Is it possible to breed humans for very high intelligence AND exellent physical health?

Factual Questions
1

I realize this would not be a good thing to go ethically etc, but I’ m wondering if the mechanics of it are even possible.

Specifically the question is can you focus in a genetic trait like a combination of very high intelligence and physical health and breed human being for this trait over successive generations, and do this without genetic physiological or mental defects cropping up as well?

Lets assume immediate family incest is not permitted in these breeding couplings.

I suppose the question is can you force breed for any trait without negative traits coming along for the ride?

2

This topic come up often. And there are several opinions. Mine is, yes, and we do that right now. We do select for beauty in our mating partners. And we do select for intelligence. Now, I may or may not be defining beauty as inner beauty, or emotional suitability as a spouse. I may or may not be defining intelligence as “gaming the system”, for example people like Kim Kardashian do know how to earn a very good living, without building rockets or curing cancer in the garage. But the human race has pretty much been getting just what it wants, one baby step a generation, just like all other sexually reproducing species.

3

Obviously not every positive trait has a negative trade-off. There are plenty of people who are both physically and intellectually gifted, and plenty of people who are both physically and intellectually challenged.

The barriers to breeding a race of supermen are social, psychological and economic.

Of course, the first thing eugenicists want to try to do is eliminate genetic diseases by preventing sufferers from breeding. Hey, if everyone with Tay-Sachs didn’t have babies, we’d eliminate Tay-Sachs. Except the number of people who express a recessive trait is the square of the frequency of the trait. So if one person in 10,000 expresses the trait, then one person in 100 is a carrier for the trait. And if you just stop those who express the trait from breeding, you’ve only reduced the incidence of the frequency of the trait by 1%. It’s going to take hundreds of generations to eliminate the trait at that rate.

But mutations crop up all the time, and so the frequency of a trait is typically an equilibrium between the frequency of mutations that cause the trait and strength of selection against the trait.

But back to your question. You find a bunch of smart healthy people, breed them together, and create smart healthy children, and cull the dumb unhealthy ones. Keep doing that for generations and you’ll see results. Except, how are you going to keep doing that for generations? And how do you control the breeding of your stock? Lock them in cages? What do you do with the culls? Euthanize them?

For farm animals, the answers to these questions are easy. Culls are simply butchered. Animals are literally kept in cages while fertile. Animals can be bred for multiple generations over a single human lifetime, and since the goal of animal breeding is more profitable animals, your colleagues will continue your work after your death.

The other problem, your goal is to create a race of atomic supermen, yes? But the breeding stock in your program will have to be slaves, otherwise they’ll control their own breeding. So how do you keep a race of supermen as slaves? Won’t they, you know, turn on their masters? Haven’t we seen this movie before?

4

Well… it was more a feasibility question, but this “atomic” angle intrigues me.

5

How many generations does it take to develop similar traits in dogs 5 or 10 generations? I don’t know of any projects that span 100 years without major changes that really stretch the idea that they have the same goals. I think that is the main issue with a human breeding program. It have to be run by humans and the focus must stay there for through many changes of leadership and society.

6

That can be a problem. Genes recombine on chromosomes, but they don’t recombine randomly. Genes near each other on the chromosome tend to recombine together whereas those further away don’t. So, if the gene for a “big, ugly nose” happens to reside right next door to the gene for “super intelligence”, then it’s going to be hard to breed for the latter without also getting the former.

Considering the timeframe and ethical/economic problems with breeding humans like farm animals, we will probably be able to just genetically engineer the super race sooner than we could do it the old fashioned way.

7

You’ll simply need chronitons to accelerate their growth.

“Weren’t those the particles that destroyed an entire civiliz…”

“Good news, everybody”

8

We’ve been doing this for a long time now, and we may be near the limits for intelligence and physical ability already. 100+ years of highly controlled breeding of race horses hasn’t made them any faster. Without a mutation, humans may not be able to achieve much more in general intelligence or physical ability through selection. For the sake of future generations I hope this isn’t the case. If we have reached the peak of human intelligence, it’s going to be a bumpy ride from here on out.

9

The OP isn’t asking if we can breed smarter people. He’s asking if we can make “high intelligence” breed true without also getting a lot of negative traits. I assume he is thinking of the fact that many pure bred dogs have heritable physical problems. Those are usually caused by excessive inbreeding, which he has ruled out for the human experiment.

Inbreeding is the fastest way to get traits to breed true, but it’s also a great way to ensure genetic problems are amplified in the breed as compared to the general population. I’m sure it’s possible to get traits to breed true without using inbreeding, but it’s going to be a LOT more difficult. Throw in the long time between generation in humans, and you’ve got a daunting task. Hence my suggestion that genetic engineering is more practical route.

10

Yeah, I’m straying a little from the OP. But there are still limits to what can be done by breeding. The problem isn’t as simple as breeding out undesired characteristics. Intelligence and physical health are more complex, and may not be as heavily influenced by genes as more basic traits like eye color. Genes provide a starting point for complex behavior and ability that can vary greatly among individuals based on developmental and environmental factors. The genetic combination responsible for human level intelligence could be present in everyone already, and no single set of additional factors involved in those who exhibit the highest level of intelligence.

11

Honestly, this sounds like the project from the Aryan Master Race, by Adolf Hitler.
~VOW

12

Highly unlikely. We might argue about the amount of variation in the human population (7,000,000,000 individuals), but it’s unimaginable that there is no variation.

13

Is it possible to breed humans for very high intelligence AND exellent physical health?

They already exist.

Yours. Truly.

14

Are we already half-way there? Truly negative characteristics tend to breed out. SO it depends how you define “healthy” and “intelligent”. There is no specific correlation or connection between intelligence and bad health. So the answer is “yes”.

Why does this not happen?
-Low standards by men. IIRC it was Helen Gurley-Brown who remarked, “men will schtupp mud.” Considering what’s pushing around baby strollers either this is very true of they have some deep inner beauty… very deep.
-Some health problems - heart issues, breast cancer, alzheimers - tend to not appear until breeding selection and actvity has passed. If we were actively selecting for good traits, these would not be identified.
-Many (especially late in life) health issues also relate to environmental factors, so selection does not matter. Many we still have no idea about the real cause.
-Modern medicine and other technology is actually working to send us backwards. Not only do people with poor vision, for example, have glasses that allow them to avoid being culled by random accidents, they also have contact lenses so the defect is not evident during the mating phase.
-Similarly, modern techniques with cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, etc. hide the effects of poor genes during the mating phase.
-Similarly, we have welfare, medicare, ec. that allow the less capable to continue to reproduce, when social as well as medical circumstances might have limited the number or survivability of offspring. Also, we hav birth control the for upper class, meaning the successful have more incentive and means to reduce their offspring which would cut into the lifestyle and toys they can have.
-you can revive the nature s. nuture debate in another forum, but essentially the rule of thumb is probably that it’s 50-50; so a not-so-smart person with a good education and training can outperform a smart lazy bastard.
-Success and more offspring does not correlate with smarts or fitness. Who is better suited for passing on their relatively lesser quality genes? Trump seems to have more children than Einstein…

So there’s a lot of things that would need to change to make your plan work.

15

This does not count as selective breeding. As an individual, we choose mates with particular traits, but as a species, nothing prevents the unattractive or unintelligent from reproducing.

16

[quote=“Arkcon, post:2, topic:606310”]

… we do that right now. We do select for beauty in our mating partners. And we do select for intelligence. …QUOTE]

What you mean “we”, paleface?

Seriously, no we don’t. Neither men nor women are necessarily selective in their choices, except to weed out the blatantly unfit. Having sex with the mentally retarded is a crime for a reason… it needs to be. I have not seen a correlation between men’s intelligence, or even looks, and their odds of success at engaging in reproduction. Men are not that discriminating either; and the complete losers always have each other.

If anything, the only real factor that may help evolution is birth control. Instead of most children being an accident (or inevitable) a woman may wait long enough to ensure the guy is not a moron before deciding to carry on. This means that men will get smarter and better looking, but it is less likely that women will.

17

Of course, natural selection is also selecting ways around that birth control. Some women have biochemical quirks that make hormonal birth control and/or IUDs ineffective on them. Latex allergies in men make condoms a bit harder to find, especially at the spur of the moment. One BAD experience with a latex condom might turn a man off of all condoms. For that matter, not planning ahead is being selected for, think of a man forgetting to buy condoms, and woman forgetting the get a script for the pill. Being too dumb to use birth control correctly is also being selected for.

And then of course, since with modern medicine, and the general welfare state, simply desiring to have a lot of kids is being selected for, since for many people that is the limiter on how many kids they have.

18

First, you’d have to establish that high intellect and physical attractvieness are objective enough to be measured, and genetically caused. While genetics seem to play a part in both, in neither case can we identify genes very much related. The plain fact is that both are ridiculously complex interactions of genes, not discrete genetic traits. This means in practice that you’re out of luck. Even fi you had the will to breed humans and the means to do so, you can’t develop a race of mutant atomic supermen.

19

That was the premise of Cyril Kornbluth’s story “The Marching Morons” even back in the 1950’s - that modern society is actually selecting for stupid and unattractive, since the rich successful types (smart and good-looking) tend to have fewer children.

I also recall a guest lecturer in our science fiction class in University, who suggested that we were diluting our gene pool with modern medicine - diseases like diabetes and hemophilia, tendency to premnature birth, susceptible to heart atatcks, high blood pressure, bad hips, etc. were more likely to survive and breed. Of course, he had no answer to how to fix this in a humanitarian way, and both he and I wore glasses - the first step down that slippery slope.

20

And for animals that are mostly kept as pets, we desex the culls. It’s pretty common for dog and cat breeders to sell the puppies and kittens that they don’t want to use as breeding stock with a “must get animal desexed” clause in the sales contract. It’s probably common in other pet animals, as well.

So, if we have human culls, who is going to make the decision as to whether or not a specific person is a cull? Usually there’s no bright line. You might have someone who is perfect in most respects, but carries a defective gene, which might or might not be serious. And as someone said upthread, some genes don’t express until after breeding age.