Pinker is probably right on this one. It's probable that screening for simple genetic diseases may become routine, but designer babies are very unlikely. For two reasons, (1) that "designing humans" ultimately relies on getting an understanding of the full system, rather than of its parts, which is unlikely in the next few generations, (2) that "designing humans" will probably be outlawed, if not immediately, at least after a few disaster stories reveal what an iffy proposition it is, reinforcing our natural reproductive conservatism

A human being is a system with 30,000 free variables interacting in ways that we haven't even began to understand. In fact, extant humanity is such an infinitestimal fraction of potential humanity that most attempts to draw conclusions about the goodness of creating new kinds of humans will be simply infeasible.

Dienekes -

Check out the Doogie Mouse. Then BLAST the protein involved at NCBI. Point - it's in humans and does the same thing. Changes like that are totally feasible, and would be the beginnings of designer babies.

Another point - there are already like 5 different ways of boosting murine intelligence, and at least one of boosting murine strength. As far as I know, all of the manipulated variables have human analogs.

>> Changes like that are totally feasible, and would be the beginnings of designer babies.

It may be in humans, but one doesn't know what effect this protein will have in humans, simply because the way that a gene operates against the genetic background of a mouse is not necessarily the way it will operate against the genetic background of a human. In a human, one simply doesn't know what the effect will be, and it might
be good, neutral, or bad. In fact it's even trickier than that, since genes are good or bad only inasmuch as they are adaptive to the environment, and humans experience a great variety of environments, of a qualitatitvely different sort than those of laboratory mice.

Perhaps there will be more to say when the genetic engineers are able to demonstrate an actual success in introducing a change to the human genome that has sufficiently positive effects over a sufficiently large population of subjects and for the duration of their lifetimes.

godlesscapitalist wrote:

"Another point - there are already like 5 different ways of boosting murine intelligence, and at least one of boosting murine strength."

Sir, with reagard to the strength boosting, are you refering to the myostatin-inhibited "Mighty Mice"?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020227070955.htm

[I'm a first-time poster here. My apologies if this has been brought up before.]

BC -

Check this out for more details on the intelligence boosting, and here for the UPenn muscle boosting. I wasn't referring to the myostatin mouse - I guess that makes at least two (and probably several more besides - been a few months since I've checked out what's out there).

BC -

Also, I don't know what your background is, but feel free to email or post further. I only get snippy with Dienekes b/c he's a regular here (regularly wrong, that is...)

A good way to settle such debates would be something similar to the Simon/Ehrlich or Kurzweil/Kapor (http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0413.html) bets. First establish certain clearly defined measures. For example, let x be the percent of births in the year 2023 in the U.S. that resulted from some form of genetic enhancement, not including screening for or elimination of single gene genetic diseases. Then determine some way to measure the efficacy of the enhancements, for example, an increase in I.Q. of y percent. This should be determined by an objective third party analysis, not the marketing department of Better Babies, Inc.

My initial guess is that both x and y will be less than 1%. This would mean that genetic enhancements will not be widely used or significantly effective. Any takers?

>> My initial guess is that both x and y will be less than 1%. This would mean that genetic enhancements will not be widely used or significantly effective. Any takers?

y will have to be measured after 2023, say in 2040, when IQ benefits will be visible. Actually, prudence dictates that we allow the generation of 2023 to die first, because who knows, their y% of IQ boost may be paid at the price of z less years to live. Like Solon said: "Call no man happy before the end".

In any case, I predict that in 2023 there will be 0% mainstream genetic treatments for increased intelligence. There will probably be < 1% of the kookier variety, e.g., by the same crowd that is racing to produce the first 'cloned baby'.

not including screening for or elimination of single gene genetic diseases

But this is how things will start. See the controversy in the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed over Cypriot screening for Beta-thalassemia.

And it will proceed from there to in vitro fertilization, genotyping, and selection for babies with typable characteristics. Such characteristics would include relative trivialities like eye color (for which we have three loci already) along with less trivial things like trisomy and - potentially - QTL-derived markers correlated with desirable characteristics.

It doesn't have to be germ-line overnight. My point is only that it *could be*, and the barriers are ethical rather than technical. Yeah, any individual manipulation may run into background effects/organism specific effects. But the overwhelming success of cross-species BLAST based annotation followed by functional genomic verification leads me to be bullish on the idea of prototyping germ-line manipulations in closely related organisms, and then porting into humans.

godlesscapitalist:

Thanks for the nice welcome. :)

I generally like to "tread lightly" when first visiting a forum. Online forums generally have their own established "culture" and as such I like to be careful, as a newbie, not to be disruptive.

I find the idea of genetically engineered ubermensch really fascinating--mostly as a result of being a sci-fi geek basically since I learned to read.

By the way, with all respect to Mr. Pontikos, I think the "outlawing" is a totally trivial issue. The Chi-Coms, for example wouldn't have the Judeo-Christian qualms about "playing God" that Westerners do and (in their current crony-capitalist incarnation) have shown that they're willing to do almost anything to increase their economic power. They (or any other "rogue" nation with the resources and willingness) could be home to the industry.

So say a rich American couple goes to China and gets a biotech firm there to design their kid. When they come home, what are we going to do? MAKE them abort it?

Ha - BC - funny you thought of that, because I independently made exactly that point a long time ago in an earlier post here:

As said below, when science becomes engineering it cannot be denied. While radical nurturists have political power now, all the censorship in the world will not prevent people from making their children more intelligent once such a service becomes available. If a single country makes intelligence engineering legal, people will flock to the clinics in that country to modify their unborn children and then return home. After all, what can the US government do to women pregnant with genetically modified children? Force them to have abortions? Prevent them from returning to the country? Tattoo their children with a "modified" label? Leaving aside the practical difficulties of detecting a subtle genetic change, any such "remedy" to offshore child engineering will never pass an American legislature. A ban will therefore be futile and short lived.

Once we can artificially increase intelligence and change behavior, I predict that three factions will emerge...

You know what they say about minds thinking alike ;)

>> Such characteristics would include relative trivialities like eye color

Indeed, even a relative triviality like eye color is a matter not altered lightly, since eye color is correlated with a great number of behavioral attributes through an as-of-yet unknown mechanism. Anyone who alters peoples' eye color will potentially be altering far more important psychological attributes.

Dienekes -

Maybe I didn't make it clear. I'm not denying that many (most?) genes have pleiotropic effects. The passage in which I referred to eye color mentioned *typing* for that attribute. In other words, embryo selection.

There may be other characteristics correlated with light eyes - either due to linkage of independent genes or true pleiotropy - but embryo selection at least corresponds to selection within the "natural" range of human attributes. Of course, picking within that "natural" range is like rolling a die over and over again until you get a 6, but that's the whole point.

As for artificial modification, I never said that there wouldn't be screwups. In fact, I always said that there *will* be screwups. I just maintained that the barriers are ethical - not technical. If you're willing to have a pool of thalidomide babies, you can leap forward technologically.

And yeah, while that may disgust Western sensibilities now, remember that all sorts of previously "disgusting" things - miscegenation, homosexuality, publicly bare female ankles - have become socially acceptable within stunningly short periods.

Furthermore - we do supply abortion on demand. Whatever you may think of it (I'm very pro - don't have 'em if you didn't plan 'em), it really is killing babies for the convenience of the mother. So there's a body of law that establishes a fetus as a mother's property. It's not much of a stretch to think that countries or companies might start paying mothers to volunteer their fetuses for experiments. I mean, as far as I know it's not *illegal* for a 3 months pregnant mom to do a bunch of keg stands and pop out a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome. It's just really immoral by our current standards.

It's also not much of a stretch to imagine the Chinese doing this kind of thing, as I've said ad nauseum.

My point - if you rely on "disgust" as the reason why this won't be done, or point to the possible side effects, those are not convincing arguments. You have to contend that trial and error won't get us to reliable germline engineering. And that contention is unsupportable.

>> The passage in which I referred to eye color mentioned *typing* for that attribute. In other words, embryo selection.

Embryo selection will fall under the category of artificial selection, rather than genetic engineering. Embryo selection continues the pattern of the Old Eugenics, i.e., artificial selection for desired attributes. The only difference is that artificial selection can now take place in the womb.

>> And yeah, while that may disgust Western sensibilities now, remember that all sorts of previously "disgusting" things - miscegenation, homosexuality, publicly bare female ankles - have become socially acceptable within stunningly short periods.

Indeed. Whether acceptance of some or all of the above is a good thing is another matter altogether. In any case, in the short run the feasibility of genetic engineering is much more urgent problem for its advocates than the moral issue. When someone reaches the stage of actually testing such a technology, then the moral issue will come into play, and lawmakers too will be forced to take a stand.

>> My point - if you rely on "disgust" as the reason why this won't be done, or point to the possible side effects, those are not convincing arguments.

It won't be done in the short term because it's not feasible in the short term (IMO). We will have to wait and see how important the disgust factor is going to be. I have little doubt that the voting public could be quite disgusted if an Oprah-like show runs a show on 'genetic monsters' thirty years from now.

Dienekes -

in the short run the feasibility of genetic engineering is much more urgent problem for its advocates than the moral issue. When someone reaches the stage of actually testing such a technology, then the moral issue will come into play, and lawmakers too will be forced to take a stand.

Ya want me to cite gene therapy links at you? It's not germline - yet - but it's surely genetic engineering of humans. Point - we *are* testing the tech as we speak.

Godless, I offered the wager to focus on what is likely to happen, not what may be technically feasible at some stage. I think if you look at the issues involved, any genetic enhancements will not even begin to be a serious issue within 20, and I would say, even 40 years.

godless, I think we're gonna get on just fine, bro. :-)

By the way, what made me think of people going overseas to get around the ban was the situation not too long ago where the California billionaire Dennis Tito wanted to be a "Space Tourist" and turned to the Russians when NASA told him they wouldn't do it.

I see something similar happening to any government that tries to ban any biotechnology that there would be a market for.