The company’s concept, which it calls expanded preimplantation genetic testing, or ePGT, would effectively add a range of common disease risks to the menu of rare ones already available, which it also plans to test for. Its promotional material uses a picture of a mostly submerged iceberg to get the idea across. “We believe it will become a standard part of the IVF process,” says Tellier, just as a test for Down syndrome is a standard part of pregnancy.
Testing embryos for disease risks, including risks for diseases that develop only late in life, is considered ethically acceptable by U.S. fertility doctors. But the new DNA scoring models mean parents might be able to choose their kids on the basis of traits like IQ or adult weight. That’s because, just like type 1 diabetes, these traits are the result of complex genetic influences the predictor algorithms are designed to find.
Armed with the U.K. data, Hsu and Tellier claimed a breakthrough. For one easily measured trait, height, they used machine-learning techniques to create a predictor that behaved flawlessly. They reported that the model could, for the most part, predict people’s height from their DNA data to within three or four centimeters.
Great, nothing could go wrong by selecting for one trait without knowing how it affects other things.
>get 6ft4 kid >but mentally disabled because you selected for genes which increase early cranial fusion
Colton Williams
You must open a door.
A) 1 Door, 10% chance to be shot in the head once open.
B) 10 doors, 10% chance on each to be shot in the head once open.
Is B less safe of a choice because you can be shot in the head?
You can't isolate B) aka PGDw/IVF and say it unsafe because it carries the same risk as natural birth does. You have to compare it's safety with natural random birth.
In this case, the chance of the weird cranial error is relatively equal in the random and selection case. The increase in information via PGD does nothing but improve things though. As you can avoid so many genetic diseases to begin with and add more as time goes by.
Grayson Anderson
If I get a genetic disease, can I sue the doctor who edited my embryo before I was born for malpractice? Seriously, how do you have oversight on something like this?
Justin Anderson
>edited
Can you sue your parents if they didn't get carrier tests and you have cystic fibrosis?
If you are anti-vax parents, how can you support parents that don't screen genetic diseases when it's affordable and available?
The oversight/legal stuff you are talking about is essentially low IQ nonsense thoughts.
Elijah Barnes
Yes, avoiding genetic diseases makes sense e.g. dwarfism etc. However there is a reason that we haven't evolved to all be 7ft superhumans with high IQs, huge penises, flawless faces, long lives, and muscular lean bodies. Everything has a pro and a con. E.g. higher IGF1 -> cell proliferation -> lower quality of cells + faster aging + higher cancer risk. Taller people have a higher risk of cancer. Taller people live shorter lives. They have more joint problems, require more calories and nutrients (i.e. higher chance of deficiencies), and the faster bone growth can make their faces either very handsome or very ugly. Makes it more difficult to build a muscular physique as a man. Also reduces sexual attractiveness of women to be too tall. Similar thing with testosterone: men who mature earlier do well sexually when they are young, have bigger dicks, are usually more masculine. However they also go bald more easily, get more prostate issues, have lower IQs and do less well financially. There's a genetic contribution as to why most beautiful/handsome men and women are at best normie-tier in terms of intelligence. Everything is a trade-off.
Jackson Adams
Nice post but it's ultimately pointless. The immediate emphasis will probably be on genetic health and avoiding risk factors for very serious disease. It will also be diverse in usage and have a pretty hefty random component.
Of course the holy grail is IQ improvement, not beauty or height It is also something that will improve over time as other technologies improve. In the end though this will be nothing but a positive change for the genetic health reasons alone. Just as an example about half of children visits to hospitals are genetic disease related.
Isaiah Bailey
To continue. A very important thing is that assuming a mass usage of the technology in a dumb way is pretty speculative. At the moment at least in non-dark markets it is only being used for health reasons and avoiding obvious genetic disease.
Levi Davis
I can't wait until the first 10000 IQ humans are born in China.
The US and the West will become completely irrelevant in all research as humanity moves on. It will be the end of Western civilization. The reign of ignorant, know-nothing control freaks running the research ethics boards will finally be over.
