The headline is quite misleading. From the post, the patent appears to be about calculating and showing the traits children are likely to inherit from their parents, not a way to "design" them.
If a couple produces 50 zygotes togather, and the mother and father test all of them, and pick the one that sounds like it has the most appealing traits that a couple might envision together, and discard the rest, would that count as "design"?
This process sounds like it's half a step away from that. The half-step being that they only mention testing the parents, and then the process permits a degree of hypothesizing about possible children. Meanwhile, how hard would it be to test an embryo in utero, and then make a shallow, superficial decision about the pregnancy?
The process is practical and ethical, when considering it's utility for assessing the risk of inherited, incurable diseases tied to varying combinations of dominant or recessive genes, but it's a flimsy assumption that it will solely be used for only those scenarios.
There will be couples with known risk factors, who will want to roll the dice and try anyway, because they love eachother and want a family, and then they check their pregnancy in utero for things like downs syndrome. But then, if you have the options in front of you, why not check out other characteristics too?
And then, if couple A was allowed to do that, and this is a business, after all... Why not couple B? This couple who has no life threatening conditions or genetic combinations, but has the money, and the confidentialitiy of protected health information laws shrouding their decisions in secrecy.
In 20 years, don't be surprised when a certain cross-section of humanity suddenly looks strikingly different, but without any obvious explanation.
I'm not sure I see this happening to any great degree. We have had the ability to know the sex of babies in advance for decades, and there are still many parents who prefer to leave it as a surprise. If there are still so many people who don't even want to know the gender of their baby before it is born, how many are going to want to make any kind of changes to it.
Also, there are still a great many people who are very suspicious of any new medical technology and would not want to take any risks when it comes to a child.
"Many" is meaningless. There will also be "many" who will do exactly this as soon as possible. It's already possible to run certain tests during pregnancy, and it's legal to have an abortion based on the test results. One of my friends in high school was pre-nataly diagnosed with spina bifida and the doctor recommended an abortion.
I think this is true, but wow that article is such an impressive fireworks display of abstract optimistic language and marketing-ese that I have only a shadow of an idea of what they actually do -- as I'm sure was intended.
I don't know about the parent, but to me the combination definitely sounds like "immoral assheadery."
These guys seem to have a lot of patents#. Some of them seem (to me) like something you shouldn't be able to patent.^ It's a little creepy (but very easy) to imagine a future where most (rich) children are engineered by selectively accepting zygotes, sperms/eggs or actually creating them.
I don't know much about the economics or laws of IP, but I would really prefer that all the critical technology and data needed for engineering babies be treated as scientific discovery and available publicly.
You should probably watch Gattaca - the answer to your question is pretty much the whole point of that film. Or if you don't want to watch, at least to read the first two paragraphs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca.
It raises many important questions on how to properly and ethically handle genetic improvements in society, but in my opinion it doesn't at all say that the genetic improvements shouldn't be done, it simply warns about the social, political and legal issues that the society should discuss and solve alongside with the actual biological/engineering challenges.
So, I was 15 when Gattaca came out. 15 year old me was very much "Look at the protagonist succeed against all odds! Take that cold science!".
30 year old me is much more pragmatic. The world is changing very quickly, and even though I'm still somewhat young, I know things will get harder for me as I get older (I work in the tech sector; "The Benevolent Treadmill"). I have a wife, and soon kids on the way. I need to be able to get more done in the day, concentrate more, remember more, and continue to constantly learn while competing against kids half my age.
30 year old me would select the best traits for my child(ren) in a heartbeat. I want better for them than I had, as all parents do.
A better genotype does add value to a person's existence - For example, all other things being equal, a healthy person both individually feels better and is better for society than the 'same' person with a genetic defect that causes a horrible death in his/her childhood. If we can fix that, then it's a noble cause. If a genotype doesn't add value to existence, then it can't be called a "better genotype", then it's simply a different genotype.
And, by the way, "If X, then eugenics is not that bad' is in no way an acceptable argument against or for X; it's worse than irrelevant.
No, that is what I contend: a better genotype makes no sense because there is no such thing as a "better" person from the physical standpoint. That is what I contend and that is why I take the natural conclusion: if you can "choose" between people based on their genotype, then you are treating them as 'things', not as 'people'.
My personal moral opinion is that it would be extremely good if there was some way to make the kids/embryos with Down syndrome be cured, preferably before birth (because earlier in development there are less irreversible changes).
And if we had such a cure (as far as I know, we currently don't and won't for quite some time), then not applying it wouldn't be okay - not using that cure would be pure evil, and comparable to torture or, say, forcibly denying someone their eyesight or hearing or limb.
I now realize I have made myself not as clear as I supposed, sorry.
I wanted to refer only to "designing" children and/or "choosing them", not to, for example, a cure for Down's syndrome (assuming there could be one): what we have achieved with prenatal diagnosis is -in this case-, I reckon you will agree with me on this, is equivalent to eugenics.
I do not think medical interventions (apart from say quarantines for contagious diseases etc) should be compulsory: illness and its acceptance is part and an important one of our lives. Suffering is unavoidable, and one can lead a very human and happy life in sickness and pain. But this last point is something on which I have not made up my mind clearly yet, certainly.
But torture? It would depend on too many issues to compare not giving a treatment with torture. I might agree in some cases (very easy, very cheap and a "huge" rate of succesa).
But I am digressing. Thanks for your points anyway, this is a thorny and difficult topic.
Our current practical possibilities for many severe genetical defects (many of them less common but much harsher than Down's - say, an expected lifespan measured in weeks) in essence is a choice of (a) suffer or (b) early prenatal detection followed by abortion. Unlike my earlier example (if a cure existed), this is not a nice choice to make, it's rather horrible; but I've had both the opportunity and need to think about it seriously and I wouldn't (couldn't) judge anyone who chose (b) in such situation, although it can be labeled as eugenics.
Thus, I have a deep dislike for reasoning such as "X leads to eugenics, ergo X is bad". Eugenics is a loaded, biased label. Any decision should be judged as okay or evil on its own; and if okay decisions lead to the label eugenics, then it doesn't make them less okay in any way and shouldn't affect the evaluation of that decision.
However, the word 'torture' and denying senses comes from me earlier reading about (hopefully rare) incidents of deaf parents intentionally choosing (via selective artificial insemination) to have kids that will be permanently deaf as well. I don't agree with that and consider it equal to, say, those parents cutting the ears of their infant after birth.
And from that comes the reverse argument - if the procedures become cheap, easy and safe, then in practice 'not-fixing' a damaged gene is almost the same as intentionally damaging a gene; since you could easily have had both options; chose the damaged one; and forced that choice and consequences on the kid. The main difference is choice of action vs choice of non-action, which are psychologically perceived differently; the Trolley problem is the classic example.
Just to clarify: saying something is not OK per se does not mean judging the people who do that as 'bad.'
Theft is not OK per se but who am I to judge the hungry robber, for example?
The deaf people example is another example of dealing with human beings as things (choose one or the other as if both belonged to you. And the other is doomed to die, moreover), which is what puts me against these techniques.
We should definitely talk, this is a cumbersome means of communication.
> The company never pursued the concepts discussed in the patent beyond our Family Traits Inheritance Calculator, nor do we have any plans to do so.
Isn't this a direct violation of the principles of patents? A patent gives you protection to work on an invention, so that you have a monopoly to sell that invention and thus cover the costs of developing it. But here they have the patent, thus preventing anyone else selling the invention, but they are not selling the invention themselves.
I'm interested about law. (Not saying this is relevant to 23&me.) Can you patent a process for an illegal action? So, a business process that enables tax evasion (not avoidance)?
Having a patent doesn't force you to make or sell the product - there are a gazillion patents of things that turn out to be impractical because the problem is too narrow or there is another, better solution.
So no, there aren't any direct consequences of that, they have disclosed the "invention" in the actual patent text, and after patent expiry everybody will be able to use that patent text for their products if they wish so.
In the future the opposite sex will not only judge us on look and wealth but also on genetic material. We're leaving DNA traces everywhere. Once the DNA samplers become small enough it's just a matter of time before an "app" that does that exists. Welcome to the future :)
I think there was some anime where that actually happened :P cliques were based on genes! The coolest girl had the best DNA! Oh and another girl was showing off her speed, so the popular girl remarked "Speed is a dominant trait of lower mammals." imagine being judged for having common genetic traits...
yep that's the one!! we had an anime channel (animax) on our cable briefly. So saw the first episode of this show back then. (Got introduced to ranma 1/2 and inuyasha as well!)
There's a scene from the movie Gattaca where Ethan Hawke is cleaning everything from his desk and keyboard in order not to leave any "DNA traces". First saw that film 10+ years ago but it has always stuck with me.
No different from a potential mate checking your credit before they decide if you "qualify". Not my cup of tea, but whatever. To each his own. Even if his own is batshit crazy.
Has anyone used the 23andMe service? I'd like to know how accurate the results are.
Can they say you definitely carry a gene for diabetes or lactose intolerance, for example, or do they just say you're at a higher chance of developing this? The website example given for carrier diseases looks so vague it's not worth bothering with ("You are a carrier of one or more infected conditions"... great, which ones!)
If they can give me a list of things I need to be mindful of in the future and, more importantly, why, I'd happily pay $99 for that. I.e; you've got this and that gene which leaves you susceptible to this condition which may lead to heart disease, etc. and we're %xx certain.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of thing?
No personal experience but someone blogged (in German, unfortunately) recently about a bug in 23andMe's analysis algorithm that resulted in him being told that he was terminally ill. He spent a lot of time learning everything about the purported gene malfunction, found the bug in 23andMe's assumptions and got it fixed upstream.
Certainly not a nice experience.
So they applied statistics to information about genes and received patent on it? I can get someone else than 23andMe analyze my genes, and he can do similar analysis.
I really like 23andMe's product, although I dont like the idea of my genetic information being stored outside my country (different than US).
I hope the patent itself isn't as broad as they are painting it, statistical methods (algorithms) should never be a part of patent - they are too generic and based on mathematics.
Btw why is everyone going on about genetic engineered kids? This company only lets you get your genetic data and the potential genetic make up of your offspring. It doesn't exactly let you HAVE a baby with those genetic traits. Or am i missing something?
The patent includes more than that. It also includes using the process against a pool of potential donors to choose the highest likelihood of a 'desirable' outcome in terms of the child's genetics. It's not quite Gattaca-style selection, but it is a way to 'design' your child with a high margin of error.
Isn't that just the process of finding the best mate based on genetic info? that is so not designing your child :/ So basically if it is worded as you say it is, then if a company figures out the actual designing part, they can't be sued by these guys. Because the selection they patent is between different donors... they cant do anything with a pre-selected donor.
