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Preimplantation polygenetic testing. The idea is that, when doing IVF, you sequence the genome of all the embryos and implant the ones that you predict will hav

Preimplantation polygenetic testing. The idea is that, when doing IVF, you sequence the genome of all the embryos and implant the ones that you predict will have properties that you like. This already exists for monogenetic screening (for parents who don't want to pass on heritable diseases for their children, where those diseases are localized to one gene). But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes, you can make predictions for things that start to be very relevant to parents, like attractiveness or height or intelligence. I don't think people understand how important this is going to be. If the process is expensive, it will only be available to rich people. In a generation, maybe they'll have children that are more intelligent or more attractive than average. If that starts happening, I think it would have pretty negative effects on society, but there's no way to really prevent it (rich people will just go to Singapore if you ban it in the US). So the only reasonable option is to have the government subsidize it and make it affordable to everyone.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Rich people already have children that are more attractive than average. Being attractive is the biggest signal for generational wealth which reinforces the need for trophy spouses which reinforces the signal and so on.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  They're also probably smarter than average, because people who are smart are more likely to become rich. But I'm worried this will accelerate the effect. On the other hand, if you make the technology available to everyone, the effect would be mitigated
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Of the truly rich today, can you honestly say that they are more attractive than average? I’m not seeing it. I’m not talking Hollywood level but much higher, generational wealth levels. I realize that it’s hard to get data on this but just anecdotally, there aren’t many examples that come to mind.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Depends on what you mean by “truly rich” I guess. Most of the tech billionaires come from upper middle class families. They don’t generally have trophy spouses. I do believe that the old money people i interact with are generally more attractive than average, yes.
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      I wonder how much of that is genetics and how much of that is lifelong access to excellent health care, nutrition, exercise, clothing, sleep, etc? Being poor or even lower middle class is hard on the body. And it shows. Big time.
  - ericmcer 4y ago
    Have you seen Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - arbitrary_name 4y ago
      Have you seen who they are dating?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - paxys 4y ago
    Top 5-10 richest people isn't enough of a sample set to draw any conclusions. Compare the million richest vs million poorest people in the world and the answer will be obvious.
- astrange 4y ago
  How is "more attractive than average" determined? "Attractive" to rich people is mostly a status game, which is why the official type of woman that's most "attractive" is a tall bony supermodel, even though that look actually only appeals to fashion designers because they work as human coathangers.
dont__panic 4y ago
[Gattaca](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/) is about the long term consequences of this exact technology for society. In particular, the consequences for the children born naturally who don't benefit from this tech. They don't get any say in the decision, but end up heavily penalized, barred from certain jobs for "safety" reasons, aren't desirable partners... an underclass of society.
- kanzure 4y ago
  "If the audience is supposed to accept that genetic determinism is true in Gattaca, then no amount of Vincent's hard work should make Vincent a hero. He's just a fraud. If the audience is not supposed to believe that in the world of Gattaca genetic determinism is true (that is, it's false), then it should be interpreted as a story of discrimination, and a story of the underdog's heroic hard work overcoming the negative effects of a corrupt, wrong, erroneously-discriminating society." from http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf
  - derefr 4y ago
    Seems to me that genetic determinism doesn’t have to be “right” or “wrong”, but rather a sometimes-useful model that we other times do not allow to colour our views. I.e. we have weight classes and gender divides for sporting events (genetic determinism), but each person who meets a minimum threshold of competence (e.g. not in prison) gets an equal democratic vote.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      What is the model being referenced where someone in prison is automatically incompetent to vote? Especially given the human legacy of the war on drugs in there for example, this seems like a really good example of letting one policy color our views of an unrelated one. You think we're going to formalize our class system with genetics and biology but then somehow ignore that in all the realms where it's not relevant? Who decides when it is relevant.
abetusk 4y ago
I think the underlying idea is spot on, if not the specifics. Biology, sequencing, health, bioinformatics etc. is going to be huge business. As of this writing, I believe whole genome sequencing is in the range of $400 with the cost (slowly) dropping exponentially. When the cost of whole genome sequencing gets to be within $100 or below, we'll see a huge influx of whole genome sequencing and all the side effects that come with it, like sequencing colds, flu and other diseases in real time, at home genetic testing, etc. Not just baby screening but made-to-order organs, personalized medicine, etc. I think the timeline is going to comparatively long, on the order of 10-20 years, but it's my belief it is coming.
- aaronblohowiak 4y ago
  That $400 isn’t de novo is it?
  - abetusk 4y ago
    Nebula genomics claims 30x coverage for $299 [0]. [0] https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/ https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/
more_corn 4y ago
So, like in the 90s sci-fi classic GATACA?
joshmarlow 4y ago
> If the process is expensive, it will only be available to rich people. I have trouble believing it will remain expensive unless there is a cultural taboo against it. In general, once proven out, there should be pretty high demand for the tech - and that provides a lot of opportunity for profit for whomever can get the costs down. What looks like a bigger blocker to me - AFAIK, IVF is really harsh on the body isn't it? Lots of hormones to force out a lot of eggs. That looks like the real adoption bottleneck to me.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Well, another way to put it, it requires that fertilization be the explicit focus of the pregnancy and the means of that fertilization not really of the more, um, traditional variety. I think at the very least there is a hurdle of willfulness (and a monetary hurdle of at least some degree — compared to the traditional alternative certainly). To be sure it need not be prohibitively expensive, but it sounds like it will go hand in glove with the parental mindset that also seeks out private schooling, tutoring, etc. That probably takes it fairly exclusively into the domain of the well off (and want-to-be well off).
Teever 4y ago
I'm going to piggyback on your comment by saying that preimplantation polygenetic testing is only the start of what I feel is broader impending reproductive revolution. Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start generating them from any genetic material available[0], and bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1]. This is going to fundamentally alter society (for the wealthy at first as you mention) because we will be able to do away with the health burdens that are placed on women who go through pregnancy and we will be able to eliminate huge swaths of genetic abnormalities. Imagine the shock to paternity law once some unscrupulous individual obtains a celebrities DNA through some discarded water bottle and generates children from it to demand child support payments with. How will organized sports handle genetically modified players being vastly superior to ungenetically modified? It's going to be huge, it'll make the pill seem quaint and I feel it's just around the corner, like 2030's sort of thing and no one is talking about. [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-just-skin-cells-israeli-lab-makes-synthetic-mouse-embryos-with-beating-hearts/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-just-skin-cells-israeli-l... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/parents-can-look-foetus-real-time-artificial-wombs-future https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/parents...
- philwelch 4y ago
  > Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start generating them from any genetic material available[0], and bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1]. And then you can bypass the entire “we don’t know which genes do what” problem because we can just clone people who have whatever qualities we want. Well, maybe. It turns out your first citation has been validated in mice, and if that was the gold standard, we’d be able to put people into suspended animation (this totally works with mice but not larger mammals) among 1000 other things that never panned out. If you go back a little bit, there are a ton of things (like suspended animation) that briefly seemed extremely promising and never panned out, and they outnumber the things that actually panned out by about 10:1. I honestly think that even if this sort of thing was possible, it might be politically regulated out of existence or even out of being developed. We cloned a sheep in the 1990’s, but still no human.
- 4y ago
CakeEngine 4y ago
This is only a problem is there's a clear mapping from detectable genetic feature to an expressed macro-feature like intelligence. My (admittedly limited) understanding is that each detectable genetic feature has a whole panoply of effects, some of which wont' be apparent at birth. Selecting for intelligence through specific genes is like to also be selecting for weak bones, reduced longevity, or other unpredictable side-effects. Maybe one day it will be possible but there's a chasm between here and there which can only be crossed by extensive testing on real people. Is that even crossable?
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  This has been out of the box already for a while. You can literally have your embryo commercially screened for intelligence, height, and other complex traits today
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    Has it been out of the box long enough to validate that the adult versions of the embryos exhibit the traits that they're supposed to? Is it a noticeable intelligence boost? For example, a standard deviation higher IQ as measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices, compared to siblings from un-screened embryos? I read enough about biotech and biohacking that I feel like I would have already come across reports if this really works, but maybe it's very recent. I read Gwern's "Embryo Selection for Intelligence" a few years ago: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Near future possibilities seemed pretty limited based on that review, unless the reasoning was incorrect: As median embryo count in IVF hovers around 5, the total gain from selection is small, and much of the gain is wasted by losses in the IVF process (the best embryo doesn’t survive storage, the second-best fails to implant, and so on). One of the key problems is that polygenic scores are the sum of many individual small genes’ effects and form a normal distribution, which is tightly clustered around a mean. A polygenic score is attempting to predict the net effect of thousands of genes which almost all cancel out, so even accurate identification of many relevant genes still yields an apparently unimpressive predictive power. The fact that traits are normally distributed also creates difficulties for selection: the further into the tail one wants to go, the larger the sample required to reach the next step—to put it another way, if you have 10 samples, it’s easy (a 1 in 10 probability) that your next random sample will be the largest sample yet, but if you have 100 samples, now the probability of an improvement is the much harder 1 in 100, and if you have 1000, it’s only 1 in 1000; and worse, if you luck out and there’s an improvement, the improvement is ever tinier. After taking into account existing PGSes, previously reported IVF process losses, costs, and so on, the implication that it is moderately profitable and can increase traits perhaps 0.1SD, rising somewhat over the next decade as PGSes continue to improve, but never exceeding, say, 0.5SD.
philwelch 4y ago
Rich people already have children who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap in intelligence, and that will have unpredictable consequences in education and the labor market.
- youngNed 4y ago
  this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off
  - tristor 4y ago
    Okay, rather than being pithy, perhaps you could explain succinctly why people are rich, then? Or perhaps you can admit that in many cases people have achieved moderate to high wealth in democratic free market societies by either working harder or worker smarter than their peers?
    - thesuitonym 4y ago
      People are mostly rich because their parents were rich. Rich people do not come from poverty. Why is that? Do you think it's because impoverished people are not smart?
      - philwelch 4y ago
        Sometimes rich people do come from poverty. Sometimes middle class people come from poverty and rich people come from the middle class. And sometimes rich heirs and heiresses go bankrupt and fade into obscurity. Why does this happen? Because the people who improve their position are either intelligent or diligent and the people who decline in position are either stupid or lazy. To whatever degree these traits are genetic, you’d expect them to get roughly sorted out to the point where social mobility would decline, but it wouldn’t disappear entirely.
throw123123123 4y ago
Making smarter, healthier and more attractive people is a net good for society. The moral issue is not "inequality", the moral issue is eugenics - building their behavior to your desire.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
If it starts happening, societies will face an existential threat in gender ratios.
cauthon 4y ago
> But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes, you can make predictions for things that start to be very relevant to parents, like attractiveness or height or intelligence. Personally, I think this interpretation of polygenic risk scoring is a crock of irreproducible shite. I don’t think it’s your fault, I think a lot of people in the field are shilling something they don’t have for grant money, and they’ve created an exciting sci-fi yarn that’s easy for people outside the field to digest. Height is a univariate trait that does not change after the age of ~20. If you show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult height within a centimeter, then I’ll believe they have a snowball’s chance of predicting something as nuanced and varied as “attractiveness” or “intelligence”. I think there’s promise in applying PRS to assessing risk for non-Mendelian disease, but there’s far too many social and environmental variables at play to reliably predict these softer features. Like other people have joked, if you want a single number that best predicts educational attainment, use a zip code.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  > show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult height within a centimeter, then I’ll believe they have a snowball’s chance of predicting something as nuanced and varied as “attractiveness” or “intelligence”. This has been done. Not to 1cm but ~3cm, and it has been reproduced by many labs all over the world That said, most genetic prediction aren't targeting exact vales, but avoiding the worst outcomes, which is a lot easier. Instead of saying this embryo will go grow to X cm, the claim is this embryo is 90% likely to grow to be taller than average. Same for IQ. They don't predict the IQ, but decrease poor outcomes and increase high ones. Hell, we have had rough monogenic screening for IQ since the 1960s https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05870.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05870.pdf
  - cauthon 4y ago
    I haven't previously read the Lello paper [1] that review is citing, but a quick skim makes me skeptical. Particulary the legend for figure 5: > Activated SNPs are distributed roughly uniformly throughout the genome. If the authors were actually identifying a genetic component to a heritable trait, I'd expect them to observe some linkage disequilibrium. And without any analysis of the SNPs (are they coding/noncoding? which genes are they associated with?) it's hard to believe that they're uncovering actual biology and not just chance correlates with external/socioeconomic factors. I also find it difficult to trust studies when the lead author fails to disclose a conflict of interest. [2] [1] https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/210/2/477/5931053 https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/210/2/477/5931053 [2] https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/214/1/231/5930514 https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/214/1/231/5930514
anovikov 4y ago
At least we will not be ruled by dumbasses like Trump! That's already a big thing.
rrwo 4y ago
I think a lot of wealthy people will throw money at genetic snake oil. Traits are determined by multiple genes (e.g. eye or hair colour), and single genes control multiple traits (e.g. EDAR gene which is associated with thick hair, small breasts, and shovel-shaped incisors). Sometimes genes for less desirable traits (e.g. mental illness, sickle cell anemia) may be associated with desirable traits (higher intelligence, resistence to malaria).
GTP 4y ago
I don't think there is any genetic basis for intelligence: if there was, then you would expect that the offspring of the geniuses we had in the past to have an higher chance at being extremely intelligent than other people. But this doesn't seem to be the case, as you usually never hear about the sons or daughters of such geniuses, as they seem to be like other "normal" people in most cases. I admit I'm not bringing any data to back my claim, but it seems to me that having a genius as a parent doesn't really change your chance at being more intelligent than average. You also have to consider that many breakthroughs in history weren't just the result of intelligence, but also being the right person at the right time in the right place played a big role.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- elil17 4y ago
  Even if there’s no genetic basis for intelligence, someone could (and, I’d say, probably will) make a marketing claim that they can select for it. Whatever they’re actually selecting for is going to start showing up in higher rates and who knows what the effects would be.
- easytiger 4y ago
  That's not how intelligence manifests. "Geniuses" are usually products of opportunity as much as anything. Indeed I am minded of a "where are they now" on british television of some University Challenge winners and despite being believed to be geniuses most of them had not done anything remarkable. Intelligence definitely does have a genetic component - but again that isn't how genetics works. The "UN Man" Tabula Rasa doctrine is ideology, not science. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  There certainly is a genetic basis for intelligence. It's not even something that's up for debate academically, there's a mountain of evidence for it. We even have identified specific genes that play roles in intelligence. Almost every human trait is partially heritable, and it would be very surprising if intelligence were an exception (considering there's considerable variation in intelligence and it's very important for fitness.) More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
bko 4y ago
> If the process is expensive, it will only be available to rich people. Most technology gets distributed to the masses. It makes more sense to sell something cheaply to a lot of people than just a few people at a higher price. The same reason the wealthiest people in the world can't buy a better iPhone. The economics behind the technology encourages mass adoption and a reasonable price
maherbeg 4y ago
While this is interesting, I think IVF still has a long way to go for ensuring solid patient outcomes in reasonable amounts of time. There's still a lot of voodoo around getting good embryo's from retrievals and implanting them.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Seems like this could be a next big thing the same way NFTs were a big thing: a big speculative concept to help separate gullible rich people from their money. I predict that any company selling this as a service will have extensive legal language in the contract protecting themselves from any liability claim if the promised benefits don’t appear.
6t6t6t6 4y ago
As someone who has done genetic screening to avoid passing a genetic illness to my children, it is not as easy as it seems. In every IVF session, if you are young and healthy, they may be able to extract around ten eggs. Of those ten eggs, 50% will valid and will get fecundated. You are down to 5. Then, in our case, 50% of the embryos will be carriers and have to be discarded. You are down to two or three that can be implanted. And, from those, you are lucky if one gets implanted in the womb correctly and produces a baby. What I mean it's that you can choose to a level, but you are quite limited by numbers, even if the technology improves or you are luckier, and you can get more embryos to choose from each IVF cycle. All that, while the mother needs to be taking a massive amount of hormones that will make her gain weight, feel tired, etc... It's not a walk in the park. By the way, we joked about the "boutique baby" with the doctor, and she told us that there are many traits that they could select but that it was illegal for them to do so.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Yes, this is a good point I didn't mention. The low number of embryos is a limiting factor on what we can do with this technology. I saw an estimate from Gwern (I think) that said we could expect maybe 1-2 IQ points gained per generation with current technology. But there are technologies on the horizon that would let us produce many more embryos, and when that's possible is when things start to get weird
droptablemain 4y ago
So the next big thing is...eugenics?
soohamr 4y ago
Sooo GATTACA?
sterlind 4y ago
So Gattaca, basically. I don't want to live in Gattaca! Society would start pressing people to conform at the genetic level, like a micro-targeted kind of racism - not (just) directed at cosmetic traits like melanin or epicanthal folds, but weeding out traits like ADHD, autism, or even non-conformity in general (as much as you can genetically, at least.) Though, scientists haven't yet found the gene(s) responsible for my genetic disorder, which seems a lot simpler than predicting "intelligence."
- krageon 4y ago
  It's not racism, micro-targeted or not: It's meritocracy.
Gatsky 4y ago
As others have said, it is currently unproven that this approach achieves anything. But it also isn’t that different to what happens anyway. Elites have superior mate choices on average, able to optimise for intelligence, education level, beauty, freedom from mental illness, financial security. Their children will similarly have such benefits and so on and so forth. This kind of associative mating has generally been rare until recently (at least the part about optimising for intelligence), but presumably explains things like all the genius level Jewish people in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. I actually predict that there will be a wave of post-millennial supergeniuses, when two generations of intelligence based associative mating comes to fruition.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Rich people already have children that are more attractive than average. Being attractive is the biggest signal for generational wealth which reinforces the need for trophy spouses which reinforces the signal and so on.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
They're also probably smarter than average, because people who are smart are more likely to become rich. But I'm worried this will accelerate the effect. On the other hand, if you make the technology available to everyone, the effect would be mitigated
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
Of the truly rich today, can you honestly say that they are more attractive than average? I’m not seeing it. I’m not talking Hollywood level but much higher, generational wealth levels. I realize that it’s hard to get data on this but just anecdotally, there aren’t many examples that come to mind.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Depends on what you mean by “truly rich” I guess. Most of the tech billionaires come from upper middle class families. They don’t generally have trophy spouses. I do believe that the old money people i interact with are generally more attractive than average, yes.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    I wonder how much of that is genetics and how much of that is lifelong access to excellent health care, nutrition, exercise, clothing, sleep, etc? Being poor or even lower middle class is hard on the body. And it shows. Big time.
- ericmcer 4y ago
  Have you seen Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - arbitrary_name 4y ago
    Have you seen who they are dating?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- paxys 4y ago
  Top 5-10 richest people isn't enough of a sample set to draw any conclusions. Compare the million richest vs million poorest people in the world and the answer will be obvious.
astrange 4y ago
How is "more attractive than average" determined? "Attractive" to rich people is mostly a status game, which is why the official type of woman that's most "attractive" is a tall bony supermodel, even though that look actually only appeals to fashion designers because they work as human coathangers.

dont__panic 4y ago

[Gattaca](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/) is about the long term consequences of this exact technology for society. In particular, the consequences for the children born naturally who don't benefit from this tech. They don't get any say in the decision, but end up heavily penalized, barred from certain jobs for "safety" reasons, aren't desirable partners... an underclass of society.

kanzure 4y ago
"If the audience is supposed to accept that genetic determinism is true in Gattaca, then no amount of Vincent's hard work should make Vincent a hero. He's just a fraud. If the audience is not supposed to believe that in the world of Gattaca genetic determinism is true (that is, it's false), then it should be interpreted as a story of discrimination, and a story of the underdog's heroic hard work overcoming the negative effects of a corrupt, wrong, erroneously-discriminating society." from http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf
- derefr 4y ago
  Seems to me that genetic determinism doesn’t have to be “right” or “wrong”, but rather a sometimes-useful model that we other times do not allow to colour our views. I.e. we have weight classes and gender divides for sporting events (genetic determinism), but each person who meets a minimum threshold of competence (e.g. not in prison) gets an equal democratic vote.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    What is the model being referenced where someone in prison is automatically incompetent to vote? Especially given the human legacy of the war on drugs in there for example, this seems like a really good example of letting one policy color our views of an unrelated one. You think we're going to formalize our class system with genetics and biology but then somehow ignore that in all the realms where it's not relevant? Who decides when it is relevant.

abetusk 4y ago

I think the underlying idea is spot on, if not the specifics. Biology, sequencing, health, bioinformatics etc. is going to be huge business. As of this writing, I believe whole genome sequencing is in the range of $400 with the cost (slowly) dropping exponentially. When the cost of whole genome sequencing gets to be within $100 or below, we'll see a huge influx of whole genome sequencing and all the side effects that come with it, like sequencing colds, flu and other diseases in real time, at home genetic testing, etc. Not just baby screening but made-to-order organs, personalized medicine, etc. I think the timeline is going to comparatively long, on the order of 10-20 years, but it's my belief it is coming.

aaronblohowiak 4y ago
That $400 isn’t de novo is it?
- abetusk 4y ago
  Nebula genomics claims 30x coverage for $299 [0]. [0] https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/ https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/

more_corn 4y ago

So, like in the 90s sci-fi classic GATACA?

joshmarlow 4y ago

> If the process is expensive, it will only be available to rich people. I have trouble believing it will remain expensive unless there is a cultural taboo against it. In general, once proven out, there should be pretty high demand for the tech - and that provides a lot of opportunity for profit for whomever can get the costs down. What looks like a bigger blocker to me - AFAIK, IVF is really harsh on the body isn't it? Lots of hormones to force out a lot of eggs. That looks like the real adoption bottleneck to me.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Well, another way to put it, it requires that fertilization be the explicit focus of the pregnancy and the means of that fertilization not really of the more, um, traditional variety. I think at the very least there is a hurdle of willfulness (and a monetary hurdle of at least some degree — compared to the traditional alternative certainly). To be sure it need not be prohibitively expensive, but it sounds like it will go hand in glove with the parental mindset that also seeks out private schooling, tutoring, etc. That probably takes it fairly exclusively into the domain of the well off (and want-to-be well off).

Teever 4y ago

I'm going to piggyback on your comment by saying that preimplantation polygenetic testing is only the start of what I feel is broader impending reproductive revolution. Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start generating them from any genetic material available[0], and bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1]. This is going to fundamentally alter society (for the wealthy at first as you mention) because we will be able to do away with the health burdens that are placed on women who go through pregnancy and we will be able to eliminate huge swaths of genetic abnormalities. Imagine the shock to paternity law once some unscrupulous individual obtains a celebrities DNA through some discarded water bottle and generates children from it to demand child support payments with. How will organized sports handle genetically modified players being vastly superior to ungenetically modified? It's going to be huge, it'll make the pill seem quaint and I feel it's just around the corner, like 2030's sort of thing and no one is talking about. [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-just-skin-cells-israeli-lab-makes-synthetic-mouse-embryos-with-beating-hearts/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-just-skin-cells-israeli-l... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/parents-can-look-foetus-real-time-artificial-wombs-future https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/parents...

philwelch 4y ago
> Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start generating them from any genetic material available[0], and bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1]. And then you can bypass the entire “we don’t know which genes do what” problem because we can just clone people who have whatever qualities we want. Well, maybe. It turns out your first citation has been validated in mice, and if that was the gold standard, we’d be able to put people into suspended animation (this totally works with mice but not larger mammals) among 1000 other things that never panned out. If you go back a little bit, there are a ton of things (like suspended animation) that briefly seemed extremely promising and never panned out, and they outnumber the things that actually panned out by about 10:1. I honestly think that even if this sort of thing was possible, it might be politically regulated out of existence or even out of being developed. We cloned a sheep in the 1990’s, but still no human.
4y ago

CakeEngine 4y ago

This is only a problem is there's a clear mapping from detectable genetic feature to an expressed macro-feature like intelligence. My (admittedly limited) understanding is that each detectable genetic feature has a whole panoply of effects, some of which wont' be apparent at birth. Selecting for intelligence through specific genes is like to also be selecting for weak bones, reduced longevity, or other unpredictable side-effects. Maybe one day it will be possible but there's a chasm between here and there which can only be crossed by extensive testing on real people. Is that even crossable?

s1artibartfast 4y ago
This has been out of the box already for a while. You can literally have your embryo commercially screened for intelligence, height, and other complex traits today
- philipkglass 4y ago
  Has it been out of the box long enough to validate that the adult versions of the embryos exhibit the traits that they're supposed to? Is it a noticeable intelligence boost? For example, a standard deviation higher IQ as measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices, compared to siblings from un-screened embryos? I read enough about biotech and biohacking that I feel like I would have already come across reports if this really works, but maybe it's very recent. I read Gwern's "Embryo Selection for Intelligence" a few years ago: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection Near future possibilities seemed pretty limited based on that review, unless the reasoning was incorrect: As median embryo count in IVF hovers around 5, the total gain from selection is small, and much of the gain is wasted by losses in the IVF process (the best embryo doesn’t survive storage, the second-best fails to implant, and so on). One of the key problems is that polygenic scores are the sum of many individual small genes’ effects and form a normal distribution, which is tightly clustered around a mean. A polygenic score is attempting to predict the net effect of thousands of genes which almost all cancel out, so even accurate identification of many relevant genes still yields an apparently unimpressive predictive power. The fact that traits are normally distributed also creates difficulties for selection: the further into the tail one wants to go, the larger the sample required to reach the next step—to put it another way, if you have 10 samples, it’s easy (a 1 in 10 probability) that your next random sample will be the largest sample yet, but if you have 100 samples, now the probability of an improvement is the much harder 1 in 100, and if you have 1000, it’s only 1 in 1000; and worse, if you luck out and there’s an improvement, the improvement is ever tinier. After taking into account existing PGSes, previously reported IVF process losses, costs, and so on, the implication that it is moderately profitable and can increase traits perhaps 0.1SD, rising somewhat over the next decade as PGSes continue to improve, but never exceeding, say, 0.5SD.

philwelch 4y ago

Rich people already have children who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap in intelligence, and that will have unpredictable consequences in education and the labor market.

youngNed 4y ago
this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off
- tristor 4y ago
  Okay, rather than being pithy, perhaps you could explain succinctly why people are rich, then? Or perhaps you can admit that in many cases people have achieved moderate to high wealth in democratic free market societies by either working harder or worker smarter than their peers?
  - thesuitonym 4y ago
    People are mostly rich because their parents were rich. Rich people do not come from poverty. Why is that? Do you think it's because impoverished people are not smart?
    - philwelch 4y ago
      Sometimes rich people do come from poverty. Sometimes middle class people come from poverty and rich people come from the middle class. And sometimes rich heirs and heiresses go bankrupt and fade into obscurity. Why does this happen? Because the people who improve their position are either intelligent or diligent and the people who decline in position are either stupid or lazy. To whatever degree these traits are genetic, you’d expect them to get roughly sorted out to the point where social mobility would decline, but it wouldn’t disappear entirely.

throw123123123 4y ago

Making smarter, healthier and more attractive people is a net good for society. The moral issue is not "inequality", the moral issue is eugenics - building their behavior to your desire.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

If it starts happening, societies will face an existential threat in gender ratios.

cauthon 4y ago

> But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes, you can make predictions for things that start to be very relevant to parents, like attractiveness or height or intelligence. Personally, I think this interpretation of polygenic risk scoring is a crock of irreproducible shite. I don’t think it’s your fault, I think a lot of people in the field are shilling something they don’t have for grant money, and they’ve created an exciting sci-fi yarn that’s easy for people outside the field to digest. Height is a univariate trait that does not change after the age of ~20. If you show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult height within a centimeter, then I’ll believe they have a snowball’s chance of predicting something as nuanced and varied as “attractiveness” or “intelligence”. I think there’s promise in applying PRS to assessing risk for non-Mendelian disease, but there’s far too many social and environmental variables at play to reliably predict these softer features. Like other people have joked, if you want a single number that best predicts educational attainment, use a zip code.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
> show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult height within a centimeter, then I’ll believe they have a snowball’s chance of predicting something as nuanced and varied as “attractiveness” or “intelligence”. This has been done. Not to 1cm but ~3cm, and it has been reproduced by many labs all over the world That said, most genetic prediction aren't targeting exact vales, but avoiding the worst outcomes, which is a lot easier. Instead of saying this embryo will go grow to X cm, the claim is this embryo is 90% likely to grow to be taller than average. Same for IQ. They don't predict the IQ, but decrease poor outcomes and increase high ones. Hell, we have had rough monogenic screening for IQ since the 1960s https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05870.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05870.pdf
- cauthon 4y ago
  I haven't previously read the Lello paper [1] that review is citing, but a quick skim makes me skeptical. Particulary the legend for figure 5: > Activated SNPs are distributed roughly uniformly throughout the genome. If the authors were actually identifying a genetic component to a heritable trait, I'd expect them to observe some linkage disequilibrium. And without any analysis of the SNPs (are they coding/noncoding? which genes are they associated with?) it's hard to believe that they're uncovering actual biology and not just chance correlates with external/socioeconomic factors. I also find it difficult to trust studies when the lead author fails to disclose a conflict of interest. [2] [1] https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/210/2/477/5931053 https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/210/2/477/5931053 [2] https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/214/1/231/5930514 https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/214/1/231/5930514

anovikov 4y ago

At least we will not be ruled by dumbasses like Trump! That's already a big thing.

rrwo 4y ago

I think a lot of wealthy people will throw money at genetic snake oil. Traits are determined by multiple genes (e.g. eye or hair colour), and single genes control multiple traits (e.g. EDAR gene which is associated with thick hair, small breasts, and shovel-shaped incisors). Sometimes genes for less desirable traits (e.g. mental illness, sickle cell anemia) may be associated with desirable traits (higher intelligence, resistence to malaria).

GTP 4y ago

I don't think there is any genetic basis for intelligence: if there was, then you would expect that the offspring of the geniuses we had in the past to have an higher chance at being extremely intelligent than other people. But this doesn't seem to be the case, as you usually never hear about the sons or daughters of such geniuses, as they seem to be like other "normal" people in most cases. I admit I'm not bringing any data to back my claim, but it seems to me that having a genius as a parent doesn't really change your chance at being more intelligent than average. You also have to consider that many breakthroughs in history weren't just the result of intelligence, but also being the right person at the right time in the right place played a big role.

deleted 4y ago
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elil17 4y ago
Even if there’s no genetic basis for intelligence, someone could (and, I’d say, probably will) make a marketing claim that they can select for it. Whatever they’re actually selecting for is going to start showing up in higher rates and who knows what the effects would be.
easytiger 4y ago
That's not how intelligence manifests. "Geniuses" are usually products of opportunity as much as anything. Indeed I am minded of a "where are they now" on british television of some University Challenge winners and despite being believed to be geniuses most of them had not done anything remarkable. Intelligence definitely does have a genetic component - but again that isn't how genetics works. The "UN Man" Tabula Rasa doctrine is ideology, not science. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104
ChadNauseam 4y ago
There certainly is a genetic basis for intelligence. It's not even something that's up for debate academically, there's a mountain of evidence for it. We even have identified specific genes that play roles in intelligence. Almost every human trait is partially heritable, and it would be very surprising if intelligence were an exception (considering there's considerable variation in intelligence and it's very important for fitness.) More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

bko 4y ago

> If the process is expensive, it will only be available to rich people. Most technology gets distributed to the masses. It makes more sense to sell something cheaply to a lot of people than just a few people at a higher price. The same reason the wealthiest people in the world can't buy a better iPhone. The economics behind the technology encourages mass adoption and a reasonable price

maherbeg 4y ago

While this is interesting, I think IVF still has a long way to go for ensuring solid patient outcomes in reasonable amounts of time. There's still a lot of voodoo around getting good embryo's from retrievals and implanting them.

snowwrestler 4y ago

Seems like this could be a next big thing the same way NFTs were a big thing: a big speculative concept to help separate gullible rich people from their money. I predict that any company selling this as a service will have extensive legal language in the contract protecting themselves from any liability claim if the promised benefits don’t appear.

6t6t6t6 4y ago

As someone who has done genetic screening to avoid passing a genetic illness to my children, it is not as easy as it seems. In every IVF session, if you are young and healthy, they may be able to extract around ten eggs. Of those ten eggs, 50% will valid and will get fecundated. You are down to 5. Then, in our case, 50% of the embryos will be carriers and have to be discarded. You are down to two or three that can be implanted. And, from those, you are lucky if one gets implanted in the womb correctly and produces a baby. What I mean it's that you can choose to a level, but you are quite limited by numbers, even if the technology improves or you are luckier, and you can get more embryos to choose from each IVF cycle. All that, while the mother needs to be taking a massive amount of hormones that will make her gain weight, feel tired, etc... It's not a walk in the park. By the way, we joked about the "boutique baby" with the doctor, and she told us that there are many traits that they could select but that it was illegal for them to do so.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Yes, this is a good point I didn't mention. The low number of embryos is a limiting factor on what we can do with this technology. I saw an estimate from Gwern (I think) that said we could expect maybe 1-2 IQ points gained per generation with current technology. But there are technologies on the horizon that would let us produce many more embryos, and when that's possible is when things start to get weird

droptablemain 4y ago

So the next big thing is...eugenics?

soohamr 4y ago

Sooo GATTACA?

sterlind 4y ago

So Gattaca, basically. I don't want to live in Gattaca! Society would start pressing people to conform at the genetic level, like a micro-targeted kind of racism - not (just) directed at cosmetic traits like melanin or epicanthal folds, but weeding out traits like ADHD, autism, or even non-conformity in general (as much as you can genetically, at least.) Though, scientists haven't yet found the gene(s) responsible for my genetic disorder, which seems a lot simpler than predicting "intelligence."

krageon 4y ago
It's not racism, micro-targeted or not: It's meritocracy.

Gatsky 4y ago

As others have said, it is currently unproven that this approach achieves anything. But it also isn’t that different to what happens anyway. Elites have superior mate choices on average, able to optimise for intelligence, education level, beauty, freedom from mental illness, financial security. Their children will similarly have such benefits and so on and so forth. This kind of associative mating has generally been rare until recently (at least the part about optimising for intelligence), but presumably explains things like all the genius level Jewish people in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. I actually predict that there will be a wave of post-millennial supergeniuses, when two generations of intelligence based associative mating comes to fruition.