Re: Embryo screening for IQ increase

From: YP Fun (ypprotection@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 18:57:25 MDT


--- Hal Finney <hal@finney.org> wrote:

>
> I think this would be a better battleground or us
> than fighting for
> reproductive cloning. Embryo screening will allow
> us to give our children
> a tremendous gift, a stronger and healthier genome
> which will benefit
> them their entire lives. It's controversial, but
> according to Stock a
> substantial number of people favor genetic
> enhancement, something like 50%
> in the U.S. As the statistics above show, the
> potential advantages to
> the child are huge. I'll bet in 20 years it will be
> either outlawed or
> routinely used in Western countries. It's the
> Gattaca world coming true.

There is nothing wrong with creating a super-human
per-se but evolution comes about because of genetic
mutation. Embryo screening would eventually yield
a very high quality human being that cannot only
survive in the ideal environment.

The strangest example is sickle cell disease and
malaria. A single cell trait of sickle cell disease
protects people from the deadly consequences of
malaria. If we breed out of genes all the different
types of possible mutations than we would not
be able to survive extreme environments.

http://sickle.bwh.harvard.edu/scd_background.html

Check out the Founder Effect:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/3/l_063_03.html

Having a small perfect gene pool is a severe problem.

YP

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