US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
Heliospect’s services were marketed at up to $50,000 for 100 embryos, undercover footage shows
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I'll probably get downvoted for saying this, but as a transhumanist the potential for this kind of technology is huge.
It's expensive now, but 20 years ago it cost $2.7 billion to sequence a full human genome, now it's around $600. Imagine a world where this process is inexpensive and easily available.
You're just unabashedly supporting eugenics? Is that because you're too young, or too uneducated to know any better?
It's because I was born disabled.
I'm glad you're here though.
So let's pretend that IQ is a reasonable measure of intelligence. Do you think that it may be related to undesirable traits?
So, Gattica?
While genetic research has huge potential in early diagnoses, and possible prevention, of illnesses caused by genetic defects, the statement that one can determine (general) intelligence of a potential offspring by checking embryos seems nonsensical from the get go.
First of all would be the definition of (general) intelligence. What exactly is it? Even when assuming that an IQ test cannot be cheated, the concept of reflecting one's general problem solving skills by a number makes little sense. Can we really say that a savant that heavily struggles with everything but in one field has the same intelligence as someone that is completely standard in any way when both have the same IQ score? I would say not, as the former would need much more support than the latter.
Furthermore, often points concerning something related to eugenics ignore the nature vs nurture debate. How much of our skills are dependent on our environment? To what extent can we say that our minds have a limit on how intelligent we are? It's hard to say, as there isn't much research about it, and experiments on that topic are often inhumane, historically speaking. So we need to keep this lack of knowledge in mind when talking about topics like eugenics.
