4 ms·
There is some history to be learned from the genetic variability problem of Ireland's potatoes in the XIX Century. Apart from other -more serious- problems, ob
by pfortuny 13y ago
There is some history to be learned from the genetic variability problem of Ireland's potatoes in the XIX Century.
Apart from other -more serious- problems, obviously, but genetic similarity is not necessarily a good thing.
- temujin 13y agoVariation can be deliberately increased, not just decreased. And PGD creates an incentive for the former: the greater the difference between your own and your partner's DNA, the greater the expected benefit from informed selection.
- JVIDEL 13y agoI was just going to mention that: given economies of scale custom babies will probably share a lot of identical prefab genetic blocks for every specification since it would be far cheaper than engineering every trait from scratch. At that point there would be enough GM humans walking around that a virus might evolve to attack only them, and it would spread like wildfire among the population given the lack of genetic variation, the only exception being old regular humans and maybe a few of those with parents wealthy enough to get them tailor-made without any of the preexisting "parts" that the majority uses.