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Scanning Embryos For Super-Intelligent Kids Is On the Horizon
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hsu, a professor in theoretical physics at Michigan State University, has an article discussing the genetic underpinnings of intelligence, and how our understanding of it will eventually lead to smarter children. Researchers have detected genes that influence cognitive ability, but the effect of any one gene is very small — less than 1 IQ point at best. Genetically modifying such genes is unlikely to happen any time soon, but our ability to analyze an embryo's genome is becoming quick and cheap. As we isolate more and more genes that affect intelligence, this means prospective parents will soon be able to analyze a batch of zygotes and figure out which ones are likely to be the smartest. Hsu says a batch of 10 zygotes will probably have an IQ range of 15 points or more. As our understanding of intelligence genetics grows, that range will only expand. He adds, "The corresponding ethical issues are complex and deserve serious attention in what may be a relatively short interval before these capabilities become a reality."
...what happens when they can detect which genes make you more likely to be a Republican.
Khaaaaaaaan!
Is 15 IQ points really a meaningful difference "in the real world'?
Now we can get back to to the slippery slope. What about killing off girl embryos or blacks or obese, etc etc.
Even if we do figure out even a few of the hundreds of factors that contribute to our (currently valued form of) intelligence, without a way to effectively cause the optimal configuration to happen, you're at best encouraging abortions of otherwise genetic-defect-free children in favor of another chance at one that would be smarter.
So pretty soon society will contain 60% autists with serious psychological problems, 20% aspergers and other forms of high functioning autism, and 10% normal human beings? Yep. We must really select on IQ only ...
Ah, but then we can also just select for embryos that will be apathetic about the ethical issues surrounding this procedure. In a few generations... problem solved!
We need a few more Einsteins, I say. But if we start designer babies... Let me be the first to say... Khaaaaan!!!!!!!!!
If I were to choose a child from a huge batch of zygotes, I'd want the one that's generally disposed to be happy - easy going, social, even tempered, and not too fussy growing up. But apparently, geneticists aren't working on identifying the genetic correlates of those traits, even though we know that they are just as heritable as intelligence.
I don't think that I'll have kids, but if I did, the thing I'd want most is that they grow up happy. I would work hard to make sure they grow up in an environment that encourages it. But genetics contributes a lot to happiness outcomes, and if I were offered well-tested genetic help, I wouldn't refuse it. Maxing out their intelligence would not be at all high on my list of priorities. Is this a weird attitude? I thought it was a kind of typical parent attitude, but apparently, geneticists have different ideas.
I just hope the "in-valids" will still be able to find nice janitorial positions...
For anyone that hasn't seen Gattaca, you can catch a small clip here: http://www.wingclips.com/movie...
Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for future eugenics. What if someone like Newton or Einstein didn't have the perfect genetic signature for IQ (as we *think* we understand it), and instead the parents select for a more 'intelligent' specimen with a higher IQ, but one that lacks creativity and 'genius' or a million other factors that would be important for a child's success?
Example: Hawking: 150ish IQ, John Sununu 190. (Granted those are 'internet' numbers, so take with a grain of salt.) Point being, IQ is not everything.
One of the ethical questions (and there are multiple here) is with discarding embryos after they are created. Do we have the technology to filter the sperm and eggs before creating the embryos to achieve the same effect? Or do you need the whole genome together to make a good evaluation? Filtering ahead of time would alleviate some of the abortion concerns with such technologies.
Sure, the first thought most people have, consciously or subconsciously, is "Would my parents have kept me if they'd had this option?" and the whole concept thus makes us very uncomfortable...
However, looking at humanity as a whole and taking into account that we pretty much switched natural selection off... can we actually afford not to do this?
I mean, billions of sperm and thousands of eggs never get to be a fertilized anything. Of the fertilized eggs, about a third or so actually manage to become a clump of cells trying to become an embryo and of the actual embryos, quite a few never make it any further. Choosing them for looks isn't very ethical, seeing as look are very much dependent on the current fashion, but physical fitness and intelligence aren't quite the same thing. Seeing as most 'potential' human beings never make it, I don't quite share the moral dilemma in choosing the best of the best.
Raising not only humanities average intelligence but much more importantly the lower end seems a phenomenal gain to me.
Where's your citation for the study that shows this correlation?
Positive side: Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon"
Negative side: Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"
If we don't do the first, we get the second. There's a reasonable argument that natural selection isn't working anymore, and in fact may have been reversed. At one point, poor eyesight or ADD meant the sabre-tooth edited you out of the gene pool. So, we'll have to add the chlorine ourselves. I'm not sure we should be editing genes directly, but selecting the best gametes from the available pool (for a given set of parents) à la Heinlein almost HAS to be done at some point.
In all honesty, why aren't we already doing this? The problem with the world is dumb people. If we can selectively breed out dumb people, how would the world be worse?
Genetically modifying such genes is unlikely to happen any time soon
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
Science understands when life begins quite well -- they just don't includexthe purely religious concept of "ensoulment", nor the equally religious concept that there's a god out there getting mad about it.
Even if there were, the logic still holds -- God has no more right to force his will on you than any dictator (or socialist, for that matter.)
You ALL are part of the problem.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That only happens when someone matures. Many people are making it well into their 40's and 50's without maturing and growing up enough to become a conservative.
I'm 51 years old. I "matured" into a fiscal conservative a long ago. I registered to vote when I turned 18, and have voted in every election since.
In 2012, and now again in 2010, I am voting a straight Democratic ticket. What the Republican party has become, makes me sick.
Quantifying something as dubious as IQ ... and then linking to genes ... makes astrology look respectable.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
In 2012, and now again in 2010...
Wow. It is still early in my time zone, but wow. Did I really just post that???
I'm sure that Slashdot is full of munchkins who always try to max out the stats of their characters, but please, don't bring that attitude with you when you're designing a baby. If you want the best for your kids - and I hope you do - you should basically do the opposite of what you would do for D&D - prioritize charisma, wisdom and health (CON). Don't worry so much about STR, DEX and INT. All of these traits have genetic correlates.
Wouldn't the embryos change by the simple action of observing it?
So environment has a bigger influence that what we've measured in the Genome.
If only we tackled the less expensive solutions first.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Stuff like this is a pretty stark reminder that we're just a bag of chemicals, even though we've evolved the capability to do things like...post on Slashdot.
This kind of thing is done in a somewhat limited fashion with high-risk pregnancies/IVF to select for embryos that don't have Down syndrome or other profound mental handicaps. And if an ultrasound indicates something wrong further along, amniocentesis is performed. Those tests are easier because it's the absence or malformation of a chromosome, and they're less controversial because the difference between a kid with 10 fewer IQ points in the normal range and a Down syndrome or Fragile X kid is huge. Someone who is otherwise normal might not be as smart, but someone with a mental handicap is never going to have a full life and be a hardship on their family.
Given what we know about genetics now, I actually don't think selecting out traits that are clearly undesirable is a bad thing as long as there's some randomization and some things left to chance. 100 years ago, we only understood that "something" was responsible for traits, not that a particular sequence of nucleotides in your DNA causes the cells they create to behave differently. The problem is that there are still lots of religious people who reject all of this and blame diseases and defects on God's will. Not that Gattaca's a good example, but the main character's defects were a direct result of his parents rejecting genetic engineering and having kids the "old fashioned way," similar to religious people having a huge family, getting a couple of kids with issues, and just shrugging it off as unavoidable because, well, you know, God.
Do you live in Florida by chance? ;)
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I know some scary smart people but they seem to lack day to day common sense and sometimes act like twits. Now imagine a beowulf cluster of these running the country. Were doomed....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Using a 15 SD scale, with Einsten-level IQ person coming up every 31560 cases, we are at the moment at about 228136 Einsteins.
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.co...
But screw Einsteins.
We are currently at about 27.6 MILLION people with an IQ of 140.
That's like something between a Nepal and Peru of 140 IQ people.
And that's not counting those with the IQ above that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you do not know your requirements, how do you know what you are supposed to do? Enough said....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Just as cameras put on ten pounds.
My ability to optimize a character in video games can finally translate to parenthood.
if the crash of 2008 has taught us anything its that we really dont value intelligence. ask an unemployed biologist or chemist how their career choice worked out, or better yet, a recently graduated yet unemployed due to lack of experience computer programmer. In the future we can scan for the most intelligent minds on the planet but that still wont prevent them from being birthed into a society where they'll be a Ph.D stuffing food into a burger trench sack until 3 in the morinng or stacking shit tickets at wallyworld.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Ahum, Stephen Hsu is a theoretical physicist, the breed that seems to think that everything else in science is a subset of their discipline and thus within their realm of understanding. Which is rarely the case.
Meanwhile, the genetic researchers have already started serious discussions about the fact that since we now can fix some defects already on the embryo level, should we? If you cull them, then that discussion will be controlled by hapless physicists...
Fine, so we can't prove when life begins.
It began with the Big Bang. Everything is alive. Some lifeforms are just more animated, and talkative, that's all.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If genius is genetically linked with a sense of humour that could best be described as "Perverted Three Stooges", I'm Einstein's smarter offspring.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
When the country is owned and operated by the stupid, does it really help to be smart? If you're full of a room of people where the "leader" says that 1+1 = 3, and everyone else says "yes sir, you are correct". If you're the smart one and say that 1+1 actually equals 2 - in some sense you're actually going to be wrong. We don't respect the thinkers. We elect the charismatic ones with the team mentality that don't have half a brain in their head. Those who get ahead are the ones who actually follow the rules the best - not the ones that buck the trend and show that things aren't necessarily as they seem. I have school aged children, and I can tell you that success in school has to do more with conformity than it does with intelligence. The teachers reward the kids that sit there and take notes (even if they're useless). You get rewarded for doing the problem on the test exactly as the teacher outlined. If you were to solve the problem with some brilliant and novel approach, you might be penalized. If Einstein were alive today, he wouldn't even be recognized. he'd be some bum working on a team just like the rest of us. We've modified the system so that "anyone can do it" - whatever "it" may be - and if you don't follow the procedure, then you're not doing your job well.
Plus or minus?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Do you live in Florida by chance? ;)
No, smartypants, a couple of hours west of there...
Except that the Republican party in its current incarnation is more akin to a special interest group for the wealthy and multinational corporations. To that end their politics and governing style is pretty radical.
But you seem to think that Republicans are conservative in the same way they were 40 years ago, when that's just not the case. Furthermore, equating maturity with getting your facts from Fox News is pretty immature.
This Sig does not Exist.
Wide adoption of this kind of gene-tampering would probably more likely help reduce the number of stupid than increase the number of high-IQ individuals.
It's not a pill that a woman would take and instantly give birth to a (well adjusted) genius baby.
It's a time and money sink for the family, and somewhat of a torture procedure for women.
On top of that, it is recognition and acceptance of one's own inferiority - for both parents.
And then there's the whole thing regarding the abortion issues.
Those dumb enough to try to fine-tune their future families through this procedure would probably end up never forming a family.
Either through repeated attempts to "score higher" and thus delaying pregnancy, or through breakup of relationships due to one or more of the issues above.
And that's not taking in account the possibility of the procedure simply failing in any step from fertilization to the offspring growing up and becoming a productive member of the society.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...there won't be anyone to run supermarkets, farmers or truck drivers to deliver food to anyone. Thus, while the entire population is reading slashdot, they will starve, die and go extinct.
Perhaps the diversity of the gene pool as it exists today is smarter than any algorithm we could come up with to serve all the changing needs of our population to have the best chance of survival. It's clear to me that creating an entire generation of "geniuses", super models and super athletes is not going to do that.
We'll make great pets
While reading the article, one thought kept coming back: what if (some of) those genes coding for intelligence have some other negative effect? When you select all those highly intelligent embryos, will they grow up to all have e.g. crooked teeth, tiny penises, or autism?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Is that the smarter babies will have higher incidences of schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, depression, and drug addiction, things usually associated with genius. Even Einstein had his problems. Source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/wh...
Selecting for kids with even higher intelligence might mean they have more severe mental problems.
This Sig does not Exist.
Tip- When you're going for a "funny" moderation, don't be so over the top. It's not vaudeville here.
HEIL EUROPA!
I thought we were supposed to stay away from Europa.
Because this is how you get Lex Luthors!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Every parent will have a "Sheldon Cooper" as a child . . .
Maybe the selection will go the other way . . . sometimes a smart child is more of a challenge than the parents are looking for.
Correct. And when people talk about this, they mean "relative to today's standards". And that's a perfectly reasonable way of talking about it.
But this is not a zero-sum game where it only matters how smarter you are than the next guy. It really does have an impact if EVERYONE is smarter on the whole.
Fun fact: If we never re-adjusted the IQ scale and somehow compared the IQ scores of people today to everyone in history, we would score higher then those of the past. People have gotten smarter. And this is a good thing. While it might mean that someone that could easily pick up orbital mechanics might be the dumbest person in the room and be forced to sweep floors for a living, it means good things for society, janitors included. Because they can play Kerbal when they get home.
Every month or so we get a new article on a new eugenics topic. Detecting "smart" embryos is a lie. Brain development may start in the embryonic phase, but this article from today demonstrates very clearly that development continues long after birth. It further indicates that childhood development has far greater impact on IQ than the embryonic phase. In other words, which scientist is lying?
Detecting a deficiency in an embryo is surely possible, but this is not the same as detecting high IQs which does not relate to "intelligence" which is subjective. As you point out, we don't even know what "high IQ" would really look like. Albert Einstein was not a great student or model person early on, Aristotle was known as a prick, and Archimedes by all accounts was completely frigging nuts.
My idea of a highly intelligent person is Socrates and I think Hawking is average. That is my opinion, and I surely hope that there are theoretical physicists that have a different opinion of who is smarter. The world needs different people to be smart at different things. What we don't need is people buying into this bullshit which ultimately leads to population control. We have enough morality to argue about for that already without a fabrication.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"No mom I don't need to do my homework, the doctor says I'm already a genius."
What does being sick about the Republican party have to do with voting straight-ticket Democrat?
The answer is, "nothing." There is absolutely never any excuse whatsoever to vote "straight ticket" anything, except coincidentally because you independently evaluated the candidates for each office and your favorite candidates in each case happened to all be from the same party.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Don't worry, we will definitely attempt no landing there.
Did anyone else notive the fact that this dude's a professor in theoretical physics? He wouldn't know a genome from a hole in the wall, why is everyone taking what he says for granted.
The bare facts are we have no clear definition for intelligence yet, never mind being able to accurately predict this difficult to define trait in a developing embryo.
How about we look for the gene's that cause one to be an uncooperative jerk? I'd be more likely to have a kid if I had some assurance they wouldn't inherit the rather prevalent trait of being anti-social jerks on my father's side of things (and his father). It seems to be getting attenuated through the generations, but I honestly am in the camp of wanting my kid to take after my wife and not me.
if you are young and a conservative you have no heart and that if you are old and a liberal you have no brain.
I might add that mothers are far more conservative politically than single unmarried women.
The answer is, "nothing." There is absolutely never any excuse whatsoever to vote "straight ticket" anything, except coincidentally because you independently evaluated the candidates for each office and your favorite candidates in each case happened to all be from the same party.
Yes, there most certainly is a reason to do so--to affect the balance of power between the parties.
Prior to 2012, I always evaluated candidates individually. The last two elections, no. The last two elections, I felt it was more important to try to send a message to the Republican party about continuing to nominate idiots obsessed with irrelevant outdated right-wing religious beliefs.
If the election has runoffs (rather than immediately awarding the win to a candidate with only a plurality of votes) then voting for a third-party accomplishes that just as well.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Just like the movie Gattaca
I can barely handle the smart kids I already have...and got them without tilting the odds. Do you know what it's like to lose an argument to your four-year-old?
Any public money this guy is getting should be taken away. We need to be curing cancer.
America is a de facto two party system. A vote for the republicans is a vote against the democrats, and vice versa. Third parties and independence have only a small presence in state politics, and a negligible presence at the national level.
Science tells us that life began about four billion years ago, and hasn't ended since. An individual doesn't 'come to life' at some point. The egg is alive, the sperm is alive, the zygote is alive - it never stops being alive. Science can pinpoint a few key points in the process, like the formation of a new uniqueish* individual genetic code, but that's all. A genome is not an individual.
*Baring identical twins and chimeras.
Intelligence is a lot like money.
Those who've always had an abundance generally either think its no big deal, because they've never suffered the limitations of not having enough, or look down on those with less and consider them inferior.
Those in the middle have enough to see the benefits of having more, and want to improve themselves in order to get more.
At the bottom this analogy falters, but I think the point remains. It's easy to dismiss making the rest of the population smarter when you're already smart and not suffering the limitations imposed on those with less to work with. I find the notion that we shouldn't meddle and just leave those who draw the short genetic-straw to be cruel and self-serving. If the lowest common denominator is raised, chance are the whole society benefits, the world becomes a better, more thoughtful place, and the overall pie grows accordingly.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's still far superior to voting for evil scumbags. Besides, part of the cause is that people vote for evil scumbags and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough people vote for third parties, at the very least, it will send a message to The One Party.
People have gotten smarter.
How does that follow? IQ = intelligence? Are there seriously still people repeating that tired myth?
I am extremely doubtful that you can determine a long-dead person's IQ if they weren't around to take any such tests. Then again, what else can you expect from soft science, or the media who report on it? IQ has all sorts of criticisms, but that certainly doesn't stop people from treating it as fact.
From an ideal standpoint it looks as if super-intelligent kids is something every parent would want. However there are some drawbacks. First, IQ is only a rough measure of intelligence, there are many factors involved and success in life is not immediately linked to IQ. See Unabomber, etc. Also super intelligent kids may not be that easy to handle. They typically hate school and may actually do poorly in school. They demand much more attention from parents (more activities, more time with them, etc). There is plenty of evidence that IQ is also linked to the environment kids grow in, so simply selecting the gene stuff and thinking this may be enough will not work. Intelligence is also linked to curiosity and independence and so perhaps to more risky behaviours. Finally there is a correlation with very high IQ and some severe forms of mental illness.
All in all, there is a cluster of reasons why the average IQ of the population is 100. High intelligence is not always that comfortable. Think of Sir Winston Churchill, hero of the battle of England, most effective Prime Minister in a time of war, Nobel prize winner in litterature. He had severe depression all his life (his "black dog"). I agree we should raise the general IQ though, cautiously.
Reminds me of Dr. Bashir.... But would our society be more willing to embrace genetically enhanced people than in the Star Trek universe? If I recall correctly, it was outlawed in the federation.
Having an intelligent kid is pointless without a parent that gives it attention in the proper way.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Seeing as most 'potential' human beings never make it, I don't quite share the moral dilemma in choosing the best of the best.
Raising not only humanities average intelligence but much more importantly the lower end seems a phenomenal gain to me.
You are assuming that parents would choose the embryo with the highest IQ. I'm wondering if a lot of people wouldn't be more likely to pick the one in the middle, because they don't want their child to be a "nerd".
Voting either Republican or Democrat is a sign of either ignorance, or a lack of personal ethics.
I thought it was a consequence of the stupid first-past-the-post voting system used in the US.
Me, I think the majority just lack morals.
My other UID is three digits.
Which is why I'd absolutely love to see something besides plurality of votes in US elections. My city has a ranked-choice voting system (although, without primaries, the number of choices got out of hand last election), and I'd love to see it on higher levels. After the Minnesota gubernatorial election that Jesse Ventura won (as an independent), I heard a lot of people starting sentences with "At least it wasn't", with either the Democrat or Republican candidate following.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It would seem you answered your own question.
Given the absolute What AGW? position required for all Republican politicians, those who view AGW with any degree of worry at all are pretty much compelled to vote against them, unless the opposition supports something like explicit genocide.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Except that the Republican party in its current incarnation is more akin to a special interest group for the wealthy and multinational corporations. To that end their politics and governing style is pretty radical. But you seem to think that Republicans are conservative in the same way they were 40 years ago, when that's just not the case. Furthermore, equating maturity with getting your facts from Fox News is pretty immature.
Good point; given the shifts in party position, I'd say that any genetic influence on party affiliation has shifted from comfort or discomfort with novelty, to decision making by authority vs decision making by individual judgement.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
This will generate a lot of competition and cause a lot of abortions!
I think you missed my point: the universe of possibilities for voting "against Republicans" encompasses more than just Democrats.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think you missed my point: the universe of possibilities for voting "against Republicans" encompasses more than just Democrats.
touche.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.