>Within twenty, maybe forty, years most people in developed countries will stop having sex for the purpose of reproduction.
That's a load of hyperbole.
First, the time-line is completely unrealistic. The ethical frameworks in a lot of developed countries currently are very much in defense of biological inception and against technological interference. It will take more than a generation to change that.
Second, a lot of people actually like reproducing via sex.
The evidence is to the contrary. Folks in developing countries are not having sex for reproduction in statistically growing numbers. Japan, Germany, France and now the US are in or going to be in population decline.
I'd say, unless we advance our timeline, we're in danger of becoming extinct. So let's hope the article is not all hyperbole.
>I'd say, unless we advance our timeline, we're in danger of becoming extinct.
Sure but this does not contradict what I wrote. I don't think designer babies is the way out of the unwillingness to reproduce we witness in industrialized countries. Maybe baby-care robots, maybe minimal basic income.
You're confusing "not reproducing" with "reproducing using non-sexual means". The notion that we'll go extinct because of low fertility rates when the world is vastly overpopulated also seems incorrect to me.
I do think he has a point though. Wherever people are wealthy enough to spend money on vacations and other activities, they seem to value leisure time over reproduction.
Currently, the world population is still growing, but that's mostly due to poorer countries and sub-populations. AFAIK, not even the US's whites are enough to sustain the population size:
"Expected lifetime births have also fallen for White non-Hispanic women from 1.91 in 2007 to 1.75 in 2013. U.S. White non-Hispanic births have been below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for decades." (http://www.unomaha.edu/news/2015/01/fertility.php).
> France (... is) in or going to be in population decline.
French INSEE (national statistical institute) doesn't seem to predict any decline here (although it reports a decrease in the rate of growth, and ageing):
If I got my definitions correct, natural population growth means without migration. So the parent comment is correct, France population is still growing from procreation alone and will do so until 2045.
"Around 2045, natural population growth will be negative (-26,000 in 2049), the number of deaths exceeding the number of births. The population will however continue to grow until 2050, thanks to net migration." [paragraph 4]
> Second, a lot of people actually like reproducing via sex.
This is something I thought of. We're biologically engineered to desire sex, and most forms of birth control deprive the pleasure we get from the act. Unless you're one of those people who are into karezza, I'm not sure the author's idea is going to appeal to you.
While I don't agree with the abstract, I have to disagree with you as well. Men who have had a vasectomy can still have sperm removed for use in an artificial insemination process. In the vast majority of cases sex does not change at all for them after the vasectomy (except for taking the 6 weeks off immediately after the surgery)
Edit for circlefavshape's comment:
You are right, I got numbers confused. It is suggested to use alternate forms of birth control for 2-3 months after the surgery to verify the success.
It depends on the method. I don't think I've ever met someone who likes condoms, and IUTs can be painful if something happens (personal experience). The only method I can think of would be birth control medication, which I know a lot of women use for hormone regulation. However, that's not fail safe. Some of my family member got pregnant while "on the pill".
Around here, all women are on the pill. You only get errors when they don't take it correctly, and there's the morning after pill for that. My personal experience with IUTs is that they work really well with no issues.
As for condoms, if you really must use them, simply pay extra for quality and there won't be any issues with how it feels. Most people negative experience with condoms are with those they give for free at schools and you might just as well use a thick rubber balloon at that point...
People who say that there's no difference with a condom are either lying, have never had sex without a condom, or have a serious defect in their nerve endings. Doesn't matter what brand, quality, or style.
The only people I've ever heard of liking condoms are the ones that have trouble with premature ejaculation, where the [significantly] reduced sensation can help them last longer.
You need to pay premium to get the thin ones and use plenty of lube. If you get the right ones, you will get all the normal feelings (heat, pressure, etc.) except for the wetness. It will not be the exact same feeling as sexual intercourse without a condom, but it will be close enough. That's a small price to pay to be safe with that one-nigh hookup.
If condoms are really an issue for you, get a stable partner that is on birth control.
I do not use condoms very often since I am in a stable relationship, but if I can manage to have a load of fun using sleeves that are as thick as dozen condoms and covered with speed bumps from time to time, surely you can manage the occasional thin rubber.
> The ethical frameworks in a lot of developed countries currently are very much in defense of biological inception and against technological interference.
It's books like this that require these ethical frameworks and it's really a shame.
These medical advances have very important use cases in the medical and Infertile community, and these ethical frameworks create massive amounts of heartache and painful waiting for those that really need these advances.
Why do people always have to find ways to exploit technology that can do great things for selfish purposes and ruin it for everyone else?
I've recently watched some films from the 1950s, and sex then was so incredibly different from the 1990s it's astonishing and disorienting. I don't think the timeline is unrealistic. John Paul II's theology of the body is the only cogently and fully articulated philosophical opponent to this development (that I know about) and most Catholics have never heard of it.
Sexual culture on average really was quite different in the 1950s and 1960s. Public norms were certainly very different before the sexual revolution, and public norms can certainly influence private behavior. There were norms against public discussion or depictions of sex, norms against oral sex (especially by men), norms against same-sex relations, norms against premarital sex, norms against childbirth out of wedlock, norms against female expression of sexual desire, denial that marital rape is possible, general denial of rape accusations, &c., &c. In the 1940s and 1950s, people had very fuzzy and wrong ideas about things like female orgasm and sexual orientation—the Kinsey Reports really were a huge shock. At the margin, all of these norms can shape average sexual experience and behavior.
Look back to the 19th century, and if you look at the number of brothels in even small towns in the US, it's just astonishing: in 1880 or 1890 IIRC, my midwestern hometown was a small town of two thousand people that had more than a hundred brothels advertising. Women had limited legal rights outside of marriage and very limited employment opportunities, and with the example a very large community of sex workers, women had very real incentives to avoid even the hint of a threat to their "marriagability" (ie., virginity and "modesty"). 1890 is just three generations removed from 1950.
Remember it was in the 1950s that people fought major free-speech fights to print and distribute "obscene" books that had been banned for decades, like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer. In the 1930s, censorship was upheld in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act due to the threat of reading the obscene parts on the Senate floor. These days pornography is omnipresent, and there are bestselling books by women about how great anal sex is.
All correct, but again, most of this is towards the outward cultural expression of sex. The Kinsey Reports were about sexual practice, and while they may have been a huge shock, my point was that the practice of sex was largely similar in the 50's and the 90's. I grant that the extent of some practices may have been lesser, but sex itself was not so incredibly different (parent poster's words)
If studies are accurate, oral sex, anal sex (especially between man and woman, duh) and many other sex acts are far more common now. But I guess maybe people just lied about it until more recently.
And even if we get past the social barriers, there's still cost. I can't imagine a program like this being taxpayer funded (for a lot of reasons that are too numerous to get into) so only those who can afford it will have the option.
They might be thinking about the rise of herbivore men, MGTOW, surrogacy, emasculated men/defeminated women etc. alongside technology enabling to bypass nature's intended way to reproduce.
Those who haven't seen it, should definitely see Gattaca. Good movie, but aside from that, posits a premise that I think will resonate with virtually everyone. That we are more than the sum of our parts. That there are unquantifiable attributes like willpower, perseverance, honor, compassion, etc. that arise out of adversity and overcoming our shortcomings. Is a genetically perfect human inferior because they were never subjected to the travails of imperfection?
Those are the questions that will bounce around in the heads of parents ... and they may lead them to have kids the old-fashioned way.
I love that movie, but what you say doesn't resonate with me. I see no reason to think that willpower and the rest are "unquantifiable." And ultimately the protagonist selfishly endangers his entire crew because he refuses to accept his physical limitations.
Confronting adversity and pushing our limits is great, but imposing unnecessary adversity on our children, when there is an alternative, is no good.
It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during pregnancy.
> It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during pregnancy.
This is a valid criticism, it's far easier to portray this issue as black/white, when in reality, it is unbelievably complex.
Nature of course, does not permit pure defects to exist for any substantial period of time. They are viciously eliminated from the gene pool. The ones that stick around are a double-edged sword. A lot of benefit here, some detriment there. And we separate them and decry the detriment ... but you can't have one without the other.
I am fearful of the day when we start eliminating these genes, that clearly have a detriment, but may also have a clear and more substantial benefit that is not readily apparent.
The computational power of natural selection over millions of years through trillions of permutations is unfathomable and does not rely on the necessity of human cognition. We are playing with fire when we start playing whack-a-mole with genes.
I'm all for trying, but we should tread carefully.
Recessive conditions can persist for a long time. Certainly there are some diseases which are double-edged swords (having one copy of the sickle cell gene is great if you live in an area where malaria is endemic and you don't have modern medical care) but it looks to me like there are a lot which are just plain bad.
Making all children tall and with perfect teeth is probably not a great idea. On the other hand, wiping out the mutation responsible for cystic fibrosis, say, would be a big win. Even wiping out the sickle cell mutation would probably be fine at this point, unless you're planning for your descendants to be slightly better off if they end up in the tropics after civilization collapses.
There's a lot of middle ground where things are unclear, but we shouldn't be too eager to extend that mystery to the edges and let that stop us from ending some unpleasant conditions.
> And ultimately the protagonist selfishly endangers his entire crew because he refuses to accept his physical limitations.
I think we watched different movies. Sure the scene on the treadmills showed that he could barely keep up, but he still kept up. To say that he "selfishly endanger[ed]" his crewmates is a bit hyperbolic.
He had a heart condition which was likely to kill him soon. He was healthy enough at the time, but there was a good chance he'd die from it while in space.
Life will continue to provide sufficient travails, even to those with "perfect" genetics, that I don't think this is a real concern.
On the very, very minor end of the spectrum: If I could guarantee that my child (or i) would never have a cold, I would choose that for sure. There is zero downside. My resulting life will not be excessively perfect; people being mean in high school will still scar people for life, etc.
That's a different argument than OP was making. Clearly if "never having a cold" happens to also mean "dies at 50" then it's not a good idea. But OP was arguing that the experience of having a cold makes you a better person, and thus we perhaps should not edit colds out of our genome.
OP, didn't declare any logical means to achieve it. If "never having a cold" might also mean you suffer allergies due hyper immune system. Or be susceptible to a future disease people without cold can easily overcome.
I'm struggling to find the right way to disagree with this. On one hand, we do know the downsides, provided there is no immunization. We don't develop the antibodies needed to fight the disease, and we're at greater risk for an outbreak. Polio was defeated largely due to immunizations, but there's still outbreaks that are devastating because people don't get vaccinated.
I'm also not sure we can vaccinate against the cold, I think it's like the flu, it mutates too quickly.
Well right I'm not disagreeing directly, I'm more saying if we could choose to simply not get colds, we don't know definitively what that would mean because it's impossible to test currently in any sort of practical way.
Gattaca stuck with narrative causality. There is little to suggest that cleaning up DNA is would prevent obstacles. If anything the opposite might happen where achievements are one of the few ways to stand out.
I really wish that movie would stop being brought up. If you haven't watched it since HS like most people, I'd encourage you to watch it again. There is nothing noble about hiding a heart condition in order to become a crucial member on an expedition that will almost certainly kill you.
On top of that the distopia just ended up feeling shallow. We're never given any reason as to why society drops any pretense at meritocracy just because of the availability of genetically optimized babies (to say nothing of the handwaving around genetic markers for fuzzy traits like intelligence nor the idea that environment plays a nontrivial part in development). The most major discrimination is that a space flight agency doesn't want an astronaut with a high probability of dieing mid mission. That's not only perfectly reasonable it's also what we do now. Vincent never would be allowed on a NASA space flight anymore than he should have been allowed on the GATTACA flight.
Gattaca is a film everyone should see if only to understand that the lay person has no business weighing in on issues of scientific ethics. A tale of human exceptionalism that does a great job of ignoring any of the science it claims to take inspiration from.
> If you haven't watched it since HS like most people, I'd encourage you to watch it again.
Just did, available on Amazon Prime for streaming. Just as good as I remembered.
> There is nothing noble about hiding a heart condition in order to become a crucial member on an expedition that will almost certainly kill you.
There's something disgusting about telling people what they can and can't do without actually testing whether they can do it or not.
You see, when you test actual ability, you're confirming an almost infinite amount of data points all at once. Your picture is complete and no understanding is necessary. It's a binary proposition. You either can or can't.
When you test for a genetic disposition ... it's just that. A disposition. You're testing only a single data point. That data point might be very important ... or it might not. Either way, it's a terrible way to determine actual ability.
He wasn't negligent in the slightest. It was all the useless genetic testing. They should have been testing his ability. If they did that, there wouldn't be a movie or anything to be outraged over.
> On top of that the distopia just ended up feeling shallow.
The movie is over 20 years old. I'd say it held up as well as could be expected.
> We're never given any reason as to why society drops any pretense at meritocracy just because of the availability of genetically optimized babies
Laziness. Why go through the trouble of testing ability, which is very hard ... vs pressing a button on a computer?
> The most major discrimination is that a space flight agency doesn't want an astronaut with a high probability of dieing mid mission.
The movie made it clear that this discrimination was pervasive in every walk of life ... which makes sense. Why hire a genetically inferior person if you can determine that through the press of a button?
> That's not only perfectly reasonable it's also what we do now.
No we don't. We do actual physical testing. We set up physical parameters that the person must clearly demonstrate. I mean, that's why they call it a physical.
> Vincent never would be allowed on a NASA space flight anymore than he should have been allowed on the GATTACA flight.
No, he wouldn't. You're right. Because he's myopic. Which by the way, is not a genetically inherited defect, although it was thought to be at the time the movie was made.
But if the assumption that genetics played a part in myopia was perpetuated in the future as it is in the movie, that would be a truly sad state of affairs.
You would have people being discriminated against for no valid rational reason. That's the point of this movie. Genetics very rarely determine a certainty. Merely a probability.
> Gattaca is a film everyone should see if only to understand that the lay person has no business weighing in on issues of scientific ethics.
Wow. I don't think scientists should have a monopoly on ethics. Pass.
China has shown you can do a pretty good job of legislating the heads of parents to change. Their system is rather similarly classist and eugenicist as the Spartan one, where the party leaders at the top are very interested in keeping a national and even international genetic advantage.
The eugenicist story of Yao Ming's upbringing, if true, would be far more innocuous than thousands of known programs. And of course, every year there is another rumble that they are leading in the march to human cloning. It seems a possible path to becoming the world's only superpower, unless the smart people just turn on each other without enough dumber people to order around, or some other country somehow gets superhuman AI first.
> That there are unquantifiable attributes like willpower, perseverance, honor, compassion, etc. that arise out of adversity and overcoming our shortcomings
Counterpoint: traits arise through neural networks established in the brain. What's to say that we won't reach a point where such traits can be artificially engineered?
Likely not in the near future, but I see it happening hundreds of years from now.
Great. Now we only need to decide which traits are those...
Perhaps servility and humility. Doing what's told? I bet lot of moms and dictators would love that.
Eternal happiness. Why shower, when you are happy as you are? Why eat when you are already happy?
EDIT: The point is, our traits depend on environment. If it changes, we change as well. We might think we control our environment, but so far, I doubt that's possible.
This completely ignores the personal aspect of having children, which is the desire to have a child with your loved one. Adding a scientific way to pick a different child seems to me to be comparable to adopting... You are just doing so at a very young age. So the idea that most of humanity would jump to this mechanism just because it is possible seem to grossly misunderstand human nature.
So it's just a PR problem. All it takes is some non-invasive technology to enforce that the woman will ovulate the right egg and the man will shoot the right sperm and it will "feel" natural enough for anyone to be ok with it.
Even if you have a bespoke baby, it's still requires the couples' genetic material... And someone has to carry that thing to term. No one's invented a Ronco Gestation Appliance to sit on your kitchen counter yet - I believe that would cause a serious disconnect with human reproduction. As long as the parents start pumping out the hormones during the pregnancy, there really isn't an issue. But you could always make a pill for that...
Well if that is so there shouldn't be any social incentives to encourage procreation, but every society in the world values procreation heavily, most traditional societies ostracize people who can't procreate. If biological insticts were enough why social incentives/ostracization. How do you explain the social stigma of being childless.
<wild conjecture> Perhaps the social stigma is an evolved response. Maybe one method humans have evolved to incentivize reproduction is the ostracization of those unable/unwilling to have children. </wild conjecture>
The evidence is to the contrary. Many first-world countries are in population decline, and accelerating. We'll all have to rethink what we believe to be 'human nature'.
You've posted this twice in this thread now. How is a slow decline in birth rate, to slightly below what's needed to replace people as they die, evidence that people prefer technological intervention in conception? It looks like a complete non-sequitur to me.
Its evidence that people are not biologically compelled to reproduce using sex. Because, they aren't doing it. In the first world. Leaving us with technological alternatives.
I'm not sure if you are serious or trolling... but you seem to be missing the question. The question is not IF you choose to reproduce. It is a given that some people will, and some will not. But in the set that do choose to reproduce, HOW they choose to do so is the relevant question for these discussions.
I was serious. But I guess responding the the legitimacy of the article - certainly to bring reproduction up to replacement/sustainable rates we'll need to supplement biological reproduction. Because that may become negligible. Thus the resistance to technological methods will have to be overcome.
That makes no sense at all. To bring reproduction up to sustainable rates, you'll need to convince people to reproduce. How they reproduce is irrelevant. The fact that birth rates are dropping in some places does not mean that people will always refuse to conceive more babies naturally, nor does it imply that the only way to overcome this is with artificial reproduction.
The birth rate isn't dropping because people don't like natural conception. It's dropping because they're choosing not to have babies. When people want a baby, the vast majority have nothing against the typical technique.
Your insistence that these two unrelated issues are somehow linked puzzles me.
Folks adopt; foster children; raise their nieces and grandchildren. Folks do all sorts of things to avoid the biological necessity of carrying a child. Its not surprising; its scary and hard and dangerous. I'm simply predicting that lots more people will, in future, choose new alternatives as they have often chosen in the past.
Really? People adopt and foster because they either can't have children themselves or because they think that helping children in need is a moral responsibility. People raise their relatives' children because of a sense of familial obligation.
If you think any significant number of people adopt children because they just want to avoid pregnancy and birth, you're the one just making things up. I'm sure you can find a few people who do this, but their numbers are utterly insignificant.
There's very little substance in the summary, hopefully the book is less clickbaity.
A few reasons why this should join the "pills will replace food" drama:
- a long-term trend in wealthier societies has been to get more control on how they have and raise children. Birth control, education, etc. Less, "more valuable" children. Getting (and losing) a child has more individual and social significance today than in 17th century Europe where 30-50% kids would die before adulthood
- another trend is for people to look and welcome ways to bypass biological constraint. Low fertility, age, more recently known genetical defects.
- a very recent trend among very select groups has now embraced the idea of "perfect children".
Now will this last trend ever go mainstream? Are people willing to _pay_ to "improve" or even only pick some traits of their children?
Or will most people have to resort to artificial reproduction because of low fertility and longer life expectancy?
And then does any of this mean "the end of sex"?
To become a market, artificial reproduction would need to be reliable ("I want my kids to get blue eyes") and confortable. I'm not a specialist, but I get from my 23andme data that so little is determined by our genes. And we're very far from understanding how genes affect each others.
Among my friends who resorted to artificial insemination for various reasons, they had sex - a lot. Hormones are here to stay.
Humans are complex organisms and this (along with the "uploaded brain" fad) forget about the chemistry that shapes intelligence, behaviors, life.
People would couldn't will soon be able to get kids. Some will possibly choose to pick a few traits. Most of the planet is _for many generations_ going to have sex.
It's not enough for IVF be safe, lawful, and free. For the general, not-infertile public to actually prefer IVF over the natural way of doing things, it'd also have to be easy, convenient, and painless, and it'd have to consistently produce a baby.
I often hear people talking about IVF as if it's some sort of a luxury service that anyone who can afford will choose voluntarily. Clearly anyone who thinks like that hasn't actually had to go through it themselves. The physical and emotional toll is quite high. The path to conception can take many months, often years. Hormone therapy is not pleasant at all. And waiting in uncertainty for months could be quite trying for many people.
Now, it is true that IVF is currently being used when everything else has failed, so it's possible that it would be much less painful for perfectly healthy mothers/couples, especially if the technology improves a lot in the future. My advice: don't count on IVF as a family planning tool.
The only reason IVF isn't always successful is goverment regulations or medical issues. In a healthy mother we can expect a 15% success rate for each embryo, so you can just implant a bunch and remove the extras. Unfortunately, regulations, in particularly in the EU, limit you to a few at a time and I'm not aware of any human fertility specialists that will remove excess embryos. It is a numbers game that could easily be won with a change of attitude.
My wife has endometriosis [1]. IVF didn't take until our 3rd cycle (using at least 3 embryos each time).
Also, we were given the option every cycle to selectively reduce [2] embryos if too many took (luckily, that was never necessary). This was in the US.
/u/gyardley mentions that its not easy, convenient, and painless. The most expensive procedure in IVF is where you stimulate a woman's ovaries in order for them to overproduce eggs for ultrasound-guided retrieval (using an extremely long, large bore needle); as soon as medical science is close enough to converting stem cells filtered out of blood into reproductive tissue (and we're extremely close, believe me; I have done my homework), IVF will be an outpatient procedure no more expensive than an expensive dental appointment.
As a full disclosure my percentage comes from my research on bovine embryos. But I think viability percentage approximately matches your experience, especially when you consider that I'm used to working with ostensibly healthy individuals who could conceive naturally.
If they had dumped 10 embryos each cycle the story would have been different.
Let's say a generation of humans is born from perfect genetic combinations. Wouldn't natural children from that generation keep the same strong genes?
What about epigenetics? If some proto-übermensch were afforded - due to automization and superior talents - to live a far more leisurely life than our own, and spend it with drugs, food, and entertainment, wouldn't that cause genetic regression?
I think the problem with Gattaca is that the movie was so damn good at tackling the issue it's made itself the sole narrative that we understand, even though science has advanced tremendously in concepts such as epigenetics and the microbiome. We need a new narrative to understand our new situation.
Not just mutations. The MUCH bigger factor would be a child whose phenotype is "desired" but whose genotype is "less than ideal," or simply a kid who was the best they could get with the limitation of the parent's genetic material. Like, if AA = bad, AG = good, GG = better and the parents are AA and AG, oh, well, let's just make an AG kid.
You can't just make one generation of genetically filtered children and figure everything's going to be good now, we have all the "bad parts" eradicated, because that's not how genes work. In addition, if you read the paper, it mentioned something on the order of a dozen embryos, and doing a genetic analysis of each one. Using this technique, you'd be able to filter out, perhaps a handful of disease, maybe pick out one with green eyes if that's what you wanted (and your genes allowed), but you're not going to gene-by-gene eliminate every chance of bad combinations with every other combination of genes on the planet, barring mutations. That's ridiculous.
And how would we know which mutations are broadly beneficial or not? What if humans of a future earth or larger society have needs we couldn't imagine, like radiation resistance or anti-autoimmune protections?
Besides, sometimes there are trade offs with no clear winning picture. Sub-Saharan Africans with sickle cell syndrome are also more resistant to malaria. What's worse? What's more necessary? How do we know malaria won't be a bigger problem tomorrow?
>how would we know which mutations are broadly beneficial or not?
In general terms we know what a good specimen looks like and the specific traits that they have. We can only build to that because:
>sickle cell syndrome are also more resistant to malaria
This is evolution by process of elimination, and unfortunetaly elimination means lack of breeding from disadvantaged phenotypes. We've largely uncoupled reproduction from evolutionary advantages anyway, and just like humans are so dedicated to controlling the world in they inhabit, we'll insist on controlling the finest details of reproduction too.
Japan's government estimates there are 500,000 adult hikkikomori in the country who have not left their homes in the last 6 months. Far more people who meet more lax definitions of hikkikomori. I see the Kakuhido (translates roughly as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women Find Unattractive) as a group possibly similar to Christians circa 40. Once it becomes the Revolutionary Alliance of People Governments Find Unattractive the recruitment opportunities are pretty obvious, right?
U.S. society has decided that it must be very costly for young women to have children—having children makes it very difficult to obtain the education and career experience necessary to effectively support young humans. So young women are under immense pressure to delay child-bearing as long as possible, delay it to the very border of infertility. But that's an example of the inhumanity of our society, its lack of humane-ness and human-centered priorities.
It's as conceivable that we could adapt by making it socially and economically feasible for young women to have children at the height of their fertility, rather than normalizing surrogacy, eugenics, and mass abortion. Those things are fine in limited circumstances, of course—even if each is under legal limitations in most Western countries (I hadn't realized that surrogacy was banned in most of Western Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy ).
>U.S. society has decided that it must be very costly for young women to have children
I'm pretty sure U.S. society isn't the one responsible for the fact that raising a child consumes significant resources and makes obtaining other goals much harder. The time spent caring for a baby makes it harder to complete higher education. Even if offered help, a baby takes a lot of time.
Also, this isn't something that only applies to young women. A single father has to sacrifice a lot of time to raise a child. While the initial pregnancy is not as bad for the single father to deal with, the time spent with a child that could be spent on anything else is a significant factor for the next 18 years.
Human children require lots of care. But high US inequality raises both the consequences of not investing in your individual human capital and the cost of investing in your individual human capital.
> U.S. society has decided that it must be very costly for young women to have children—having children makes it very difficult to obtain the education and career experience necessary to effectively support young humans.
Do you have children?
The challenges that are brought on by children aren't unique to the US. Getting an education and/or performing at a high-level at your job are very difficult to do if you are raising children. Doubly so for women who are typically the primary caregiver for infants.
The U.S., relative to Europe at least, has family leave policies and child care institutions that are uniquely bad for young families, especially families at the low end of the economic scale. Not that Europe has solved this either. A society that was organized to allow young people to complete their life cycle when they are most fertile would look very different indeed. There's certainly a tradeoff between investing in the human capital of adults vs. investing in the human capital of children. But the main coping method of young Americans is to delay childbirth as long as possible, which becomes a tradeoff between fertility and infertility.
I am always slightly amused at the idea of designer babies. On the one hand, we already do this at a more coarse grained level: it's called sexual selection. Yet I don't think adding genetic screening will turn out nearly as well as some people hope.
The relationship between our genes and the high-level traits we care about is complex and non-orthogonal; it will be difficult to isolate the genes for a specific trait without producing unintended consequences. With standard sexual selection we are able to judge by the end result (especially if you can observe the other person's family prior to reproduction, and you see what recessive traits they may possess).
We'll still have the traditionalists and we'll have the ones who have "accidents" and we'll have "increasing disparity" between the have techs and the don't have techs.
Oh please, we can barely figure out how to ensure access of stuff like penicillin for most of the population of the US. How are we going to get to a point where the larger population can afford to forsake sexual reproduction in favor of medical fertility treatment? Sexual reproduction is a time-tested and free method for propagation. The technologies the author talks about are going to have to compete on cost before they're viable on a large scale.
I genuinely enjoy reproducing via sex. It seems ridiculous to me to deny such a naturally enjoyable experience just because technology claims to have a better way. Besides, it's tradition. Literally every ancestor I have did it. To NOT do it seems kind of... arrogant.
Was the invention of fire arrogant? Climbing out of the ocean on our fins? The first sexual reproduction? Without what you call arrogance we would be RNA replicating in puddles.
All of those things had a clear benefit in the cost-benefit analysis of the prior state and after state. Getting rid of reproductive sex isn't worth it at all. It's way better to do it the old fashioned way.
Are we really already far enough along in understanding genetics to do a better job than the process of natural selection? Given, we've been manipulating it well for over a century now, which makes me wonder what percentage of the global population would not have survived to reproduce even two centuries ago?
Modern Medicinal science is amazing, but in this field I could easily imagine a scifi future where humans are no longer able to naturally reproduce. Is there any concern with this in the scientific community or is this just my writer's imagination on an unfounded basis?
Reminds me of the book: The Forever War [1] where towards the end 'humanity has begun to clone itself, resulting in a new, collective species calling itself simply Man.' Fantastic science fiction book.
You can't sum a person up by a genetic score, personality test, or any other score or test. So this may or may not happen, but it will never be effective.
There are too many possibilities and if they get good maybe they will adopt a model of intuition like "AlphaGo" to win. But intuition often fails and life isn't as binary as picking winners and losers.
No I'm saying every trait must be weighed with a complex interaction of known traits, other immeasurable traits, and the changing environment a person is in. So yes there could be a purely negative trait but it is very hard to tell without testing that combination out. Just detecting a trait, I think is insufficient.
IMO, simulation should work for a range of things. Over the long term things like uncorrected Vision may be less harshly maintained by natural selection. So, a minor level of genetic engineering may be useful over the long term (100,000 years) if we want to avoid ever stronger dependence on medical assistance.
> So, a minor level of genetic engineering may be useful over the long term (100,000 years) if we want to avoid ever stronger dependence on medical assistance.
We don't know where 'Politicians are able to do 100ky policy planning' comes in the tech-tree, though :D
From the current state of affairs, it appears to be still far out in the future...
The author's assumption is that artificial (non-sexual) reproduction will eventually be SUPERIOR -- safer, cheaper, faster, more predictable, less painful, etc. -- because unlike sexual reproduction, it benefits from exponential advances in technology.
The author therefore predicts that more and more people, and women in particular, will prefer it in the future.
Interesting to see if people choose to avoid diseases or developments that aren't necessarily crippling but for many people would be undesirable, like the various autisms or mental oddities. Maybe it will end up being just like buying a car, you pick the race, eye color, gender, etc. down a list of options and then take delivery in 9 months?
This immediately made me think of the Sting song "Straight to my Heart", and the 'sex' scene in "Demolition Man". I'm sure there are other examples.
I suspect that if sex/ sexuality were not in such an odd cultural space, ideas like this would either rarely arise, or at least never raise an eyebrow.
I'm surprised to see the amount of negative comments. Widespread adoption of this kind of technology will likely to be one of the best things to ever happen to the human race.
The author might be off on timeline but I'm pretty sure this will become common practice before very long. Some people won't like it, some people will resist, sure. It won't matter. Eventually they will be like the anti vax crowd. And everyone else will say "look what you are doing to your kids!".... there ought to be a law! And then there probably will be a law. And it will be I'm pretty sure, in the end, a huge gain for the human race.
That's a load of hyperbole.
First, the time-line is completely unrealistic. The ethical frameworks in a lot of developed countries currently are very much in defense of biological inception and against technological interference. It will take more than a generation to change that.
Second, a lot of people actually like reproducing via sex.