New article on in vitro iterated embryo selection

CarlShulman

The article by Robert Sparrow:

A series of recent scientific results suggest that, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. This paper discusses the potential of this technology to make possible what I call ‘in vitro eugenics’: the deliberate breeding of human beings in vitro by fusing sperm and egg derived from different stem-cell lines to create an embryo and then deriving new gametes from stem cells derived from that embryo. Repeated iterations of this process would allow scientists to proceed through multiple human generations in the laboratory. In vitro eugenics might be used to study the heredity of genetic disorders and to produce cell lines of a desired character for medical applications. More controversially, it might also function as a powerful technology of ‘human enhancement’ by allowing researchers to use all the techniques of selective breeding to produce individuals with a desired genotype.

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However, to my knowledge, the current paper is the first to explicitly discuss the possibility of the iterative use of this technology for reproductive purposes

The possibility was discussed in MIRI's "Uncertain Future" toy forecasting model back in 2009, and the analysis formulated a few years before that.

ETA: And further discussed in James Miller's recent book, "Singularity Rising."

The article by Robert Sparrow:

A series of recent scientific results suggest that, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. This paper discusses the potential of this technology to make possible what I call ‘in vitro eugenics’: the deliberate breeding of human beings in vitro by fusing sperm and egg derived from different stem-cell lines to create an embryo and then deriving new gametes from stem cells derived from that embryo. Repeated iterations of this process would allow scientists to proceed through multiple human generations in the laboratory. In vitro eugenics might be used to study the heredity of genetic disorders and to produce cell lines of a desired character for medical applications. More controversially, it might also function as a powerful technology of ‘human enhancement’ by allowing researchers to use all the techniques of selective breeding to produce individuals with a desired genotype.

Quote:

However, to my knowledge, the current paper is the first to explicitly discuss the possibility of the iterative use of this technology for reproductive purposes

and a recent study in which only 15% of the genetic basis for height (known to be >80% responsible

Note that the proportion explained has been scaling very nicely with increasing sample size, (going from ~0 to current levels over about an order of magnitude scaling in sample size, and with several orders of magnitude left to go), and that the efficacy of a single generation of embryo selection goes with the standard deviation, not the variance, so one should take the square root of "heritability explained" numbers to estimate efficacy.

Also see recent genetic results such as this indicating that common variants are adequate, given larger sample sizes.

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New article on in vitro iterated embryo selection

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New article on in vitro iterated embryo selection

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