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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.)
Are you suggesting that we need knowledge of genetics to relegate the masses to modern serfdom?
Challenge accepted.
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!
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!”
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
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
You know that in many cultures lots of female babys are aborted as there is immense societal pressure to have a Boy.
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 love that movie, but every time I hear him talking about his heart and how it's supposed to fail at some point and he talking to Uma Thurman and says "but mine is 30,000 beats overdue." I can't help but do the math and think, "oh, he was supposed to die earlier that morning?"
30,000 beats / 60 bpm = 500 min = 8 hours 18 min.
Sometimes I hate my brain.
Yeah, good thing we don't live in a hyper-capitalist hellhole with a massively top-heavy income distribution
OH WAIT
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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.
Ok, I see, so you made the same point I did, but I was too dense to see that.
brother who is part horse and a sister that is part cat? Can I, p-l-e-a-s-e?