There are two big risks, as I see it: 1) the human tendency to turn statistical averages into absolutes. Imagine genetic testing saying that gene A is associated with a slightly higher than average propensity for coding ability (say, 3%). Then we see people saying "Oh you can't code? Must not have gene A!" Or genetic testing revealing that someone doesn't have gene A, so they're told they can't code, even though they could very well have been great at it. All because of an extra 3% probability.

2) Making it impossible/unbearably expensive for people with genes that are correlated with higher risk of whatever conditions to get health care/insurance.

We need to be really careful with how we talk about genetic insights as we gain more and more understanding, as well as what uses of that information we allow, or we're going to get ourselves into another period of atrocities justified by what boils down to eugenics. Perhaps not on the scale of genocide of entire populations, but still bad enough.

I'd add 3) A Genetic arms race between nation states.

It's only a matter of time before a nation state starts spending a not-so-insignificant amount of money on IVF + DNA-based screening to start picking good genetic offspring for their populace. It's only going to start becoming more and more plausible the cheaper we make this technology.

Very awkward and important questions/decisions await us in the near future.

Genetic arms race, or intentionally crippling your population to make them easier to control? I wonder which the various governments will go for?

Are gene-modded babies going to have genetic compulsions that make them predisposed to propaganda and suggestion? Biological kill-switches?

There's a lot of good and a lot of bad that is going to come out of these technologies.

> Genetic arms race, or intentionally crippling your population to make them easier to control? I wonder which the various governments will go for?

This hypothetical doesn't make sense in the face of robotics. If people are around, they are because they are useful.

The GP's point is, to put it in your terms, whether the people are more useful for their friends, families and humankind or if they are more useful for governments to retain (and grow) their power. The activists today who are fighting their governments and government agencies are of the former kind, and there is a natural conflict between them and the governments in many areas (not saying all areas).

Unless one sees all governments as benevolent agencies that are truly "of the people, by the people, and for the people", this is a distinction to be wary of.

Nation states could already do this, but they've been remarkably uninterested. Yao Ming is the only example I know of.

You don't need DNA tests, or even knowledge of the concept of DNA, to participate in a genetic arms race. DNA tests were not necessary to produce dogs that would rescue drowning humans or cows that would produce incredible amounts of milk. They also aren't necessary to produce "good genetic" humans.

And furthermore, even after producing / selecting those, we struggle to give them a good education in a repeatable way.

China already paid people with high intelligence to ship them DNA for research in 2013, they are already doing embryo gene manipulation. They are years ahead of us due to not caring about ethics. Political correctness will be the death of the west.

https://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-genet...

The BGI project referenced above was hindered by certain suboptimal methodological assumptions. It does not appear that the Chinese are any further than the West in the field, and the most notable replicable advances have occurred in the supposedly-stymied labs of the West.

It is worth remembering that China is a highly ideological society with blinders and "PC" of its own, and is not entirely uninfluenced by Western priorities.

Different ethics != not caring about ethics. And if not caring about ethics were the key to winning the nation-state game, the ethical response would be to tear it all down ASAP, which is usually quite unethical in practice.

I'm not sure I follow your argument. Tearing it all down is or isn't ethical, therefore not caring about ethics is not the key to winning the nation-state game?

Ethics is stuck between a rock and a hard place if nations collapse because they're not disregarding ethics enough, as the previous comment suggests. (I'm disputing the premise.)

I phrased it a bit harshly, more like less inhibited. The US can't even have a discussion about IQ and genetics due to the pushing of BS like blank slate and political correctness, which makes doing research impossible.

Well, there are potential reasons beyond PC for caution.

Keep in mind that eugenics, the "old school" version of genetic manipulation, is widely considered a failure, and has a nasty association with certain unsavory leaders that loom large in European/American history (the most notorious one being, um, Hitler). One can say that eugenics has that nasty issue of raw tribalism clouding any potential good judgement. Personally, I would consider the sordid history of eugenics to be a warning sign to everyone in regards to genetic engineering.

The other angle to bring up regarding genetic manipulation of humans, is that genetic manipulation of animals and crops, whether through the old school "selective breeding" or more modern techniques, have not been without unexpected big problems. At the very least, specific health problems have popped up in certain purebreds, and certain bred crops are far more vulnerable to being wiped out by single parasites (eg: our "perfect bananas" have this nasty tendency to keep getting wiped out by the Panama disease). Biodiversity is also the reason that in-breeding of humans is widely looked down upon.

The other ties with the former: it is not impossible for some unsavory leader to take some research, bastardize the science through blinders of tribal instinct, say "Ah! Gene X is the key to IQ!", and do some nasty tribal things "justified" by science. And in the end, get it quite wrong in the end due to lack of biodiversity.

If by political correctness you mean the basic human rights of the constitution Of course we could add an exception to the constitution that excludes lab grown children. Well, unfortunately gene manipulation is eugenics unless you are willing to support your "defects" until they die of old age plus their offspring but then china is probably going to win again because they are disposing their defective subjects as soon as they notice the defect.

It doesn't take much imagination to think of this scenario. Creating artifical super children that grow up inside a lab and get killed off when convenient is the most common staple in scifi books and movies involving gene editing.

What's more important? Basic human rights for all humans or competitiveness?

> If by political correctness you mean the basic human rights of the constitution

I think the US constitution is silent on the subject of genetic research.

> What's more important? Basic human rights for all humans or competitiveness?

If a nation is uncompetitive, it won't matter in the long term what it thinks about human rights, as that nation will will be out-competed by other natinos that are more competitive.

I agree. Sometimes cowardice masquerades as ethics. Things will go wrong with genetic experiments. We should do them anyway.

I doubt it will end well.

Point 2 is not a problem per se, it can be solved with a national/mandatory health insurance system like the one we have in most european countries.

In the enlightened USA, The GOP-controlled congress is considering a rollback to the ACA rescission and pre-existing condition regulation that would allow insurance companies to not cover these folks.

Coding is such a nice example to go with. Imagine if gene A showed a 3% higher chance of having some socially extremely taboo sexual attraction? Imagine how a child would be treated, growing up with everyone knowing this about them?

Insurance companies actually have strong incentives to price things in a way that reflects the expected value of the money they'll have to pay out, and they have people who are paid to do those calculations. If some genetic variant makes someone ten cents per month more expensive, on average, then an insurance company would have trouble charging much more than that.

That's not really the threat, though. We're worried about what happens when someone has an 80% chance of having a disease that requires expensive treatment for the sufferer's whole life. At that point, insurance is either too expensive to buy or amounts to giving money away.

Reminds me of GATTACA.

Which reminds me of GATTACA law which congress passed after the movie came out.

> "Oh you can't code? Must not have gene A!"

To which the response could be: "You can't perform logical reasoning? Must not have gene B!"

I wonder how long it will take until some enterprising society will start a new eugenic breeding program, this round with a faster feedback loop. It could start as simple as extra tax breaks for desireable genotypes if they have children, or tax reductions for undesireables if they get long-term birth control. Already in you can reduce prison sentences by voluntary sterilization in Tennessee.

Top down control is kind-of hard. Given increased availability of genetic data, democratised action is easier to envision. You start off with compatibility tests against genetic disorders [1]. Then those that lead to potentially the better offsprings [2]. That opens the door for egg/sperm selection [3]. Then third-party gene introductions [4]. All the way to complete designer babies. These action may even completely cut out evolution from the equation, but evolution can be sneaky.

At every step of the way it becomes slightly more acceptable to push the boundaries just so slightly.

[1] Been the case for many decades now in the case of sickle-cell anaemia, this affects partner selection. In the last decade selection against mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 i.e the "breast cancer genes", has lead to searches for egg donors. Also, some people with history of severe depression that runs in the family are self selecting against child bearing (this selection is more common among females).

[2] This could even be pseudo-science at the beginning.

[3] Sperm and egg banks already allow for a crude version of this.

[4] Either natural or synthetic.

It doesn't even need to be breeding, it could be CRISPR technology. How close is that to the mass market? To some parents it could be very defensible as technology to fix a child's genetic defect, which was preventing longer life or peak brain function.

According to this article, it's not yet ready for the mass market: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/gene-editor-crispr-wo...

I'm not a biologist, but reading this sounds more like a few years till mass market, not the ominous "30 years" you hear when people really have no clue how long it's going to take :-)

Is CRISPR suitable for doing more than single location fixes? I feel that breeding would work better for traits such as intelligence or longevity that seem to be controlled by many genes, each of which has only a tiny influence.

I am probably being naive but I see nothing wrong with the examples you listed. Isn't this how iceland essentially erradicated downs syndrome? Using information about genetics to inform how we steer the populations' gene pool sounds very good to me.

Some believe that Britain did this in the past; with the combination of the richer in society having many more children, and hanging (gene pool removal) criminals on a regular basis.

IIRC, China is trying to do just that.

Siddhartha Mukherjee had a fantastic point about this on a recent Sam Harris Podcast - "The more specific we make tests, the more likely we'll find genetic reasons".

If we define beautiful as having blue eyes and blonde hair, of course beauty is genetic! That's equally analogous to how we define intelligence and find it similarly heritable. More work needs to be done on the former before we can for sure talk about the latter.

That's a sly attempt at trying to eschew the existence of superiority, make no mistake, it exists

Luckily we already have ample proof that nothing is more important than diversity for survival of populations. Any desire to "optimize" for certain traits is inherently flawed and dangerous. 'Wouldn't it be great if everyone had the gene for a high IQ?' No, it wouldn't. It would make our population a target for parasitic and pathogenic systems which every successful system leads to. And without variation, they could eliminate us no matter how brilliant we might be.

Yeah, bacteria should not be taken lightly, they can evolve drills to chop through hazmat suits any moment.

Bacteria are worrying with their exponential reproduction, but viruses are what worry me. Radically smaller, not alive (so there isn't anything to kill), just a little jumble of parts that if they happen to get bumped into one of your cells, hey, it hijacks everything and forces the cell to create copies of the little jumble of parts until it explodes.

> instead of relying on twin and adoption studies

Twin and adoption studies have never been reliable. They have ranged from dubious methodology to outright fraud such as in the case of Cyril Burt.

Yes, but let's not forget that the variation in IQ within races and genders is larger than between them.

The variation in altitude between the highest and lowest aircraft is greater than the difference between average altitudes of planes and cars.

I could have worded it better but I'm sure you understand what I was trying to say.

With gender, it's easy. There appears to be no solid evidence for any difference in IQ between men and women, in terms of averages.