I have a new column today on OnlySky. It’s about the prospect of genetic technology creating a new caste system, and what, if anything, we can do about it.
It’s easy to sequence the DNA of embryos conceived through IVF. We can use that technology to screen out the ones carrying genes for devastating disorders, which no one could object to.
But what happens when we don’t stop there, and start selecting for embryos carrying the genes that parents want? In a world of capitalism and rampant inequality, it’s inevitable that people will want to give their offspring every possible leg up. What happens when the rich and the privileged start creating custom-tailored children, selecting the genes that make them the tallest, the most handsome or the most intelligent? Should we embrace this brave new world of eugenics, or is this a Pandora’s box we don’t dare open?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter and the ability to post comments.
An American startup, Heliospect Genomics, charges prospective parents as much as $50,000 to screen embryos for desirable genetic traits, especially intelligence. According to undercover footage, they claim they can help parents select the embryos genetically predestined to be the smartest. And if Heliospect’s founders are to be believed, the first children selected through their screening process have already been born or will soon be.
Naturally, this is an opportunity available only to the wealthy. Heliospect only does the genetic screening; it doesn’t help create the embryos. Those have to be obtained through IVF, which costs tens of thousands to start with, on top of whatever Heliospect charges.
We don’t need to imagine the dystopias that might spring from this. Hollywood has already depicted sci-fi worlds with a genetic caste system, where the elite modify their offspring to be superior while the rest of us are an oppressed underclass. We’re barreling toward that future in reality, which is a terrifying prospect.
Have you seen Gattica?
Gattaca.
Not particularly apposite; the conceit there is that the genetically superior are privileged, and that the protagonist is not in that category but the tests let him through anyway.
cf. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/22/there-are-no-marching-morons/
There are a number of problems with this idea:
1) and foremost, is it actually possible to screen an embryo for intelligence? It’s not a simple thing to screen an actual born person for intelligence. For example, what *kind* of intelligence? Emotional? Social? Any of the others?
2) pretending for a moment it’s possible to screen for getting-into-Harvard intelligence, potential does not equal eventual. Any number of things can impact a person’s intelligence by the time they reach their teen years and start applying to college: nutrition; environmental hazards; accidents resulting in TBI or repeated concussions; undiscovered learning disabilities; any number of diseases including COVID (leading to long COVID), chicken pox, and measles; and many other factors.
Also, did GATTACA and Incorporated teach us nothing?!?
Yes.
Eugenics, by any other name.
Katydid @1 is correct. There *are* no genes or genetic sequence for intelligence: the field of psychology doesn’t even have a definition of what “intelligence” is. Ask 25 psychologists, you will get 25 different answers.
Also, as PZ is always saying, genes don’t work separately, the Mendelian model is quite discredited. Genes shape the environment and the enviroment shapes genes. It’s more a matter of complex neural networks, which can’t be gentically selected, interacting with each other and the environment. Also, anything can happen during fetal development, no matter what “genes” are there, developmental events decide what neural networks you end up with. Moreover, the networks are almost infinitely plastic most of people’s lives.
I think that we’ll never get to being able to select fetuses for “genetic” traits (at least, I hope so!) This company is a scam, and I hope that they con a lot of rich and snobby suckers into shelling out vast sums to them. And, after all, once the child is born that they’ve “genetically” selected as the best at everything, the parents can’t give the child back or sue for breach of contract.:)
…or is this a Pandora’s box we don’t dare open?
That’s not really an option — whatever “box” there is to open, someone will open it, so the rest of us have no choice but to learn as much as we can about it and be as prepared as possible to deal with whatever consequences ensue.
And yes, this company is a scam. Is there even ONE reputable paper they can cite that specifies which genes determine “intelligence?”
Also, one problem I foresee with any sort of custom-cloned-babies business is: MONOCULTURE. Most people who want specially-designed babies will be asking for whatever traits are “in fashion” at the time. So if, in a given year, Henry Cavill is considered the sexiest man and Scarlett Johansson the sexiest woman, most parents who order custom-made babies will want clones of Scarlett or Henry. And then if a pandemic gets loose for which Scarlett or Henry didn’t have natural immunity, then all the Scarlett or Henry clones will get sick and die pretty much at once.
And of course it’s a pretty safe bet that a lot of the genetically-engineered embryos won’t turn out as planned, and will have to be discarded. So how are all those pro-business and anti-regulation Republicans going to address that issue?
@#1, #2:
Yeah, there’s no genes for intelligence. People have been looking for decades with all the resources of the Human Genome Project, and nothing with a correlation better than the margin of error. What there is, is maybe a couple dozen different genes that together (if balanced properly) give the neural potential that, with appropriate training over the years of growing up, will produce something we would normally call intelligence.
And I say ‘balance’ because a lot of ‘mental disorders’ are normal parts of thinking taken to unbalanced extremes. There are reasons why we have correlations between, say, creativity and schizophrenia. The brain is definitely in the category of ‘frankly, it’s incredible that things work as often as they do’.
@#3:
Monoculture is a definite issue. As the issue of ‘what happens in the next generation’. Unless the next generation tweaks their kids again, all sorts of potentially weird crosses could come out.
Years back I wrote a game module for a TTRPG called ‘Blue Planet’, which had technology like this available (the game kind of crossed ‘cyberpunk’ with ‘new gold rush’). The CEO of one of the big exploitation companies tried creating an ‘optimized’ clone child to take over the company. Unfortunately for the sociopathic CEO in question, one of the things he optimized for was ‘understanding how other people think (to make it easier to con them)’ and so the child quickly figured out just how much of an asshole his ‘father’ was and promptly made a break for it as soon as he could.
It is astounding to me that anyone is born “normal” when there is so much that can go wrong between genetics and environment.
The point about a monoculture was very thought-provoking. In the real world, we’re in danger of losing commercial bananas to a virus because they’re a monoculture. At one point we lost a previous strain to a virus.
On the other hand, how many people would take advantage of this “designer baby” service? A thousand? It’s not cheap and private insurance is not going to cover it. In a world of 8 billion people, a thousand isn’t even a drop in a bucket.
I’m surprised we’re not hearing more of an outcry from the anti-choice crowd about this. Remember Sarah Palin and her loudmouth family, who whipped up outrage about Down Syndrome screening that’s a normal part of maternal care in the USA? The anti-choicers took up the crusade against the “genocide” of embryos with that particular genetic defect. Interestingly, there’s no such outcry against screening against Tay-Sachs, another genetic defect that promises a short, painful, miserable existence and many parents choose not to continue such a doomed pregnancy.
Obvious question back: how much does it cost? Because there are currently, per Forbes, 2,781 people in the world who are BILLIONAIRES. My guess at how many of them would take advantage of it would be “all of them” assuming the cost was less than $500m per kid. Because you might think you want a yacht, or a mansion, or ffs a spaceship, but all of that weird acquisitiveness can’t compete with what a parent wants for the child they’re planning.
And if the cost is “merely” up there with the cost of say, a Ferrari, then again, you have to ask how many people who can afford a Ferrari (not people who HAVE one, people who have enough money to) would sooner have a smarter, more conscientious kid? And again, I have to assume that with a small error bar, the answer is “all of them”.
And yes, that’s a drop in a bucket. It’s a drop of VX nerve agent in a bucket you have to drink out of.
Just the existence of billionaires in such numbers is having a measurable worsening effect on the world. Just their ability to secure generational wealth for their kids is baking that inequality in for decades, even centuries to come, barring global revolution. But let those people make their kids even slightly MORE genetically superior to the hoi polloi? Aw hell no. It’ll start slow and choke the planet.
That’s the aspiration, that’s the fear. But it’s not the reality.
Again: cf. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/22/there-are-no-marching-morons/
(There are no marching geniuses, either)