by Rhoda Wilson, Expose News:
We don’t get to choose which of our genes we pass on. Every conception is a roll of the dice. But that could be about to change with emerging technology called “preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders.”
A technology that allows parents who can afford the cost of the procedure to select which embryos should be allowed to survive based on their desired traits. In humans, selective breeding is called eugenics.
Could this new eugenics movement eventually result in a new breed of elitist humans that are sufficiently genetically distinct from the rest that the two populations are no longer genetically similar enough to interbreed?
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he following is paraphrased from the article ‘The quiet return of eugenics’ written by Louise Perry and published by The Spectator.
Testing of a foetus or embryo is already common. Prenatal Down’s Syndrome tests, for instance, are so widespread that in some Scandinavian countries, almost 100 per cent of women choose to abort a foetus diagnosed with the condition, or – if using IVF – not implant the affected embryo. The result is a visible change to these populations: there are simply no more people with Down’s to be seen on the streets of Iceland and Denmark.
Until now, these prenatal tests have been available only for some conditions.
Preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (“PGT-P”), hereafter “polygenic screening,” is a genetic test designed to screen for multiple genes associated with a polygenic disorder, which is a condition caused by the interaction of multiple genetic and environmental factors. This test is typically performed on embryos created through in vitro fertilisation (“IVF”) and aims to identify embryos with a lower risk of developing a polygenic disorder.
Polygenic screening allows parents to take a batch of embryos conceived through IVF, have a report compiled for each one, based on their genetic risk factors, and then use these reports to decide which embryo to implant.
Such reports give a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become, including their vulnerability to an enormous number of diseases – heart disease, diabetes, cancer – and their likely physical and psychological traits: height, hair colour, athletic ability, conscientiousness, altruism, intelligence.
The list is long, and ethically fraught. Polygenic screening permits parents to choose the very best children, according to their own preferences, almost entirely removing the role of luck in the normal genetic lottery.
The screening itself is expensive, but not prohibitively so – probably in the region of £7,000-£12,000, which is less than a year of full-time daycare in London. Equally expensive, and far more physically onerous for the mother, is the IVF process.
But think of what’s on offer: the opportunity to offer your children the best possible chance in life. Why would the kind of upper-middle-class parents who think nothing of spending vast sums on their children’s education not opt for polygenic screening? My bet is that they will, and soon.
A New Eugenics Movement is Born
If the word “eugenics” has sprung to mind while reading this, you’re not alone. What we’re talking about here can best be understood as a new kind of eugenics.
The video below was not included in The Spectator’s article. You can find a transcript for the video above HERE.
Eugenics is a science that has, within living memory, been used to justify many evil deeds. The horror most modern people feel when they hear the word is justified by the atrocities associated with the first movement. The extermination programmes of the Nazis, for example, were directly inspired by the eugenics movement of the Anglosphere, not least the programmes permitted by American eugenic legislation that saw more than 64,000 individuals forcibly sterilised between 1907 and 1963, disproportionately African-American and indigenous women.
The fundamental claim behind the first eugenics movement in Victorian and Edwardian times is that our genetic inheritance affects – often to a large degree – not only our physical but also our psychological characteristics. It is therefore possible to manipulate the characteristics of a population by encouraging or discouraging the reproduction of some genes – which historically meant, in practice, the reproduction of some people.
