It seems to me that our social norms – including women foremost expected to get an education and a career – are inevitable moving our societies in the direction of artificially creating babies, if we want to survive longer term. To an extend this process have already begone with screening babies for disabilities and other invasive fertility treatments. Soon this will involve screening for a variety of hereditary diseases. And from there why not go the next logical step and improve the human body by modifying the genetics?
This is currently meet with reservations in much of the Western world due to history, but it is doubtful that will China or India will show the same hesitation. On the contrary their population might view it entirely positive, who doesn't want to have a tall light-skinned son performing well in school. In such a scenario we will be forced to partake or be overtaken.
> It seems to me that our social norms – including women foremost expected to get an education and a career – are inevitable moving our societies in the direction of artificially creating babies, if we want to survive longer term
This isn't really a technological question but a socioeconomic one. Gestation is hard enough, but the much longer work of child-rearing: who pays for that?
Similarly with artificial generation: who is going to pay for it? The very rich who've already exhausted conventional infertility treatment?
The fully artificial person raises a possibility from cyberpunk dystopia: corporate-owned persons. After all, if someone is built out of artificial DNA and has no direct link to human parentage, could they be made liable for their own existence? Kind of like college loans, only starting from birth.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and let India and China "beta test" gene editing in humans. Once they iron out the horrific wrinkles, then we can adapt the technology.
The most concerning possibility I find is the ability to surreptitiously create offspring of two unsuspecting people with nothing more than some left behind skin or hair (wouldn't the Bene Gesserit have liked this?). The rest of it doesn't seem particularly concerning to me.
it is infuriating when the topmost comment on that article is about overpopulation FUD while the comments have gotten closed, so I am unable to retort.
There is absolutely no hard evidence that world overpopulation should be seen as a serious concern, because we do not know the actual food production capacity limit of the earth, and clearly we are already wasting quite a bit of whatever's there (such as eating meats instead of plants).
But the environmental burden of even the current population is quite severe, is it not? What with all the pollution, global warming, ocean acidification, overfishing, deforestation, aquifier depletion, extinction of many species, etc etc..
Probably the biggest long term concern is that this kind of reproduction, that depends on machines will become prevalent to the point of non functionality of normal reproductive systems. One freak solar flare and our species, can't multiply.
More importantly, "transposons" (endogenous retro-viruses) spray damage all over a normal human cell's DNA about once a month. The damage would be cumulative.
Gamete cells have special mechanisms to control transposon activity that skin cells lack. The child won't be getting a clean genome.
I think that for non-selection for operational sex organs to have a noticeable effect on the population would require hundreds of generations, and would likely get fixed by gene therapy anyway. If instead you are talking about purposely using gene tech to remove traits for sexual reproduction, I don't see that as an immediate concern either.
- reprogram cells (could be any cells, here they are considering skin cells as they are easy to get) to become embryonic stem cells capable of growing into different kinds of cells
- use signaling factors that occur in nature to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm
This isn't eugenics. I'm not sure why people use that label so much with almost any reproduction-related technology. Birth control is "eugenics", genetic disease screening is "eugenics", the creation of egg cells from other cells is "eugenics".
Eugenics is, very specifically, the application of husbandry to humans. I'm all for anything that has similar benefits without the associated human rights violations.
[+] [-] l5870uoo9y|8 years ago|reply
This is currently meet with reservations in much of the Western world due to history, but it is doubtful that will China or India will show the same hesitation. On the contrary their population might view it entirely positive, who doesn't want to have a tall light-skinned son performing well in school. In such a scenario we will be forced to partake or be overtaken.
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
This isn't really a technological question but a socioeconomic one. Gestation is hard enough, but the much longer work of child-rearing: who pays for that?
Similarly with artificial generation: who is going to pay for it? The very rich who've already exhausted conventional infertility treatment?
The fully artificial person raises a possibility from cyberpunk dystopia: corporate-owned persons. After all, if someone is built out of artificial DNA and has no direct link to human parentage, could they be made liable for their own existence? Kind of like college loans, only starting from birth.
[+] [-] EGreg|8 years ago|reply
Pretty sure the population went from 1 billion to 9 billion in a short time.
Want to survive long term? Perhaps people having children later in life might just be the thing to do it.
[+] [-] ythn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkrisc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|8 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kTdh-u5tis
[+] [-] jobigoud|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|8 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-...
There is absolutely no hard evidence that world overpopulation should be seen as a serious concern, because we do not know the actual food production capacity limit of the earth, and clearly we are already wasting quite a bit of whatever's there (such as eating meats instead of plants).
[+] [-] DamnInteresting|8 years ago|reply
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Wor...
[+] [-] DarkKomunalec|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgag|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
We're past one limit already. We couldn't feed current population were it not for the invention industrial fertilizers.
[+] [-] Ygg2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chasil|8 years ago|reply
Gamete cells have special mechanisms to control transposon activity that skin cells lack. The child won't be getting a clean genome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposable_element
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dankohn1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libeclipse|8 years ago|reply
Besides, it has numerous benefits too. I feel like the argument against it is an example of the slippery slope fallacy[1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
[+] [-] DarkKomunalec|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moofight|8 years ago|reply
- reprogram cells (could be any cells, here they are considering skin cells as they are easy to get) to become embryonic stem cells capable of growing into different kinds of cells
- use signaling factors that occur in nature to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm
This has been done with mice
[+] [-] klibertp|8 years ago|reply
That would be great, however the backlash from the more... conservative population will be equally huge, I guess :)
[+] [-] jansho|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyager|8 years ago|reply
Eugenics is, very specifically, the application of husbandry to humans. I'm all for anything that has similar benefits without the associated human rights violations.
[+] [-] Ygg2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinter-py|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyc|8 years ago|reply