Re:China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions
by nsxwolf on Thursday August 17, 2017 @06:22PM
(#15041615)
What other argument against it would their be besides the usual pro-life ones?
I don't know who would be against some kind of treatment to disable or delete the extra chromosome.
Re:China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions
by wbl on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:48PM
(#15041351)
People with Down syndrome have high life satisfaction.
Re:China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions
by thriftwy on Thursday August 17, 2017 @06:17PM
(#15041572)
That's the problem with humans where life satisfaction seems to be inversely correlated with IQ.
Re:China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions
by gwern on Thursday August 17, 2017 @06:32PM
(#15041683)
I believe it tends to either be constant or slightly positive, actually. Of course, if all you want is happy people, happiness is heritable and so you can do embryo selection on it or genetically correlated traits like personality factors (for Extraversion & against Neuroticism: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-hu... )
I don't think it's "being reported as though a cure for Down syndrome has been found". That's the spin the National Review article puts on it. Here are the first two paragraphs of the quoted CBS article:
> With the rise of prenatal screening tests across Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased, but few countries have come as close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland.
> Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women -- close to 100 percent -- who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.
It's pretty clear that they're not talking about a cure. How is this a bad thing at all? How is this "eugenics"? Down syndrome is a serious, debilitating genetic disorder with no benefits in any sense. Why do we want it to exist? I'm not really seeing an argument against this besides the usual pro-life positions.