3 ms·

Right, but at ten weeks, all you can do is abort, which means it's only practical to screen for a few different genetic flaws this way, particularly if you expe

Right, but at ten weeks, all you can do is abort, which means it's only practical to screen for a few different genetic flaws this way, particularly if you expect some of them to be bad Mendelian inheritance and not some kind of rare structural flaw. Suppose you want to screen out four recessive traits and each one is inherited with probability 1/4, the probability of rolling a good combination is (3/4)^4 = ~30%. If you want to screen out ten such genes, the probability of a good combination drops to ~5%. With embryo selection, you can perform all the trials in parallel instead of sequentially at ten weeks per trial.

jessaustin 8y ago
You're still flushing all the other embryos down the drain. It doesn't seem as awful as lots of other shit that happens every day, but it's certainly sketchy enough that I wouldn't do it. Humans are not livestock.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  Can you define what’s the moral difference against trisomy prescreeners? Or are you against these too? Honest question btw.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I'm not 100% comfortable with the trisomy thing, but I understand why people do it. The "moral difference" is primarily one of scale. Choosing to abort or not, in one particular case, is a human decision. That's even true of abortions motivated by "less moral" factors like economics or convenience. Those are still human decisions. Deliberately aborting 99 out of 100 or 999 out of 1000 or whatever, that's not how humans interact with each other. That's the sort of decision-making I reserve for cattle or other livestock. (Although we wouldn't make much money if we were so Procrustean in our evaluation...) In that sphere, it's considered immoral by lots of perfectly sane people. I'm not saying that this practice will never be normalized and accepted by most people. I am saying that if researchers try a little harder and develop methods with the same results but less abortion, the world will be a better place.
    - m_mueller 8y ago
      Good point about scale. Tbh. I doubt that more than an 1/10 ratio is going to be feasible due to limits given from female biology. If people start doing that, something like CRISPR will soon be employed to fix such issues directly - if the west doesn’t allow it, people will simply travel to a country that will. For families with severe disorders, the cost of doing so will be much lower than to just take the chances with nature, so I think there’s going to be sort of a price balance for each illness. The main risk IMO is a Gattaca-style dystopia.

jessaustin 8y ago

You're still flushing all the other embryos down the drain. It doesn't seem as awful as lots of other shit that happens every day, but it's certainly sketchy enough that I wouldn't do it. Humans are not livestock.

m_mueller 8y ago
Can you define what’s the moral difference against trisomy prescreeners? Or are you against these too? Honest question btw.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I'm not 100% comfortable with the trisomy thing, but I understand why people do it. The "moral difference" is primarily one of scale. Choosing to abort or not, in one particular case, is a human decision. That's even true of abortions motivated by "less moral" factors like economics or convenience. Those are still human decisions. Deliberately aborting 99 out of 100 or 999 out of 1000 or whatever, that's not how humans interact with each other. That's the sort of decision-making I reserve for cattle or other livestock. (Although we wouldn't make much money if we were so Procrustean in our evaluation...) In that sphere, it's considered immoral by lots of perfectly sane people. I'm not saying that this practice will never be normalized and accepted by most people. I am saying that if researchers try a little harder and develop methods with the same results but less abortion, the world will be a better place.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    Good point about scale. Tbh. I doubt that more than an 1/10 ratio is going to be feasible due to limits given from female biology. If people start doing that, something like CRISPR will soon be employed to fix such issues directly - if the west doesn’t allow it, people will simply travel to a country that will. For families with severe disorders, the cost of doing so will be much lower than to just take the chances with nature, so I think there’s going to be sort of a price balance for each illness. The main risk IMO is a Gattaca-style dystopia.