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Iceland just has a high abortion rate. Selectively terminating births isn't quite the same thing as the genetic engineering and embryo manipulation that was goi
by jart 4y ago
Iceland just has a high abortion rate. Selectively terminating births isn't quite the same thing as the genetic engineering and embryo manipulation that was going on in the Gattaca movie. There's even a quote from the movie that specifically addresses this, where that guy says, "you could conceive a million times naturally and never get such a result."
- reducesuffering 4y agoI don't mean Gattaca's full tech involving choosing traits for a child are here, but that the age of embryo and trait selection is here. Aren't some parents doing embryo selection filtering out undesirable traits?
- canucker2016 4y agoYes. In India and China, selecting embryos based on sex (preferring males) has supposedly led to a lower number of baby girls. see https://www.newscientist.com/article/2199874-sex-selective-abortions-may-have-stopped-the-birth-of-23-million-girls/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2199874-sex-selective-a... But South Korea has been able to reverse the trend, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38362474 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38362474 ==== In an effort to reduce the incidence of selective abortions, South Korea enacted a law in 1988 making it illegal for a doctor to reveal the gender of a foetus to expectant parents. At the same time women were also becoming more educated, with many more starting to join the workforce, challenging the convention that it was the job of a man to provide for his family. It worked, but it was not for one reason alone. Rather, a combination of these factors led to the eventual gender rebalancing. South Korea was acknowledged as the "first Asian country to reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth", in a report by the World Bank. ====