. According to flyers distributed by the company, it will also warn clients about any embryo predicted to become a person who is among the shortest 2% of the population, or who is in the lowest 2% in intelligence. The test is straight out of the science fiction film Gattaca, a movie that's one of the inspirations of the startup's CEO, Laurent Tellier. The company's other cofounders are testing expert Nathan Treff and Stephen Hsu, a Michigan State University administrator and media pundit. So far, fertility centers have not leaped at the chance to offer the test, which is new and unproven. Instead, prospective parents are learning about the designer baby reports through word of mouth or news articles and taking the company's flyer to their doctors. "The test (called "LifeView") is carried out on a few cells plucked from a days-old IVF embryo," the report says. "Then Genomic Prediction measures its DNA at several hundred thousand genetic positions, from which it says it can create a statistical estimate, called a 'polygenic score,' of the chance of disease later in life."
Criticism of the company from some genetics researchers has been intense. "It is irresponsible to suggest that the science is at the point where we could reliably predict which embryo to select to minimize the risk of disease. The science simply isn't there yet," says Graham Coop, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and a frequent critic of the company on Twitter.
Never underestimate (Score:5, Informative)
Never underestimate the ability of a cautionary tale to be taken as a source of inspiration...
Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)
Gattaca's moral was the same as Jurassic Park's: life finds a way. It makes a great Hollywood story, but back in the real world, getting a shitty roll of the genetic dice sucks. (Ask a kid with ADHD how much they enjoy seeing all their peers succeed, while they struggle)
Yeah, some people, through having the right mental disposition, living circumstances, and a bit of luck, overcome the obstacles life placed in their path to success. But most people don't - which is why Hollywood loves "overcoming the odds" stories, as opposed to stories about people who had a difficult time in school and ended up in a trailer park.
As our society becomes increasingly reliant upon automation, there will be even less jobs available for people who don't have a natural aptitude for higher education. The idea of genetically selecting for a "better baby" sounds creepy, but society is heading down this path whether we like it or not.
Poor comparison. (Score:2)
"Gattaca's moral was the same as Jurassic Park's: life finds a way."
Ugh, really? You're comparing Jurassic Park to Gattaca? Jurassic Park's "moral" was that people like groundbreaking special effects. It was just an alight movie overall.
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Two: Technology makes life better. Every time. Even Nuclear Weapons. Life loss due to war was increasing every decade since early civilization until Nuclear Weapons. Suddenly, it slowed down to about 1M deaths a year. Why? Nuclear Weapons. Those that have it are terrified of recourse by others who have them, and those that don't are afraid of those who do.
There are X number of pre-mature deaths due to these diseases. Lets assume for a moment that you can
Re: Poor comparison. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Technology doesn't lead to dystopian futures. Never will.
Of course it does and has. Without 'technology' the third reich and the despotes in South America, phillipines, east asia etc. would not have been possible. As far as I can tell, the US population is living in a dystopian future/present.
Re: Poor comparison. (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming technology for the evil assholes that use it to do evil things is idiotic. Do you similarly rebuke medicine because it could also be used as a poison?
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You're premise ius:
"Technology doesn't lead to dystopian futures."
When in fact, it has.
"The Khans bloody reign and brutality makes the Nazis look like third rate chumps "
No actually, it does not.
China Is literally building a dystopia on the back of technology.
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And before that technology there were no despots right? The Khans bloody reign and brutality makes the Nazis look like third rate chumps and the tinpot dictators in the third world like they aren't even worth considering.
Hitler came to power in 1933, killed himself in 1945 and murdered 2/3rds of Europe's Jews in that time span - the vast majority in the last four years. True he did not create a lasting Nazi empire the way Genghis Khan and his successors did but in terms of pure genocidal efficiency they must be neck and neck. I used to not be so worried because most of the world's technological and economic power was in democratic countries, okay so there's a lot of poor shitty countries but it's not like some two bit dicta
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And before that technology there were no despots right? The Khans bloody reign and brutality makes the Nazis look like third rate chumps and the tinpot dictators in the third world like they aren't even worth considering.
Hitler came to power in 1933, killed himself in 1945 and murdered 2/3rds of Europe's Jews in that time span - the vast majority in the last four years. True he did not create a lasting Nazi empire the way Genghis Khan and his successors did but in terms of pure genocidal efficiency they must be neck and neck. I used to not be so worried because most of the world's technological and economic power was in democratic countries, okay so there's a lot of poor shitty countries but it's not like some two bit dictator in Africa will upend the world. But now authoritarian regimes are getting richer and more powerful every year without any signs of a democratic reform, in fact they're using their economic power to silence critics instead. I'm just waiting for the tanks to roll into Hong Kong...
This is my fear as well. something has got to give. At this point i'm not sure if there is anything you could give the protesters that would satiate their desires. Maybe call a truce , lay out some rational well thought out plans and promise that protest will resume if they are not met? I don't know the answer. But it doesn't seem like protest forever is sustainable.
Re: Poor comparison. (Score:2)
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Medical technology does not work like that.
Do only the rich get flu shots?
Can only the rich get genetic testing?
Do Only rich woman get test while pregnant.?
It will literally be cheaper to create the same technology for everyone, then for some reason have machines for the rich, and machine for the poor.
" I'm a car guy"
That explains why you missed his point.
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Um poor people cant afford cars. You need to travel the world and see what true poverty is.
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You missed the moral. It has nothing to do with technology. It's about the transitions and division. What happen to 30 year old's working when a wave of super healthy super smart people hit the market?
You could have changed the people with androids. Would have been the same moral.
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Those movies all miss a great point about society: wealth and class is not fixed and people that try to do so by force (communism) fail. People move up and down the ladder all the time in any society and the rich may get richer, but so do the poor.
The other difference between Gattaca and real life is that everyone can do these modifications today, the tech is very cheap even for 'poor' standards, the other thing about life is that it is easy to replicate, so if your designer baby doesn't have the desired fe
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>People move up and down the ladder all the time in any society
Only if you mean "there's always someone moving up or down". How *common* that is can vary wildly. Under feudalism for example, you're probably 99.9% likely to spend your entire life in the same income strata as your parents. Your talent and hard work are largely irrelevant to your own prosperity - the idiot slacker children of nobles remain nobles, and brilliant, hard-working peasants will remain peasants. It's only with rare luck (goo
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Those movies all miss a great point about society: wealth and class is not fixed ...
Umm yeah it pretty much is. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something.
Sure there are a few exceptions here and their, considering the entire population of the world these exceptions make up a fraction of a percentage point.
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*there
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Why would anyone want to reproduce psychopaths, those with extreme criminal tendencies due to a lack of an autonomic empathic response, an essential genetic social training and without a full range of human emotions. Well if you are poor and can not afford top end gene's why reproduce a disadvantage person, why allow the ego of one to cause another to suffer. Breeding is a belief, we evolve as a society, if you genes are shitty loser genes, why would your extreme selfish ego demand that be passed onto the
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Sure, that's very likely what would happen. But eventually some new technology would come out to separate the haves and the have nots, and the best genetic manipulations would become available to the lower classes as well. Those on top today aren't there because they're better or smarter, at least not wholly. They are there primarily due to opportunity. They go to schools with better networking opportunities, or they have famous names that open doors. It's not about genetic superiority now, and even in a wo
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Sure, that's very likely what would happen. But eventually some new technology would come out to separate the haves and the have nots, and the best genetic manipulations would become available to the lower classes as well.
Is this about manipulation though? Certainly at present it is about eugenics.
And while we can all get wrapped around the axle about some major things, there is a certain amount of horror to see what some folks would allow, and what they would destroy.
Some folks want superstar athlete offspring, some want male, some female, some don't want a child with Asperger's, some might toss a child that is likely to have weight problems.
Stephen Hawking would have been flushed down the toilet.
I'm fully pro c
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Ultimately I think it's wrong to not let parents choose genes. But it's also wrong to let anyone choose genes for parents, and that's the real danger. Not designer babies, but regulations forcing people to make modifications. That's the third reich wet dream.
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Except technology gets cheaper with time.
If it was rich people, why were they all fucking working?
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Who founded the worlds biggest and most profitable company? I am pretty sure he wasnâ(TM)t a product of a egg sorting based in genetic profiling
There's no genes for founding companies, so I'm curious as to what's your line of thinking there.
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Who founded the worlds biggest and most profitable company? I am pretty sure he wasnâ(TM)t a product of a egg sorting based in genetic profiling
There's no genes for founding companies, so I'm curious as to what's your line of thinking there.
Would Stephen Hawking be allowed to come to full term?
Or let's get a bit more in depth. Would you destroy a zygote that tested positive for depression? This is an important question, because while many people that suffer from depression do great things, yet what parent wants to know they purposely allowed an unhappy person into the world?
How about OCD? Is there a minimum level that you would allow, because while severe forms of OCD end up with miserable people, but milder forms end up with people that
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Having nuclear weapons hasn't stopped the biggest countries with nuclear weapons from going to war but it has very much increased the chance of global catastrophe on a scale we've never seen before and we've come far too close to that more than once in the past. It only takes one idiot / insane leader to start a nuclear war and god knows we've had enough of those.
Back to the article.. What is interesting here is the fact that the couples need IVF suggests that they themselves may be passing on dud genes. [d
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Dud genes are not the point. They might simply be not compatible, or the sperms not agile enough, e.g. the immune system of the woman kills them before they reach the egg. There are plenty of other reasons to be infertile in a certain couple while both easily had a child with a different partner.
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Sperms not being agile enough doesn't sound like a genetic trait that should be passed on.
Not being compatible? If a sperm and an egg are not compatible then surely there is something wrong with one of them. Again, a trait probably best not to pass on.
Human desire to reproduce is what will lead to the death of the human race if humans can't think without having their judgement clouded by that desire.
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Sperms not being agile enough doesn't sound like a genetic trait that should be passed on.
That is a matter of age and nutrition and living habits like smoking.
If a sperm and an egg are not compatible then surely there is something wrong with one of them.
Nope.
Again, a trait probably best not to pass on. :P
Is usually not passed on, as the sperm does not get into the egg
Well, you mean IF ... in this case yes, but it does not matter. The same "genotypes" simply will have the same problem the parents had in mee
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Most "incompatibilities" come from the fact that father and mother are in a certain sense to close related. It basically never happens with people of different races.
That's a very good point, while I have noted the general robustness and physical attractiveness of genetically more widely separated people, I never made that connection.
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Human desire to reproduce is what will lead to the death of the human race if humans can't think without having their judgement clouded by that desire.
Then let's discuss.
Should Stephen Hawking have been killed as a fertilized egg?
Explain your rationale.
What about a child likely to become OCD?
Physical attractiveness is important to many people. What if a child is not going to be an attractive human?
What if the child will be a dwarf?
What if the parent's select for height?
Sex, male female or intergender?
Your thoughts? Eugenics is a minefield. Explain how we shall this time ethically navigate it.
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I'm sure there is some assumption in your post. And I have my devil's advocate hat on.
Would the human race survive if Stephen Hawking hadn't existed? Would anybody care about the lack of a Stephen Hawking if he hadn't existed? How does Stephen Hawking prevent the extinction of the human race?
Maybe the argument should be about what we classify as disabilities, and should we prevent people with negative traits like sociopathy.
Eugenics is indeed a minefield but I'm not completely against it. The real scary iss
I don't think nuclear weapons stopped war (Score:2)
If you're talking big, multi-country "World War", well, Globalism stopped that.
About a decade ago Pakistan's government looked the other way while a bunch of Pakistani terrorists attacked a major building in India's capital city. The two countries came to the brink of war and stopped. It wasn't nukes that stopped them, the business people said
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Uh, one: Jurassic Park was a fantastic movie.
Two: Technology makes life better. Every time. Even Nuclear Weapons. Life loss due to war was increasing every decade since early civilization until Nuclear Weapons. Suddenly, it slowed down to about 1M deaths a year. Why? Nuclear Weapons. Those that have it are terrified of recourse by others who have them, and those that don't are afraid of those who do.
There are X number of pre-mature deaths due to these diseases. Lets assume for a moment that you can save so many human life-years by selective genetics. Why not? Is there really a bad reason for this? Lets assume that for a moment, the science is flawed. So? Then the results are random. Is that any worse than things today? No.
What if the accuracy isn't good, and the correlations are only slightly positive? Great! Have you seen any technology NOT improve? I haven't. It we can make ourselves better, gain understanding about ourselves or our genetics, and improve quality of life for millions of people, then I am for it.
What if sometimes the flaw, or the defect has an unexpected or unanticipated beneficial side affect we aren't yet aware of? What if the a little bit a autism in the right person is the defining characteristic that makes them truly remarkable? What if by using these test and selected an embryo we accidentally leave the next Einstein in Petri dish at the bottom of a medical waste container?
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Gattaca's moral was that anyone can be an astronaut even if they are genetically defective in ways that jeopardize the mission. And that genetic screening is wrong even if it is just a faster way to find the same defects that physical screening would find anyway.
Also, in the future people will wear suits and ties when they travel into space for no plausible reason.
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ADHD and related syndroms are not bases on genetics (and don't require medication) but on lifestyle, nutrition and education/parenting.
When I was a boy no one had ADHS/S or however you want to call it, as we did sports and spent 8h a day outside playing or riding a bike or - god forbid - working on school vacation in/on a farm.
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When I was a boy no one had ADHS/S or however you want to call it
Sure...right. And schizophrenia also didn't exist in the Middle Ages. /s
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Exactly, because at that time now one ate fly mushrooms at full moon ...
Erm, somehow I don't get what you wanted to say ...
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He's saying just because we hadn't coined the term didn't mean the underlying issues were not present. I find it a bit of a stretch to think depression, ocd and other mental illnesses just didn't exist. We may of just identified them differently and now that we have more research are able to more appropriately define what is happening and attempt to mitigate it's disruptive effects on the individual persons life.
Someone that's has dysthymia (which is now a deprecated term as well) likely would of just been
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I've seen these parents pass them around at work. Its always been the mothers, but that could be from a selection process (not the kind of drugs men would share.)
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I share fucking aspirin at work. WTF are you people doing? geesh.
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Or... and check this out... it's a bit radical...
We as a society might decide that society based on exploitation of humans is not the path we want to continue going down on?
I.e. The only reason "jobs available" in the face of automation is treated as detrimental to people who haven't "rolled" the right genetics, luck, mental, living and financial circumstances, is that the profit from said automation is treated as something sacred for the owners of said automation.
Which is particularly ridiculous in the cas
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Or... and check this out... it's a bit radical...
We as a society might decide that society based on exploitation of humans is not the path we want to continue going down on?
I.e. The only reason "jobs available" in the face of automation is treated as detrimental to people who haven't "rolled" the right genetics, luck, mental, living and financial circumstances, is that the profit from said automation is treated as something sacred for the owners of said automation.
Which is particularly ridiculous in the case of said owners being immortal machines - i.e. corporations.
If only there was some way to redistribute the profit from automation... but that would be a sin.
Sorry... I meant tax. That would be a tax.
Or... you know... simply cessation of subsidizing of corporations on the pretense of "because jobs and economy and patriotism".
Funny how corporations whose existence is perpetuated for the benefit of perpetuation of existence of said corporations and the small, interchangeable cadre of humans at the top of the corporation ladder - very much resemble religions.
They don't actually produce anything - that's what the workers in the factories they own do.
All they provide is faith in the value of corporation, from which they then harvest the profit by convincing people outside of the corporation that there is value in trusting them.
The fact that there is no real value in corporation (or its product) can be gleaned from the fact that... say... a soap making corporation can purchase a soup making corporation - and customers would never know the difference.
Cause corporations don't produce neither soap nor soup - they produce faith in corporation. Which they then trade on the stock exchange.
Meanwhile, they push the government and bend the rules so that they pay no taxes, while exploiting the public resources and the public itself.
Only real differences are that the church has mastered the extraction and retention of wealth extracted from the faith of the gullible public - and in the forms of sexual abuse practiced in the church and in the corporation.
Then again, corporations don't really employ children the way churches do so there's not that much opportunity for sexual abuse of children in a corporation.
Well... discounting the children working in sweatshops and fields and mines etc. around the world.
Lobbiest will never let the corporate tax rate get so high or the rules so stringent that it would stringent as to cut into corporate profits, so why not just go after profits from the other end why not have the government just buy a percentage share of every public offering when a company sell stock, as for companies existing before the policy just slowly buy stock from them until reaching the desired percentage and use stock dividends in place of trying to increase the tax rate.
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Never underestimate the ability of a cautionary tale to be taken as a source of inspiration...
Holy shit! My post was going to read "don't you just love it when people treat a cautionary tale as an instruction manual"? It's too funny and a little bit spooky that the very first post here said what I wanted to say, and used similar wording...
Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll be interesting when GATTACA is viewed not as science fiction, but as a manual for how to subvert the system.
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Makes one wonder if the CEO even realizes Gattaca was a dystopia.
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My leg extensions are healing nicely.
You should have tried the Steven Wright method:
I’m going to get a tattoo over my whole body of me but taller.
Not really new or interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Genetic testing of fetus for known genetic abnormalities has been common in many places across the globes ever since such tests became affordable. For example, here in Finland it's normal to offer in vitro testing for specific genetic mutations that cause severe mental retardation if you are deemed to be a couple at risk due to family history of such genetic disorders.
This is simply admitting to the fact that with first time mothers getting much older, IFV is increasingly popular. And IFV has a much higher rate of genetic abnormalities likely due to relative lack of spermatozoa selection, which means that genetic testing for known potential abnormalities is far more necessary than in natural conception.
Re:Not really new or interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
All well and good, except given the subjective scope of the term, we could also consider one of these "abnormalities" to be, say, "not Aryan enough".
At least, that's the largest scale test case of the concept, so far.
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All well and good, except given the subjective scope of the term, we could also consider one of these "abnormalities" to be, say, "not Aryan enough".
I think that's a pretty poor example as far as concerns go. If you had such a situation it would clearly be the fault of one of the parents (after all, how could two "true" Aryans produce a non-Aryan offspring?) and they'd have to ostracize themselves from their community if they were actually true to their beliefs. If it were a government policy then they'd probably kill both of the parents. One for not being Aryan enough and the other for being some kind of filthy traitor or some such nonsense. Or maybe t
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A large chunk of that was due to China's one child policy
The one-child policy has been repealed, which has made the problem WORSE. When Chinese parents were allowed one baby, only about 10% of female fetuses were aborted. But if they are allowed two children, and the first is a girl, the parents are even more likely to abort a 2nd girl.
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The abortion of the second girl is not the problem, unless you are christian bigott.
Shifting the population to have more males 'of age' than girls is
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First of all, relying on official Chinese statistics on any social policy related issue is absurd. If you ever worked in China/with Chinese, you should know better.
Second, you'd have to have more than doubling of gender selection terminations for effect you're claiming to take effect. Considering that most urban parents still choose a single child because of costs of education related to median income for their area, and considering that Chinese industrialists focused on bringing women from the countryside,
Re: Not really new or interesting (Score:2)
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Pretty sure all humans have a good chunk of DNA originating from Alpha Centauri... like 100%.
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we could also consider one of these "abnormalities" to be, say, "not Aryan enough.
Nazis were not bad because they were blonde, but because they tried to control the lives of other people ... like you appear to be advocating now.
If someone wants a blonde kid with blue eyes, that is none of your business. It is their choice.
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But here you are, advocating that the parents have the right to control the very nature of their kids.
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They apparently do. Since no one has taken that "right" away, they most certainly do have this right and with the help of this company, will be able to do it.
Maybe government will step in and say no. Maybe not. We will see.
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As a mainstream development, it will begin with tests for genuine disease causing abnormalities, backed by peer reviewed science, because those will be the tests health insurance can most easily be persuaded/strong-armed into paying. Those tests will become very popular, very quickly. As they become popular the technology will improve and price will come down rapidly.
Once this stuff becomes a commodity, the technology will progress to be so cheap that "add ons" providing "indicator scores" for eye-color,
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No, I'm not a member of Antifa. Actual Nazis are Nazis.
Eugenics is a slippery slope, however.
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Eugenics is a slippery slope, however.
Majoritarian moralizing is even slipperier.
Reproductive choices should be made by parents, not governments.
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I agree on a libertarian level, however governments shouldn't support any particular belief system about reproductive choice. Right now, the black community is having more people die than are born due to specific government promotion of procedures, more heavily into that community than any other, that have as goal (according to the founder of Planned Parenthood) the eradication of black babies.
Re:Not really new or interesting (Score:5, Informative)
No, it is absolutely subjective. The markers may be specific and objective, but who is "defective" is definitely a subjective determination, and that drives which markers are targeted.
And, very strange that you'd consider this a "far left" position. To my history, leaving reproduction as not to be terminated or manipulated, is a clearly conservative, i.e. right, stance.
The difference lies in the type of justification (Score:2)
Conservative: "Genetic testing is wrong because it tampers with god's work."
Liberal: "Genetic testing is wrong because it promotes social selection."
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There are plenty of conservatives, and liberals too, that are against abortion, but not religious.
If you cannot fathom the non-religious argument, its because you are hooked on dehumanizing the fetus, just like those that came before you dehumanized black people.
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Take this as a different perspective. Your parents have 10 test tubes lined up with all the genetic stuff from the parents in order to create the future "you". The baby they have, you, is the best of those 10.
Sounds a lot better that way, doesn't it? I wish my parents could of choose the best possible me instead of leaving it up to chance. Seriously, if they can find the genetic marker that makes people more prone to allergies and sinus conditions, imagine what a huge thing to help out future generations wi
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There's nothing strange about it. You may have missed it, but ever since Stalin and massively popularized by modern far left in non-communist/former communist countries, there exists a pseudoscientific assertion that humans are born as same blank slates that are programmed by society, and to claim any determination by biology is "nazism". You know, the argument made by the person I answered to, "but what would nazis do with this".
And this denial has a strong tendency to cause massive amount of human sufferi
Re:Not really new or interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
In reality it means family is tied to that child for his entire life, and he will never become anything even remotely close to a fully functional human being
The problem with this is that one you start to judge who gets to have the rights and protections of a human being, it's very hard to stop.
If you can overcome the instinct to protect babies, for pete's sake, it gets much easier to get over protecting annoying children and adults.
What happens when somebody decides that you are not "fully functioning" enough? Perhaps your IQ is a few points too low. Perhaps you don't "value diversity" enough or something. Perhaps your lifesaving drugs or medical equipment are "too expensive".
Hence the term "culture of death". Once you accept the premises, the logic train doesn't stop just where you want it to stop.
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>The problem with this is that one you start to judge who gets to have the rights and protections of a human being, it's very hard to stop.
Only if you're a blind ideologue. Normal people deal with shades of grey in their lives on daily basis, and do just fine.
>If you can overcome the instinct to protect babies, for pete's sake, it gets much easier to get over protecting annoying children and adults.
Most people in the world are pro-choice and accept abortions. It didn't make us genocidal toward childre
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And if you think this is something linked to far right,
Eugenics were very popular with both nazis in Germany and fascists in Italy, to the extent that sterilizing and even killing "defective" people was practiced. I think nazis and fascists were far right.
I am not saying you are far right, but your views would be welcomed by those with eugenics worldviews.
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Eugenics were also very popular with far left, doing all the same things. Soviets until 1980s. They were also very popular in political centre. Sweden mainstream in 1970s for example.
I'm not saying you're far left, but your attempt to pretend that eugenics movement is a feature of far right rather than a feature of everyone from far left to far right to political mainstream long after the Third Reich was crushed would be welcomed by far left.
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there exists a pseudoscientific assertion that humans are born as same blank slates that are programmed by society
Even more strange, you accuse me, as a supposed member of the "far left", of -exactly your position-, and you feel free to "program" them genetically.
a life long existential tragedy
And who makes the determination of what conditions constitute a "tragedy" versus a "burden" versus an "inconvenience"? Am I allowed to make my own determination regarding, say, my spouse or elderly parent, and terminate their existence?
on the same principle defend sibling marriage
No, absolutely not. I can say sibling marriage is wrong, and that in unfortunate cases of sibling marriage, terminating a
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>and you feel free to "program" them genetically.
According to objective scientific consensus, this is a natural process among all DNA based living beings. We do nothing new. Our entire existence is structured around sexual selection, which is the programming you're talking about.
You are literally complaining about the fact that rape is a crime, because to reject advances is to genetically select against someone and therefore program your future children.
>And who makes the determination of what conditi
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According to objective scientific consensus, this is a natural process among all DNA based living beings. We do nothing new
Okay, now you're just directly lying, or are so dedicated to your rationalizations you are becoming irrational and making directly false claims. Genetic engineering is most certainly different and "new" compared to nature. Nature creates diversity. You are proposing to cull that diversity based on your subjective opinions.
You are literally complaining about the fact that rape is a crime
Absurd. You seem incapable of understanding that reality doesn't conform to the categories and relationships you declare we are to believe. I do not agree that murder is fine becaus
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Some *do* consider "being black" as having a "genetic defect" though, which is exactly the point of the parent poster: what is considered a genetic defect or not can be subjective.
Contrast with e.g. "Deaf culture", which rejects the notion of deafness even being a defect or disability.
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We already have people aborting pregnancies for things like a hair lip, a purely cosmetic "defect" that can often be fixed with minor surgery.
Then you have things like autism. Autistic children can be very hard work for the parents and I can completely understand if they don't feel able to take on that responsibility. But equally we risk stigmatising neurological conditions even further and you quickly get into arguments about things like dyslexia, sexual orientation, or even bunk like skull size.
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Would you care to explain what 'far left' has tod with your argument?
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Seeing nazis in everyone and everything.
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There is nothing subjective about genetic defects.
No. It is only true for certain anomalies; some genetic anomalies are purely harmful, as far as anyone can tell. It has been known for decades that there are gray areas.
There are many variants that have provable positive and negative effects. Classic example: the genetic factor for sickle cell anemia is provably heterogenous superior in regions where malaria is common. It is two copies of this same gene that cause the negative effect.
Re: Not really new or interesting (Score:2)
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There's a fair chance of this being a slippery slope, but I can't fault couples going through IVF for wanting to minimise risk.
No personal experience, but I understand IVF is a stressful, unpleasant last resort for those who've run out of options (excepting adoption). It's only natural to want the best possible result.
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It's not just stressful, it's often physically painful. The hormonal treatment for preparing the woman for implantation alone causes severe symptoms in many cases.
And with the limitation the process puts on natural selection ("spermatozoa swimming up the fallopian tubes") chance of defective sperm being the first to penetrate the ovum is significantly increased. And hence, the chance of manifested genetic defects. Considering that we're already screening IVF material as much as we can to prevent the failure
And it's terrible (Score:2)
More beneficial selection (Score:2)
What differentiates selecting the DNA of embryos to keep, versus selecting the DNA of Genomic Prediction employees to keep?
Yes, I do mean "keep" in the same sense.
A society of inequality (Score:4, Funny)
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You mean a society of equality. Equality in terms of every baby being born with a genetic chance at life, anyway.
Weeding out the short is suspect, but the shortest 2% will have serious difficulties in our world. The stupidest 2%, meanwhile, will be unfit for any job outside of politics.
What are the levels of confidence? (Score:2)
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) with IVF is already standard procedure to predict the presence of certain genetic conditions that generally preclude a success birth. The level of confidence associated with such chromosomal analysis is quite high because the target conditions are known to be highly correlated to specific chromosomal abnormalities. This is not the case with diseases such as diabetes, heart attacks, and cancer, which are likely correlated with multiple, non-obvious genetic patterns i
I've been fighting them for 40 years (Score:5, Funny)
There is no end to the alien assault...
Oh wait, the headline said Gattaca, not Galaga...carry on.
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We should team up and put our movable firing laser canon next to each other.
And by the way, congratulations on no longer being an air conditioner.
We'll have to do it anyway to survive as a species (Score:2)
Better luck with Eye Color (Score:2)
We aren't anywhere near the point of really weeding out diseases. The company would do better if they offered to select based on cosmetic traits like male pattern hair loss, skin tone, and eye color.
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Add breasts size and cat ears to the mix and a lot of people will be happy.
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I don't need the technology, I just need the affluent suckers to believe I do.
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Ditto.
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Which genetic modifications do you suggest to survive on Venus, Jupiter or Saturn?
Or lets start easy: on Luna or Mars?
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Let's start easier: the third rock from the local star.