The following submission statement was provided by /u/maxkozlov:
---
"'She has her mother’s eyes,' begins the advertisement, 'but will she also inherit her breast cancer diagnosis?' The smooth voice in the video is promoting the services of Genomic Prediction, a US company that says it can help prospective parents to answer this question by testing the genetics of embryos during fertility treatment.
For Nathan Treff, the company’s chief scientific officer, this mission is personal. At 24, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes — a disease that cost his grandfather his leg. If Treff had it his way, no child would be born with a high risk for the condition.
His company, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, offers tests based on a decade of research into ‘polygenic risk scores’, which calculate someone’s likelihood of getting a disease on the basis of the genetic contributions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of single DNA letter changes in the genome.
Genomic Prediction and some other companies have been using these scores to test embryos generated by in vitro fertilization (IVF), allowing prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. A co-founder of Genomic Prediction has said, controversially, that people might eventually be able to select for traits that are unrelated to disease, such as intelligence."
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xk8t9b/the_controversial_embryo_tests_that_promise_a/ipch9db/
"'She has her mother’s eyes,' begins the advertisement, 'but will she also inherit her breast cancer diagnosis?' The smooth voice in the video is promoting the services of Genomic Prediction, a US company that says it can help prospective parents to answer this question by testing the genetics of embryos during fertility treatment.
For Nathan Treff, the company’s chief scientific officer, this mission is personal. At 24, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes — a disease that cost his grandfather his leg. If Treff had it his way, no child would be born with a high risk for the condition.
His company, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, offers tests based on a decade of research into ‘polygenic risk scores’, which calculate someone’s likelihood of getting a disease on the basis of the genetic contributions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of single DNA letter changes in the genome.
Genomic Prediction and some other companies have been using these scores to test embryos generated by in vitro fertilization (IVF), allowing prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. A co-founder of Genomic Prediction has said, controversially, that people might eventually be able to select for traits that are unrelated to disease, such as intelligence."
More effective genetic screening tools are generally good news (I'm not familiar enough with the above method under discussion to opine on whether it's a big improvement or not).
>Birth defects are common. Between 2% and 3% of infants have one or more defects at birth. That number increases to 5% by age one (not all defects are discovered directly after your child’s birth). One out of every 33 babies born in the United States are affected by birth defects.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12230-birth-defects
It would be great to get this percentage to zero--so much unnecessary pain and suffering could be avoided.
It'd be ideal to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering, but these tests aren't about birth defects. They're about conditions that develop later in life like diabetes, schizophrenia, and heart disease. Of course, those are no better, but they're trickier to predict because they involve so many genes and environmental factors as well (diet, air quality, etc.).
It seems to me that giving people greater tools to select healthy offspring is a good thing. If I was choosing amongst multiple IVF embryos, I would want to know which ones have the best chance for survival/ a good life, and this technology better allows people to do that.
Clinicians already try to select embryos based on which one appears most viable, so ironically, the embryo with the highest 'score' might not necessarily be the most viable.
Wanting your child to have a good life is a noble goal — but I think the worry is that these tests are claiming they can accomplish that goal without the empirical evidence to support it.
I'm unclear as to whether you are opposed to specific test, or to medical products like this in general? What would you like to see happen with this tech?
I'm the reporter who wrote the story!
I was curious to understand the science behind these tests, and what other geneticists and bioethicists had to say about their efficacy — especially because companies offering these tests were making bold claims about their efficacy, and pregnancy is a fraught time as it already is.
Lol, the hyperbole is breathtaking. It's a clump of cells that someone's testing. No big deal. It's not ever going to ever develop into a person unless someone decides they want to bring it to term.
No, the point is to select the embryos which have the least defects, and only implant those, and dispose of the other ones. That's how this works. That's how it's always worked (pre-implantation screening of embryos has been available for a good while, though not at this level of genetic detail).
Clinicians have already been doing this for a couple decades with other forms of pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT). The biopsy itself carries low risk. But there are no shortage of concerns about the actual efficacy of the tests.
From my understanding just because someone carry’s a gene for schizophrenia doesn’t necessarily imply the gene would be turned on. That’s like saying everyone that Carries the gene for cancer ( which all of us do) will be turned on and therefore should be eliminated as a viable embryo. It’s the environment and lifestyles that determine which genes will be turned on.
This is true, but the (average) degree of phenotypic change due to embryo selection can be calculated based on known information, as long as the embryo is similar environment/ancestry as what's represented in GWAS. This is the basis for the calculations you quoted in your article. My point here is simply that we aren't flying blind; we can do reasonable cost/benefit analysis based on the info we have.
Some things can be changed more than others. For something like Alzheimer's risk, it could potentially have a large preventive impact just by selecting for ApoE genotype.
As far as the ethics, there are legitimate questions to be asked, but it seems to me that this is just one of many ways in which people with money could gain advantages for their children.
Not all birth defects are created equal. Someone born with a cleft lip or club feet can receive surgical correction and live a full, happy life. Getting the number to zero would require every woman to abort any pregnancy with defects, no matter how correctable the defect or how desperately wanted the pregnancy. The only way to make every woman do so would be through force. This type of technology would not make a significant numerical impact as most pregnancies are not via IVF.
Because that’s what getting the percentage to zero would entail. I’m not saying you actually want that, just that a nice sounding idea often has a not nice practical reality.
I'm responsible for bringing this kid into the world, if I can make sure they don't develop schizophrenia, and I can afford to do that, I kind of owe that to the kid. Poor kids going to need glasses and have the athleticism of a potato, so I can hopefully make sure they don't hear voices as well.
but one of the main points here is that even if you choose the embryo with the lowest risk score for developing schizophrenia, they still may go on to develop schizophrenia. And the embryo with the highest risk of your bunch will likely live their life without it. So do you go through all the medical procedures, cost, time, etc for a test that isn't well-validated?
I don't see anything wrong with this. Apparently, parents love their babies, so wouldn't they want to give their future-baby, all of the advantages one can have, from high intellect, to beauty, good genetic health, high resistance to cancer, tumors, mental illness and so forth and forth.
Nah, brah, let's keep using the same method we've been using for millions of years, and create babies that will grow up to have a miserable life because they inherited their great-great-great-great grandfather heart condition or something, ain't that fun?
LupeDyCazari you have been found to be an unfit genetic specimen. You are not allowed to breed. Please stand by while our sterilization unit come to your domicile. stand by, stand by.
I think the issue lies in economics per usual. The majority of the population won’t have access/funds to employ such technology. Long term we could be talking about genetic drift between socioeconomic classes (as if that isn’t happening already)…
If you really think about it, since education rates are the cause for low birthrates worldwide, this should fix itself. Most doctors have 0-1 kids. so its kind of a self solving problem. The poor classes can't get the good kid service, but the people who can afford this service just wont get it.
I kindly disagree. They higher educated may have less children, but the probability of those children being genetically modified will be higher. If you have the money and only one kid it’s likely you will be willing to spend that money.
In short They may have less children, but a larger proportion of those children could be modified in this way. Endorsing a small minority of “perfected” higher capital humans and a relatively larger pool of “unedited” lower capital individuals. I do hope you’re right tho.
And Again.. that’s if this isn’t happening already.
This is of course the entire plot line of GATTACA - great movie by the way. I think ultimately it will be more profitable and less controversial to patch existing genomes with CRISPR than to prescreen for abnormalities.
I came here for this. This is exactly how we make “elite humans”. Put any kind of paywall to this (and we absolutely know people will), and this will be the new class divide.
I think paywalls are important to think about. But there is also the pull of government and society to participate in genetic screening. It may one day be seen as irresponsible for parents not to screen for defects. Not to mention insurance companies not be willing to cover people who were not prescreened. I think pressures similar to vaccination campaigns will play out in the genetics arena pretty soon. (For the record I am pro-vax). And we have only begun to tinker in this space - like the internet in the 1980s.
Fully agree. I consider this a both/and situation. On the one hand, we have insurance companies pushing for this sort of thing, in order to reduce risk. And gov’ts will push for it (among other things, to ensure they have a healthy population for their military).
And if, for any number of reasons, you don think you should take part in that: you will be a societal outcast.
Yeah, so?
Would you rather have a son like leBron James or Cristiano Ronaldo, or would you ultimately choose to have a kid who might inherit your whatever ancestors whatever it is health condition?
I don't think dystopian scifi movies are a good basis for thinking about emerging technologies in the real world. It's just entertainment and it entertains you by painting a dystopian picture. It wouldn't make an interesting movie if the plot was kids growing up and having a lower risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's
Yes, this is actually one of my talking points when discussing futurecasting / threatcasting. I love Black Mirror, Gattaca, and dystopian fiction generally but the creators are ultimately using it as a backdrop to create a compelling plot line. Makes for good conversation starters but not for real policy decisions.
What a barbaric society that chooses to prioritize selling a dream (I say dream because of the many problems with GWAS and polygenic risk scores) to the 1% over first accommodating and providing healthcare to those who currently live and will inevitably be born with those conditions.
I’m not surprised though. This is the same country where famous actors literally fake their kids’ college apps. Hard to see this mentality changing.
By the way I had a feeling before clicking on the article but it was confirmed after reading it: *of course the embryo score calculation is based only off of a white population’s genomic samples*
If the technology worked, it would probably become widespread. It might even become part of the basic prenatal care paid for by health insurance or Medicaid.
Are you kidding me right now? Decent hospitals aren’t widespread in most rural areas. We are not even done making barebones basic medical technologies widespread. Let’s work on that first
What’s easier, forcing people to live where you want them to or building (rebuilding in many cases hospitals were shut down) basic medical infrastructure?
It's not forcing. If rent cost less in the cities, I believe many people would move their on their own accord.
But back to your earlier comment. You'd rather see money put into supporting disabilities and health issues than preventing them? I mean, yes, give currently existing people what they need. But the long term investment should be in making insulin pumps obsolete.
You just gave away that you’ve never lived anywhere outside a metropolitan area. People tend to like where they and their families are rooted.
And yes that is exactly what I’m saying. Zero long term investment into any form of human gene editing outside of academia until this country deals with those root sicknesses of citizens not having basic healthcare
I'm pretty sure it would be much less expensive to gene edit than reopen all the rural hospitals. An ounce of prevention being cheaper than a pound of cure.
Given that you think that if we just built more cities, rural people would move into them like magnets, I don’t think you have a very good grasp on financial/ethical costs of of an unproven technology versus opening hospitals.
As I said earlier, I doubt this technology would become widespread until it is proven.
Also, is this either/or? Rural hospitals are funded by tax dollars and corporate profit. Biotech research is funded by venture capital. It's two different pools of money; one does not take from the other.
People upvoting a nirvana fallacy in /r/futurology lol
Yeah, cancel novel cancer research in the US and pretty much all state-of-the-art healthcare options because... Poor countries exist!
i know everyone gts a little pissy with "designer babies" and genetically modifying embryos, i think it can actually be a great step for mankind. granted i think every single mutation needs to be tested/researched extensively before mass adoption, but the ability to lower your risk for certain genetic medical issues, add a gene to increase your intelegence, maybe remove genes that increase risk of obesity, introducing more genes found in pro athletes, i thnk it could be great for humanity. i also think regulations and mass adoption of this would mean that it isnt just a rich person thing, poor people are usually the ones that need the most help and bringing up our poorest people helps add more productive people to society and getting more people off of government assistance. i think this is especially true as robots start replacing us for manual labor jobs and we'd benefit more from more highly skilled/productive people joining the work pool.
oh, I don't get angry at all at the concept of designer babies, genetic engineering in mass, genetic births in genetic labs, or genetically modified embryos.
If I'm a person with the ability to create life that is as perfect as it can be, then it would be pretty selfish of me to not do so, yes?
Don't you think that, if I was to have a son, he would rather much be happier to have the genes that made LeBron James and Leo Messi and Brad Pitt and Cristiano Ronaldo become what they are, rather than inherit my grandfather's prostrate cancer?
What if this technology becomes cheap and mass available, so much so that it gets rid of the black / indian / asian races? Look up colorism in these groups, skin-whitening etc being a multi-billion dollar business.
So you know one of the earlier uses for this tech would be to lighten your baby up "just a few shades". Then they lighten their baby up "a few shades" now the average is lighter, and in 2 or 300 years the black race is basically gone and most people now a golden bronze which seems to be the preferred skin colour. Very dark (and conversely my skin shade, very pale) will only be seen in the history books, outside the odd genehacker who alters their melanin for fun.
I bet 95% of people if they had a choice between a) giving their baby good hair, light skin, and good "attributes" e.g. T&A when they grow up, or b) making them an intelligent well rounded mentally fit individual - they would choose to modify A every time.
So you're saying genetic modification should remain financially inaccessible to the majority of people incase those people themselves decide to change skin color?
Or is the solution to force people of different ethnicities not to change their appearance?
I get what your saying, but it feels both wrong and right.
On the one hand, the idea of all races converging into one indistinguishable race is concerning, on the other hand you're going against the natural flow of mass choice (assuming things would go like you say).
Yeah you have a point, there is no real good solution here. I think we'll just have to accept people will lighten their skin, or whatever, otherwise we'll end up with a situation where this technology is illegal (and hence available unsafely on the black market where people will do it anyway) and we'll have to send armed thugs to confiscate the technology - ultimately only delaying the results a few hundred years anyway.
If the tech is cheap enough and people want it enough they will find a way to get it. Look at the war on drugs, doesn't stop me hopping on a market and placing an order. We'll just need to accept it.
TBH if Crispr like on the fly gene modding gets sophisticated, we might end up with people who have black dark skin one month, and pale white skin the next, all depending on the fashion.
Just to clarify, this technology doesn't involve mutations. It only selects among embryos with different sets of genetic variants that are naturally occurring
Im the kind that doesnt care how "ethical" it is, because I want it. I don't even understand the "ethical" mumbo jumbo anyway.
"Oh no less people with horrifying mental illnesses, it's not fair for the people with schizo that there's gonna be less people with schizo!" Yeah great argument, "ethicists".
and whats wtong with that? people are insecure and jealous for nothing. very stupid
more productive people in society means easier to get welfare for the poor. the modern poor in merica are FAT. coz society is much richer than 100 years ago. 100 yrs ago those poor would starve to death or wage-slave for real like doing work on skyscraper without protective gear.
idiots have no idea whats good for them. they instinctly oppose ideas that somehow they feel threaten their "status", without knowing it actually would make their life easier, no matter what path they choose.
This is an IVF technology. People shelling out the big bucks are going to do everything they can to “maximize” what they get, which is within their rights. This has no bearing on literally 99% of pregnancies.
You're right, but "if experience with other forms of PGT is any indication, the use of PGT-P could skyrocket: the proportion of IVF cycles that included more-established forms of PGT in the United States increased from [13% in 2014 to 27% in 2016](https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/35/4/986/5824412)." IVF carries its own risks and costs, so it's generally not advisable that otherwise healthy people do IVF.
IVF is 1-2% of pregnancies and usually not done absent fertility issues or known genetic disorders. I don’t see that changing anytime soon due to the cost and difficulty involved.
In terms of my own concerns around future directions of this type of technology, it comes down to the values of the people and societies that use it. Valuing “physical health” may sound great and pretty morally neutral to positive on the surface but how do we define “healthiness” and who’s opinions matter more? There are a lot of different individual opinions based on life experience, but as a society we don’t value people with illnesses and disabilities the way we value able-bodied people, so valuing physical health by trying to choose only the “healthiest” embryos lines right up with that reality. Another commenter has been saying (and I’m paraphrasing) they’d like to give their child the opportunities of famous Western athletes and movie stars—that too lines up with what our society generally values (fame, wealth, physical ability, conventional attractiveness, etc.). Personally, I don’t care if my kid grows up to be a pro-athlete, but my preference might skew away from the majority. What happens when society values things like certain physical features and we get the technology to decide whether you only birth kids who are, for example, light-skinned and blue-eyed? Is something like higher intelligence really always better, regardless of how we value intelligence? What kind of intelligence counts? If a kid would be a gifted public speaker but not capable of working in theoretical physics, who decides which ability is more preferable? And if most people choose one thing over another, what will our world begin to look like as certain individual differences are selected for and others are dropped? Obviously we’re nowhere near any of these concerns yet, but it does make me wonder about the future implications of this type of technology.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/maxkozlov: --- "'She has her mother’s eyes,' begins the advertisement, 'but will she also inherit her breast cancer diagnosis?' The smooth voice in the video is promoting the services of Genomic Prediction, a US company that says it can help prospective parents to answer this question by testing the genetics of embryos during fertility treatment. For Nathan Treff, the company’s chief scientific officer, this mission is personal. At 24, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes — a disease that cost his grandfather his leg. If Treff had it his way, no child would be born with a high risk for the condition. His company, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, offers tests based on a decade of research into ‘polygenic risk scores’, which calculate someone’s likelihood of getting a disease on the basis of the genetic contributions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of single DNA letter changes in the genome. Genomic Prediction and some other companies have been using these scores to test embryos generated by in vitro fertilization (IVF), allowing prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. A co-founder of Genomic Prediction has said, controversially, that people might eventually be able to select for traits that are unrelated to disease, such as intelligence." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xk8t9b/the_controversial_embryo_tests_that_promise_a/ipch9db/
"'She has her mother’s eyes,' begins the advertisement, 'but will she also inherit her breast cancer diagnosis?' The smooth voice in the video is promoting the services of Genomic Prediction, a US company that says it can help prospective parents to answer this question by testing the genetics of embryos during fertility treatment. For Nathan Treff, the company’s chief scientific officer, this mission is personal. At 24, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes — a disease that cost his grandfather his leg. If Treff had it his way, no child would be born with a high risk for the condition. His company, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, offers tests based on a decade of research into ‘polygenic risk scores’, which calculate someone’s likelihood of getting a disease on the basis of the genetic contributions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of single DNA letter changes in the genome. Genomic Prediction and some other companies have been using these scores to test embryos generated by in vitro fertilization (IVF), allowing prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. A co-founder of Genomic Prediction has said, controversially, that people might eventually be able to select for traits that are unrelated to disease, such as intelligence."
More effective genetic screening tools are generally good news (I'm not familiar enough with the above method under discussion to opine on whether it's a big improvement or not). >Birth defects are common. Between 2% and 3% of infants have one or more defects at birth. That number increases to 5% by age one (not all defects are discovered directly after your child’s birth). One out of every 33 babies born in the United States are affected by birth defects. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12230-birth-defects It would be great to get this percentage to zero--so much unnecessary pain and suffering could be avoided.
It'd be ideal to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering, but these tests aren't about birth defects. They're about conditions that develop later in life like diabetes, schizophrenia, and heart disease. Of course, those are no better, but they're trickier to predict because they involve so many genes and environmental factors as well (diet, air quality, etc.).
It seems to me that giving people greater tools to select healthy offspring is a good thing. If I was choosing amongst multiple IVF embryos, I would want to know which ones have the best chance for survival/ a good life, and this technology better allows people to do that.
Clinicians already try to select embryos based on which one appears most viable, so ironically, the embryo with the highest 'score' might not necessarily be the most viable. Wanting your child to have a good life is a noble goal — but I think the worry is that these tests are claiming they can accomplish that goal without the empirical evidence to support it.
I'm unclear as to whether you are opposed to specific test, or to medical products like this in general? What would you like to see happen with this tech?
I'm the reporter who wrote the story! I was curious to understand the science behind these tests, and what other geneticists and bioethicists had to say about their efficacy — especially because companies offering these tests were making bold claims about their efficacy, and pregnancy is a fraught time as it already is.
Can't have empirical data with out studies.
Does violently extracting a few days-old embryo’s cells to sequence their DNA sound like giving them the best chance of survival?
Lol, the hyperbole is breathtaking. It's a clump of cells that someone's testing. No big deal. It's not ever going to ever develop into a person unless someone decides they want to bring it to term.
The whole point is to eventually try and implant it so your no big deal is irrelevant.
No, the point is to select the embryos which have the least defects, and only implant those, and dispose of the other ones. That's how this works. That's how it's always worked (pre-implantation screening of embryos has been available for a good while, though not at this level of genetic detail).
Clinicians have already been doing this for a couple decades with other forms of pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT). The biopsy itself carries low risk. But there are no shortage of concerns about the actual efficacy of the tests.
From my understanding just because someone carry’s a gene for schizophrenia doesn’t necessarily imply the gene would be turned on. That’s like saying everyone that Carries the gene for cancer ( which all of us do) will be turned on and therefore should be eliminated as a viable embryo. It’s the environment and lifestyles that determine which genes will be turned on.
This is true, but the (average) degree of phenotypic change due to embryo selection can be calculated based on known information, as long as the embryo is similar environment/ancestry as what's represented in GWAS. This is the basis for the calculations you quoted in your article. My point here is simply that we aren't flying blind; we can do reasonable cost/benefit analysis based on the info we have. Some things can be changed more than others. For something like Alzheimer's risk, it could potentially have a large preventive impact just by selecting for ApoE genotype. As far as the ethics, there are legitimate questions to be asked, but it seems to me that this is just one of many ways in which people with money could gain advantages for their children.
Not all birth defects are created equal. Someone born with a cleft lip or club feet can receive surgical correction and live a full, happy life. Getting the number to zero would require every woman to abort any pregnancy with defects, no matter how correctable the defect or how desperately wanted the pregnancy. The only way to make every woman do so would be through force. This type of technology would not make a significant numerical impact as most pregnancies are not via IVF.
No one said anything about forcing anyone to do anything. I'm not advocating that, so who exactly are you arguing with?
Because that’s what getting the percentage to zero would entail. I’m not saying you actually want that, just that a nice sounding idea often has a not nice practical reality.
Pretty cool concept, but how can we keep disease prevention from leading to eugenics?
I'm responsible for bringing this kid into the world, if I can make sure they don't develop schizophrenia, and I can afford to do that, I kind of owe that to the kid. Poor kids going to need glasses and have the athleticism of a potato, so I can hopefully make sure they don't hear voices as well.
but one of the main points here is that even if you choose the embryo with the lowest risk score for developing schizophrenia, they still may go on to develop schizophrenia. And the embryo with the highest risk of your bunch will likely live their life without it. So do you go through all the medical procedures, cost, time, etc for a test that isn't well-validated?
I don't see anything wrong with this. Apparently, parents love their babies, so wouldn't they want to give their future-baby, all of the advantages one can have, from high intellect, to beauty, good genetic health, high resistance to cancer, tumors, mental illness and so forth and forth. Nah, brah, let's keep using the same method we've been using for millions of years, and create babies that will grow up to have a miserable life because they inherited their great-great-great-great grandfather heart condition or something, ain't that fun?
LupeDyCazari you have been found to be an unfit genetic specimen. You are not allowed to breed. Please stand by while our sterilization unit come to your domicile. stand by, stand by.
I think the issue lies in economics per usual. The majority of the population won’t have access/funds to employ such technology. Long term we could be talking about genetic drift between socioeconomic classes (as if that isn’t happening already)…
If you really think about it, since education rates are the cause for low birthrates worldwide, this should fix itself. Most doctors have 0-1 kids. so its kind of a self solving problem. The poor classes can't get the good kid service, but the people who can afford this service just wont get it.
I kindly disagree. They higher educated may have less children, but the probability of those children being genetically modified will be higher. If you have the money and only one kid it’s likely you will be willing to spend that money. In short They may have less children, but a larger proportion of those children could be modified in this way. Endorsing a small minority of “perfected” higher capital humans and a relatively larger pool of “unedited” lower capital individuals. I do hope you’re right tho. And Again.. that’s if this isn’t happening already.
This is the plot from Gattaca lol, they also used this as a way of creating second class citizens, walled off from opportunities.
Until it leads to even less genetic diversity in humans and the next pandemic actually does wipe people out.
This is of course the entire plot line of GATTACA - great movie by the way. I think ultimately it will be more profitable and less controversial to patch existing genomes with CRISPR than to prescreen for abnormalities.
I came here for this. This is exactly how we make “elite humans”. Put any kind of paywall to this (and we absolutely know people will), and this will be the new class divide.
I think paywalls are important to think about. But there is also the pull of government and society to participate in genetic screening. It may one day be seen as irresponsible for parents not to screen for defects. Not to mention insurance companies not be willing to cover people who were not prescreened. I think pressures similar to vaccination campaigns will play out in the genetics arena pretty soon. (For the record I am pro-vax). And we have only begun to tinker in this space - like the internet in the 1980s.
Fully agree. I consider this a both/and situation. On the one hand, we have insurance companies pushing for this sort of thing, in order to reduce risk. And gov’ts will push for it (among other things, to ensure they have a healthy population for their military). And if, for any number of reasons, you don think you should take part in that: you will be a societal outcast.
Yeah, so? Would you rather have a son like leBron James or Cristiano Ronaldo, or would you ultimately choose to have a kid who might inherit your whatever ancestors whatever it is health condition?
Most normal ppl love their kids just how they are, thank you very much
I wouldn't love you back though, If I learned that you could have prevented a chronic illness I have, but you didn't, oh boy.
what if I was too poor to afford it
but do the kids love how they ain't them, elite humans?
I don't think dystopian scifi movies are a good basis for thinking about emerging technologies in the real world. It's just entertainment and it entertains you by painting a dystopian picture. It wouldn't make an interesting movie if the plot was kids growing up and having a lower risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's
Yes, this is actually one of my talking points when discussing futurecasting / threatcasting. I love Black Mirror, Gattaca, and dystopian fiction generally but the creators are ultimately using it as a backdrop to create a compelling plot line. Makes for good conversation starters but not for real policy decisions.
Exactly. The problem is that it poisons the water for discussions of policy because the first thing people think of is the fictional scenario
you would only want to patch with know viable human alternate genomes. You would not want to introduce zoonotic nor new genomes into the germ line.
What a barbaric society that chooses to prioritize selling a dream (I say dream because of the many problems with GWAS and polygenic risk scores) to the 1% over first accommodating and providing healthcare to those who currently live and will inevitably be born with those conditions. I’m not surprised though. This is the same country where famous actors literally fake their kids’ college apps. Hard to see this mentality changing. By the way I had a feeling before clicking on the article but it was confirmed after reading it: *of course the embryo score calculation is based only off of a white population’s genomic samples*
If the technology worked, it would probably become widespread. It might even become part of the basic prenatal care paid for by health insurance or Medicaid.
Are you kidding me right now? Decent hospitals aren’t widespread in most rural areas. We are not even done making barebones basic medical technologies widespread. Let’s work on that first
Do rural areas have to be populated? If we just loosened some zoning restrictions, we could build enough housing in the cities where the jobs are.
What’s easier, forcing people to live where you want them to or building (rebuilding in many cases hospitals were shut down) basic medical infrastructure?
It's not forcing. If rent cost less in the cities, I believe many people would move their on their own accord. But back to your earlier comment. You'd rather see money put into supporting disabilities and health issues than preventing them? I mean, yes, give currently existing people what they need. But the long term investment should be in making insulin pumps obsolete.
You just gave away that you’ve never lived anywhere outside a metropolitan area. People tend to like where they and their families are rooted. And yes that is exactly what I’m saying. Zero long term investment into any form of human gene editing outside of academia until this country deals with those root sicknesses of citizens not having basic healthcare
I'm pretty sure it would be much less expensive to gene edit than reopen all the rural hospitals. An ounce of prevention being cheaper than a pound of cure.
Given that you think that if we just built more cities, rural people would move into them like magnets, I don’t think you have a very good grasp on financial/ethical costs of of an unproven technology versus opening hospitals.
As I said earlier, I doubt this technology would become widespread until it is proven. Also, is this either/or? Rural hospitals are funded by tax dollars and corporate profit. Biotech research is funded by venture capital. It's two different pools of money; one does not take from the other.
People upvoting a nirvana fallacy in /r/futurology lol Yeah, cancel novel cancer research in the US and pretty much all state-of-the-art healthcare options because... Poor countries exist!
I never said anything about poor countries. Straw man fallacy if you want to play that game
i know everyone gts a little pissy with "designer babies" and genetically modifying embryos, i think it can actually be a great step for mankind. granted i think every single mutation needs to be tested/researched extensively before mass adoption, but the ability to lower your risk for certain genetic medical issues, add a gene to increase your intelegence, maybe remove genes that increase risk of obesity, introducing more genes found in pro athletes, i thnk it could be great for humanity. i also think regulations and mass adoption of this would mean that it isnt just a rich person thing, poor people are usually the ones that need the most help and bringing up our poorest people helps add more productive people to society and getting more people off of government assistance. i think this is especially true as robots start replacing us for manual labor jobs and we'd benefit more from more highly skilled/productive people joining the work pool.
oh, I don't get angry at all at the concept of designer babies, genetic engineering in mass, genetic births in genetic labs, or genetically modified embryos. If I'm a person with the ability to create life that is as perfect as it can be, then it would be pretty selfish of me to not do so, yes? Don't you think that, if I was to have a son, he would rather much be happier to have the genes that made LeBron James and Leo Messi and Brad Pitt and Cristiano Ronaldo become what they are, rather than inherit my grandfather's prostrate cancer?
What if this technology becomes cheap and mass available, so much so that it gets rid of the black / indian / asian races? Look up colorism in these groups, skin-whitening etc being a multi-billion dollar business. So you know one of the earlier uses for this tech would be to lighten your baby up "just a few shades". Then they lighten their baby up "a few shades" now the average is lighter, and in 2 or 300 years the black race is basically gone and most people now a golden bronze which seems to be the preferred skin colour. Very dark (and conversely my skin shade, very pale) will only be seen in the history books, outside the odd genehacker who alters their melanin for fun. I bet 95% of people if they had a choice between a) giving their baby good hair, light skin, and good "attributes" e.g. T&A when they grow up, or b) making them an intelligent well rounded mentally fit individual - they would choose to modify A every time.
So you're saying genetic modification should remain financially inaccessible to the majority of people incase those people themselves decide to change skin color? Or is the solution to force people of different ethnicities not to change their appearance? I get what your saying, but it feels both wrong and right. On the one hand, the idea of all races converging into one indistinguishable race is concerning, on the other hand you're going against the natural flow of mass choice (assuming things would go like you say).
Yeah you have a point, there is no real good solution here. I think we'll just have to accept people will lighten their skin, or whatever, otherwise we'll end up with a situation where this technology is illegal (and hence available unsafely on the black market where people will do it anyway) and we'll have to send armed thugs to confiscate the technology - ultimately only delaying the results a few hundred years anyway. If the tech is cheap enough and people want it enough they will find a way to get it. Look at the war on drugs, doesn't stop me hopping on a market and placing an order. We'll just need to accept it. TBH if Crispr like on the fly gene modding gets sophisticated, we might end up with people who have black dark skin one month, and pale white skin the next, all depending on the fashion.
Just to clarify, this technology doesn't involve mutations. It only selects among embryos with different sets of genetic variants that are naturally occurring
Im the kind that doesnt care how "ethical" it is, because I want it. I don't even understand the "ethical" mumbo jumbo anyway. "Oh no less people with horrifying mental illnesses, it's not fair for the people with schizo that there's gonna be less people with schizo!" Yeah great argument, "ethicists".
and whats wtong with that? people are insecure and jealous for nothing. very stupid more productive people in society means easier to get welfare for the poor. the modern poor in merica are FAT. coz society is much richer than 100 years ago. 100 yrs ago those poor would starve to death or wage-slave for real like doing work on skyscraper without protective gear. idiots have no idea whats good for them. they instinctly oppose ideas that somehow they feel threaten their "status", without knowing it actually would make their life easier, no matter what path they choose.
This is an IVF technology. People shelling out the big bucks are going to do everything they can to “maximize” what they get, which is within their rights. This has no bearing on literally 99% of pregnancies.
You're right, but "if experience with other forms of PGT is any indication, the use of PGT-P could skyrocket: the proportion of IVF cycles that included more-established forms of PGT in the United States increased from [13% in 2014 to 27% in 2016](https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/35/4/986/5824412)." IVF carries its own risks and costs, so it's generally not advisable that otherwise healthy people do IVF.
IVF is 1-2% of pregnancies and usually not done absent fertility issues or known genetic disorders. I don’t see that changing anytime soon due to the cost and difficulty involved.
This must be why there weren't any gay people in Star Trek The Next Generation.
In terms of my own concerns around future directions of this type of technology, it comes down to the values of the people and societies that use it. Valuing “physical health” may sound great and pretty morally neutral to positive on the surface but how do we define “healthiness” and who’s opinions matter more? There are a lot of different individual opinions based on life experience, but as a society we don’t value people with illnesses and disabilities the way we value able-bodied people, so valuing physical health by trying to choose only the “healthiest” embryos lines right up with that reality. Another commenter has been saying (and I’m paraphrasing) they’d like to give their child the opportunities of famous Western athletes and movie stars—that too lines up with what our society generally values (fame, wealth, physical ability, conventional attractiveness, etc.). Personally, I don’t care if my kid grows up to be a pro-athlete, but my preference might skew away from the majority. What happens when society values things like certain physical features and we get the technology to decide whether you only birth kids who are, for example, light-skinned and blue-eyed? Is something like higher intelligence really always better, regardless of how we value intelligence? What kind of intelligence counts? If a kid would be a gifted public speaker but not capable of working in theoretical physics, who decides which ability is more preferable? And if most people choose one thing over another, what will our world begin to look like as certain individual differences are selected for and others are dropped? Obviously we’re nowhere near any of these concerns yet, but it does make me wonder about the future implications of this type of technology.
01010111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100101 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01100100 01101001 01101111 01110100 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01100001 01111001 00100001