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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'."
Would you have allowed Bill Gates to be born?
Advances in prenatal genetic testing pose tough questions
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
No doubt this will be modded down, but on a similar note when the genetic test for homosexuality comes out, who wants to bet the current foes of private health care decisions will be first in line to abort their fetuses? They would have aborted Alan Turing and let the Germans win.
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 ...
...
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! --
Many people believe that "God" alone should determine how many and what sort of babies we have, but I really think that is stupid. Serious matters like this should be decided by the State.
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?
It is thought that Einstein had ADD. What would have happened if we gave him drugs?
Einstein: Leave me alone, i'm depressed!
Dashboard Widgets
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
tending his private logs of baseball statistics
That is perfectly normal for a four year old, so back off!
/gonna get my gumdrops yet, I tell you
The Knack!
More
My father was a ..yes.. a for real..."Rocket Scientist" working for the Air Force back in the 60s. Back then he said the Officer's Club hated to see him and his work buddies coming and loved the pilots. Why? Because the pilots order Beer by the tanker load. Scientists order one beer and used up all the napkins writing down equations. To any jock, a group of nerds talking must be super boring, but then, that is not a measure of the conversation but rather of the jock mental faculties.
-In a related note to the parent post: How many Geeks are dyslexic?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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."
The malady every geek wants to have.
Syphilis?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
Yes, it's a legend. As in, "any wonderful story coming down from the past, but not verifiable by historical record; a myth; a fable."
That said, it is a "popularly held" belief, yeah.
Now all we need to do is see if there is a particular gene common to people who want to be ultra-selective when it comes to picking the genetic makeup of their children, and we can just weed these people out before they are born?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Many years ago (early 80's), I worked for Tandy Corporation. We had a meeting with Bill and a few other folks from Microsoft. Bill spent most of the meeting sitting sideways in his chair, rocking back and forth, chewing on the leather band of his wristwatch. He seemed to not be paying any attention, but it was obvious from the questions he asked that he was listening to everything.
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
He's a great kid. My sister says he's about as hard as two kids, because of his 'special needs' but she also tells me that it's at least twice as rewarding to see the results. He was 2.5 Yrs old when he learned to walk. They REALLY celebrated when he crossed that milestone. It was a big deal because it was the culmination of months of physical therapy, long labors and battles of will with him. Was it worth the work? She says, undoubtedly!
Today he's a sixth-grader working at grade level in all subjects. He can do what other kids do, it simply requires harder work. He's a joy to be around, and he's a very thoughtful and compassionate kid.
I'm quite glad that he was not killed prenatally. I commend you for your choice, and while the road ahead may be difficult, it's a good road to be on.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
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.
Seriously! FUCK ALL YOU PEOPLE!
For future reference, this may not be the best tone to take when attempting to convince others that you're psychologically normal.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
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.
Because you can't predict any of these things, it's much better NOT to reduce our genetic diversity by artificial selection rules:
1. how the gene may mutate in the future (i.e. it may produce beneficial effects - this is key.)
2. how the gene will manifest in adulthood.
3. the effect of the gene on the person's activity as a whole, and thereby, on society.
etc.
The only cases in which I would support aborting babies with specific genes would be if so many people with a severe problem are born that it becomes an unmanageable burden on society, or the problem is so crippling that the person is completely unable to function. But in general, we need to maintain diversity in order to ensure our continued existence.
No one knows how many or what sorts of people will be able to develop immunity to future epidemics, or what sorts of people will be best able to do the technological work necessary for a future technology. For all we know, severely autistic people could save humanity.
It's been theorized that the band of humans that crossed the bering strait into North America could have numbered as few as 10 or so. Presumably, many others died along the way. Their diversity increased the likelihood that at least a few would complete the journey.
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.
chewing on the leather band
:)
-- Actually the watch was a computer, and the band contained short range antennas that transferred the meeting through Bill's fillings directly into his brain.
sitting sideways in his chair
-- The watch just needed to be positioned correctly to receive the most data. Sitting sideways did exactly this for Bill.
rocking back and forth
-- This ancient direct-to-brain method had the side effect of causing your fillings to go crazy. Something akin to the sensation people with fillings get when they chew tin foil.
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.
There are all kinds of good and bad in the Universe, observable at every intelligence level. To claim that sadness is the result of your ability to observe that which is bad is shortsighted.
The "ignorance is bliss" crowd tends to avoid answering "What intellignece level would provide me peak happiness?" Perhaps I should have "lifetime fast food manager" intelligence to find maximum joy. How about "still wearing diapers at 35" intelligence? Perhaps being comatose is my best option? After all, there are proven ways both physical and chemical by which I could permanently assume a lower intelligence level.
(I'd like to interject an apology for appearing to objectify those who fit in any of the above categories)
Brain chemistry aside, your happiness correlates to your emotional ability to process that which your intellect provides you. Whether you're bothered by missing SpongeBob or our Sun eventually going supernova, it's going to be your ability to balance that info with everything else that will determine how easily you can find happiness.
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.
Asperger is in fact light enough for people who have it to lead a normal, achieveing life. I, for one, have been fairly able to live an acheiving life up to now (I would not call it normal or fullfilling, and I would also not say that asperger is not a problem, but with enough experience and some intellegence it can be worked around).
My new blog
I think one could make a connection in a sense. How many people do you know who are simultaneously piano, cello, and trumpet virtuosos? None?
Learning anything requires time. Geeks are notorious for spending their time doing "geeky" things which are also notable because they generally fail to cultivate social skills (but do cultivate a different skillset, just like the music analogy).
While I don't necessarily disagree (there are activities which seem to do nothing (mindlessly playing solitaire for hours on end) as well as activities that can cultivate both facilties), I think you're being overly simplistic.
But lastly, I disagree with your cynical note at the end. All industry devotes much of its energy to profit for the same reason we devote much of our existance to eating and drinking. Children who have music lessons, for example, are shown to do better on standardized tests. Just because the music teachers may want to make a profit so they can maybe own a house or something silly, doesn't mean their efforts are insincere or useless.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
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?
Ok, lets take a look at some terribly heinous crimes:
Sex out of wedlock.
Paying for sex out of wedlock.
Sex out of wedlock with someone of the same gender.
Marrying someone of the same gender.
Polygamy/Polyandry.
Purchasing a "mail order bride".
Teaching students that sex using a condom can protect against some STDs and help prevent unwanted children.
Aborting a fetus that would normally survive but be crippled mentally or physically.
Aborting a fetus that would not normally survive, but would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the attempt at life, just in case it does survive.
Allowing a woman to die after 15 years in a coma on life support.
Refusing to allow the government to pass a law forcing said woman to not die.
Aborting an unwanted fetus.
Copying a song onto tape from the radio.
Copying a song onto mp3 from a cd.
Copying a song onto mp3 over the internet.
Teaching someone else how to copy a song from a cd with copy protection.
Gambling.
All of these and more are "Evil" acts that someone or another thinks is "wrong", and yet those feelings are not universally held, and/or have changed over time. As the grandparent said, some things that are evil and unspeakable to me aren't to others, and vice-versa. Common grounds are few and far between. I wonder what cannibalistic tribes think of other people's revulsion of killing and eating humans.
Vagary's statement that "only creatures capable of evil are capable of good" is itself not logically sound. If someone was born who never once thought of killing anyone, would they be incapable of learning CPR and saving a life? Maybe my CPR training in Boy Scouts was what led me to work in tech support. Driven to evil thoughts by my capability to do good?
Perhaps on a species-wide scale if humans became incapable of breaking laws, starting wars, or hurting one another, there would no longer be "heroics" or other large scale displays of "good" that everyone could point to, but even if we did somehow create a beautiful utopia, people would still be born into the world, cared for as children, and raised into this society... would this not be "good"?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:
Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita
(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)
Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.
See this link.
(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)
Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.
See this link.
MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.
Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.
Seastead this.
"genius doesn't matter if it can't be communicated"
it sure does...wtf are you smoking? we owe most of the modern world - computers, CD players, automotive engineering, airplane turbines, antibiotics etc. etc. to genius that has no hope of being communicated to the growing scientifically illiterate masses
but your post reflects a certain meme I'm beginning to see in the world now...a fear of true intelligence and a belief that only what can be "marketed" is even "real" since the "market" is the dominant socio-political organization. I think Spielberg dramatised a possible outcome of this kind of "anti-thinking" with the memorable Amazing Stories episode where all children were tested for intelligence and the brightest killed, this in a supposed negative utopia where technological advances that would come from such children are seen as dangerous. But that's all hogwash, of course it's actually the people with your purported "social intelligence" who are dangerous, like GW and his risible fake Texas accent. Social intelligence - yes...it appeals to middle American dumbf--ks...does he have a drop of real intelligence? Probably not.