US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
Heliospect’s services were marketed at up to $50,000 for 100 embryos, undercover footage shows
I can't see any problems here. It's not like there's a famous novel about why this is a terrible idea or a movie about it with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.
The idea of intelligence being a static property of a person is already known to be wrong. And IQ is not the same as intelligence. The idea that there’s one number to put to how smart a person is needs to die.
Also there are multiple types of intelligence, im good at tracking and navigation but woefully braindead when confronted with a social situation where I cant just poker face and pretend I am above it all.
Hmm. Do we have sufficient information in -- and understanding of -- DNA to reliably predict IQ?
We can definitely screen for some things, genetic diseases and such. I'm just a little skeptical of the our ability to say "this is what the IQ of this embryo will be".
Maybe their whole service doesn't do any testing at all, it just auto sends a reply "We're sorry, we think there is a strong chance your child will inherit genes related to lower than average intelligence." to anyone dumb enough to pay them money.
Back in the early days of the web, thespark.net had a bunch of games and jokes and crap. One of the things they had was an IQ test that was based solely on subtracting points the more questions you answered.
We absolutely do not - geneticist who has worked on neurodevelopment projects
We don’t even know why Turner Syndrome - a disorder of X chromosomes - often leads to neurodevelopment delays. We have hypotheses that still aren’t tested, so anyone claiming to know the genetics of neurodevelopment is grifting you.
We don't have sufficient information to reliably predict IQ, but we do know hundreds of genetic loci associated with intelligence. The overall contribution of these loci is significant.
The polygenic scores predicted 4–7% of intelligence variance in independent samples; another study predicted 10.6% [50]. Thus, a blood sample at birth in these samples predicts intelligence with about the same effect size as parental socioeconomic status, i.e. they do not predict well; neither is of practical use for predicting the intelligence of an individual.
Source. (A review of the subject.)
It's true that the polygenic scores cannot reliably predict that one person will have a higher IQ than another, but that doesn't mean that polygenic screening is useless as a tool for increasing the expected intelligence of one's offspring. People who effectively screen their embryos will, on average, have slightly but significantly smarter children than people who don't. In this way, screening is not qualitatively different from many other parental interventions.
I would use this sort of screening if there was an opportunity to do so. (I don't think it currently justifies resorting to IVF if that is otherwise not necessary, although it would if the effect was larger.)
So basically they are straight up scamming people since we do not have knowledge of genetic indicators correlated with a test that has changed over the years.
Never mind that genetics can't reliably predict IQ. The important thing is that IQ can't reliably predict intelligence.
IQ is your performance on an IQ test. It's not subjective at all, for the same reason that SAT math scores are not subjective.
The real question is whether SAT scores and/or IQ scores have anything to do with what we consider "intelligence".
Yeah its a stupid thing to filter for. Looking for genetic diseases and such. I get it. Trying to looks for mental or athletic prowess likely is not going to work. Of course the same rich folk who do this will have tutors/trainers and arrange their whole life around whatever thing they want them good and low and behold they will be good at it and tell their friends how it was because of the genetic selection.
Among all the moral problems, there is also a technical problem: we don't know that much about the relationship between IQ and genetics. Not even close to enough. We can't even reliably predict something as straightforward as eye color outside of very simple situations and that is far clearer than the genetics of building and operating brains.
Not only is the genetics that underlie human intelligence complicated, so too is understanding intelligence itself. It's not even clear that human intelligence can sensibly be reduced to a single number, or even a set of numbers, let alone ones that can be used to ordinaly rank people.
The situation isn't much, if at all, better for any of the other traits they list. There may be some useful screens for specific mutautions that result in particular diseases that are well understood, but when it comes to the full understanding and subtlety of more complex traits, human genomics just isn't there yet.
Anybody with even half a brain knew that IQ was a bullshit number the first time they heard about it. Anybody who thinks that’s how intelligence works is not intelligent themselves.
Oh I think there was a book about this... Brave New... something
Okay, say this was true. I'm not saying it is, but let's carry this argument to the next step.
IQ is a score that shows how well someone can solve problems and think compared to other people their age. It doesn’t measure how smart you are in every way, but it can help show how strong your brain is in certain kinds of thinking. So let's say, okay, they aren't born smart, but we'll train them to BE smart, and this screening will make it easier because we won't be working upstream against "the dumbness," or whatever. Kid has the capacity to be smart, now all we have to do is train them, right?
Next, you have to assume that their parents and environment allows for this. These services will be available for rich parents only, which historically have been a better environment for teaching. But it also will give these "high IQ kids" access to parents of conservative, "Christian values" as well as liberal rich kids. So now we have a problem. What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity? We haven't even defined what "smart" is, really, and so a lot of conservatives, "smart" means "stronger than your enemy." Intelligence without compassion breeds psychosis, and leadership qualities that are sociopathic and ruthless. And that INCLUDES turning on their own kind. But that's what they want, right? "Survival of the fittest," a kind of social Darwinism.
"Sorry dad. I know you raised me to be the head of the company, but I gutted it instead, and will be funding my super-race and frankly...? You're genetically inferior. Goodbye."
What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity?
I don't know about insanity, but there are and have been plenty of smart people who also have some very weird ideas. Linus Pauling thinks vitamin C is a panacea. Bobby Fischer believes in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Garry Kasparov thinks history is wrong and has come up with his own timeline of history. Nikola Tesla was terrified of women with pearl earrings and talked to pigeons. Yukio Mishima thought he could restore imperial Japan, something the emperor himself didn't want. Mayim Bialik is just fucking nuts.
Oh God lol... "Sorry sir/ma'am your baby is dumb as fuck. That little unborn shit can't even tell me what shape goes in what hole! He's got no chance."
We should just rewrite the IQ test with a bias for babies.
Baby comes in test at 160, then if they test later just be like idk what did you do?
