medicaltreatment:in vitro fertilization

Gene Editing Must Reckon With the Unforeseen - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/gene-editing-must-reckon-with-the-unforeseen

http://static.nautil.us/11060_37c691988cb0a6f0fdc8cc41f6ede4f1.jpg

Almost exactly a year ago, I attended the International Summit of Human Gene Editing at the National Academy of Sciences. It was organized in part by Jennifer Doudna, arguably one of the inventors of Crispr-Cas9. It’s a new biotech tool—cheap, easy to use, and reliable—that allows thousands of scientists around the world to modify genes in plants, model organisms, and living human cells. One of the biggest ticket items on the agenda was a debate on editing the germline, the heritable code entailed in sperm and ovum that gets passed on to future generations. One chief concern is that Crispr-Cas9 will open up new terrain for a “market-based eugenics”—genome editing will be combined with in vitro fertilization techniques. There’s certainly motivation to explore this landscape: Many mothers (...)

What If Tinder Showed Your IQ? - Issue 28: 2050
▻http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/what-if-tinder-showed-your-iq

http://static.nautil.us/7210_df308fd90635b28d82558cf580c73ed9.png

The not-so-young parents sat in the office of their socio-genetic consultant, an occupation that emerged in the late 2030s, with at least one practitioner in every affluent fertility clinic. They faced what had become a fairly typical choice: Twelve viable embryos had been created in their latest round of in vitro fertilization. Anxiously, they pored over the scores for the various traits they had received from the clinic. Eight of the 16-cell morulae were fairly easy to eliminate based on the fact they had higher-than-average risks for either cardiovascular problems or schizophrenia, or both. That left four potential babies from which to choose. One was going to be significantly shorter than the parents and his older sibling. Another was a girl, and since this was their second, they (...)

Why Are Some People So Smart? The Answer Could Spawn a Generation of Superbabies - Wired Science
▻http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq

Zhao’s goal is to use those machines to examine the genetic underpinnings of genius like his own. He wants nothing less than to crack the code for intelligence by studying the genomes of thousands of prodigies, not just from China but around the world. He and his collaborators, a transnational group of intelligence researchers, fully expect they will succeed in identifying a genetic basis for IQ.

They also expect that within a decade their research will be used to screen embryos during in vitro fertilization, boosting the IQ of unborn children by up to 20 points.
...
In theory, that’s the difference between a kid who struggles through high school and one who sails into college.But studies make it clear that IQ is strongly correlated with the ability to solve all sorts of abstract problems, whether they involve language, math, or visual patterns.

The frightening upshot is that IQ remains by far the most powerful predictor of the life outcomes that people care most about in the modern world. Tell me your IQ and I can make a decently accurate prediction of your occupational attainment, how many kids you’ll have, your chances of being arrested for a crime, even how long you’ll live.

#chine #sciences #genetique #selection