This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born
This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born
Noor Siddiqui founded Orchid so people could “have healthy babies.” Now she’s using the company’s gene technology on herself—and talking about it for the first time.
Does population decline worry you?
I mean, it’s super important. The population of all of the places we love is shrinking. In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.
Uhhh...what? There are a handful of countries with recent population decline, but most of the world is still growing even if growth rates are slowing. I've never seen any credible projections of catastrophic population decline.
Sure, but what if those countries are the only places I love tho?
This is sounding close to replacement theory.
Replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, and there are about 100 countries under that rate. Yes, their populations are still growing, but much of that is through extension of life expectancy and immigration (which requires a higher birth rate somewhere else, lest that other places start seeing shrinking population).
It's not an immediate crisis, but it is turning into a problem that should be addressed soon.
Yeah it's a bit of a hyperbole, but the rate is what's important. By the time we hit worldwide negative growth rates (which is projected to happen this century), it's going to be way too late to have a discussion about whether or not that's a good thing.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the paywall click: https://archive.is/8WWq2
I'm having trouble trusting anyone with no scientific background (i.e. no PhD), no published journal articles, and no ethical committee oversight to proceed with a complex problem such as this one.
Theranos : Evolution
Theranos: Genetic Boogaloo.
As long as you don't use the word eugenics explicitly apparently you can sell anyone on anything.
No they acknowledge that the technology could be used that way. But there's a lot of actual medical problems we can catch this way. Imagine you carry the Huntington's gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don't pass that down to your kids?
Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
Nothing. That's what health insurance is for. Also practically noone has any issues with preimplantation diagnostics when it comes to things that are clearly genetic diseases, what rubs people the wrong way is a) selecting by bullshit criteria, e.g. sex, eye colour, curliness of hair, whatever, b) making designer babies the default at the expanse of erm wild ones, worst of all, c) the combination.
And ethics aside the arguments should be obvious it's also a bad idea from the POV of the honest eugenicist: Humanity's genetic diversity is already low as it is it would be fatal to allow things like fashions to narrow it down even more.
Humanity is already shaping its own selection criteria, we might need to start doing something extra to avoid evolving ourselves into a corner by non-PID means. Random example: C-Sections. No mother or baby should die in childbirth, yet, the selective pressure towards more uncomplicated births getting removed might, over many many many generations, leave us with very few women who would survive a natural birth which doesn't sound like a good situation for a species to be in, to be reliant on technology to even reproduce. Thus is might become prudent to artificially select for e.g. wide-hip genes.
They literally say "Word beginning with 'eu' and ends with 'genics'" inside the article pimping them out.
With a sprinkling of 'Orchid doesn't like us to use that word' as if 'Nazis do not like to be called Nazis' is a valid complaint.
Wasn't there a movie about this? Called Gattaca?
These people are saying “we finally created the utopia of Neuromancer.” And I look at them and I go, “I don’t think you read Neuromancer."
--Cory Doctorow
Do you want Khan Noonien Singh? Because that's how you get Khan Noonien Singh.
Eugenics is overblown, they can't even tell the difference between a pre ganglionic fiber and a post ganglionic nerve
They can be great at darts though.
Do you want Khan Noonien Singh?
YES!
How to invoke tldr bot?
It automatically replies when it can read/summarize a site, but that isn't always possible (maybe it has problems with some paywalls).
Is there a nonpaywall link?
Elysium IRL
Another tick box on the Star Trek timeline! There is still hope!