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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?
See many a SciFi novel.
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
Ok, if Monsanto can sue a farmer for reusing a genetically modified seed, does this mean that Personal Genomics could sue the kids when they give you grand kids?
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.
So this work in a sperm bank type of environment ? Why not fetch sperm from handsome, smart people only ?
Have you seen the sorts of screening criteria that sperm banks use? People looking for egg donors can't afford to be as picky; because human egg harvesting is not a pleasant business(multiple drugs, some hormonal tweaking, assorted long needles); but the supply of men willing to jerk off into a sample cup for money is pretty large, so they do tend to screen pretty enthusiastically.
will be used mostly to select sex of baby's
Francis Galton came up with this idea over a hundred years ago. It wasn't a good idea then, it still isn't.
Well, that's the ugly trick. Humans have been using selective breeding on various organisms for most of recorded history, and it works just fine*
If eugenics were simply hanging out with phlogiston and luminiferous aether on the failed ideas pile, nobody would care very much. What gives it continued edgy relevance is the fact that, possibly through a willingness to break a few eggs, possibly through more human measures, it should actually be doable to make even more of a mockery of the idea that 'all men are created equal' than nature already does.
(The fact that it's also a convenient 'scientific' cover for just sterilizing society's powerless unlikeables doesn't do it any favors in terms of popularity either). *(actual fineness of results variable, objectives of the breeder may not be well aligned with those of the organism being bred, or with sanity, other limitations and restrictions may apply.)
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!
Monsanto will be the first corporation to own human beings created by virtue of it's technology.
That depends... did you sign a contract saying your kid wouldn't reproduce?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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!”
Mechanical engineering produces patents on the math for physics. That is pretty much pure math which they have wrapped in a physical form.
The patent system has "failed" by this definition since its inception.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
'Eugenics' is a poisoned word, if they go that way it will surely be called something else.
A precursor to Gattaca, maybe?
No, genomics is the study of genomes; IOW it is a subbranch on genetics that focuses on many-gene interactions, pathways, etc. As opposed to analyzing individual or a few genes in 'isolation'.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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!
Snap. You beat me to it.
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
More precisely:
Eugenics is scientifically sound. Improving the human condition through selective breeding is just like any other form of selective breeding and we know it works.
The problem is that eugenics is morally unsound if applied to non-volunteers, and politicly unsound if applied only to a minority of the population (the numerically superior "normals" would wield enough power to illegalize the practice and would have every incentive to do so lest they become obsolete in future generations).
So until a majority of the population are willing to volunteer to turn over their reproductive rights "for the good of future generations" eugenics is going to remain a non-starter.
so breast cancer will protect people from nuclear weapons?
i see where you're going
About 27 years too late in fact.
I don't know why GP thinks "economics" or "genome" are such sacred words that shouldn't be bastardized anyway. Biology has changed rapidly in the last 50 years and the rate of change appears to be increasing. New words and phrases to cover new concepts effectively are going to have to be made up.
Francis Galton came up with this idea over a hundred years ago. It wasn't a good idea then, it still isn't.
Its not Eugenics. All of evolution happens because of trait preference. Eugenics is the trimming of less desirous genetic traits through sterilization (preventing a new generation) or more direct ending of the current one. Picking traits isn't that. People who seek out companions of their race, or their ethnicity, or with ripped abs or big boobs are all selecting for traits in the next generation. Or, as another modern example -- China's allowing of a second (or third) child( for couples with graduate degrees. Also not eugenics.
Why not fetch sperm from handsome, smart people only ?
Women can do that without any help - well, maybe not the "smart" part :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I believe it is called, "dating".
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
You do realize that blue eyed blonds have two recessive traits, correct?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Eugenics is the theory and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. In the 20th century we didn't have genetically altered humans, so the only way to do it was to make some humans not reproduce, either by sterilization or murder. Now we are adding a new scientific option, but the end result is the same, only living humans that we consider 'perfect'. Humans need diversity, in the future there may be good reasons to keep about populations with traits we don't agree with now.
People Monsanto sues often don't have contracts with them.
Existent and functional is the same as ethical, huh? So shooting you in the head shouldn't be a problem because physics tells us the momentum transfer from the bullet to your gray matter is a completely natural physical reaction.
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.
I can site several thousand years of prior art here. It is called animal breeding.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Apparently, by "often" you mean "two cases out of over a hundred", both of which involved the farmers taking significant action to get Monsanto seed without buying it from Monsanto.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
Maybe I didn't make my point sufficiently clear: The fact that it does work is why it still makes the ethicists nervous. If it were quaint nonsense, nobody would care.
To adopt your hypothetical scenario, people would get worked up if you shot me; because bullets work just fine. That's why we still argue about who you are and aren't allowed to put them into. If you were casting hexes at me, though, you'd be largely ignored because nobody would consider you a real threat.
That's the kind of efficacy I'm talking about. 'Works' doesn't mean 'ethical'; but 'completely useless' generally consigns something to the scrap heap of PHIL101 hypothetical questions in reasonably short order. Eugenics works, which is what has kept it floating around and making people nervous. The National Phrenology database, where we use laser scanners to analyze all citizens for cranial evidence of criminal tendencies, on the other hand, isn't a controversial issue because that doesn't work.
Eugenics is the theory and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. In the 20th century we didn't have genetically altered humans, so the only way to do it was to make some humans not reproduce, either by sterilization or murder. Now we are adding a new scientific option, but the end result is the same, only living humans that we consider 'perfect'. Humans need diversity, in the future there may be good reasons to keep about populations with traits we don't agree with now.
In the sense that anyone means when talking about Eugenics, its "sterilization or murder" not "improving the genetic quality of the human population".
And, its pretty safe to say the vast majority of the moral outrage was because of the sterilization and murder, not the concept of improving humanity.
The patent system has always been about keeping the little man down while further lining the pockets of the rich.
The inventor of the Telephone was Elisha Gray. It was his insight into variable resistance, leaked by the patent office to the rich Bell, which won Bell his patent. If Bell hadn't existed, Gray would have "invented" the telephone a mere hour later than Bell... Edison didn't discover electricity or invent the light bulb. Incandescent bulbs were in the European patent office years before Edison's bulb. He merely iterated on that design and with his wealth was the first one (of the many searching) to discover an economical flame retardant gas to fill the bulb with. If Edison hadn't been "invented" by his parents, all of the technological improvements he discovered would still exist. Why is this? This is because it is not artificial scarcity of ideas that drives mankind to create.
You mentioned Mechanical Engineering. Perhaps you've heard of the Scientific Method? Yes? Ah, well, you see: The hypothesis that Patents are Benificial and Not Harmful has NEVER been tested. You jest, but your statement is factually correct: The patent system HAS failed since its inception. No one tested the hypothesis... Wouldn't it be foolish to operate the world's technological economy based on untested hypotheses? Isn't that dangerous, not to mention unscientific? Especially considering that the Fashion and Automotive industries are not allowed design patents or copyright in the US and yet they are very innovative in design and it is their core selling point... So, we have a system which is proven to be harmful in some cases, and which is proven not to be necessary for innovation in many other cases. Where is the proof that the patent system is beneficial? THERE IS NONE.
There is no such thing as a lone "Genius". We all exist in the same problem space, we all find solutions in it. Why we grant the first to register a beneficial idea with a monopoly over it? Doesn't that mean everyone else who was working on that very same solution has now forfeit their R&D costs? I hypothesize that without a Patent System more people will create more solutions to more problems since they have no risk of their investment in research being ripped out from under them. Yes, there will be duplication, for that is how life itself functions.
Now, convince me I'm wrong and you're right. Prove that our patent system hasn't always been a failure. Let's do the damn experiment, since it's dangerous not to. We must abolish all patents and see if they are harmful or not. To do otherwise is too irresponsible to comprehend.
A scientist filing a patent?! For shame.
An overly-high IQ might not be a good thing, it's likely to make the kid a miserable outcast. Better to have an average-intelligence popular kid who will have lots of friends in college and make many connections with the children of rich kids, each one worth as much as a good solid degree, never mind the easy joke major he/she will have the luxury of studying.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Eugenics.
Ok, I see, so you made the same point I did, but I was too dense to see that.
I'd expect we'd be on it from the start, just a natural extension of all the forms of discrimination in use today...especially in HR departments.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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 is exactly the same as what they show in the movie Gattaca from 1999. How the hell was this patent granted?
brother who is part horse and a sister that is part cat? Can I, p-l-e-a-s-e?
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
Goddammit Affleck. First off, I hate all of your shitty movies. Phantoms was NOT the bomb yo, and I was relentlessly hoping you'd be blown out of an air lock in Armageddon. And has anyone seen fucking Reindeer Games? Holy Christ on a cracker, what a terrible movie. I could go for days about how shitty of an actor you are but the thing is Affleck---- YOU AREN'T A FUCKING ACTOR. This post has as much to do with you being a real actor as the strawman you threw up suggesting the AC said any fucking thing at all about making an Aryan nation. It is like you reverse Godwin'd the argument. When did you stop butt fucking Matt Damon nightly? That's a loaded question, identical in style to yours and just as fucking useless. DIAF.
And yeah guys, I know I'm feeding a troll but I wore out my mod points on the Tesla fire article.
ACs don't have mod points.
You do realize there are a lot of us, saying bad things about my second cousin won't hurt my feelings.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I only have so much sperm you insensitive clod!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)