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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.
I would not blindly trust those people either, if they are human they are corruptible as well.
Looking at certain ‘scientific background’ people they act just like politicians, if you take the time to look into them and their activities.
I am just saying to be criticial and do not treat them like celebrity worship status, because I have done that mistake with politicians as well.
We must stay criticial of people in power and with money/influence.
Science IS political, at all levels. You can’t compete without funding and your institutions will pressure you to perform a certain way.
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.
This article is basically promotional material.
Theranos : Evolution
As long as you don’t use the word eugenics explicitly apparently you can sell anyone on anything.
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?
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.
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.
It’s still eugenics, you just used more words to describe it.
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.
No that’s literally what it means:
The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
Science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
They literally say “Word beginning with ‘eu’ and ends with ‘genics’” inside the article pimping them out.
With a sprinkling of ‘Orchid doesn’t like us to use that word’ as if ‘Nazis do not like to be called Nazis’ is a valid complaint.
GATTACA IRL
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.)
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.
How much does an Orchid screening cost?
It’s $2,500 per embryo.
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.
Is there a nonpaywall link?
Check comments, it has been posted.
You can also visit an archive website and paste url on search bar.
Elysium IRL
Another tick box on the Star Trek timeline! There is still hope!
She can have my babies, wow
bonk Off to horny jail
Never say that again.
This is so terribly inhuman. Makes me want to vomit.
