Slashdot Mirror
Personal Genomics Firm 23andMe Patents Designer Baby System
An anonymous reader writes "Consumer genomics company 23andMe has developed a system for helping prospective parents choose the traits of their offspring, from disease risk to hair color. The patent — number 8543339, "Gamete donor selection based on genetic calculations" — describes a technology that would take a customer's preferences for a child's traits, compute the likely genomic outcomes of combinations between a customer's sperm or egg and other people's sex cells, and describe which potential reproductive matches would most likely produce the desired baby."
Hmm, sounds like the logical next step is a dating service to match those traits. Who's doing the cyber-squatting for 23harmony.com and eugenicsmingle.com?
A portmanteau of genetic and economic? Really? Please kill this word immediately.
See many a SciFi novel.
Francis Galton came up with this idea over a hundred years ago. It wasn't a good idea then, it still isn't.
So this work in a sperm bank type of environment ? Why not fetch sperm from handsome, smart people only ?
Hitler would be proud. Once this can be done on a regular basis, the differences between the born-privileged (children born to parents with money to custom design their child to have movie-star looks and high IQ) will relegate the masses to a modern serfdom.
I had a horrifying vision of hundreds of preschool age clones of Giorgio Armani complete with graying hair and Speedos.
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/wkXX8i-_YY7/Giorgio+Armani+Beach+Spain/o9t_26CJhk8/Giorgio+Armani
This is pretty much a patent on the math for matching between genome expressions. That is pretty much pure math which they have wrapped into an interface.
The patent system continues to fail.
Sci-fi has seen this coming since at least 1997, with film Gattaca...
Plot summary source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/plotsummary
Excerpt: "Gattaca Corp. is an aerospace firm in the future. During this time society analyzes your DNA and determines where you belong in life. Ethan Hawke's character was born with a congenital heart condition which would cast him out of getting a chance to travel in space"
I imagine most readers are worried about super-strength people, but on a more practical basis, this could be used to prevent genetic predisposition to disease, like breast cancer gene carriers being able to ensure their child won't be carriers of the gene, or even the mentally ill from passing on genes related to say, schizophrenia.
Gattaca, like 1984, was intended to be a warning rather than an instruction manual. We seem to be slouching towards various forms of dystopia and the worst part of it all is that people think this is a good thing.
Finally! Now nerds can design the perfect baby they have no chance of planting in a chick's belly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Tall, dark, handsome, because you think a child with those features would be awesome, or picking someone who has compatible immune systems by kissing...
Well, mainly because it would work more often.
Wait, what is the argument against it again?
will be used mostly to select sex of baby's
Parent: I want a tall beautiful kid with IQ of 140, no predisposition to cancer, autism, obesity, coronary disease or alzheimers.
Doctor: looking at our database the best match for you will be if we mate eggs from donor 123 with sperm from donor 345. We guarantee that will produce the desired offspring with probability of 1E-6. The fee will be $100,000, please sign here. We can guarantee higher probability for cancer and diabetes free offspring if you trade tall for dwarf.
It COULD be used to screen for undesirable traits (but that's eugenics), it WILL be used to screen for 'desirable' traits - that's money.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...or an unexpected form of cancer that turns into a heavy burden on society...
Just the next iteration of natural selection. We already consciously and unconsciously evaluate potential mates for their potential to produce offspring with traits we believe will improve its chance to thrive. Now we already "shop" for mates online at sites like Match.com and judge them based on their appearance, occupation, apparent intelligence, etc, without actually getting to know them first. This is just the next step.
Monsanto will be the first corporation to own human beings created by virtue of it's technology.
I think you miss the point on how important it is for a population to have these 'defects'. Who's to say having breast cancer isn't a solid way to survive a nuclear fallout? or the next bird flu death explosion? The continuation of short term exploitation for catastrophic delayed failure surely has to be reaching a tipping point. Oh wait.. let me go let it ride on my goldman shares, what could go wrong!
This needs to be regulated because the result of many people individually selecting for characteristics can have negative effects on the overall human gene pool. I've already elaborated on this under another recent story: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4173815&cid=44775829
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
"Uh, yes, I would like a sickly, blind, deaf, mentally disabled child, so I can collect its disability benefits... make it twins, conjoined twins, triplets if you can pull it off."
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I never thought we would be here 16 years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
'Eugenics' is a poisoned word, if they go that way it will surely be called something else.
A precursor to Gattaca, maybe?
no need for Cerebro, if we focus on making Homo Superiors instead of those lowly Homo Sapiens
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it
Let's compute the genomic outcomes of combinations which would most likely produce the desired baby
There's your first problem. It doesn't go in a chick's belly.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
In SG1, the Asgard are dying off due to having almost no genetic diversity resulting from generations of cloning. It makes a nice Sci-Fi subplot, but back here in reality we still have people who don't even have access to electricity. I seriously doubt we ever need to worry about all of humanity being wiped out by an engineered genetic monoculture. It's likely only those who are part of the monoculture will be at risk and since these are also likely to be the wealthy and successful of the world, something that wipes them out would be a bit of reverse Darwinism. Call Alanis Morissette, because that would be ironic.
Actually, I was thinking that if people get to choose how their kids will look.. imagine would fads play into this. When a particular set of attributes become the most popular and a high percentage of the population decide to have offspring that have almost the same characteristics.. I don't know, couldn't it be pretty dangerous, messing around like that with genetic diversity?
Obviously, I'm not a biologist :P
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
so breast cancer will protect people from nuclear weapons?
i see where you're going
individuals can carry "superior" traits and have a strong detrimental effect on the whole.. especially when there are mass social responses .. this is trouble with a capital T
to cancel my order for a gene test set. I won't have any business with Lebensborn Inc.
Why this was granted a patent one will never know.
Follow the bribes.
I believe it is called, "dating".
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Just wait until a genomics company literally owns your baby's genome configuration. Almost no one takes the time to read terms of service. Imagine being under the pressure of signing such an agreement after your water breaks.
The very last part of that being unlikely - the patent part may not be. Imagine choosing from a selection of perfect but generic templates, then adding and remove traits as you see fit. We could end up with a large population of near twin sets.
Setting absolutely all of that aside, if the technology this evolves into could build a better human (post-human?) species, I'm all for it regardless of how strange a future it might produce. Can you imagine a future version of the human race absent of our desire to break up into factions and murder each other in as large of numbers as possible? This could result in the survival of our species, or at least a future iteration of our species, which is something that I otherwise think will prove unlikely over the next century if we don't find a way to evolve past being bent on self-annihilation.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
If the genetically modified offspring have offspring of their own, will the original parents have to pay for those new children or will their genetically modified offspring have to pay to have their own?
Genes are patented today and after a farmer grows a genetically modified crop if he collects and uses the seeds of that crop, he has to pay again.
It shouldn't be, but at some point this is going to be an argument from someone with money.
Humans already do this. It's natural selection. This is merely refining the options. The problem comes in (ie. the point of GATTACA) when you start treating people as second class citizens if they aren't engineered in this way.
It was upheld because what harm was there if the child wasn't going to reproduce. I mean if the child reproduced that would be contract breach and I know of no greater crime.
I can site several thousand years of prior art here. It is called animal breeding.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The wonderful world of GATTACA is coming. For those that didn't see the movie this is the future where those people that are conceived naturally will be the new underclass and the test tube babies will be the new professional class. Your new resume is nothing more than a DNA sample and based off of the traits you were engineered for determines your line of work. Your parents will chose your profession type for you and you will be engineered with those traits that will be an asset to that kind of profession type. Employment laws, as they are partially enforced now, will not even put a dent in genetic discrimination that will be rampant in society. People like me, with genes for immune systems problems and moderate risk for heart attacks, will not be employable except for low-wage menial jobs. In fact almost none of us will be employable in middle class jobs nor will any bank loan money for your to start a business.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I'm going to file a patent for a method for randomizing all options when deciding what you want in a baby. Just pick an egg at random, mix in a bunch of sperm, and you get a Random Baby. Don't worry about license fees, though. I'm not greedy. Anyone who uses this method will only need to pay me $1. What's that? This is so broad that it covers natural conception? Well, waddaya know. Now pay up!
One dollar per baby born times about 4 million babies born every year in the US = instant retirement!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
There's your first problem. It doesn't go in a chick's belly.
As an atheist, I disagree. How can you be a rational being without eating babies?!
Eugenics.
Gattaca has arrived.... May I borrow your ladder please?
It COULD be used to screen for undesirable traits (but that's eugenics)
if eugenics means eliminating debilitating genetic disorders then i'm in. when you get mutations in the standard code that defines us as humans, you get serious health problems.
it WILL be used to screen for 'desirable' traits - that's money.
unless you are choosing really simple traits like hair and eye color, you are going to have to wait until we figure out how our DNA really works. there are a ton of changes that occur just for things like height which we still dont fully understand. genetic testing for traits gives results in probability based on their pool of knowledge from other people that provide information.
if you are really interested in this topic, watch NOVA's Cracking Your Genetic Code which is on netflix, your local torrent site or on their website which doesnt work for me.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Often overlooked is that Khan, like Napoleon, was a failure. For all their supposed superiority, they were defeated in the end.
The ongoing budget argument in US
It's more that you *have* to choose disease risks. This isn't engineering a baby's genome from scratch -- it's just a matching system between potential gametes.
For example, if you're a woman looking to have a child via artificial insemination, then this system will let you profile the risks and rewards of using different donor sperm with your own eggs. All of these genomes (and your own) carry defective genes. So, do you want the donor with a high IQ and arthritis or the one with good looks and a high risk of heart disease? It'll depend in part on what genes you have that make the risks worse in addition to what benefits you most value.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Hugo Boss"
That would be even more horrifying. *shudder*
This has been in place since 2009 and it's interesting but not a big deal and nothing new. I've used it as a tool to see some of the traits of what me and my gf's offspring will most likely have. You could do the same by looking up each SNP as I do for most of the other less interesting traits that they don't have on the tool.
They say they have no plans to use it as anything more than this tool. I doubt they are going to set up a dating service based on it.
http://blog.23andme.com/news/a-23andme-patent/
This is exactly the same as what they show in the movie Gattaca from 1999. How the hell was this patent granted?
Surely all they are doing is making explicit the choices that we make when selecting a partner?
brother who is part horse and a sister that is part cat? Can I, p-l-e-a-s-e?
I like standing around and feeling self superior (that is what cisco certs are for right?), wank rather often and am looking for 'validation'. Where do I sign up?
This is how the Amish inherit the Earth.
.. is all half the world will want. Until brunettes become rarer and then that may become the desired color scheme?
Not sure I want a version 1.0 designer baby.
But really, while I don't agree that buying a baby with specific beauty and vanity traits is the right application of this area of science, selecting an embryo that doesn't have some trait that will have a kid grow up with a hump or other genetic defect should be allowed. While many will scream abortion!, realize that 4 - 8 cells is not a sentient lifeform no matter how far you stretch your faith.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I think that would be considered preexisting art. Well at for those that read the Kama Sutra!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It COULD be used to screen for undesirable traits (but that's eugenics), it WILL be used to screen for 'desirable' traits - that's money.
So you haven't been tested at 23andme.com (about $100) and have no clue about them or what this service is likely to be used for.
Any "desirable" traits like hair color, athleticism, or nation of origin are going to be known by the potential parents and this service will have little utility. If two Olympic sprinters fuck, they run a good chance of having Olympic sprinter babies that look like them. No genome test required.
Most of the concrete information offered at the service are the odds of various diseases. E.g., testing shows I have a slightly higher disposition towards alzheimers and prostate cancer (e.g., 25% more likely). So I can select foods or supplements that my be preventative.
Yes, there is information like nation or continent or region or origin. That tells me stuff like
a) my parents weren't lying