The Loom has a post up titled Fear of a Eugencist Planet that reviews a review of a book called War Against the Weak. He comes to the conclusion that the book is much ado about nothing (ie; biotech companies are not pawns of the new eugenicists).
He also brings up the point that it might be difficult to genetically modify intelligence: "If you wanted to make your kid significantly smarter, you’d have to tinker with a huge number of them [genes], perhaps hundreds or thousands." Well, what little I know does indicate that the affect of any given gene on intelligence might be small (predicated on the individual being within the normal range), perhaps on the order of 1%, but that’s far from "thousands." Additionally, some psychologists have done research which indicates that heritability of IQ (variation within a population caused by genotype) increases as you move up the socioeconomic ladder, in other words, given a minimum quality of life the difference due to genetic inheritance looms larger[1]. I point this out because the post focuses on the possibilities of the rich using GE to boost the intelligence of their children. Carl Zimmer, spinmeister of The Loom, sounds a lot like our old pal Charles Murtaugh, throwing cold water on the prophets of the future. But I think sometimes he is limited by conventional preconceptions. He notes that "For a new species to incubate, it needs barriers around it to keep genes from the old species from flowing in and its new genes from flowing out"-well, yes, but those barriers can be social, if some religious nutsos decided to create biphallic sons, there would be issues with these sons being able to get mates from the mono-phallic majority. Additionally, GE would by its very nature alter the ground rules for speciation as mutation in the context of genetic drift and natural selection plus physical barriers thrown up by geography, etc. might not be the only sources of reassortment & segregation of genes within a population….
Update: Carl Zimmer responds to my response. And Greg Cochran swoops down upon the helpless message board….
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