Children of Tomorrow - How far

Maybe I should get in and buy Eugenics4U.com, if this kind of thing will be possible and legal.

This isn't so much genetic manipulation as embryo selection; you fertilise a bunch of eggs and test for which ones meet your criteria. You won't get any freakish genetic mutants this way, except for what you'd get through natural mutation. Or from any genetic damage that might result from the whole artificial process, I guess. So no tiger people.

I don't have any problem with doing genetic screening if a couple knows there's a risk of a genetic disease. If we know which genes to test, then it seems prudent to me to allow screening to make sure a child doesn't have the gene.

If we start getting into screening for other attributes, like intelligence or beauty, then we're in a whole 'nother kettle of fish. It will take some time before we crack enough of the code to predict something as complex as that, I think. But if we do get that ability, and we make it relatively risk free (i.e. there isn't a 5% chance that the test screws up and you end up with genetic abnormalities), then while I'd be uncomfortable with the whole thing I can't see a good reason to ban it.

The main ethical issue is what happens to all the redundant embryos. But that's an issue we currently have with IVF. At the moment, they get destroyed. As a side note, that's why I support embryonic stem cell research; we've already got unwanted embryos that are just going to be thrown away, so the whole sanctity of life issue is moot as far as I see.

My educated guess is that people would try to be selective about what their children look like because they want beautiful children.

I have an easier solution: just have sex with beautiful people. It costs less, the ethical issues are nullified, and its a natural inclination of our nature.

I'm not exactly sure where the underlying drive comes from (evolution?), but it seems that our attraction to beauty is a way to satisfy the need to have healthy children. The things we select for already are designed to ensure healthy children and strong family stability.

There used to be selective pressure and high infant mortality rate, you see, for all the history. To suddenly go on reproducing without any sort of genetic fixes would be absolutely terrible long term. Having children of future be cyborgs relying on mechanical life support would be as unnatural, and probably it would suck for them.

Lets make choice more specific. Suppose you can either have child with high risk of inherited disorder, relying on medications or mechanical lifesupport, or you can do genetic fixes and have child without any disorder. What's more unnatural, fixing up the blueprint beforehand or fixing up later on with meds and mechanics? I'd say genetic option is a more elegant solution anyhow.

(though, selection for trendy things such as hair color or eye color could actually be bad for overall health.)

'Designer babies' - what a horrible expression. Somehow, this makes me think of Frankenstein.

if this become very popular and, for example, blond is more popular than brown hair would it not go like this:

generation 1: 30% brown, 70% blond
2: 10% brown, 90% blond
3: 3% brown, 97% blond.

and before you know it we have eliminated brown hair from humans.

Like selective breeding of live stock. Chickens / turkeys with no hair.

we may end up with everyone being tall and then everyone gets even taller until everyone is 6 ft. Then 5' 8 is short, 6 ft is average and 7ft is tall, then everyone wants to be 7ft. Etc.

elminating disease is a good idea, trait selection imo is a bad idea.

Health = Beauty
So maybe creating/selecting a healthy baby and creating/selecting a beautiful baby are actually the same thing.

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Original post by RivieraKid if this become very popular and, for example, blond is more popular than brown hair would it not go like this: generation 1: 30% brown, 70% blond 2: 10% brown, 90% blond 3: 3% brown, 97% blond. and before you know it we have eliminated brown hair from humans. Like selective breeding of live stock. Chickens / turkeys with no hair. we may end up with everyone being tall and then everyone gets even taller until everyone is 6 ft. Then 5' 8 is short, 6 ft is average and 7ft is tall, then everyone wants to be 7ft. Etc. elminating disease is a good idea, trait selection imo is a bad idea.

Well, if everyone's blond, then brown or black gets popular.

Go watch Gattaca

Mention of a fertility clinic in Los Angeles led me to think of the "Octomom", but a bit of checking indicates it's not the same clinic [1] [2]. Calling Dr. Bokanovsky!

I don't think we know enough about genetics to start playing around with humans. For example, changing hair color might lead to unexpected changes in other areas. I saw a documentary on the evolution of dogs last year that told an interesting story in this regard. It seems that in Russia, during the Soviet era, there was a big push for more fox fur coats. Many captive breeding programs were started using wild foxes. When it came time to pick breeding pairs, the farmers selected foxes that were less wild, that is, that didn't snarl and attack human beings who got too close to their cages and were thus more manageable. This meant that every generation of foxes become more and more domesticated. As more generations piled up, the foxes became more like dogs than foxes and the color of their fur began to change as well. Many years later, DNA studies showed that the genes related to fur color were also related to fight or flight response. So when the fight or flight response was bred out of foxes, it also effected their fur color.

I don't like that idea. First and foremost, man makes mistakes. We're ruining the very planet we walk on, and so the idea that we pick and choose what genetic traits we have to "cure disease" before it allegedly starts, while oh-so-incidentally making our children pretty all the same, is both vane and offensive. Priorities are out of whack, so to speak.

I don't trust man as far as I could throw any one of them. I especially don't trust doctors to succeed in whatever it is they're doing. But, that is me.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid This isn't so much genetic manipulation as embryo selection; you fertilise a bunch of eggs and test for which ones meet your criteria. You won't get any freakish genetic mutants this way, except for what you'd get through natural mutation. Or from any genetic damage that might result from the whole artificial process, I guess. So no tiger people.

Aww man. Ye the tiger people comment was a carried away. But with the unvravelling of the human genome and continued deciphering of it, seems like embryo testing is only the first use of our increased genetic knowledge base. Seems like full genetic engineering will become an eventuality. And we will begin to see divergence in the human species.

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(though, selection for trendy things such as hair color or eye color could actually be bad for overall health.)

This is a good point. As overselecting for one set of traits would have similar results to inbreeding no?

How far would I go? Nope, sorry. If I were to have a kid I would want him to be my kid, not some genetically altered (or worse yet, "superior") baby that isn't really completely mine and my wife's in the first place. I can understand where people come from when they say they want to lower color blindness or mental retardation, but I don't think I'd want to. I want my baby and mine alone... I'll let evolution do its work.

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Original post by Sirisian Go watch Gattaca

My thoughts exactly. That is such an amazing movie.

As for expectancy of life, I think this is bad as long as we don't colonize space. I mean, we are already too many. Mother Gaia doesn't have the resources to feed us all.

Or another idea: Uhm, how was the name of the movie again where they get eliminated on their 30th birthday?

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Original post by mntlinstituteflr I want my baby and mine alone... I'll let evolution do its work.

Survival of the fittest no longer applies to humans. The successful and the unsuccessful, the strong and the weak all can reproduce and be fairly certain their line will live on. The next step in human evolution will have to be introduced by man. The scifi lover in me says bring it on.

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Original post by phresnel As for expectancy of life, I think this is bad as long as we don't colonize space. I mean, we are already too many. Mother Gaia doesn't have the resources to feed us all. Or another idea: Uhm, how was the name of the movie again where they get eliminated on their 30th birthday?

Logan's Run - They're in the process of producing a remake of it, slated to be released next year.

Another movie with a similar theme was The Island, although that was about cloning.

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Original post by tstrimp Quote: Original post by mntlinstituteflr I want my baby and mine alone... I'll let evolution do its work. Survival of the fittest no longer applies to humans. The successful and the unsuccessful, the strong and the weak all can reproduce and be fairly certain their line will live on. The next step in human evolution will have to be introduced by man. The scifi lover in me says bring it on.

Survival of the fittest never applied, it's survival of the fit. Setting that nitpick aside, however, we are not on our way to "Idiocracy", although at times it seems that way.

Human evolution kicks into high gear (Feb. 10, 2009)

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... They find an abundance of recent adaptive mutations etched in the human genome; even more shocking, these mutations seem to be piling up faster and ever faster, like an avalanche. Over the past 10,000 years, their data show, human evolution has occurred a hundred times more quickly than in any other period in our species’ history. The new genetic adaptations, some 2,000 in total, are not limited to the well-recognized differences among ethnic groups in superficial traits such as skin and eye color. The mutations relate to the brain, the digestive system, life span, immunity to pathogens, sperm production and bones — in short, virtually every aspect of our functioning. ... “It beats me how leading biologists could look at the fossil record and conclude that human evolution came to a standstill 50,000 years ago,” Hawks says. By his account, Hawks’ theory of accelerated human evolution owes its genesis to what he could see with his own eyes. But his radical view was also influenced by newly emerging genetic data. Thanks to stunning advances in sequencing and deciphering DNA in recent years, scientists had begun uncovering, one by one, genes that boost evolutionary fitness. These variants, which emerged after the Stone Age, seemed to help populations better combat infectious organisms, survive frigid temperatures, or otherwise adapt to local conditions. And they were popping up with surprising frequency. ... The three scientists reviewed the demographic data. Ten thousand years ago, there were fewer than 10 million people on earth. That figure soared to 200 million by the time of the Roman Empire. Since around 1500 the global population has been rising exponentially, with the total now surpassing 6.7 billion. Since mutations are the fodder on which natural selection acts, it stands to reason that evolution might happen more quickly as our numbers surge. “What we were proposing was nothing new to animal breeders of the 19th century,” Cochran notes. “Darwin himself emphasized the importance of maintaining a large herd for selecting favorable traits.” ... Scanning genomes in the haplotype map for these clues, the researchers discovered that 7 percent of human genes fit the profile of a recent adaptation, with most of the change happening from 40,000 years ago to the present. As predicted, these apparent adaptations occurred at a rate that jumped almost exponentially in prevalence as the human population exploded. To rule out the prevailing view — that our evolution has proceeded at a steady rate all along — the scientists ran an additional check. They performed a computer simulation to see what would have happened if humans had evolved at modern rates ever since we diverged from chimpanzees 6 million years ago. The steady-state test led to a nonsensical result: The difference between the two species today would be 160 times greater than it actually is. To Moyzis and the others, the results confirmed that human evolution had only recently hit the accelerator. ...

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Original post by LessBread Quote: Original post by phresnel As for expectancy of life, I think this is bad as long as we don't colonize space. I mean, we are already too many. Mother Gaia doesn't have the resources to feed us all. Or another idea: Uhm, how was the name of the movie again where they get eliminated on their 30th birthday? Logan's Run - They're in the process of producing a remake of it, slated to be released next year. Another movie with a similar theme was The Island, although that was about cloning.

Ah yes, thanks. I think I forgot it because of the clumsy german title "Flucht ins 23. Jahrhundert" ("escape into the 23rd century") :D