Ironically, this would enable those with genetic conditions to more safely have kids. I’d argue the problem with Gattaca was that the one man who wasn’t genetically perfect was discriminated against, not that everyone else was genetically perfect.
The problem with this is that it sounds like they haven’t proven that it works.
(Sorry for the edits, accidentally pressed post before I was done.)
I’d argue the problem with Gattaca was that the one man who wasn’t genetically perfect was discriminated against, not that everyone else was genetically perfect.
The premise of the movie was that people would discriminate against the perfect whan the tech becomes available. Seems like a very realistic take on how society would act in the real world based on all of human history.
I agree with your statement, but I feel the intersection of this technology and capitalism is GATTACA. It simply makes sense to begin selecting the “good” genes, not only select against the bad ones. And what’s another $500 for blue eyes at that point?
It wasn’t just one man who was discriminated against. Your genetics determined which opportunities were available to you, even for those who were selected for at conception. There were still varying degrees of “genetically perfect.”
The problem presented by gattaca and with the thought process behind this company is the suggestion that your “value” to "be selected’ (for conception, for employment, etc.) should be determined by your genetics.
I’m having trouble trusting anyone with no scientific background (i.e. no PhD), no published journal articles, and no ethical committee oversight to proceed with a complex problem such as this one.
Sadly, I agree. Scientific background does not a good person make. It’s just mostly (not always) required to solve problems of this level of complexity.
I’m mostly concerned because of no independent ethical committee oversight which is standard in breaking ground on new research and procedures and is widely practiced in medicine and psychology that I know of. I can’t know if this is a fraud, it’s not my field, but the lack of any public information on their groundbreaking procedure based in science is also quite concerning.
No they acknowledge that the technology could be used that way. But there’s a lot of actual medical problems we can catch this way. Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
No. Eugenics is race theory as much as it’s anything scientific. It was about making sure the “correct” races had children. I don’t know what the name for this is in science but Eugenics isn’t about making kids healthier, it’s about making them whiter.
You specifically left out the “a science” part, which is also part of the “kids’” definition for eugenics.
eugenics noun eu·gen·ics yu̇-ˈjen-iks : a science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
Removing the “a” from the beginning completely changes the meaning of the word, which is why you did it.
I’m not native speaker so please excuse my stupid question. How does the “a” change the meaning? My language doesn’t even have articles so I have troubles with using them or understanding such nuances.
Did you miss where they do that by sterilization? And qualities of a race or breed?
Do you speak English? Is this a translation error?
Edit to add-
And you present it like there’s multiple definitions. There is not. This is Merriam’s entry-
the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
The second one is for kids. The follow on context under the actual definition also makes it very clear that this was selective breeding by sterilization, closely related to white supremacy ideology.
But this isn’t selective breeding, unless you twist the definition to the point where it means something wholly different. If I understand right, this is just screening embryos for potential health problems.
Closest, but the method used by eugenics is specifically selective breeding, and is specifically about races or breeds even when you twist the definition like you did here.
You specifically left out the “a science” part, which is also part of the “kids’” definition for eugenics in your source.
eugenics noun eu·gen·ics yu̇-ˈjen-iks : a science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
Removing the “a” from the beginning completely changes the meaning of the word, which is why you did it.
Genetic screening has been around for awhile now. The scam here (if there is one) is them claiming this is new. Maybe they have a better screening, but this is not Theranos.
The theory of eugenics is specific to racist ideology. They sterilized minorities so they couldn’t have children because they wanted more white people. That’s why it says “inherited qualities of a race, especially of human beings” it is specifically calling race out as separate from the idea of all humans.
If this is indeed like GATTACA selecting specific embryos after fertilization is not really selective breeding. Selective breeding is picking the parents. This is picking the children. You could do both but it didn’t seem like that is what was happening. I could still see this likely leading to problems genetically not dissimilar to problems with inbreeding. Genetic diversity requires the randomness of life to be useful long term.
Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
Nothing. That’s what health insurance is for. Also practically noone has any issues with preimplantation diagnostics when it comes to things that are clearly genetic diseases, what rubs people the wrong way is a) selecting by bullshit criteria, e.g. sex, eye colour, curliness of hair, whatever, b) making designer babies the default at the expanse of erm wild ones, worst of all, c) the combination.
And ethics aside the arguments should be obvious it’s also a bad idea from the POV of the honest eugenicist: Humanity’s genetic diversity is already low as it is it would be fatal to allow things like fashions to narrow it down even more.
Humanity is already shaping its own selection criteria, we might need to start doing something extra to avoid evolving ourselves into a corner by non-PID means. Random example: C-Sections. No mother or baby should die in childbirth, yet, the selective pressure towards more uncomplicated births getting removed might, over many many many generations, leave us with very few women who would survive a natural birth which doesn’t sound like a good situation for a species to be in, to be reliant on technology to even reproduce. Thus is might become prudent to artificially select for e.g. wide-hip genes.
Yeah, but nobody here is suggesting racial criteria. This article is specifically about screening for health issues. Reading more into it, it seems like they’ve paired big data with genetic screening to lay odds on health problems that aren’t just a single gene going the wrong way.
Edit to add, there’s no such thing as an ethical Eugenicist. The theory was based on racism and sterilizing “undesirables”. This isn’t Eugenics.
There’s a debate about that ongoing, whether the word and basic idea can be divorced from its history with scientific racism. I don’t really have a skin in the game but would like to point out that psychiatry didn’t cease to be called psychiatry when we stopped physically abusing inmates, showing them off to gawkers, whatnot, got rid of phrenology, etc. You can make arguments both for “we must start from a clean slate” as well as “let’s own the bullshit of the past to have something to teach students to not do”.
That’s because phrenoloy and the other theories are under Psychiatry and Psychology. You don’t throw out Astronomy because of Heliocentrism. Eugenics was specifically developed to produce racial outcomes. It’s a theory, not a field of science.
It’s first and foremost a word meaning as much as “good stock”, or, more modern, “good genes”. Nazis didn’t actually use it, at least not prominently, they were all about “racial hygiene” – very different implications.
As to “specifically developed” I’m not so sure I don’t know enough about Galton. What I do know is that he first did e.g. twin studies to figure out the relative importance of nature vs. nurture and stuff. People motivated by hate don’t tend to be that thorough meaning if he had more information he might’ve ended up on the other side of the fence but as said I don’t know nearly enough about his work to actually draw conclusions, ask a literary critic or such.
His base assumption was something called genetic determinism. Which is exactly what it sounds like and exactly as debunked as you would think. He also tried to link body build and head measurements to genetic determinism.
And No. The Nazis absolutely loved Eugenics. The entire Western world did. The Nazis literally made it a required subject in grade school.
Eugenics needs to go die in a fire. There’s no need to resurrect the name or practices when we’re talking about actual genetic science.
The Nazis absolutely loved Eugenics. The entire Western world did. The Nazis literally made it a required subject in grade school.
I was talking about words. Said required subject was called Rassenlehre, very much not a calque of eugenics.
There’s no need to resurrect the name or practices when we’re talking about actual genetic science.
If anti-racist biologists want to reclaim the word, or even appropriate it as the case may be, I’m not going to call them racists over it. That needs to be judged by the practices.
Yeah that’s not whose arguing we should put call genetic modification eugenics.
I’m sorry but that sentence doesn’t parse for me.
And the Germans didn’t use an English word? Shocking. Truly shocking.
It’s not an English but Greek word and yes it exists in German. Nazis (unsurprisingly) weren’t big on loan words but it doesn’t end there: The non-racially charged German word would be Erbgesundheitslehre, erm, “erf health lore”. Just as neutral as a term as “genome health theory” would be. But that’s not what the Nazis used, they specifically used a term that included “race”.
One factor that comes to mind which would make me, if I were a geneticist, argue in favour of the term would be people using the term “eugenics” to smear things like screening and IFV to get rid of Hutchinson’s. Sure the field has plenty of ethical question marks but much of it is perfectly kosher, yet there’s people who are opposed on principle and are fighting hella dirty. Re-claiming, even appropriating the term then gets you out of the defensive.
But, as said: I don’t have a skin in the game. As said, there’s arguments for and against.
Eugenik (von altgriechisch εὖ eu „gut“ und γένος génos „Geschlecht, Familie“) oder Eugenetik, deutsch auch Erbgesundheitslehre, in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (da auch Erbpflege genannt) bzw. in Deutschland[2] meist gleichbedeutend mit Rassenhygiene (vgl. Nationalsozialistische Rassenhygiene), bezeichnet die Anwendung theoretischer Konzepte bzw. der Erkenntnisse der Humangenetik auf die Bevölkerungs- und Gesundheitspolitik bzw. den Gen-Pool einer Population mit dem Ziel, den Anteil positiv bewerteter Erbanlagen zu vergrößern (positive Eugenik) und den negativ bewerteter Erbanlagen zu verringern (negative Eugenik).
Eugenik (from old Greek “good” and “dynasty, family”) or Eugenetik, German also “erf health lore”, in the time of national socialism (there also called erf maintenance) respectively in Germany mostly synonymous with racial hygiene (cf. national socialist racial hygiene), denotes the application of theoretical concepts respectively insights of human genetics to population and health politics respectively to the gene-pool of a population with the goal of increasing the share of positively evaluated hereditary dispositions (positive Eugenics) and to decrease [the share of] negatively evaluated hereditary dispositions (negative Eugenics).
(my apologies for the quite literal translation I can’t be arsed but an AI will do much, much worse on that kind of dense language).
Note the completely neutral actual definition, nothing about race after “denotes”. If you scroll past all the racist history to the section 'modern form of eugenics" you see a brief section about abortion, of pre-implantation diagnostics being considered (by some at least) to be eugenics, then next short section on trans- and post-humanist ethics also containing eugenics as a major theme.
I’m not deep into that area either but I don’t think racial themes are common among transhumanists.
I don’t have access to the book wikipedia cites, but, well:
Die Begriffe Eugenik und Rassenhygiene werden in Deutschland stets synonym verwendet. Einen feinen Unterschied gibt es jedoch: Eugenik hat immer etwas mit Erbgesundheit zu tun
The terms eugenics and racial hygiene are always used synonymously in Germany. A subtle distinction exists, though: Eugenics always has something to do with hereditary health.
So not only does wikipedia misquote the source, the source shouldn’t be bloody cited in the first place because it contradicts itself within the span of two sentences: If there’s a distinction, they aren’t synonymous. Mostly that stuff is just not talked about at all in the public discourse, I’d be very sceptical about inferring any distinctions from practically non-existent use of those terms.
“respectively in Germany mostly synonymous with” also doesn’t make any sense, really. Semantically speaking: Respectively to what? German uses the word all the time this is a very very sloppy use I can’t make heads and tails of what it’s actually intended to mean.
Are we actually arguing about the use of the word in Germany, though. All, literally all I actually said about my opinion on the issue is, I quote:
If anti-racist biologists want to reclaim the word, or even appropriate it as the case may be, I’m not going to call them racists over it. That needs to be judged by the practices.
That’s all. Literally all. That’s my opinion on the matter. If you want to criticise something, criticise that, don’t go off on tangents.
So now you’re saying your source is useless and not to be trusted? I mean, it’s Wikipedia, I’m not surprised. But your original assertion that the Nazis weren’t into Eugenics is still dead in the water. It formed the basis of their racial theories.
So now you’re saying your source is useless and not to be trusted?
I was citing that article for a particular reason: To show that the Greek word exists in the German language. Here, have another source.
But your original assertion that the Nazis weren’t into Eugenics is still dead in the water.
I NEVER FUCKING SAID THAT. And you’re taking that baseless libel back, right fucking now. Don’t you fucking dare call me a Nazi fucking apologist I wouldn’t even be alive had my grandfather had a single Jewish grandparent more.
I said they weren’t into the word, but preferred ones that were a) not Greek b) German and c) included “race” in some way.
Voluntarily preventing the birth of children that would suffer from horrible disorders due to genetic defects is not a “bar” that is “lower now”, it is the most ethical thing to do.
I mean, it’s super important. The population of all of the places we love is shrinking. In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.
Uhhh…what? There are a handful of countries with recent population decline, but most of the world is still growing even if growth rates are slowing. I’ve never seen any credible projections of catastrophic population decline.
Yeah it’s a bit of a hyperbole, but the rate is what’s important. By the time we hit worldwide negative growth rates (which is projected to happen this century), it’s going to be way too late to have a discussion about whether or not that’s a good thing.
Experts have generally agreed that any reduction in population size will come far too late to help with the current climate crisis. We’re either going to hit sustainability with our current population or die in the process.
While the climate crisis is a significant part of what ails the environment, it’s far from the only thing. Lowering the human population should mean reduced destruction of surviving animal habitats and populations, for instance. And the greater the genetic diversity in an animal population, the better its chances of adapting to external events like climate change become.
Replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, and there are about 100 countries under that rate. Yes, their populations are still growing, but much of that is through extension of life expectancy and immigration (which requires a higher birth rate somewhere else, lest that other places start seeing shrinking population).
It’s not an immediate crisis, but it is turning into a problem that should be addressed soon.
In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they’re being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
It’s a matter of job replacement. Maybe AI will partly help, or maybe we’ll open our borders so immigrants can come end masse and do all the jobs we don’t have enough people for, but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
I’m by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.
U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.
If only there were people desperate for a better life here, alive now, perhaps in a neighboring country or even entire other continent bordering the states.
As long as you either have many tens of millions, or you don’t care about electricity, water, food, and you’re extremely physically isolated and/or hidden very well and armed to the teeth, it shouldn’t affect you much.
For the rest of us it’s something to worry about. Infrastructure needs a lot of trained people to operate. Once the train gets going it doesn’t stop, and that means as time goes on it gets worse and worse until it reaches a point of stability some X years after collapse. And you won’t be able to freely and adaquetely hunt/pick your food if you’re anywhere near a city until point X, because everyone else will be doing the same. Also some idiots will be bathing in the only still good stream near you with whatever leftover chemicals they can find.
Your country can open the immigration floodgates and become a country without borders (i.e. become whatever country is currently your neighbor) but that comes with similar problems listed above.
So as you can see, it’s not an issue for a small privileged few. For the rest of us, its a big fucking deal. I would encourage you to look into it.
Not really, it’s a matter of replacement. Plus we need a lot more people if we’re going to become a multi-planet species for survival. Nothing to do really with capitalism.
but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
Population decline is a good thing. Raising a child requires more resources than caring for elderly. When the elderly die, that frees up even more land and resources for the next generation.
The Black Plague caused the Renaissance. WW2 killed almost exclusively all the healthiest and most productive workers at the prime of their working lives. The result was the survivors experienced unprecedented wealth for a generation.
When the population declines such that a person with a high school diploma can once again own a home and support a family of 4, the population will increase again.
I agree that a Phoenix will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, there will be many ashes, you and I and most of us posting here likely included.
But we are long overdue for a reset. Maybe this time we can just skip the internet infrastructure during rebuild, and develop near-peer networks instead.
I don’t understand why you think there would be any ashes? Extreme population decline like the Black Plague or WW2 caused extreme wealth. Slow decline will cause a slow increase in wealth in the following generations. If we have half the people we only need half the goods manufactured which means half the people is fine. We had only 4 Billion people in 1980. It wasn’t a post apocalypse hellscape. So if we returned to 4 billion it would be fine.
The only people who suffer from population decline whether it was the Plague or great wars are the wealthy because their livelihood comes from skimming a little from all the workers.
ETA: The 4 billion people in the 80s was still growth. Infrastructure has been scaled up, and it will take a ton of work to scale down - work which we will be hard-pressed to find enough skilled laborers for. Also overpopulation isn’t the main driver behind climate change, overconsumption is. We are a society of consumers, we buy convenience, and evil corporations force planned obsolescence on us to make us buy more. Many of us will scoff at high-priced long-lasting items yet still buy a new iPhone every 3 years.
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure and faith in the economy are going to take a hit. That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies. Public utilities like trash, shipping - we already saw how many products were discontinued and companies went out if business because of the inability to get parts, over a 6 month (at first) brief shortage of truck drivers, which is still recovering 4 years later. If you think the economy is bad now, wait until faith in the market completely collapses and we have a full-on crash, not just a recession. It’s been showing signs for years now, and things aren’t improving.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit, the people that make parts for the machines that installs the infrastructure, the vehicles, etc. Everything you can think of will be affected, along with many things most people never think about.
Immigration is a way to slow it down, but almost every country on Earth has falling birth rates at the moment. Immigrants coming from, say, Mexico and Canada to US will only delay the problem, and cause a larger problem for those allied countries we rely so much on.
You can find pros and cons, and it’s been a while since I did heavy research into the subject, but my takeaway was that once we reach a certain point, mass deaths will start to occur, especially in population centers. Rural communities won’t be affected as much provided they have plenty of weapons and systems for defense, livestock, agriculture and close community. Knowledge will need to be retained - on disease, birth complications, fixing nuts and bolts technology, etc. Authoritarian countries who decide to force birth (whether by force or accommodations - see USSR support and metals for mothers with greater than X number of children) will become a serious threat.
There are many variables and moving parts, but one thing is for certain: there will not be mass population decline without major hurt for everyone.
It takes virtually nothing to scale down. Again see WW2. Millions of the best workers in Europe, Asia, and America were dead. No one needed to put in overtime to not grow wheat for the dead.
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure
I don’t want to keep saying it but WW2. The working population was decreased far faster than today. You don’t need extra factory workers to not produce iPhones.
That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies.
I ran a large internet company. You don’t need many people to serve millions of customers. If there were less people, there would be less equipment installed. Less customers means less employees needed. So service would not suffer. If anything it would improve. Because Internet servers/bandwidth is built with oversubscription built in. You don’t really have 100mbs service. It’s that peak usage for your local neighborhood is modeled such that as long as everyone isn’t using maximum bandwidth all the time, you have the illusion of 100mbs at any time. Reducing customers over time means that existing networks and servers could handle unusual loads without slowdowns.
It’s the same with hospitals. You don’t need more doctors when you have less patients.
business because of the inability to get parts,
You don’t need parts because you have less people that want to buy your product.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit
When German and Japanese factories were bombed and the experienced operators were killed, someone else was trained and took their place the next day.
As older people die, you get younger people to take their place. You don’t need population growth for that. If anything, population decline means the younger generation gets better training because there are more of experienced people giving the fewer younger people their knowledge. Instead of one teacher with 50 students it can be 1 teacher with 10 students.
Population decline doesn’t mean tomorrow 99.9% of the entire planet suddenly disappears tomorrow. We have had far more rapid population declines in history and the results have always been overwhelming positive.
In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they’re being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
Growth is growth. It’s not tracking only births, it’s tracking births against deaths. Population decline is people dying faster than they’re being replaced, but even “very slow growth” would still mean the population is increasing.
There are countries that decline in population even though they try to offset it with immigration, Japan is ahead of everyone in that.
But every time someone talks about the decline in population they usually aren’t afraid of people going extinct, they are afraid of working hands supply going low imo 🌚
You mean, the rest of the Asia has gone below even further? Also, birthrate isn’t the only factor, and birthrate of Japan is highest among developed Asian countries, it’s not highest overall
Yeah, mostly because they’ve got no more births to reduce lol. Keep in mind these are the worst countries in Asia, though. There’s still plenty that have decent birth rates (for now)
Yea I mentioned in another comment I should have clarified “east Asia” in the original comment. The rest of the southern and western asian continent have much higher birthrates.
And presumably you’d be screening several embryos. What about for families that can’t afford that?
We have a philanthropic program, so people can apply to that, and we’re excited to accept as many cases as we can.
I must now ask a question I’ve been dreading. I’m sorry in advance. Here goes. It’s the inevitable question about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
No, this is the worst question. This is so mean.
Tell me why it’s so mean.
I find it sad. It’s a sad state of affairs where—my friends who aren’t even in health, they say they get it too. It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud? Do you want to comment on this other random fraud that occurred that has absolutely nothing to do with you besides the person being the same gender as you?
If you’re trying to charitably understand where this question is coming from, how do you do that?
What would be the charitable interpretation—besides that our society is incredibly misogynistic and men’s frauds and failings are passed aside and when one female does it she stands for every other female CEO ever?
So there’s no charitable interpretation.
I don’t think there is. Society treats men as, like, default credible. For a woman, the default is skeptical.
Yeah, she didn’t really address fraud comparisons. Went straight to sexism. Both can be true, and if you are a CEO of a medical company you should be ready to prove your shit works.
If I (man) was being interviewed and the interviewer randomly said “hey, I read in the news a little while ago that a man committed fraud, and well, you’re a man too. Are you a fraud?”, I also wouldn’t dignify it with a response.
If the interviewer had said “This seems like a service a lot of people would want to partake in - how has the efficacy of this procedure has been confirmed, how can we verify that it works?”, he’d have got an answer.
Saying “hey, these people with no link to you other than your genitals are frauds, and it makes me feel like you could be, so are you?” doesn’t deserve to be treated like a question asked in good faith, because it isn’t.
Did you read what she was claiming it could do with a minuscule sample and a fancy algorithm? That is exactly the same claim as Theranos.
Comparing Theranos’ claims with the state of the art at the time should’ve revealed that they were implausible: some blood tests genuinely require a substantial amount of blood in order to properly process and separate and look for a statistically valid measurement of something about that blood, because blood isn’t homogenous and the act of drawing blood actually changes it.
Comparing this embryo screening claim with the state of the art is comparatively less of a leap. It’s just genetic sequencing, which has already advanced to the point where an entire genome can be sequenced with a tiny number of cells (including some single-cell sequencing techniques that are more complex and less reliable), plus actual correlative analysis of specific genes, plugging into existing research (the way 23 and me can do it for like $20).
I have some skepticism, but this business’s model really seems to be assembling steps that others have already established, and not inventing anything new.
It’s not exactly the same claim as Theranos. They’re entirely different things.
One is an embryo screening service, and the other was the promise of a blood testing technology that used a ridiculously small amount of blood, carried out tests without any human interaction in a ridiculously short amount of time, and used an impossibly compact device to do so.
E: ok lol just downvote and refuse to answer. That’s fine by me, you’d probably be a waste of time anyway.
I know that you aren’t smart enough to understand since it has already been answered, so I’m just putting this here for future readers before blocking you.
Just because Noor claims that the reasons people are comparing her and Orchid to Theranos is sexist doesn’t mean that is the only reason. There is a grain of truth that women get more of a spotlight than men in the same situations, but this comparison is primarily about the business and science with a small sprinkling of sexism that gets it to the printed page. But people aren’t comparison apples and oranges, there are a ton of similarities about the business claims and how implausible both sounded from existing businesses that have credible reasons for their skepticism.
But she does have somewhat of a point. Though it’s female and tech and medical - a closer comparison - women in tech leadership roles do get more questioned on their competence than do men.
The reason people are comparing her bullshit made up science crap to Theranos is because she is not a medical person promoting a medical thing that supposedly checks for thousands of times more things than established science with a minuscule sample. Somehow this caught on in a ton of places through being the new hotness and will most likely implode when it is proven to be snake oil in less than a decade.
This is the exact same situation as Theranos.
Plenty of existing companies, like 23andMe, already screen for BRCA variants.
23andMe does an array. They only look at, I think, 44 BRCA variants of the 70,000. If you only look at a few, then you can give people false certainty.
And they’re obviously not testing embryos.
Yeah, they just do people.
Whereas you sequence the entire genome of embryos—orders of magnitude more information, on both monogenic and polygenic conditions, than anything that’s ever been done before. Even your main competitor, Genomic Prediction, only does arrays of embryos, looking for specific things.
Yeah. Whole genome is a big deal and a massive upgrade. You can mitigate risks for thousands of diseases that previously you weren’t able to detect. It’s kind of like a vaccine for everything that we know, genetic-wise, at once.
And all off a very small amount of DNA.
About 5 picograms per cell in an embryo sample. That’s a really, really tiny amount. From both a chemistry perspective and a computational perspective, we had to invent new things to make it so that you can recover whole-genome data.
It’s fucking tech bro bullshit, and the fact that she shares a gender with the other high profile person is a coincidence. While there is something to be said about not pushing back on the men doing the same thing, the criticism of her totally not eugenics because it involves computers logic is completely warranted and the comparison is spot on.
[Reporter] But again, you think that’s unfair because of who your mom is. Because she suffers. Something about her suffering catalyzed in you the desire to end suffering in other people. Does that make sense?
No, that doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, not all disease is genetic. There will still be disease and suffering. We are not that much of an optimistic fantasy.
Like she knows it’s partly optimistic fantasy that will eventually work if she just keeps it going, but let it slip. E. Holmes thought the same thing… just a little more time and we’ll have it.
I’m very glad I found the link to read the full article. She really does come off just like Elizabeth Holmes. When there isn’t a viable product to sell, you really have to sell yourself. There are plenty female tech CEOs that stay out of the media, just like the majority don’t know the names of most male tech CEOs, besides the few largest.
The way she reacted to the question of “your company is basically using exactly the same style of claimed technology as Theranos” as “Ugh. You’re a meanie. Women shouldn’t only be slaves!” is really quite telling.
She also didn’t understand the question about of her mom had been screned out then what would she think about not existing, and she said that there would just be a different version of herself.
It was a dumb answer to IMO a dumb question. Embryo screening won’t affect anyone who has already been born unless it gets combined with some kind of time travel.
Yes, filtering out embryos will mean that entire potential family lines won’t exist, but other new potentials will replace them, assuming they weren’t going to be randomly selected in the first place.
She knew full well, she was just playing ignorant since she knew it would be printed. better to play dumb while you think of something to say than to give ammunition to your opponents
I guess the server is crushed. I don’t understand modern webpage development and web servers at all. 25 years ago I hosted 10,000 simultaneous connections on 4 megabit line (part of a t3) and a Pentium 3 server. It was fast.
The link is text with a picture. It should be a couple dozen kilobytes. A 10 year old PC on a home 100mbs Internet service should handle hundreds of simultaneous connections.
The link is likely a few kiliobytes of text, 10 meg of uncompressed 4k jpegs that no one bothered to downscale and 50megs of javascript to track you and serve ads
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