Should we start genetically engineering "perfect" babies?

[Chou Toshio]

Saying that a certain trait is always not successful is a very myopic way of thinking. K-type reproductive strategists tend to have fewer progeny due to their prolonged lifespans and high maintenance of their children. As the number of children being cared for rises, the difficulty of raising rises exponentially. Therefore, in order to produce optimal progeny that has a higher chance of being a suitable, well-adjusted mate likely to reproduce one must limit the amount of children they have to a number that has at minimum care costs that match the returns the child produces. Having as many children as possible is, therefore, not the greatest idea.

All of that is completely irrelevant because of the real facts of reproduction within first world countries.


High Intelligence / High Income Reproductive Model

Model:
-Very high expectancy to live to reproductive age.
-1-2 offspring

Cons/Risks:
-frequent adoption
-High risk of offspring being obsessed by career and not marrying/reproducing
-High risk of offspring getting complexes / disorders preventing them from reproducing
-High risk of children being so obsessed at finding the "perfect" partner that they never get a partner
-Higher risk of your female offspring becoming strong feminists who scare off men (and not marrying before the age of 40)
-High risk of offspring choosing a homosexual life style
-High risk of your children adopting
-High risk of your children deciding children are not important
-Less cultural commitment to marriage and child rearing
-High risk of unsuccessful reproduction because of low expected birth rates
-Lower incidence of un-planned pregnancy due to higher use of contraception

(if you have fewer offspring, every problem that could potentially happen to your offspring becomes an even greater risk).


Low Intelligence / Low Income Reproductive Model

Model:
-Much higher chance of having 3-5+ children
-Still very high chance of living to the age of 18
-Very unlikely to adopt
-higher incidence of unplanned pregnancy due to less proper use of contraception.

Cons:
-Higher incidence of early death related to involvement with crime.

(All problems represent less risk when spread over several offspring).


TL;DR, even if you come from a low income family in a 1st world company, your odds of living to 18 is still very good! You are also more likely to find a partner and reproduce.

It is almost impossible to argue that in terms of reproduction, high income model is superior to low income model. Low income model absolutely has more reproductive success.

Even if high income model was extremely successful in reliably producing 2, intelligent, well-educated high income offspring--by sheer numbers in the race to reproduce, odds are that those 2 children, or their children, would eventually choose a mate from the low income model. In this model it's impossible for higher intelligence to emerge as the more prolific trait.

 

[elcheeso]

All of that is completely irrelevant because of the real facts of reproduction within first world countries.


High Intelligence / High Income Reproductive Model
Cons/Risks:
-frequent adoption
-High risk of offspring being obsessed by career and not marrying/reproducing
-High risk of offspring getting complexes / disorders preventing them from reproducing
-High risk of children being so obsessed at finding the "perfect" partner that they never get a partner
-Higher risk of your female offspring becoming strong feminists who scare off men (and not marrying before the age of 40)
-High risk of offspring choosing a homosexual life style
-High risk of your children adopting
-High risk of your children deciding children are not important
-Less cultural commitment to marriage and child rearing
-High risk of unsuccessful reproduction because of low expected birth rates

HA! Oh man, Chou, you're good. But maybe you could stop making shit up and deciding these things are necessarily associated with high income people. Even ignoring the "choosing" aspect... I've never seen any stats associated with high income people having more gay kids than low income, even as a stereotype. I've seen one or two papers suggesting that the younger children in the family are more likely to be gay, which would suggest that larger (aka "poor") families have more gay kids (though I have no idea whether that study was even peer reviewed). Care to reference that? Or are you just spinning shit out of whole cloth, like... pretty much every other suggestion on that list? High risk doesn't even have a meaning when the ratio of ALL adoptions to live births is 3/100... and that's in the US, where adoptions are probably the highest in the world. Other Western countries are at 1/100 or under, and adoption includes stepchildren. High risk, indeed.

 

[M. Rock]

My guess is that it refers to high intelligence/high income families being more socially progressive and accepting of homosexuality (don't quote me on this).
I wouldn't know if the term high risk would be appropriate, though.

 

[Chou Toshio]

I am spinning opinions together without looking up facts. I'm not going to fucking look up facts for a discussion thread in a Pokemon forum. lol Go look up your own damn statistics if you care to "know for sure."

I'm going to give you a basic frame of thought, and you can decide whether it makes sense or not.

 

[elcheeso]

My guess is that it refers to the fact that high intelligence/high income families are more socially progressive and accepting of homosexuality (don't quote me on this).
I wouldn't know if the term high risk would be appropriate, though.

The words high risk don't even mean anything. The stats on homosexuality are almost as low as the ones on adoption, ranging between 1% (low estimate IMO) and 8%. But yeah, I admit I also guessed what you did. I'm guessing the assumption is that gay people don't want to have kids (which is just... wrong) and that poor people would shame them into marrying the opposite sex and having billions of children while they bang the same sex on the side or something. Personally, the assumption comes off as stupid as suggesting that sterile heterosexuals are by necessity not going to want kids and have no way of making that happen even if they did. Chou forgets one thing that is also available to people with a lot of money... IVF.

 

[ButteredToast]

I want my child to be just like Dennis Rodman. That guy's the shit.

 

[Myzozoa]

I think that it's fine to screen for terminal diseases, but inherent in any outline of eugenics procedures is an assumption about what traits are desirable and which aren't. Such preferences are socially constructed and so there is a danger that communities will decide to select based on what are essentially personal prejudices.

I'm horrified by the biological determinism being thrown around in this thread. Your genes don't decide who you are, they don't determine your sexuality, they are just one element of how each of us forms an identity. And that's kind of why eugenics is a joke, the only people who would really get suckered in by eugenic procedures also think that their genes made them who they are. They clearly don't think people are 'created' equally, or that effort decides how far one gets in achieving their goals. They'll probably fuck up their kids through bad parenting, because after all, it's only the genes that matter right?

You can't make perfect children, or even better children, because those adjectives don't exist in any objective sense (bar afflicted children vs un-afflicted children and even that is very hazy in some instances).

Also Chou, you don't even know what feminism means, why are you invoking it in this discussion?

 

[JimBob]

i think he was kidding hotshots

here's the thing though... that was actually a pretty good analogy. Sure, Pokemon is a way stripped down version of human genetics (like... way stripped down), but genetic engineering is just attempting to get rid of the 'bad' genes and promote the 'good' ones, in order to create a more satisfactory product.

Isn't that the point of genetic engineering?

 

[mattj]

I don't mind genetically engineering my pet.

I do worry about genetically engineering a person.

On the one hand, parents should be allowed to make numerous decisions for their kids. We get them shots. We get them medication. We choose which primary school they go to.

But there are some decisions parents shouldn't be allowed to make for their children. Who they should marry comes to mind.

Tinkering with their genes just seems a bit too far for me right now. It's something that would have lifelong consequences. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal to some people, but I just can't shake the feeling that its crossing the line.

 

[Eraddd]

Myzozoa is on the ball here. Genetics only go so far as to determine who you are as a person; after determining your bodily traits, propensity for disease, etc (and even then, genetic manipulation isn't what your bio class taught you with F_x and F_y dominant and recessive genes it's more complicated than that surprise!), other elements of your actual life shapes you as a person, based on your experiences, your environment of growth etc. Eugenics is nice because to an extent we can prevent some of the more dangerous conditions that negatively affect us such as preventing PKU or Cystic Fibrosis which are debilitating but it shouldn't necessarily define as who you really are in the end with the infinite permutations of experiences and environments there are available for an individual.

 

[v]

my kid's gonna have four arms so he never loses a fight and can play halo co-op by himself

 

[Chou Toshio]

I have to lol at how quickly people try to make things an emotional or political argument xD

I was only pointing out that from an evolutionary perspective,

higher intelligence =/= more fit

I'd argue:

Fashion model beauty =/= more fit
pro athlete strength =/= more fit
high creativity =/= more fit

not necessarily

It seems pretty foolish to tamper with the human genome (outside genetic illness, etc.), when it is not at all obvious about what constitutes a "better" human being.

 

[xenu]

i have to say i agree with chou for the most part. the fact that a single gene can govern multiple, complex attributes - you can't just magically make a kid "more intelligent" without having some sort of consequences elsewhere - means that altering genes without fully understanding the traits they control can have widespread, even fractal repercussions on the entire population.

i hate to bring this up, but consider, for instance, how autism is often linked to high intelligence and creativity. if all conditions on the autism spectrum were somehow bred out of the human genome, wouldn't the population, to some extent, be deprived of its greatest scientists and visionaries? obviously, not every great thinker or progressive is autistic - but it seems that most of them aren't always neurotypical.

it's necessary to preserve variety as a sort of "buffer" or "fall-back" in case things go horribly wrong.

 

[elcheeso]

i hate to bring this up, but consider, for instance, how autism is often linked to high intelligence and creativity. if all conditions on the autism spectrum were somehow bred out of the human genome, wouldn't the population, to some extent, be deprived of its greatest scientists and visionaries? obviously, not every great thinker or progressive is autistic - but it seems that most of them aren't always neurotypical.

Bolded is a stereotype. There's actually a relatively high chance (over 25% I believe? I could be off there) of some mental retardation/delayed development associated with autism-related disorders... Asperger's being an exception to that.

 

[Chou Toshio]

I agree with what Xenu said about variety... but in my statement I wasn't even worried about side affects like autism or other disorders.

I mean that even if you had pure, unfettered, no-strings-attached intelligence, it doesn't equate to being a purely desirable thing.

 

[Improbability]

Leave it at screening for diseases.
I prefer humanity with all of its flaws.

 

[PK Gaming]

Should we or should we not is irrelevant.

We're going to it eventually. We won't be able to help ourselves, it's just a matter of time.

Evolutionary success is having the most progeny.
High intelligence is most often averse to producing a lot of progeny.
Therefore, high intelligence is not a trait that is evolutionarily successful.

*fucking swoon*

 

[billymills]

The most important evolutionary quality is variety, how do you engineer for that?

 

[Jorgen]

Evolutionary success is having the most progeny.
High intelligence is most often averse to producing a lot of progeny.
Therefore, high intelligence is not a trait that is evolutionarily successful.

Okay so this is pretty clearly an exaggeration and a bit of a joke, but there is a hint of sincerity in there. If intelligence wasn't important we wouldn't spend 9 months incubating a baby, dangerously passing its big-ass head between our females' legs, and having that child be helpless for about 2 years after because we still need even more intelligence.

Also evolutionary success isn't just about having progeny, it's about having genes that propagate in the long run. Which means having not only having many progeny but also having progeny that themselves can propagate, and so on for more and more generations.

 

[faint]

what do you all consider a "PERFECT" baby.

 

[Nastyjungle]

Cons/Risks:
-frequent adoption
-High risk of offspring being obsessed by career and not marrying/reproducing
-High risk of offspring getting complexes / disorders preventing them from reproducing
-High risk of children being so obsessed at finding the "perfect" partner that they never get a partner
-Higher risk of your female offspring becoming strong feminists who scare off men (and not marrying before the age of 40)
-High risk of offspring choosing a homosexual life style
-High risk of your children adopting
-High risk of your children deciding children are not important
-Less cultural commitment to marriage and child rearing
-High risk of unsuccessful reproduction because of low expected birth rates
-Lower incidence of un-planned pregnancy due to higher use of contraception




(if you have fewer offspring, every problem that could potentially happen to your offspring becomes an even greater risk).

i really hope you are joking when you say these are cons/risks

if not then jesus christ

edit: also i get that we are mostly talking from a purely biological standpoint, but that's hardly productive when talking about humans because we are very clearly pretty complex beings so this method of thinking isnt very applicable

i also think most of you don't really understand how genetics and our current capabilities to alter them work or how limited they are, or that the nurture side of the "nature and nurture" idea of what makes a person a person is a HUGE factor in their outcome as an adult

 

[frogoholic101]

Bolded is a stereotype. There's actually a relatively high chance (over 25% I believe? I could be off there) of some mental retardation/delayed development associated with autism-related disorders... Asperger's being an exception to that.

You're completely right, about 1/4 to 1/3 of autistic people have very low IQs and cannot function very well without professional assistance.
Agreeing for Chou for the most part.

 

[Glen]

what do you all consider a "PERFECT" baby.

 

[v]

 

[6A9 Ace Matador]

hey here's a crazy idea: how about adopting one of the many children in need of a home instead? or are we this fucking selfish