Gene sequencing

We work with a bunch of companies that do gene sequencing and they come by every so often to give a talk. All of them start off by showing a variant of the following graphics:

(note the blue curve)

usually with the most up to date data and the trend is, if anything, accelerating.

Invariably they then go onto the knowledge gains from sequencing and the potential implication for fighting disease. Everyone leaves with the warm and fuzzies knowing that they are helping to fight cancer and various other horrible diseases.

However, my mind naturally goes to how this will be used with designer babies. Not actually fabricating the gene sequences, since that is further off, but rather once we figure out simple correlations between characteristics and we figure out a couple of technical challenges like how to harvest more embryos and how to implant them slightly more successfully we are off to the races.

At first our knowledge of the correlations between desirable characteristics and the gene(s) that influence them will be weak. But I think that this will rapidly increase in short order. So at least for the 1st few years this will not lead to serious disruptions, perhaps we will have a more people with blue eyes. However, over time (and I think that this time will be amazingly short, by 2015 maybe 2020 I would be willing to wager that we will be able to select for a vast number of traits) our knowledge will increase.

Anyway, the interesting and PR part of this is that the method I’m describing : harvesting vast numbers of embryos and then gene sequencing them and then filtering for desired characteristics will necessarily lead to the quality of a person (where quality is measured by accordance to the traits which their parents deem desirable) will be, on average, be directly proportional to the amount of money spent on the child.

I suppose there is a ‘R’ part of this wrt. what is done with the embryos that don’t make the cut, but I couldn’t give a flying fuck about that they are just a collection of cells to me.

PS: I’m on my stairmaster (which isn’t too uncommon when I am posting here) so I’m a little loopy right now, maybe I’ve posted this before since I’ve wanted to post about this ever since the 1st time one of these companies came by.

I’ve said it before, but this is the only way I’m ever having a child of my own, ever. I have too many genetic defects to responsibly breed unless I know that I can filter out the crazy brains and the diabetes and the bad thyroid and whatever other horrible surprises I have waiting for me further down the road. The only really significant downside that I see to this is that genetically-linked diseases will become more and more correlated with poverty. Unfortunately, there’s not really a way to cure that - this kind of medicine is going to be on the fringe and well outside any kind of mainstream practice for a long time, and the only people who are going to have the kind of money necessary to fund that sort of experimental medicine will be the rich. It’s too bad that not every human being in the world will be cured of Type I diabetes at the same time, but what’s the alternative? I honestly can’t come up with one.

Sequencing is not the same as annotating, fwiw.

There is also going to be increasing complexity in figuring out systems in trying to determine “desirable” characteristics. Things like hair color are probably simple; vague concepts like overall beauty, intelligence, or physical strength will be much harder to determine and will probably require something like the “singularity computer”, a simulator that can replicate the expression all the genetic reactions in an entire human being simultaneously. Which will happen eventually of course, though i don’t know when. But when we can simulate the outcome of any genetic code we can design people any way we see fit. Right now it would be more Frankensteinien tinkering.

The most pure way of manipulating the genome is direct; inserting and/or modifying those sequences we want in our offspring to be expressed. Whether this is the most “ethical” remains to be decided, especially if you can starting adding traits that were not inherited from either parent.

I am for designer babies. I want a smart child, that will have the minimm deseases possible. People already spend thousands to adopt, imagine if yo could pimp your baby!

I mean, if we still live in a society where ugly people are less favorable than the beautiful, why risk our children to be rejected and have worse living condotions? This is just curbing genetic luck in our favor.

You make the case, quite honestly, that we have “surpassed” evolution in that we can predict the environmental conditions which would maximize success (environment now mostly meaning the social civic cultural environment as much as the outdoors) and that it is irresponsible if not inhumane to force human beings’ lives into the straight jackets of random chance or hard inheritances.

The problem of course is what happens afterwards. You could quickly make the case, for ex., that allowing your daughter’s physical characteristics to be determined by random sexual reproduction is outright cruelty and child abuse in a world where every woman has supermodel looks; for in the future world of perfect beauty, the last ordinary woman is the ugliest woman on earth.

I don’t see this happening in reality. After the first few horrible monstrosities, most first world nations will likely ban the practice.

I’m sure you could still go to brazil to get it done though. As long as you don’t mind the occasional monster babies.

Honestly, I’d bet more on a super soldier than I would on designer babies. If there’s one thing the military industrial complex has proven is that ethics are the last thing on its list of things to care about.

It would probably take a few generation to catch on, certainly. Pretty quickly though, when the genetic superbabies are getting all the money, educations, sports, experience, and women, it’s going to be hard not to keep up. After a hundred years all but the most fundy religious families will crack as well.

Considering that this costs money, then you have to start with the wealthier reaping the benefits. As the cost comes down and the benefits materialize, then it will be subsidized for lower and lower incomes. Of course you’ll still have plenty of people that just get regular-old-pregnant and take the baby to term.

H.

We’re not talking about fundy religious families here though, we’re talking about people who would be against the kind of strange deformed or broken children that are likely to be the early results of these kinds of attempts. I don’t need to be religious to have a serious problem with creating children who will now have a horrible life because the parents weren’t content with letting nature take its course.

It’s part of the reason I decided to never have children – I am not interested in subjecting a child to this world.

Carried to its logical extreme, this will eventually split humanity into two species, assuming the non-GM people do not become extinct before the GM folks change enough to be considered a new species.

  1. GM people will be stronger, smarter, and live longer, with increased resistance against disease.

  2. Non-GM people will have fewer and fewer options as far as jobs and living conditions when competing against the GMers, and will not be as healthy, smart, and happy.

Whether this is a good thing for the future of humanity remains to be seen, but in the short term the non-GM folks will be at a distinct disadvantage.

Why and how would we differentiate GM people? They would be normal, non deformed people. Unless we create hawkmen, or new characterisics that only they have, they would just be people. And if you are concerned for the poor ugly women of the future, you should worry about them today. Social injustices they live every day, if they could they would choosen to be GM.

Sci Fi really ingrained in people the dangers and worst case scenarios. Reality would be far less dramatic. The Industrial age is all about surpassing nature, and this is the ultimate step.

What does it taste like?

It’s like pre-natal care today. Yes, there are people that don’t receive it but the majority in the Western world does. Do you choose to take an injection that will correct for any and all defects (after a quick pre-natal sequence), make her more attractive, intelligent, healthy, and overall having a better life… or do you not? When she has a bad nose, blotchy skin, and is 20lbs heavier than every one of her friends, and she comes sobbing as a teenager to you about how everyone hates her because she’s not attractive, and she can’t get a boyfriend, and she cries herself to sleep at night, and she’s begging you to justify to her why you chose her to be this way, will you still be sure you made the right choice?

Oh god, Gattaca was right! Why didn’t we listen?

Gattaca was off because it basically focused on corporate eugenics; the world governed by insurance adjusters. It saw capitalist discrimination against imperfect natural birthers, and as a morality tale, showed how this was not ethically wrong but strictly speaking wrong, that they really weren’t the genetically superior supermen they thought they were. Gattaca was ultimately about class warfare.

Now, make a Gattaca about an ugly teen girl that always gets sick, has no friends, and is less than her peers in every possible way. You don’t need corporate or political discrimination to see how that will turn out.

I think it’s going to be a long, long time before the impact of genetics on children even gets close to the magnitude of the effect of income. So who cares?

IDK what ‘this’ you are referring to. Are you referring to:

  1. actually manipulating the genes in the embryos
  2. filtering out embryos based upon sequencing

The 1st could result in ‘monstrosities’ it is pretty difficult and it is further off. The 2nd, well, you’ll have to explain to me how a ‘monstrosity’ would result.

Well said. The blind spot to the massive, unbelievable advantages that rich kids have over middle-class kids – not to mention the poor, who are almost irreversibly fucked at birth – that exists in American culture is incredible.

Somehow, saying that not everyone is born with equal opportunities is un-American. How the fuck did that happen?

Well, the Alphas will be the most intelligent ones; there’ll be the highest rate of misfits in that differentiation but there’ll be systems in place to minimize any disruption they’d cause. A larger number of Betas will handle most highly-skilled labor needs; a larger number yet of Gammas and Deltas will handle the more unskilled and basic work. In all cases, they’ll certainly be as healthy as organically possible.

I don’t know, I’m pretty awesome, and my parents made me the old fashioned way.