IANA the OP, but 8 years ago was already the beginning of the trump era. The widespread tribalism was not new then. It was well established even 4 years previous to 8 years ago. Arguably less has changed on the political polarization front in the last 8 years (2016-2024) than in the 8 previous to that (2008-2016).
Maybe. We have the tech to snip out a gene from a cell. Snipping a gene from a zygote while leaving it viable is tougher.
What we really lack is a reliable roadmap of which gene does what. The vast majority of genes are kinda like AI: you can’t point to any one functional gizmo that controls the outcome. It’s the collective efforts of lots of different functional gizmos all pushing and pulling on each other in unfathomable ways that produces the net emergent outcome we see.
There are certainly exceptions to that complexity. Down’s syndrome is (AFAIK) one of those neat clean “one bunged-up gene = one obvious defect” things. Whose isolation gave so much now-dashed hope for easy cause-effect genetic engineering.
We’ll certainly make progress as time and science march on. But overall, IMO right now we are at the tough stage of “we have a knife, but no real idea what to cut where.”
Step 1 is not even to do that yet; it’s to make access to IVF (including genetic screening of the fertilized eggs before implantation) universally available.
Genetic disorders that crop up randomly - trisomies and the like - are handled overnight.
Genetic disorders caused by specific known genes can also be avoided, so long as both parents don’t have both copies of said genes.
Being able to go in and correct errors would be great, and I don’t think there are any true technical challenges left before we can begin doing it - but we can accomplish enormous good even without doing that.
And when we are ready for that step, I believe it’s easier to modify the egg than it is to modify the zygote, no? If we are doing fertilization externally anyways we can do the tweaking whenever is most convenient.
You are certainly right about this being an immature technology with a long way to go; but there are things we could do now, and doing them would give us the practice we need to refine these techniques for the future.
I think the answer to figuring this out is incredible amounts of data. I think it’s interesting that you bring up AI - IMO that’s our best bet for figuring this out.
Get detailed genetic information from as many people as possible; track as much health information as possible; crunch the data with AI.
Neither of these statements are strictly true. As @LSLGuy noted, editing the genome of a zygote and leaving it viable is not a mature technology, and there are plenty of genetic syndromes that can occur with just one copy of a defective gene, especially those on the Y-chromosome which is (obviously) not subject to dominant reinforcement.
Stranger
The aspect of politics today that most clearly matches the movie however is the low regard that the right has for science and intellectual rigor, in favor of corporate propaganda and gut feelings. There is not much different between putting Brawndo on your crops because its got the Electrolytes that plants crave, and saying that burning coal can’t be bad because plants need CO2.
I must be missing something.
Don’t we do it literally all the time in animals, and wasn’t it recently done successfully by a renegade Chinese doctor in humans?
My understanding was that most CRISPR research in humans has been done in non viable zygotes, but that’s been done for moral concerns, not because the technology is incapable; and my understanding is that it is done in animals on a literally daily basis.
That is fair enough.
OTOH I wasn’t even necessarily speaking of gene editing humans yet - we could get a very large portion of the benefits simply by making IVF universally available and screening eggs.
Couples with genetic problems on the Y chromosome could choose only female zygotes for implantation, if gene editing isn’t available.
But again, that’s a matter of character. Camacho et all weren’t ignoring the science, they had been denied any opportunity to ever learn the science. They were at the tail end of a thousand years of decay.
But, because they had an honest desire to fix the problems that were so obvious, even they could see them, they ended up actually following the science. Not Sure convinced them to try using water, even thought that sounded stupid to them, and when he was finally proven right (after a few set-backs, admittedly), they accepted the results of the experiment, and implemented the changes to their whole country.
That’s a matter of fundamental character, and is what is different between them, and the MAGAts. MAGAts wouldn’t have even admitted there was a problem, would have refused to even try the suggested solution, and would have rejected the clear results of the experiment even if someone had gone and done it anyways.
For sure some small number of people now can do (and do do) exactly as you suggest. Test eggs, sperm, or already-combined zygotes for the (few) troubles we can identify then do not use any of the problematic components. But for anyone but the very rich, or the comfy-class very genetically suspect, this is not practical at scale. The tiny statistical benefits don’t begin to pay for themselves when applied to everyone. Who collectively usually manage to make genetically typical babies the old fashioned way by guess & by gosh. Usually.
In a country where here in “enlightened” 2023 some 45% of pregnancies are unplanned or unwanted and universal health anything is anathema to half the populace, expanding even your step one to commonplace behavior is decades into the future and sociologically a non-starter until far more progressive and intellectual thought processes become the norm in the populace.
Oh, I agree. Actually implementing this would require huge cultural shifts. You didn’t even touch on this, but a significant portion of the population would consider doing anything along these lines an evil abomination against God’s divine plan, or some such nonsense. And as you say, it would require significant changes in what we view our responsibilities to one another, and society’s responsibility towards the individual, to be.
That being said, I was comparing this plan to eugenics, which is also a utopian (well, we might say dystopian, but its proponents would disagree) plan that would require massive transformation of society and of social mores.
If you’re going to embark on such a massively transformational project, then you may as well include the latest in genetic engineering technology, rather than relying only on ancient principles of animal husbandry.
I’m not saying that someone needs to run for office on this platform; I’m saying it’s a superior plan to eugenics in every way - effectiveness as well as morally - and so it renders eugenics obsolete.
I doubt the validity of the stated premise, that stupid people outbreeding intellectuals would result in a significant decline in aggregate human intelligence over that short a timeframe. Or even a much longer timeframe. Human intelligence is a very complex thing, heavily dependent on communication (the medium of abstract learning), social influences and imperatives and epigenetics.
Many of the people we observe to be geniuses or celebrated artists are not the children of especially remarkable parents, just as some physical attributes do not always carry forth (two very short people, e.g., can sometimes have a normal-height child).
That said, the underlying premise might have some weight to it. Stupid parents would tend to encourage stupid ideas and behavior in their brood. Culture has a much shorter timeframe of evolution, as we have seen.
I thought that was the direct message. The satire of American consumerism was clearly done based on the time the movie was made, but also clearly not meant to be the enduring and important message of the movie.
Yet, it is corollary. I have written that stupidity is a vital economic resource, and if you let critical thinking get out of control, our entire economy would severely contract, possibly even collapse.
Well said and I agree completely.
The only thing the animal husbandry approach has/had going for it was familiarity / simplicity. As well as a facile expectation by the Great Unwashed that real results could be reliably delivered quickly.