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Genetic Testing For Geekiness?
Paul Johnson writes "MSNBC is carrying an article wondering about how to handle a possible future genetic test for autism. Raising a severely autistic child is a heartbreaking grind, and many people (and legal systems) consider termination to be a reasonable choice where the fetus carries other genetic disorders such as Downs Syndrome. But this might also prevent the birth of future geniuses too. The article flippantly uses Bill Gates as an example (Gates is widely thought to have Asperger's syndrome), although Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison are also thought to have been similarly "different". And there is some reason to believe that "geekiness" in general is actually the place where autism shades into 'normal'."
The malady every geek wants to have.
I'm different! Really!
You are a special snowflake, just like the rest of us.
Parents will tend to choose the jocks with five year lifetime careers who contribute nothing to humanity instead, dooming us to a world of know-nothings and really really boring parties - I've been at a bunch of them, and let me tell you, they'll bore the paints off you ...
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Genetic testing will probably cause more harm than good - we need to have it screened for medical uses only, such things as fatal diseases, not What's Hot This Week
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So, science is so good now that we can predict with 100% accuracy if someone will be able to contribute OR OR OR live a happy life?
I know so many people with IQ's over 110, well educated, well employed, good citizens who are miserable. I also know one girl who is in a wheel chair, she has some genetic disorder, and she lights up a room with her smiles and laughs.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"Raising a severely autistic child is a heartbreaking grind, and many people (and legal systems) consider termination to be a reasonable choice where the fetus carries other genetic disorders such as Downs Syndrome."
The parents I've meet with Downs and autistc children have commented on how rewarding it is. "Hearbreaking grind" is very judgemental and not necessarily true (although for some it might be).
Anyway, what legal systems consider termination to be a reasonable choice? Do they actually spell out different reasons for abortion?
What drives me crazy is all the programmers I've known who make the connection "I'm socially awkward and like computers, so I am a misunderstood genius and I'm better than everybody!"
And this goes hand in hand with every kid who can stack blocks by the age of 3 being 'gifted'. Of course, there's a whole industry dedicated to 'helping' (read: profiting off of) parents who believe their child is gifted.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
People already kill babies because they're inconvenient; why not kill them because they're even less convenient?
He didn't show any typical traits such as repetetive behaviour or social oddities. He was a loner, but that doesn't necessarily make him autistic.
consider termination to be a reasonable choice where the fetus carries other genetic disorders such as Downs Syndrome
That makes me very, very sad. My wife and I are expecting our first child, a girl, to be born in the next 4 weeks. There is a strong chance she will be born with Downs Syndrome.
Our doctors wanted to advise us about our "options". They wanted to run all kinds of tests, including amniocentesis and genetic testing, in order to be sure one way or another,so we could make an "informed" decision.
So, so sad. I just can't imagine anyone wanting to do such a thing - especially since we've seen her in full motion 3D video on two seperate occasions - smiling when we stroke her head, sucking her thumb, yawning when we wake her up after a nap - things that any baby would do.
My point of view -- not a political statement really. It's just heartbreaking. I fear for any culture that so highly values convenience, pride, and "perfectness" that it would cast aside those who we should be called to love and care for even more than the "perfect" little baby everyone hopes and prays for. And for the worst shame of all, doctors who repeatedly promote termination of even marginally defective babies and are constantly harping about options -alternatives! - to life.
I am under no illusions about how painful, difficult, and disappointing raising my daughter maybe if she turns out to have Downs, but believe me, I will love her and treat her as my daughter till I draw my last breath.
I really hope our culture doesn't continue to devolve into one that values only designer, perfect, genetically correct babies.
social intelligence is far more important than iq, and doesn't get the press it deserves.
an average iq kid who has a high social intelligence will go on to make $40 million, and the high iq, low social intelligence asperger type we're talking about here will wind up working for him for $30K/ year.
if the point of this slashdot story is to bring attention to the preciousness of autism/ asperger's and its role in high iq people, then i respond with a big "so what".
genius doesn't matter if it can't be communicated.
a mediocre idea well-communicated is worth 10,000x more than a genius level idea that stays locked up in someone's skull.
so enough of the cult of asperger's. it's overrated. social intelligence is the real deal.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just want to note -- I have a lot of experience with autism and specifically Asperger's. And before it gets too involved, I want to mention this:
The argument "in doing this, you might stop the next genius from existing", whether applied to medication or abortion, is not simply the last word. It is something to take into consideration.
The parents who have to raise the child are the ones making these decisions. It's true, "he just might be the next Einstein", but it's much more likely that his parents will go through their lives not being able to speak to him, having him attack you for no reason, and not being able to see him ever live on his own.
Asperger's, a mild variety of autism, is a mixed bag. It breaks my heart to see my cousin's family torn apart by their son's inability to control himself, and he's relatively high-functioning. A test for autism would be a tremendous boon for parents facing the prospect of raising a child who will be forever locked away from them, and they from him. High-minded ideals about future genuises are not what they want to hear.
Summary: Serious autism is terrible. Only a small fraction of autistic children are able to lead productive lives. Borderline cases like [famous person here] are extremely high-functioning, if in the spectrum at all, and probably wouldn't fall under any test in the near future.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I agree.
Next, genetic testing before an insurance company will sell you health insurance.
Science is not perfect, it never was. I remember 20 years ago the HUGE butter scare. Scientific test after test came out saying butter caused heart attacks, and to switch to margerin. A few years ago, studies came out saying that margerin is unhealthy, and butter is better? If people listen to science or their studies, they will be eatting eggs one year, avoiding them like the plauge the next year, and then drinking them raw the next.
And like the above example, it was the margerin industry that funded those early scientific studies. They wanted to increase their sales, so they labled butter unhealthy.
Now extend this one step further. Someone HATES jews, there are tons of people out there who are racist. They decide that certian genes, only found in the jewish population, lead to certain disorders. They then use this as an excuse for terminating these pregnecies.
Next... "We think your baby has an abnormally high chance for sickle cell anemia, we reccomend termenating your pregnancy".
Meanwhile... "Yes Mr. Forbes, we agree, if we lighten the shade of your babys hair, it will bring out his eyes, and we'll make sure to add the genes which increase muscle mass, and the genes that increase IQ".
Now, which one will be the more ethical and better human being? That is something science is incapable of prediciting.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
He bought DOS and seems to have stolen most of the best parts of Windows. The man didn't see the potential in the internet, was late to the game on search engines and music downloading. By what standard is he put in the class of these other great visionaries? His success is largely due to shady business practices, other people's work and a fair amount of luck. I personally hold the word genius to a higher standard.
I,
Am a decently successful human being, I run my own business, have held numerous significant jobs, have an advanced college degree.
But, I was born with a small level of Cerebral Palsy.
Just enough to make me limp and trip occasionally.
And other than constantly overhearing 4 year olds asking their parents why does that man walk that way in public I am just as "normal" as the next guy. Ok, normal might be too nice:-) But I'm trying.
When I entered pre-school I was automatically placed in the "special education" (that's what it was called then) class. Not one question was asked of my parents as to my cognitive abilities, etc. My Dad was livid to say the least.
But, what if I had been diagnosed in the womb with my CP would I even exist? Would a doctor have "convinced" my parents to abort?
The kind of testing described should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned.
We have already seen what happened in China, I believe it was, or was it India, when people started getting ultrasounds to determine if they were having a girl or a boy, then aborting the girl fetuses.
It's just a place society shouldn't go, at all.
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
No, just amoral, opportunistic, and predatory.
He's not a freakin' genius, folks. I believe the last piece of decent technical work he personally did was Microsoft Basic (Not VB, not QBasic. Microsoft basic for 8080/Z80, back in the "press play on the casette deck" days). Yes, he's quite smart. Probably quite a lot smarter than I am. He has also managed to concentrate on making Microsoft the juggernaut it is, very often by undertaking and encouraging his employees to undertake actions of questionable legality, morality, or fairness, all in the name of increasing marked penetration and edging out competition.
So, I guess it's somewhat true. You don't get to be a convicted predatory monopolist by being average.
The whole "would you not have allowed X to be born" argument against abortion is somewhat of a fallacy: there's no way to tell in advance precisely what will become of a person in their lives, so if you want to create "geniuses", by the argument, you should spend your entire life having more children. So what if aborting a child has a 1/N chance of destroying a world-changing genius - having an additional child has that same 1/N chance of creating a new world-changing genius, so you better get started!
There may be some truth in an argument that "culling all people with 'Gene A' before they're born" (with the natural assumtpion that there will be other people born in their place) may have downsides if 'Gene A' has some positive side affects that aren't widely considered. But "would you have allowed (insert person here) to be born?" is a fallacy.
Aeris Died For Your Sins.
There is a faction that would very much like to define homosexuality as a genetic trait rather than a choice. Like some people are born with brown hair or red hair, etc. And some people are born gay. There is quite a bit of supporting evidence for this. But personally I'm not convinced (nor do I really care about other people's sexual orientation unless I actually plan to have sex with them)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Like it or not, society *needs* jocks.
1) Who else will punish and ostracize the geeks? If I wasn't ostracized in high-school, I'd never have learned to program, or have done my homework. I'd have been getting stoned, and having sex. Things which rightfully belong to my college years.
2) Who will distract the TV watching, Dorito-stuffing, SUV-driving masses? I mean, we all could be rioting on Pennsylvania Ave right now, fighting for our rights, but, wait, TheBigGame/Sitcom81-g/MovieWithExplosions#2118 is on...
3) Who will die by droves in meaningless wars for us, while we complain on slashdot?
Meh. As far as I see it, when we have designer babies, we'll get lots of super-smart jocks. Very few parents are going to say, "Yeah, I want a throwing-arm, 20/20 vision, and, oh, make him dumb as a brick".
What I'm afraid of, is, no more lefties. ( that's me looking around scared )
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
*shrug* I don't know if there is a gene for homosexuality. What I do know is the gay kids in high school were showing signs of their sexuality long before puberty. Everybody knew they were a bit different, by the way they acted, dressed, just behaved in general... Then guess what happened, some of them admitted they were gay during high school... I imagine others hid their secret.
A lot of people say it's a choice.. Well, I never made the choice to be hetereosexual, that's just the way it was. And for those few gay kids that I went to school with, it wasn't their choice either, that's just the way they were. A gene causes this? No clue, I don't think it matter except to the religious & bigotted.
Wouldnt it be ironic if an anti-abortion anti-gay parent had the choice between murdering a baby or raising a homosexual son/daughter?
SRSLY.
When our little girl was born the doctors fairly broke our hearts with the sad news that test results showed severe brain damage. She's almost 3 now, and on the "you ask way too many questions, girl" side of normal. Had that diagnosis been prenatal, and given to a different set of parents, she might have ended up as medical waste.
And that's enough to make me spitting mad.
Executive summary: don't kill your children. They are more important than you.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
How the **** can such an obviously stupid, inflammatory and uninformed remark be modded "Insightful"?
Furthermore, if free will means anything,
a) the aforenamed are responsible for their actions
b) equally mad men could have arisen in their circumstances; their elimination would not guarantee much
In summary, omniscience would seem to be a requirement prior to making adjustments.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's comfortable to sit sideways, the leather tastes good, and it's easier to analyze what someone is saying when you aren't looking at them. I often close my eyes or stair at blank walls when trying to listen to people.
I have all of those behaviours and I can assure you that I am no genius nor idiot.
And how are you going to do that? The technology is not that complicated. Are you going to prohibit people from owning a PCR machine (which is really just a precisely controlled hotplate)? Or make thermostable polymerase an illicit substance? Pretty soon, anybody will be able to test for any gene sequence they choose.
I'm sure I could give you a laundry list of Good and Evil acts, and you'd probably agree with 100% of them, but the moment somebody disagrees, and does one of those heinious (sp?) acts, it's OK because nobody can tell another what is good or bad?
I call BS.
2) A homosexual couple will not reproduce (no chance of hh mixing with hh, only Hh and Hh)
Assuming there is a gay gene, then of course not, but you're ignoring huge social factors that have made passing that trait forward quite likely. And again, assuming this gene exists, if it were not for tyrannical religious groups, this gene may have faded away thousands of years ago. If the church really wants this gay 'disease' to go away, they should encourage early marriage for gay teens.
3) By its nature, this genetic trait would find itself dwindling in existance.
Cannot the same thing be said for Multiple sclerosis, aspergers, cystic fibrosis, hemophelia, sickle cell, tay-sachs, etc etc etc ? Hell even people with blue eyes are defying a strict interpretation of natural selection. Those disease have been around forever with no end in sight.
No, no; you miss the point of the argument. The argument is designed to expose the fallacy behind the claim that "this life is not worth living."
Suppose my wife and I have a medical test result which gives X% of a chance to have a child with autism -- no, that's too hard, since autism is a spectrum disease. Let's make it something genetically definite, like hermaphrodism -- are we then justified in deciding that "this life is not worth living", and killing off the baby?
To do so places us in the position of arguing from the probability of a problem to a definite, terminal solution: kill the baby. But other possibilities exist, even if the problem is as severe as projected.
The "would you have allowed (X person) to be born?" argument simply exposes the fallacy of arguing from a probability of lower quality of life to a definite conclusion: "terminate" the life.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
This is not true at all. Children actually do better when raised in extended families: families that include the active participation of grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc... living in close proximity. These additional family members take a lot of the burden off of the parents, especially in the early years and provide a wealth of expirience to help said parents deal with problems that come up.
The "mother, father, 2.5 kids and the dog" traditional family is anything but traditional and is the product of post-WWII America. A short-lived Traditional America where white men were in charge, the women stayed at home, children were the property of their parents, those pesky minorities knew their place, those homos stayed in the closet or were beaten to death and everyone was a propper God-fearing Christian. An America that never was.
Gay/Straight matters to those who are concerned about kids's welfare.
How? What does it matter if someone is gay or straight? If they are allowed to live normal lives and are happy then their orientation is of no matter. I do know that the "for the children's sake" is an argument frequently used to stifle ideas offensive to conservatives who consider everything outside their narrow point of view to be evil.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
It doesn't necessarily favor the pro-abortion argument if you realize that not everything that reduces crime is desirable. Certainly 24/7 government surveilance of every room in every house of every person in the world would reduce crime, but it certainly would not be desirable.
Or, to extend the above economist's logic, why should we stop at merely encouraging abortions among those whose cultural and socioeconomic characteristics make their children more likely to be criminals? Sterilizing everybody in the inner cities would certainly reduce crime for the same reason that encouraging inner city residents to have abortions does. Should it be done?
E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3
Ah, I see! People in Afghanistan, for example. killed by having walls pushed to collapse on top of them did it to "be different" and to break the law "because it's there". I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Aeris Died For Your Sins.
Don't you think it's possible that the higher instance of these (all depression-associated) diseases could be a result of persecution and non-acceptance, rather than purely associated with being gay?
we should not be denying anyone the chance of life, even if they have downs syndrome, or some other genetic abnormality, that is not a reason to kill them and deny them life.
You're presuming that life is always worth living, regardless of circumstance.
Of course, you're not the one living with constant pain, outcast from most of society, and knowing that you'll die at a very young age.
So before you go spouting off again how life is always worth living, consider some worse cases, and at least consider that maybe, just maybe, some people would be better off not having been born.
just maybe, some people would be better off not having been born.
That's an oversimplification. If it were true, those people would be rationally attempting suicide, instead of struggling to keep living as long as they can.
The question is not whether it is in the individual best interests of a genetically crippled person to be born, but whether allowing the birth is better for enjoyable human life for everyone.
When it is considered that most parents considering abortion over a major congenital defect will try again for a luckier mix of genes the next year, the net effect on total human lives is actually positive. The pre-partum death of the first child means not only that a second will be born, but also that the second will probably live longer, happier, and cheaper.
"There is a chance a given child will be the next Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pot Pol, Jeffery Dahmer, or Charles Manson."
You missed George W. Bush..