pone11, I greatly appreciate your restarting this thread so that I can more clearly communicate what is now underdevelopment.
Your firm demand for precise and accurate details is very much in order.
Happy New Year!
I have now gotten over the initial shock of 1500 IQ people and can be more coherent.
Firstly, even the low grade embryo selection technique has substantial potential to greatly change phenotypes in the community.
This is an important point to clarify. Ball parking IQ genetics: there might be 10,000 SNPs involved, with 500 per chromosome,
current evidence suggests that the effect distribution is normal and centered at zero, with most of the minor allele frequencies in
the range of 20-50%. A typical person might have 5,000 beneficial SNPs with 250 per chromosome (0 SD IQ) . A supreme genius such
as John von Neumann would have 5,500 beneficial SNPs (+5 SD IQ).
A simulation came up with 100 SNPs per SD, and 100 SDs in total.
Thousands of embryos would not be needed to substantially select for IQ or any other highly polygenic trait.
It is currently thought that merely selecting 1 embryo in 10 would result in a 1 SD increase in IQ.
This would be true for any randomly mating couple.
The polygenic nature of IQ and the implications for IQ enhancement through genetic selection is a universal truth.
This will have extremely profound social implications.
There is currently no nation that has a reported IQ even 1 SD above Greenwich mean.
For example, Japan's national IQ is typically reported as 105.
It is now possible for anyone to move the next generation in their family's IQ by 1 SD at a fairly modest expense.
To go back to the numbers: Each chromosome might have roughly 250 good SNPs on average, though for any comparison
there would be expected to be some variation, let's guess an average variation of +20 SNPs. Over 46 chromosomes this would be
a difference of a possible difference of +900. This would be a 10 SD enhancement of IQ. If you could completely extract all the gain,
there would be a new average IQ in the community of 10 SD or 250. No human has ever had 250 IQ. Farm breeders have enhanced
phenotypes for over a century and gains are still occurring. The same would be true for humans. Simply selecting the best embryo will
result in ongoing increases in human phenotypes including IQ.
This is a minimally complex technology that is already well entrenched across fertility clinics. It has recently been noted that China has
done a massive build out with this technology and is now already ahead of the US in this area.
There is no aborting of fetuses involved here. There is no fetus. One implementation of this would be selecting among embryos of perhaps
only a few cells of maturity.
This is true that the current technology is typically about selecting against a monogenic disease. Such technology has been in use in the community
for almost 50 years. For many, existing technology has not resulted in a perceptibly different humanoid life form. Polygenics clearly will result in
such a change. The main difference will be that everyone will reproduce through fertility clinics. Clearly it will seem quite odd if some would choose
any other form of reproduction. It will no longer be seen as ethically acceptable to allow a randomly recombined life to be brought into the world.
Would someone think it rational to go to a casino to select the genotypes of their children. I think not. Then why would they allow a completely random
genetic process to select their children's genetics? The horrific genetic mistakes that are all too common today will soon be a thing of the past.
Ideally for sperm selection, one would only need perhaps 100 sperm to have a wide range of recombinations for each chromosome. Perhaps instead of +20 per chromosome
one could move to +50. This would more than double the top end of optimal IQ with a very simple technology. Of course, one might then always look for a chromosome donor
who had been highly selected to have an extremely unique chromosome perhaps with a rating of +100. This would again double the top end phenotype.
Large scale sperm sequencing would never be needed. All that would be required would be to sequence the parents once and then use FISH to find which chromosomes recombined. Perhaps 5 Fish probes per Chromosome would be enough.
Going to sperm and egg genotyping would entirely eliminate ethical questions associated with this technology.
I have avoided focusing on CRISPR because this is the high end route and there was almost immediate resistance expressed to enhancing IQ or improving
humanity. The first international response was to declare an international moratorium. Genetic selection sidesteps the high tech end entirely. Profound disruption of
human society can occur without the approval of government: Increasing human IQ by even an average of 1 SD would have extremely significant implications.
Moving the conversation away from CRISPR also allows us to talk about what can be done now and not in decades. The selection technology is already widely
accessible in the community. What is of particular note from the url I provided above is that this company stated that they would not be specifically selecting for
enhanced IQ. This is especially interesting because they stated that it was not that they could not provide such a service, but that they felt that the social issues
surrounding such technology have yet to be fully resolved. This interpretation of what is and is not socially acceptable might be different in other regions of the world
(including for example China).
Whatever horrible birth defects that might arise in the future will almost certainly occur in those who have been genetically engineered by the casino protocol.
It is quite startling how flawed human reproduction can be in this respect.
One only has to look to some of the universe's most affluent communities to see what happens when randomness is allowed to design the genetics of children.
Silicon Valley is experiencing an extreme autism epidemic. This is obviously not a great surprise. Surely everyone can think back on those class members who
were clearly intellectually gifted and yet somehow not entirely socially normal. Perhaps shadow autism? And they then migrated to Silicon Valley, met, married
and mated other highly selected people who also were somewhat autistic. They then rolled the genetic dice and, as is now widely acknowledged, have created
a generation with more than a quirky personality. For those who have been paying even the slightest attention, we are now confronting a very large autism
challenge not only in the Valley but across most of our communities. It is not difficult to imagine that once the roll out of the next generation of genetic services
finally moves into stride there could be scenes similar to Thanksgiving sales that one can view on their television sets. Namely ordinary citizens fighting over the
last half priced wide screen TV set.
I do not have $1 billion. If I were to have such a sum dropped from a passing pigeon or something, then I would not find it unreasonable to spend 10% of my
net worth on genetically engineering each of my children. Some might find such spending excessive and perhaps even objectionable, though by doing so
I would be building out the technology and allowing a reduction in price so that everyone else in the community would eventually gain access to such technology.
Of course, if I were to put $100 million on the table for optimized genetic engineering for my child the results, even given today's technology would without question be
quite stunning. The phase transition behavior of different traits has now been discovered. This means that it is now understood that about 1 million DNA samples
would essentially completely unlock the IQ genome and most any other human trait/condition.
There is simply no reasonable chance that the future will be even remotely similar to the present.
The technology that could start us on this journey does not need to be overly hi tech.
Edited by mag1, 10 January 2018 - 04:16 AM.
