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Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Trump backs universal coverage for IVF treatments, criticizes Florida abortion restriction proposal

  • California legislature adopts bill mandating coverage of IVF, awaiting governor’s signature

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Silicon Valley pronatalism emphasizes reprotech and genetic enhancement

  • Fertility rates are driven by culture, not income

• Genetic Studies

  • Study finds humanity’s most recent brain gains are most at risk from aging

• Further Learning

  • Podcast: Elisabeth Carr interviews Louise Brown on being the first IVF babies

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Repro/genetics

Techno-natalist turn: “Trump says he would have government or insurance pay for IVF treatments if elected” (The Hill)

• Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said his administration would protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and have either the government or insurance companies pay for the treatment if elected in November.

• “We are going to be—under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” he said in an exclusive interview with NBC News, adding that would apply to “all Americans who need it. So, we’re going to be paying for that treatment, or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance companies pay.”

• Trump justified covering IVF saying: “I was always for IVF … It’s fertilization. It’s helping women, and men, and families to be able to have a baby. Some have great difficulty and a lot of them have been very happy with the results. … We’re doing this because we just think it’s great. And we need great children, beautiful children in our country.”

• Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign slammed Trump’s pledge to pay for IVF, claiming it is “one of his most brazen lies yet. … Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide.”

• Trump had drastically shortened the Republican Party platform, including removal of a call for a federal abortion ban. The new GOP platform now reads: “We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

• As president, Trump appointed originalist or textualist justices who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion as unconstitutional, meaning each of the states is now largely free to regulate or restrict abortion as they see fit.

• While infertility remains a common problem among Americans, many insurance companies or employers still do not cover fertility treatments such as IVF. According to one study, 54% of the biggest U.S. employers—those with 20,000 workers or more—covered IVF in 2022.

• “We … appreciate President Trump’s acknowledgment of the significance of access to fertility treatments and the crucial role of government in ensuring this access,” said Sean Tipton, Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASMR). “Many things get said during campaigns. Candidates must provide detailed proposals for voters’ evaluation. We stand ready to work with any candidate or elected official with a sincere interest in ensuring all Americans have access to the medical care they need.”

• “We hope that former President Trump, Vice President Harris, and indeed everyone in and running for public office will commit to ensuring access to care for family-building therapies for all who need them,” Tipton added.

• Trump also said that Florida’s proposed six-week limit for abortions is “too short” and he would vote for a longer period.

• Israel is one of the few countries in the world reimbursing IVF. The cost of IVF per child can easily reach $12,000 to $14,000.

California legislature adopts bill mandating most private health plans to cover IVF (ASMR)

• The California General Assembly has adopted a bill requiring most private health insurance plans to cover IVF.

• “This bill requires both large and small healthcare plans to provide diagnosis and treatment of infertility and fertility services,” Assemblymember Buffy Wicks from Oakland said. “I know IVF is really important and we're hoping our health insurance plans cover it.”

• Sean Tipton, Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASMR), said: “We are very pleased that the California legislature has, after years of debate, passed SB 729, crucial legislation to provide appropriately inclusive coverage. We call on Governor [Gavin] Newsom to sign it immediately.”

Population Policies & Trends

“The pronatalism of Silicon Valley” (Heritage)

• Fewer babies means fewer adults who can contribute to the future economy, military readiness, Social Security, education, and family formation of their own.

• The fertility decline has caught the attention of socially conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, American Compass, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Institute for Family Studies, as well as Silicon Valley elites like Elon Musk.

• There are different kinds of natalism. “Pro-family” natalism emphasizes the role of family formation, often defined by heterosexual marriage.

• Narrow pronatalism tends to encourage childbearing detached from its natural role within the family.

• Silicon Valley pronatalists have a distinct goal that supersedes both categories.

  Many of these Silicon Valley elites are in the emerging class of “right-wing progressives” who view technology as the natural solution to and means of childbearing itself.

• Their selective pronatalism aims to ensure that their future children are the healthiest, smartest, and best potential children they can be.

• The author warns: “unless Silicon Valley pronatalists impose principled self-restraint onto their reproductive technological developments, such efforts may only further birth inequality and demographic collapse in the United States.”

• $800 million was invested in fertility technology start-ups in 2022 alone.

• The author criticizes the desire to create “genetically superior babies who are selected, often out of a misguided compassion on the part of their parents, based on their health, potential creativity, or other characteristics.”

• Investors in fertility technology include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong, Jack Abraham, Nicole Shanahan, and Vitalik Buterin. Such techno-optimists are looking for a way to reverse reproductive aging, overcome infertility, and optimize child selection.

• Some investments are focused on developing fertility awareness-based methods or restorative reproductive medicine.

• The phone application 28—a Peter Thiel-backed application from the right-leaning Evie Magazine— teaches women how to live within their natural cycle with fertility tracking, fitness, and nutritional insights.

• Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate and former spouse of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, pledged to give $100 million for reproductive research, especially focused on helping women become pregnant later in life.

• Beyond this, much of Silicon Valley’s fertility research tends to fall into three categories: embryonic optimization, technologies that replace the need for human gametes or wombs, and the use of AI in the analysis and selection of human life.

• In 2021, Noor Siddiqui—a former Peter Thiel fellow—launched Orchid, a fertility service that allows couples to screen for more than 1,200 monogenic diseases. While basic preimplantation genetic testing is widely available in the United States—with 75% of clinics offering these services—Orchid allows couples to sequence more than 99% of an embryo’s genomes. Instead of merely testing for single-gene disorders such as Down syndrome, polygenic testing allows Orchid to screen for conditions that involve multiple genes.

• With an initial investment of $12 million, interest in Orchid and similar start-ups like Genomic Prediction and MyOme has only continued to grow.

• Orchid’s investors alone include Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart; Anna Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe; Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase; and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Musk and Shivon Zilus, director of Neuralink, used Orchid’s genetic screening service to have their third child.

• The author dismisses emerging reprotechnologies’ potential to reduce the risks of childbirth as “misleading,” condemns the prevention of birthing embryos with congenital diseases as a deprivation of personhood, and sees genetic enhancement as just another luxury good, not a way to enable the health and flourishing of future generations.

• The author condemns Silicon Valley natalism and calls for “a cultural revolution that promotes a sustainable and life-giving pronatalism that asks men and women, in the words of Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, “why not have one more child?”

“More money, more babies: What’s the relationship between income and fertility?” (IFS)

• Evidence suggests that across almost all pre-industrial human societies, higher-status and higher-income families had more children.

• The author argues that historic fertility declines were overwhelmingly caused by novel cultural norms, which were often correlated, but distinct from, income.

• In France, fertility fell 100 years before industrialization, while in England, the first country to industrialize, fertility did not decline for a century after industrialization.

• Today, fertility in Africa is lower than it was for European or Asian countries when they had similar income levels, because modern Africa, though poor, is nonetheless highly exposed to globalized cultural norms. At the individual level, when African women get richer, they actually tend to have more children.

• In the United Stats, correlations between fertility and income differ widely by race. Among whites and to a lesser extent Asians, tends to rise with income (except for the high-fertility very poor).

• By contrast, wealthy black and Hispanic women have rather low birth rates, whileforeign-born women exhibit little connection between income and fertility.

• Among the Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the U.S., fertility is negatively correlated with income: poorer income brackets have 6 to 8 children, while the richer ones have 3 to 5. Overall, the higher fertility of these two groups compared to other Americans is overwhelmingly driven by cultural factors however.

• Among the Arab countries, which range from poor to oil-rich, there is no national correlation between wealth and lower fertility.

  

  • Within poorer Islamic/Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Libya), there is a clear negative correlation between fertility and income, as income rises towards $20,000 per person or so.

  • The author argues this is because richer people in these countries are more influenced by global cultural trends. Paradoxically, oil-rich Arab states have been able to insulate themselves culturally more, resulting in more traditional Islamic/Arab cultural norms and more even fertility among social classes.

  • The author concludes: “When whole societies become richer, they do not necessarily have fewer children. Once we control for the basic problem of cultural stratification, the supposed link between low income and high fertility, or high fertility and low income, largely disappears.”

More on population policies and trends:

• “South Korea’s low fertility rate is ‘no joke’”: Shrinking consumer market is pushing a Korean pizza startup to go global fast (Fortune)

Genetic Studies

Humanity’s newest brain gains are most at risk from ageing (Nature)

• In the more than 6 million years since people and chimpanzees split from their common ancestor, human brains have rapidly amassed tissue supporting decision-making and self-control. According to a new study comparing chimp and human brain scans, these regions are also the most at risk of deterioration during ageing.

• Previous studies have shown that regions of the human brain that are the last to mature, such as parts of the frontal lobe, are the first to show signs of ageing. This has led to the “last in, first out” theory of brain development and decay.

• The results support the “important hypothesis that our cortical expansion came at the price of age-related decline”, says Rogier Mars, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford.

• The researchers also compared chimps with olive baboons (Papio anubis) and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). No link between the areas of the brain that had experienced rapid evolutionary expansion and those that went through accelerated ageing was found, suggesting that this feature could be unique to human brain evolution.

Further Learning

“Two IVF (first) babies have a chat” (Born for This)

• Elisabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born in the United States, interviewed Louise Brown, the first IVF baby born in Britain. Topics discussed include:

  • What it was like growing up with so much media attention.

  • Why they advocate for IVF practitioners and users.

  • Their intense dislike of the term “test tube babies.”

  • What were the 10 most stupid questions asked of them by reporters. (“Do you feel an affinity with Dolly the sheep?”)

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• The Peacock’s Predicament: Steve Stewart-Williams, a professor psychology, at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, is writing a new book on sex differences and why they matter (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• “Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution” (MIT Technology Review)

• “AI and the future of human DNA” (Thomas Frey)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • AI system selected same embryos as an embryologist 69% of the time, with no significant difference in clinical pregnancy rate, but 10 times faster

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde warns in the Spectator of the global fertility crisis which is affecting most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa

  • Survey: Most Tokyoites say they want marriage, kids

• Genetic Studies

  • In a survey of 30 nations, people tended to overestimate the heritability of personality and intelligence, and underestimate the heritability of body weight and, especially, criminality

• Further Learning

  • Japanese court declares 1948 Eugenic Protection Law unconstitutional

  • Researchers make first full mapping of genome of Przewalski’s horse, the last wild horse species

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Repro/genetics

“AI system for embryo selection tested on IVF patients” (PET)

• In a recent study, an AI system selected the same embryos as an embryologist 69% of the time, with no significant difference in clinical pregnancy rate.

• Researchers from 14 clinics in Australia, Denmark, Sweden and the UK compared pregnancy rates and outcomes from embryos selected using a deep learning AI system, iDA, to those selected using standard assessment of the morphology of the embryo by an embryologist.

• Though no significant differences in pregnancy rate were found, the selection of the embryos using AI was ten-times quicker than selection by embryologists.

• “It seems from this that the use of a deep learning tool for embryo selection will not radically change the outcome (as it mostly chooses the same embryo) for a patient undergoing IVF,” wrote Dr. Christos Venetis, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and one of the study authors. “However, the use of a reliable automated tool of this sort may make embryology laboratories more efficient and consistent.”

More on repro/genetics:

• “Polygenic embryo screening—Patient perspectives and concerns (PET)

• “Polish court allows woman to use IVF embryo after divorce” (PET)

Population Policies & Trends

“The global fertility crisis is worst than you think” (Spectator)

• Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, calculates that humanity’s total fertility rate (2.18) is below the real replacement level (2.21).

• Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb is a cautionary tale for those trying to predict the future. Drawing on the then popular Malthusian belief that the world was doomed by high birth rates, Ehrlich predicted: “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”

• Ehrlich came up with drastic solutions such as adding chemicals to drinking water to sterilize the population.

• People 55 or younger today are likely to witness something humans haven’t seen for 60,000 years: a sustained decrease in the world population.

• According to the UN World Population Prospects, the global total fertility rate last year was 2.25—a little above the replacement rate. But UN statisticians were wrong, being bound by political constraints and lack of statistics for some countries.

• For many places with reliable records, last year’s birth numbers were 10-20% lower than UN estimates. In Colombia, the UN estimate was 705,000 births. Yet its national statistical agency counted 510,000.

• At present rates the human population will peak in around 30 years. Then start plummeting.

• While economists have predicted that fertility would decline with economic development, the speed and extent of the fertility collapse, going beyond wealthy countries, has been faster than expected

• South Korea is the most extreme case: the fertility rate last year was 0.72—roughly one-third of the replacement rate. In 2015, it was 1.24.

• Turkey’s fertility rate plummeted from 3.11 in 1990 to 1.51 in 2023. The UK’s was 1.83 in 1990, 1.49 in 2022.

• The situation in Latin America is striking too: Chile and Colombia had rates of 1.2 last year, Argentina and Brazil were at 1.44. Each of them had high fertility rates three decades ago.

• A non-exhaustive list of countries where the rate isn’t only below replacement but falling quickly includes India, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Bangladesh, Iran and all of Europe.

• We know less about Africa because of poor quality data. The available evidence, however, suggests it’s undergoing a rapid decline, including in Egypt, Tunisia, and Kenya.

• The only countries where fertility isn’t falling are in Central Asia.

• Immigration is not a solution when most countries’ populations start to shrink; even supposing immigration of the scale needed would be politically palatable.

• Countries from France to South Korea have introduced policies such as extended parental leaves and generous child tax credits. These have had limited success.

• Fertility rates have fallen faster in large metropolitan areas than in rural areas, probably because of housing costs. Small, expensive homes deter fertility.

• Societal structures have also become deeply unwelcoming to large families. Take child car seats: in the UK, children must use a child car seat until they’re 12. There’s evidence this lowers birth rates as it makes it harder to fit more than two children in a car.

• Fernández-Villaverde argues for making it easier for young people to marry, safer streets to allow children to spend more time unsupervised and travel to school on their own, and organizing school holidays to not disrupt parents’ work.

• He concludes: “Creating the conditions for large families to flourish is the only way to reverse the trend in fertility rates. If we fail to do so, then the coming demographic winter will be far harsher than anyone cares to admit.”

“Vast majority of young Tokyoites keen on marriage, having kids, but reality is harsh: survey” (Mainichi)

• Tokyo’s total fertility rate fell below 1 per woman for the first time in 2023 to 0.99, the lowest among Japan’s 47 prefectures.

• The Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry conducted a online survey in April-May 2,198 people aged 18 to 34 who worked at businesses in the capital.

• When asked about their attitudes toward marriage, only 9.7% of respondents said they “do not intend to get married ever.”

• 50.3% said they “intend to get married someday.” Combined with those who were already married (35.8%), more than 85% of all respondents had a positive attitude about marriage

• 42.7% of respondents said there were “no opportunities to meet people (potential partners).”

• 36.7% cited “financial concerns (income, employment, housing costs, student loan repayments, education expenses, etc.)” as an obstacle.

• Among unmarried women, 29.5% said “increased burden of housework and child care” was a barrier. 17% cited “anxiety that marriage will interfere with career.”

• More than 70% of respondents said they want multiple children, with 56.7% saying “two” and 19.7% answering “three or more.” However, when asked about the number of children they can realistically expect to have, the responses changed drastically, with 39.5% saying “two” and 4.7% answering “three or more.”

• The Chamber of Commerce and Industry called on businesses to create work environments that can accommodate working parents.

Genetic Studies

“A 30-nation investigation of lay heritability beliefs” (Public Understanding of Science)

• Lay beliefs about human trait heritability are consequential for cooperation and social cohesion, yet there has been no global definition of these beliefs.

• In the study, participants from 30 countries (N = 6128) reported heritability beliefs for intelligence, personality, body weight, and criminality.

• Globally, mean lay beliefs differ from published heritability (h²) estimated by twin studies, with a worldwide majority overestimating the heritability of personality and intelligence, and underestimating body weight and criminality.

• Criminality was seen as substantially less attributable to genes than other traits.

• People from countries with high infant mortality tended to ascribe greater heritability for most traits, relative to people from low infant mortality countries.

• The authors argue that future research must incorporate diverse global perspectives to further contextualize and extend upon these findings.

More on genetic studies:

• “Friends’ genetic traits may influence your behavior” (PET)

• “New genetic causes of bowel cancer identified” (PET)

Further Learning

Supreme Court of Japan declares 1948 Eugenic Protection Law unconstitutional (Japan Times)

• The Supreme Court of Japan has declared Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law, which was in force from 1948 to 1996, to be unconstitutional.

• For nearly 50 years, the 1948 law facilitated forced sterilization surgeries for thousands of people with disabilities as a national policy.

• The 15-justice court unanimously decided to hold the government liable for compensating the victims and rejected the application of a 20-year statute of limitations on damages claims.

• “At that time, (the government) believed it was acting with good intentions, not evil intentions,” said Yasutaka Ichinokawa, a professor of sociology at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, who is familiar with the history of eugenics. “A similar thing can happen again.”

• Before the war, Japan already had a national eugenics law. Under the 1940 law, 538 people were sterilized up to the end of 1947, existing records show. These surgeries were said to have been voluntary.

• By contrast, an estimated 25,000 people are believed to have been sterilized forcibly between 1948 and 1996 under the postwar eugenics law.

• The small number of surgeries under the prewar law reflected opposition from conservative lawmakers, Ichinokawa said. According to one lawmaker: “Japan is a ‘family nation,’ and all Japanese share the same bloodline if we trace our history.” Another lawmaker asked: “If we lose offspring, who will pay respects to our ancestors?”

• Ichinokawa argues that the collapse of the “family nation” ideology due to defeat in World War II empowered coercive eugenics.

• The 1948 Eugenic Protection Act was enacted by a unanimous vote in parliament. Shidzue Katō, a Japanese feminist, one of the first female members of the Japanese parliament, and a pioneering birth control advocate, was among those who proposed the bill.

• Western feminists such as Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes had also seen advocacy of reproductive rights and eugenics as compatible or even synergetic.

• The 1948 law allowed sterilization and abortion for individuals with physical or intellectual disabilities without their consent. The health ministry informed prefectural governments that physical restraint and deceptive tactics could be used as needed to perform surgeries.

• About 66% of those who were sterilized under the law did not give their consent.

• A relief law enacted in 2019 provides a one-time payment of ¥3.2 million (US$22,142) to each victim.

“University of Minnesota researchers map genome of the last living wild horse species” (Genes to Genome)

• Researchers have successfully mapped the full genome of the endangered Przewalski’s horse.

• Once extinct in the wild, thanks to conservation efforts the species now has a population of around 2,000 animals

• Researchers can now use the genome as a tool to make accurate predictions about what gene mutations mean for Przewalski’s horse health and conservation.  

• “We were excited to partner with the University of Minnesota to preserve the genetic health of the species as their populations continue to recover, both in zoos and in the wild,” said Anne Rivas, doctor of veterinary medicine at the Minnesota Zoo. “We are thrilled to offer our community the opportunity to see the horse as the results of our conservation efforts.” 

• Future applications of the reference genome may include studying genes that help the horse adapt to environmental changes, identifying mutations associated with specific traits or diseases, and informing future breeding decisions to help improve upon genetic diversity. This is crucial for given the extreme population bottleneck that occurred during the near-extinction of Przewalski’s horse.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “The Human Genome Project: Inside the ‘most important biomedical research undertaking of the 20th Century’” (GLP/NIH)

• “When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: How does language begin in the womb?” (Aeon)

• Agrifood

  • “Beyond Meat is stalling in the U.S., Europe could be another story” (WIRED)

  • “UK becomes first country to greenlight cultivated meat pet food sales” (GLP)

  • “U.S. Defense Department backs The Better Meat Co. with $1.4 million for advanced biotech development (Vegconomist)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! After the summer summer break, we resume our regular posting. Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Prospects for artificial wombs

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance has long promoted natalism

  • Visualized: the number of people born every year by region since 1950

• Genetic Studies

  • Self-control is about 60% heritable

• Further Learning

  • Why did Homo sapiens outcompete Neanderthals?

  • Are humans still evolving?

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Repro/genetics

“Artificial wombs when?” (Asterisk Mag)

• Last September, advisors to the FDA met to discuss artificial wombs which might be available in just a few years.

• Artificial wombs present the prospect of allowing mothers to skip pregnancy altogether and gestate the fetus in a machine outside the body.

• For now research into artificial wombs is focused on continuing gestation of extremely premature infants born “at the cusp” of viability. Children born at this stage—between 22 and 28 weeks—have high mortality rates and carry high risks of disability if they survive. 6% of all US preterm births fall into this extremely premature category.

• Incremental progress in adjusting the designs of these “artificial placenta” systems has pushed the date of viability earlier and earlier. A successful prototype, created by a team at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2017, kept premature lamb fetuses alive for four weeks in a “biobag” circulating synthetic amniotic fluid.

• Other groups have kept premature lambs alive with the help of artificial placenta devices. These include scientists at the University of Western Australia and the University of Michigan, both in 2019.

• The Philadelphia researchers are currently in discussions with the FDA about moving toward testing the “biobag” on extremely premature human infants.

• These types of “artificial placenta” or “ectogenesis” devices do not attempt to replicate all the functions of the uterus. Current artificial wombs are primarily mechanical—not chemical—devices. They pump the fetus’s deoxygenated blood into an oxygenator and then freshly oxygenated blood back into the fetus, just as the placenta normally does in utero and the lungs and heart do in healthy infants.

• In contrast, a biological uterus has complex signaling mechanisms involving hormones, immune system modulation, gene expression, and epigenetic modifications, all of which contribute to fetal development. Many of these processes are poorly understood, and more are certainly unknown. 

• When people talk about “artificial wombs” being imminent, they usuallly mean ectogenesis for prematurity—essentially an advanced form of life support. This will not necessarily lead to full end-to-end artificial wombs. The biobag doesn’t address the hardest part: early development in the first weeks of pregnancy.

• Artificial gestation of mice has been explored in studies, though not to birth.

• The author argues that artificial wombs to replace pregnancy are not going to be developed any time soon and face challenging obstacles.

• The article also explores emerging technologies of genetic screening, in vitro gametogenesis (e.g., creation of ovaries in the lab), and delaying menopause.

More on repro/genetics:

• New Australian Capital Territory fertility law eliminates donor anonymity (PET)

• “Event review: Polygenic embryo screening—the promise and perils of selecting our children’s traits” (PET)

Population Policies & Trends

“Why JD Vance worries about childlessness” (Wall Street Journal)

• Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate J. D. Vance has linked Americans’ reluctance to have children to high high housing costs, risk aversion and a culture of social isolation.

• The Ohio Republican has come under scrutiny for criticizing people who don’t have children. In 2021, he told Fox News that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

• After joining the Senate last year, Vance became one of the most outspoken lawmakers about the decline in U.S. fertility. The total fertility rate—a snapshot of how many children a woman is expected to bear over her lifetime—fell to 1.62 last year, provisional government figures show, the lowest on record, and well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to keep population steady.

• In an interview in April with the Wall Street Journal, Vance described low fertility as having many causes, no simple remedy, and negative consequences beyond simply a smaller workforce and less sustainable programs such as Social Security.

• “A very important part of kids’ social development obviously is spending time with other kids,” Vance said. But with lower birthrates, “you have a lot less brothers and sisters, you also have many, many fewer cousins. I think childhood has become much more socially isolated.”

• “I do think there’s just something about the economies of having families that have really gotten out of whack,” Vance added. He cited high housing costs in particular.

• Vance also linked lower birthrates to young Americans growing up more socially isolated. “They’re not spending as much time socially together,” he said. “They’re certainly not dating as much as they used to.” This manifests itself as “less marriage, much thinner friendship groups.” 

• Vance argued lower fertility might also be the result of less patriotism. In Israel, which has relatively high fertility, “there’s still a fundamental sense that they love their country, they want their country to keep going. America was always considered by our European friends to be kind of jingoistic back in the 1990s and 2000s. We had pretty healthy fertility rates back then. Now that we’re a little bit more like our European counterparts, much less sort of innately patriotic than we were 20, 30 years ago, our fertility rates have declined.”

• While Vance has studied pronatalist policies in countries including South Korea, France, Hungary and Japan, he said he hasn’t yet seen any clear solution to falling fertility. “I’m fascinated by Hungary … because they’re aggressively trying a lot of different things. And I think some of it’s working.” The U.S. should look at lowering income-tax rates on women who have multiple children as Hungary has done, he said.

• In a 2021 interview, before he was a senator, Vance had said that people without children should pay higher tax rates than people who have children. (Some provisions of the current tax code, such as the child tax credit, have that effect.)

• Vance has previously floated the possibility of giving parents extra votes for their children.

The number of people born every year, by region (Visual Capitalist)

• Asia’s annual births peaked at 90 million in 1990, but there’s been a steep drop since 2012 to 65 million.

• Meanwhile, the number of people being born each year in Africa has been rising quickly. In 2023, Africa recorded 43 million births. Current UN projections estimate an increase every year until it peaks at 56 million in 2067.

• Births in other regions have been relatively steady, with slight downtrends seen in Europe, and more recently, Latin America.

• Countries in Europe and northeast Asia in particular are aging because of the decline in births, casting doubts over the sustainability of social welfare systems. An aging population can also disrupt the economy, both through the workforce and a shift in demand. Healthcare costs, for example, will increase, raising the requirement for doctors, nurses, and related health workers.

• All figures were sourced from the UN World Population Prospects 2024.

More on population policies and trends:

• “Australia in biggest ‘baby recession’ since 1970s as pandemic birth boom fades” (Guardian)

• Japan’s population shrank for the fifteenth year in a row, by 861,000 (0.7%), despite the arrival of 329,500 foreign residents (an 11% increase) (Japan Times)

• “The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies” (Vox)

• “The real reason people aren’t having kids” (The Atlantic)

Genetic Studies

“The nature and nurture of self-control: Self-control is around 60% heritable” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• Identical twins are more similar in self-control than the non-identical twins, indicating that genes play a considerable role in shaping this important trait.

• Self-control is around 60% heritable, meaning genes explain roughly 60% of the differences between individuals in their levels of self-control.

• A meta-analysis of heritability studies on self-control found that shared family environment had no effect on self-control. In other words, twins who grew up in the same home were no more similar in self-control than those who grew up apart.

• Heritability of self-control was the same for men and women.

More on genetic studies:

• “New study addresses long-standing diversity bias in human genetics” (Johns Hopkins University)

Further Learning

“Neanderthals vs Homo sapiens: How social structures affected ancient species’ ability to survive” (Nicholas Longrich/GLP)

• Why did Homo sapiens outcompete and replace Neanderthals? It probably was not because of individual smarts, as Neanderthals were intelligent and had larger brains.

• It may be that the key differences were less at the individual level than at the societal level. It’s impossible to understand humans in isolation, any more than you can understand a honeybee without considering its colony. We prize our individuality, but our survival is tied to larger social groups, like a bee’s fate depends on the colony’s survival.

• Modern hunter-gatherers provide our best guess at how early humans and Neanderthals lived. People like the Namibia’s Khoisan and Tanzania’s Hadzabe gather families into wandering bands of 10 to 60 people. The bands combine into a loosely organised tribe of a thousand people or more.

  These tribes lack hierachical structures, but they’re linked by shared language and religion, marriages, kinships and friendships.

• Neanderthal societies may have been similar but with one crucial difference: smaller social groups. This is suggested by Neanderthals’ lower genetic diversity.

  In small populations, genes are easily lost. If one person in ten carries a gene for curly hair, then in a ten-person band, one death could remove the gene from the population. In a band of fifty, five people would carry the gene – multiple backup copies. So over time, small groups tend to lose genetic variation.

• In 2022, DNA was recovered from bones and teeth of 11 Neanderthals found in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Several individuals were related, including a father and a daughter–they were from a single band. And they showed low genetic diversity. Low diversity suggests they lived in small bands—probably averaging just 20 people.

• It’s possible Neanderthal anatomy favoured small groups. Being robust and muscular, Neanderthals were heavier than us. So each Neanderthal needed more food, meaning the land could support fewer Neanderthals than Homo sapiens.

  And Neanderthals may have mainly eaten meat. Meat-eaters would get fewer calories from the land than people who ate meat and plants, again leading to smaller populations.

• If humans lived in bigger groups than Neanderthals it could have given us advantages, notably in warfare. Big societies have other, subtler advantages. Larger bands have more brains. More brains to solve problems, remember lore about animals and plants, and techniques for crafting tools and sewing clothing. Just as big groups have higher genetic diversity, they’ll have a higher diversity of ideas.

• More people also means more connections. Network connections increase exponentially with network size, following Metcalfe’s Law. A 20-person band has 190 possible connections between members, while 60 people have 1770 possible connections.

• Information flows through these connections: news about people and movements of animals; toolmaking techniques; and words, songs and myths. Plus the group’s behaviour becomes increasingly complex (culminating in things like buildings, cars, modern warfare, and computers).

• Group intelligence even works with ants. Individually, ants aren’t smart. But interactions between millions of ants lets colonies make elaborate nests, forage for food and kill animals many times an ant’s size.

• Humans aren’t unique in having big brains (whales and elephants have these) or in having huge social groups (zebras and wildebeest form huge herds). But we’re unique in combining them.

• Throughout history, humans formed larger and larger social groups: bands, tribes, cities, nation states, international alliances.

• It may be then that an ability to build large social structures gave Homo sapiens the edge, against nature, and other hominin species.

“Yes, humans are still evolving” (Popular Science)

• Noted public figures like David Attenborough have previously claimed that human evolution is over, but many researchers studying human evolution firmly disagree.

• Humans have altered our environment in innumerable ways–changing the very air, water, and soil that we rely on as the most successful “ecosystem engineers” on Earth. It can be easy to then assume that we’ve conquered biology and eliminated the effects of evolution and natural selection on our species. But that’s not what the science says.

• “Of course humans are still evolving,” says Jason Hodgson, an anthropologist and evolutionary geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University in England. “All living organisms that are in a population are evolving all the time.” 

• “Humans are still evolving, as are virtually all other populations of organisms,” says Stephen Stearns, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University. 

• In biological terms, evolution is a change in gene variant (a.k.a. “allele”) frequency in a population over time. It is not a force directing a species’ trajectory towards a certain goal.

• Evolution can occur through different mechanisms:

  • De novo mutuations: Every person is born with about 70 new genetic mutations on average, which aren’t derived from their parents’. Once emerged, mutations can be passed onto subsequent generations, thereby changing population-level allele frequency.

  • Genetic drift: When randomness influences what gene variants are passed on in what proportions. this unfolds the quickest in small populations.

  • Gene flow: When individuals and populations migrate, bringing their genetic material to new places.

  • Sexual selection: When people mate non-randomly (which accounts for most of human mating).  In nature, much of sexual selection is driven by female choice. Over time, female peahens’ esthetic preference has led to the spectacular tail and coloring of the peacock.

  • Natural selection: where environmental conditions that impact survival and reproduction dictate what alleles are most likely to persist through future generations. Unlike drift, natural selection happens faster in larger populations, as beneficial alleles are more likely to emerge when there are more people around. “This is the largest the human population size has ever been, so this is probably to some extent the greatest change for natural selection to act in humans,” Hodgson says. 

• Through all of these above mechanisms, humans evolved from our last common ancestor with our two closest living relatives–chimpanzees and bonobos. And all these mechanisms are still at play in humans today, though our societal organization and sheer numbers may have altered which ones are acting the quickest, in what populations, and in what ways.

• Some drivers of human evolution that are likely unique to our species, at least in their intensity. In many instances, our cultures influence with whom, how, and whether people reproduce. Those things also go on to affect the frequency of gene variants across time.  This is an example of gene-culture coevolution.

• “We are maybe somewhat tweaking the course of evolution, but it doesn’t at all mean we’re stopping it from happening,” says Hakhamanesh Mostafavi, an associate professor of genetics and genomics at New York University

• Many studies of humans’ genetic past provide illustrative examples of evolution in action:

  • The rise of malarial resistance in Madagascar, linked to the proliferation of a specific gene variant in the population, as described in 2014 research from Hodgson. That example of evolution within the past 2,000 years.

  • The emergence and spread of alleles that enable adult lactose digestion in some Middle Eastern, European, and African populations, following the spread of herding. “Even within the past 1,000 years, lactase persistence as an allele is increasing,” Hawks says.

  • Stearns and his research colleagues attributed height decreases and other population-level changes to natural selection over just one century in a classic 2010 study of people in Framingham, Massachusetts.

  • Studies of large genomic datasets reveal changes that wouldn’t otherwise be observable on a trait-level. A 2022 paper identified two small changes in the human genome, responsible for creating functional proteins, which emerged since our species split from other primate lineages.

• “Humans are definitely still evolving,” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The ultimate direction of that change is unclear however.

• “Today’s environments are changing really fast in various ways. We don’t know for sure which changes will be sustained over time, so we don’t know what changes might add up to anything. [Many] changes might reverse and go the opposite direction just as quickly as they evolved in the last generation or two,” Hawk adds.

• “I personally think that our genetics are going to continue to change, probably at an accelerated rate,” he says, “but I do not have a good basis for predicting how.”

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Human genetics

  • “50 times human genetics led to some unique body characteristics” (MSN)

• Agriculture

  • “France’s Gourmey submits first EU application for cultivated meat” (Politico)

  • “Singapore becomes first country to sell lab-grown meat directly to the public” (GLP/NYT)

  • “‘Gene editing poses no unique risks’: European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) finding lowers the regulatory barrier for crop biotechnology innovation” (GLP/Transkript)

• Sport

  • “Athletes worldwide turn to genetic screening for improved performance (Down to Earth)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Despite China’s three-child-policy encouraging births, Chinese single women are still denied access to domestic egg-freezing services

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Singapore now has the lowest number of births in over 50 years

• Genetic Studies

  • Researchers have identified over 5000 of the BAP1 gene enabling cancers of the eye, lung lining, brain, skin, and kidney

• Further Learning

  • Jamie Metzl, a former White House official and WHO advisor, has penned a new book entitled Superconvergence on the future of genetics, biotech, and AI

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“‘Society doesn’t want my kids’: China’s single women forced abroad to freeze their eggs” (Guardian)

• Despite China’s push to boost the birthrate, only married couples with fertility problems can use egg-freezing services or any kind of assisted reproductive technologies. Single women are excluded.

• “I talked to a doctor, and she told me that to freeze my eggs in China, I either need a husband or I need to have cancer. And I told her, I don’t want either,” said one woman.

• More and more educated, urban women are delaying marriage and motherhood. Last year China’s birth rate fell to a record low of 6.39 per 1,000 people and the population shrank by almost 3 million.

• Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on society to “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing”.

• Chinese social media, in particular Xiaohongshu, a female-focused app with more than 200 million users, is awash with young women exchanging tips on where to go to procure the treatment. Some Chinese women secure egg-freezing services abroad in countries such as Czechia and Laos.

• “It was very difficult to get practical information,” said one woman, who used a VPN to bypass China’s blocks on accessing the open internet to search on Google and Xiaohongshu. “I have the luxury of being able to financially afford it and also the luxury from my work to be able to travel on holiday, because it’s quite a lengthy period of time,” she added. “So I think I am really lucky, but if you asked me again, I think this has been a really painful process.”

• A study published last year by economists Ren Zeping and Liang Jianzhang claimed that more than 65% of 30-to-34-year-olds hoped to preserve their fertility via egg freezing.

• The Chinese government has so far not welcomed this trend. In 2020, the national health commission said that allowing single women to freeze their eggs could give women “false hope” and encourage them to delay motherhood, “which is not conducive to protecting the health of women and offspring.”

• The topic of relaxing the rules around egg freezing is routinely discussed at China’s political meetings but so far the national policy has remained fixed.

• Lijia Zhang, a writer who is working on a book about Chinese women’s changing attitudes towards marriage and motherhood, expects demographic pressures will force China’s policymakers to loosen restrictions. “It is just a matter of time before the authorities will relax the law,” Zhang said. “Without making a song and dance about it, most provinces have allowed single women to register their children and some places even give them maternity benefits.”

• In 2022, a Chinese court overruled an attempt by Teresa Xu, a single woman, to sue a Beijing hospital that refused to allow her to freeze her eggs, on the grounds that the hospital was violating her rights. Xu appealed against the ruling last year but is still awaiting a verdict.

More on repro/genetics:

• “Having both ovaries removed could come at serious cost to the brain” (Science Alert)

• “Prolific Dutch sperm donor responds to Netflix series’ claims” (PET)

• “Vertex sues US over fertility support program for Casgevy gene editing therapy” (Reuters)

• “‘Dream come true’: study suggests drug could extend women’s fertility by five years” (Guardian)

Population Policies & Trends

“Singapore's Baby Bust: Record low births in 2023 deepen demographic crisis” (population.news)

• Singapore is experiencing its lowest number of births in at least 50 years.

• 33,541 babies were born in 2023, down 5.8% from 2022 and 13.3% from 2021.

• Total fertility rate hit a record low of 0.97.

More on population policies and trends:

• “How development programs impact fertility rates in Africa” (VoxDev)

• “Pro-natal policies work, but they come with a hefty price tag” (Institute for Family Studies)

• “More diversity, fewer kids? A new study on diversity and fertility in America” (Institute for Family Studies)

Genetic Studies

“More than 5000 high-risk cancer gene variants identified” (PET)

• Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, collaborating with the Wellcome Sanger Institute, assessed the effects of 18,108 DNA

  changes in the BAP1 gene, a well-known tumor suppressor across multiple cancer types. When mutated, BAP1 can cancer growth and development.

• The study, published in Nature Genetics, identified over 5000 genetic variants of BAP1 enabling cancers of the eye, lung lining, brain, skin, and kidney.

• “Previous approaches for studying how variants affect function in genes have been on a very small scale, or exclude important contexts that may contribute to how they behave,” said Dr. Andrew Waters. “Our approach provides a true picture of gene behaviour, enabling larger and more complex studies of genetic variation. This opens up new possibilities for understanding how these changes drive disease.”

• Using UK Biobank data, the researchers confirmed that people carrying harmful BAP1 variants are over 10% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than the general population.

• The researchers have made their results freely available so they can be immediately used straight away by doctors to help diagnose patients and aid treatment choice.

• Professor Clare Turnbull said: “This research could mean more accurate interpretation of genetic tests, earlier diagnoses and improved outcomes for patients and their families.”

• Because all genetic variants were studied, the researchers hope their findings will help individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

More on genetic studies:

• “Study of veterans’ DNA shows diversity sharpened overall results” (STAT)

• “Sources of gene expression variation in a globally diverse human cohort” (Nature)

• “The general disease (‘d’) factor and mutational load” (Emil Kierkegaard)

Further Learning

“How to prepare for the imminent AI and biotech revolutions, according to a leading futurist” (NBIC)

• Jamie Metzl, a former White House official and advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on human genome editing, has a written a new book entitled Superconvergence on the future of genetics, biotech, and AI.

• Metzl argues these technologies put as on the precipice of fundamental change with the capacity for human-engineered intelligence and human-engineered life. The drivers of this change are compounding, accelerating, and converging. The speed of such change will be historically unprecedented.

• Areas that will be transformed include healthcare (with the use of genomics and personalized medicines), agriculture, and advanced materials.

• Great harms due to use of biotech are also possible, such as the development of engineered or enhanced pathogens. Metzl believes COVID-19 probably originated due to a research-related accident.

• Technologies such as gene drives could eradicate malaria, but could also accidentally crash ecosystems.

• Metzl founded the OneShared.World as a global movement recognizing interdependence, namely that problems such as pandemics, climate change, and technology governance are deeply interrelated.

• In this new era of uncertainty, Metzl encourages people to learn every day, re-prioritize tasks (especially given that AI will be able to take on many tasks), and think through our values to ensure technologies are used in service of them.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Evolution

  • “Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion Skull anatomy shows the boy or girl would have been severely disabled, yet survived until the age of six” (Guardian)

  • “Study brings lifestyle of enigmatic extinct Denisovans into focus” (Japan Times)

  • “The plague may have wiped out most northern Europeans 5000 years ago” (New Scientist)

  • Sexual selection: AI resolves 150-year-old controversy between Darwin and Wallace (New Atlas)

• Agriculture

  • “UK becomes first European country to approve lab-grown meat” (Financial Times)

  • EU approves 2 genetically-modified corn crops for food and feed, but not cultivation (Agriland)

  • “England’s Precision Breeding Act ‘remains an empty shell and serves no functional purpose’ — Will politics scuttle crop gene editing future?” (GLP)

  • “Eco-terrorists destroyed an Italian scientist’s gene-edited sustainable rice project. Here is how her team is rebuilding it” (GLP)

  • “Democrats are more receptive to cultivated meat than Republicans” (Green Queen)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Donald Trump’s Republican Party manifesto abandons anti-abortion amendment, supports IVF

  • PhD-educated women have a three times higher chance of achieving a live birth following IVF than those with only secondary education.

  • European clinics delivered 1.1 million IVF cycles in 2021, up from 0.9 million in 2020

  • British study shows routine genome sequencing improved care for children with cancer

• Population Policies & Trends

  • UN report shows global population will shrink faster than expected, one fifth of countries covered (including China, Italy, South Korea, and Spain) have “ultra-low” fertility beneath 1.4 per woman.

• Genetic Studies

  • Chinese identical twins raised apart have matching IQ scores

  • Scientists disover genetic cause of severe neurodevelopmental disorder with hundreds of thousands of cases

• Further Learning

  • New York Times on Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars, including to birth people on Mars and breed new species

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

Trump’s GOP manifesto abandons anti-abortion amendment, supports IVF (WSJ)

• The Republican Party has adopted a stripped-down 16-page platform ahead of the 2024 presidential elections which largely reflects Republican president candidate Donald Trump’s views.

• The Republican platform no longer calls for a “human life amendment” banning abortion at the federal level, but instead the issue should be decided at state level.

• The platform says Republicans “will oppose late term abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

• Polling currently suggests Trump will likely win the election to be held in November.

“PhD-educated women have 3 times higher IVF live birth rate” (PET)

• Danish researchers presented data on differences in IVF success rates among women of different socioeconomic and educational levels at the 40th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

• Women with a PhD in Denmark were shown to have a three times higher chance of live birth following IVF compared to those who had just completed secondary education, analysis of a cohort of 68,738 women showed.

• Women with the highest level of income were also two times more likely to have a live birth after IVF than women in the lowest income bracket.

• Lower education level, income, employment, and socioeconomic status were all associated with lower live birth rates following IVF.

• Denmark offers citizens three cycles of IVF free of charge via its public health system, but socioeconomic status was found to influence whether women started a second or third cycle.

• Authors said their granular analysis indicated that disparities in socioeconomic status and health outcomes were due to a range of factors besides financial ones.

• Professor Nicky Hudson, of the Centre for Reproduction Research at De Montfort University, Leicester, said: “The research highlights the potential importance of the forms of social and cultural capital that patients might need in order to successfully navigate complex medical systems and especially treatments like IVF, which have a high burden on patients and do not have a straightforward care pathway.”

• Another study presented at ESHRE this year showed that women who become

  surrogates in Canada experienced poorer health during and after pregnancy than other women undergoing IVF. Becoming a surrogate was linked to lower socioeconomic status and higher risk of high blood pressure before becoming a gestational carrier, despite widespread calls to screen potential surrogates for pregnancy-associated risk factors.

“European clinics delivered over 1.1 million IVF cycles in 2021” (PET)

• Over 1.1 million IVF cycles were carried out in Europe in 2021, according to data collected by ESHRE from over 37 countries.

• The total number of fertility treatment cycles rose 20% from 2020, despite the restrictions on fertility treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 1,103,633 IVF treatment cycles were reported in 2021, up from 919,364 in 2020. 

• Pregnancy rates following IVF remained stable across Europe in 2021, despite a rise in the number of single embryo transfers taking place in clinics, following efforts to reduce the number of multiple births in fertility patients.

•  Lead author Dr Jesper Smeenk of Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital in Tilburg, the Netherlands, said: “The 25th ESHRE report on ART (assisted reproductive technology) and IUI (intrauterine insemination) shows a continuous increase of reported treatment numbers and medically assisted reproduction (MAR)-derived live births in Europe. Being already the largest data collection on MAR in Europe, continuous efforts to stimulate data collection and reporting strive for future quality control and completeness of the data and offer higher transparency and vigilance in the field of reproductive medicine.”

• The proportion of singleton, twin, and triplet deliveries following fertility treatment was 90.4%, 9.5%, and 0.1% in 2021, respectively, compared to 88.9%, 10.9%, and 0.2% in 2020.

• Around three quarters (148,194) of IUI treatments were done with the patient’s partner’s sperm and around one quarter (48,583) were performed with donor sperm. 

“Routine whole genome sequencing improves child cancer care” (PET)

• Routine whole genome sequencing can improve treatment options for children with cancer, according to a recent trial by the British National Health Service (NHS).

• The research, conducted by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS trust, and Great Ormond Street Hospital, analyzed whole genome sequencing data from 281 English children with cancer. This data enhanced the immediate clinical care for 7% of children and provided “additional disease-relevant findings” in 29% of cases.

• “Whole genome sequencing provides the gold-standard, most comprehensive, and cutting edge-view of cancer,” said Professor Sam Behjati, a senior author of the study. “What was once a research tool that the Sanger Institute started exploring over a decade ago, has now become a clinical test that I can offer to my patients.”

• The study, published Nature Medicine, provides evidence for the clinical benefit of routine whole genome sequencing, both by replicating the findings from currently applied tests and identifying previously unknown features of childhood cancer that could inform treatment options.

• Cancers that occur in children are very often driven by a tumor’s intrinsic genetic features. Whole genome sequencing should be able to identify all relevant features.

• While being able to identify clinically relevant features of childhood cancer, the study was able to accurately reproduce results from every molecular test that is currently included in standard-of-care. This provides further evidence that whole genome sequencing can add valuable information beyond current best practices.

• “Our research shows that whole genome sequencing delivers tangible benefits above existing test, providing better care for our patients,” said Dr. Jack Bartram.

  “We hope this research really highlights why whole genome sequencing should be delivered as part of routing clinical care to all children with suspected cancer.”

• Future work will likely focus on the implementation of whole genome sequencing in clinical practice. This will include the necessary turnaround time, which will vary depending on the specific cancer, as well as identifying centers who could benefit most from whole genome sequencing, such as those that do not currently employ standard testing.

• The authors suggest that replacing the current array of tests with whole genome sequencing could lead to lower costs, especially as the price of sequencing is decreasing dramatically.

More on repro/genetics:

• “China publishes ethical guidelines for human genome editing research” (Xinhua)

• “First dedicated guidance for embryo model research published by experts” (PET)

• “Event review: The ethics of engineering biology” (PET)

Population Policies & Trends

New UN report forecasts global population will shrink faster than expected (Financial Times)

• The world is set to have 200 million fewer people than previously expected by 2100, according to a UN’s 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects.

• The latest edition said the number of people would grow from 8.2 billion in 2024 to a maximum of around 10.3 billion in 2080.

• “The demographic landscape has evolved greatly,” said Li Junhua, under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs at the UN. “In some countries, the birth rate is now even lower than previously anticipated, and we are also seeing slightly faster declines in some high-fertility regions.”

• In more than half of all countries, the average number of live births per woman is already below 2.1, the level at which the population is stable. In nearly a fifth of all jurisdictions covered by the report—including China, Italy, South Korea and Spain—there are fewer than 1.4 live births per woman, a level described by the UN as “ultra low.”

• Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna, said the drop-off in fertility rates was “likely to have to do with value changes in the younger generation, for whom having children evidently is less important as a key dimension of a successful life than it was for previous generations.”

• The UN reported that in 63 jurisdictions, containing 28% of the world’s population in 2024, including China, Germany and Japan, the size of the population peaked before 2024.

• By 2100, Europe’s population is set to shrink by 21 per cent from its peak in 2020, marking the largest decline of any continent.

• A shrinking working-age population and a higher proportion of older people will add pressure on public finances.

• “The problem is that with fewer workers, you get less growth and less tax, and with more incapacitated old people, you need to provide more care, medicine and welfare,” said Charles Goodhart, professor at the London School of Economics. “If medicine and medical science cannot deal with the diseases of the old, we will have a lot of incapacitated old people with fewer young people to look after them, and it will become very difficult.”

• The UN urged aging societies to use technology to improve productivity, boost life-long learning and create opportunities to extend working lives.

Genetic Studies

Chinese identical twins raised apart match IQ scores (Times of London)

• A study has investigated the intelligence of identical twins who were split as a result of China’s historic one-child policy.

• According to a study published on this rare group of separated identical twins, the genetic component of intelligence predominates. Even when raised in different households, in some cases different countries, identical twins converge on the same IQ scores and seem to do so more the older they get.

• “As genetic factors kick in, the environment drops out,” said Nancy Segal of California State University. “So they become more alike with time.”

• The study was published in Personality and Individual Differences.

• Segal, who researches twins, came across the separated pairs from China after being approached by a mother. “She told me she’s looking for literature on how to raise one twin. I told her that doesn’t exist. Then she told me her story,” she said.

• China’s one-child policy led to the abandonment of thousands of girls because boys were more highly prized. “Some families wanted to get rid of them,” said Segal. “So parents would give [them] up. And among these, thousands of baby girls who were abandoned there were twins.”

• These twins were, in turn, separated. Parents from other countries looking to adopt them would often be assigned only one.

• Segal has worked to track down both halves in 15 instances where identical twins were separated in this way, then used them to understand aspects of intelligence.

• Twins are useful in behavioral research because they share DNA and usually share an upbringing. With identical twins, nature and nurture are the same; with non-identical twins, who share only half their DNA, nature is different. By comparing the two, researchers can tease out the genetic component of traits. In this case, though, the paradigm was reversed. Nurture was completely different but nature the same.

• “The twins just are themselves and they tell you a whole story about human behaviour. They’re so well aligned in so many ways that they don’t even think about it,” Segal said.

• The study fits with a growing body of research into the importance of the genetic component in intelligence — yet that does not make parenting pointless. “Should parents and educators throw their hands up in despair? Absolutely not,” said Segal. “Everybody can become smarter. But we’re not going to all be the same.”

“Scientists uncover genetic disorder that may affect thousands around world” (Guardian)

• Researchers have found that a mutation in the RNU4-2 gene causes severe disabilities in children and adults. The condition could affect hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

• The condition causes severe developmental delay and many of those diagnosed are unable to speak, are fed through a tube, and have seizures. The disorder produces characteristic facial features, such as large cupped ears, full cheeks, and a mouth with downturned corners.

• “It’s not unusual to discover a neurodevelopmental disorder, but it is incredibly unusual to discover one that is this common,” said Nicola Whiffin, an associate professor at the Big Data Institute and Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. “This is surprisingly frequent. There are a lot of questions as to why we haven’t seen this before.”

• About 60% of people with a neurodevelopmental disorder remain undiagnosed after comprehensive genetic testing, leaving the underlying cause unknown.

• A formal diagnosis can help patients and families by identifying the reason for the condition and connecting them with others to form support groups.

• Most work aiming to uncover the genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disorders focuses on genes the body uses to make proteins.

• After analyzing the complete genomes of nearly 9,000 people with undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders, an international collaboration led by Whiffin made a chance discovery: Dozens of the patients, all of whom were enrolled on the 100,000 Genomes Project, led by Genomics England and NHS England, had mutations in the same gene, RNU4-2, which is not used to make proteins.

• “We know of hundreds of patients, but one of the key issues is that we are limited to making diagnoses in patients where we have their whole genome,” Whiffin said. Decoding patients’ entire genetic code is becoming common in Birtain and other developed countries.

• Identifying the RNU4-2 diagnosis is an important first step towards a better understanding of the underlying biology of the condition and provides hope and a potential research path towards a therapy.

• The study was published in Nature.

More on genetic studies:

• “Alzheimer’s risk is strongly shaped by your mother’s side, study finds” (Science Alert)

• “Ten risk loci for female genital tract polyps identified” (PET)

Further Learning

Birthing Martians and breeding new species: Inside Elon Musk’s plan to colonize Mars (New York Times)

• For more than two decades, Elon Musk has focused SpaceX, his rocket company, on his lifelong goal of reaching Mars. Over the last year, he has also ramped up work on what will happen if he gets there.

• Musk has directed SpaceX employees to drill into the design and details of a Martian city. One team is drawing up plans for small dome habitats, another is working on spacesuits to combat Mars’s hostile environment and a medical team is researching whether humans can have children there.

• Musk has volunteered his sperm to help seed a colony.

• The initiatives are a shift toward more concrete planning for life on Mars as Musk’s timeline has hastened. While he said in 2016 that it would take 40 to 100 years to have a self-sustaining civilization on the planet, Musk told SpaceX employees in April that he now expects one million people to be living there in about 20 years. “There’s high urgency to making life multi-planetary,” he said. “We’ve got to do it while civilization is so strong.”

• NASA does not expect to land humans on Mars until the 2040s, discovering a barren terrain, icy temperatures, dust storms, and air that is impossible to breathe.

• Musk once said he plans to die on Mars. His vision for Mars underlies most of the six companies that he leads or owns, each of which could potentially contribute to an extraterrestrial colony.

• Musk is worth about $270 billion and has said he only accumulates assets to fund his plans for Mars. “It’s a way to get humanity to Mars, because establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars will require a lot of resources,” he said.

• Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder who envisions humans living in giant space stations throughout the solar system.

• Musk has been fascinated by Mars since reading Isaac Asimov’s 1951 science fiction novel Foundation when he was 10. In the book, the protagonist builds a colony across a galaxy to save humanity from the fall of an interstellar empire.

  “They find a planet far away from the galactic center and try to preserve human knowledge and civilization there while the center of the galaxy kind of falls apart,” Musk said in a 2013 interview for a science video.

• Scientists have not determined whether people can have children in space. Musk has said children won’t be allowed on the first flights to Mars because of the dangers, though he expects them to live there eventually.

• In his 2013 interview for the science video, he said he hoped to create his own species on Mars, an idea that he has repeated over the years to SpaceX employees and others close to the company. “I think it’s quite likely that we’d want to bioengineer new organisms that are better suited to living on Mars,” he said. “Humanity’s kind of done that over time, by sort of selective breeding.”

• In a 2022 podcast interview, Musk said he would tackle the planet’s icy temperatures with a series of thermonuclear explosions that would warm the planet by creating artificial suns.

• One internal drawing obtained by the New York Times shows a family with young children standing in a dome neighborhood, gazing up at the stars.

• To make the Mars colony self-sustaining, Musk plans to use Starship as sort of a Noah’s Ark, carrying plants and animals on the initial voyage. Residents would then build greenhouses on Mars to grow food.

• SpaceX has partnered with Impossible Foods, the plant-based alternative meat company, to provide food in SpaceX’s cafeterias, but also to test the products as a possible protein source for Mars.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Evolution

  • “To explain biological sex, look to evolution” (Nature)

• Biosecurity

  • Laboratory Biosecurity Guidance (WHO)

• Health

  • “Progression of rare genetic condition halted by gene therapy” (PET)

  • “Kenya to release genetically modified mosquitoes to fight malaria” (Accra Times)

  • Plague may have begun wiping out Europeans long before Middle Ages (CIDRAP)

• Agriculture

  • “EU’s food watchdog dismisses concerns over gene-edited crops proposal amid Council deadlock” (EurActiv)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Jon Rueda and colleagues argue for open minds and evolving regulatory approaches on biotech (human genome editing), as future generations’ moral preferences may be different from our own and new tech often triggers change in moral attitudes

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Professor Andrew Eungi Kim argues South Korea’s grueling and hyper-competitive education system contributes to the country’s ultra-low fertility

• Genetic Studies

  • A large Danish twin study on book-borrowing finds that literary tastes are 45-70% heritable, with a negligible role for the shared (family) environment

• Further Learning

  • Study finds humans, not climate, likely caused mass extinction of large land animals

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Repro/genetics

“Anticipatory gaps challenge the public governance of heritable human genome editing” (Journal of Medical Ethics)

• Jon Rueda and colleagues write on the “anticipatory gap” in the consideration of emerging technologies such as heritable genome editing.

• The “anticipatory gap” is the potential (mis)match between present and future public moral views on a given technology. The authors argue current debates on emerging tech tend to focus on future technological changes, while ignoring potential changes in public opinion.

• The authors argue new technologies often trigger changes in moral attitudes, and this should be recognized in the emerging governance of biotechnologies.

• Somatic genome editing (genetic modification of non-reproductive cells) may become successful in the coming decades for treating a wide range of hereditary and acquired diseases, including cancer, muscle degeneration, blood, infectious, neurological, haemolytic, cardiovascular, renal, stem cell, optical, periodontitic and X-linked disorders.

• Genetic enhancement—which may also be practised at the somatic level—is an application that could reshape human reproduction in the future.

• “Anticipatory governance” has been defined as a broad-based capacity extended through society to manage emerging technologies while such management is still possible. Public engagement has been considered an essential component of this.

• A global social media survey with respondents from 185 countries showed that therapeutic (disease-curing/preventing) gene editing receives majority support while genetic enhancement mostly generates rejection. This trend is particularly pronounced in Western countries.

• In South Africa, there is significant moral support for using heritable genome editing for immunity enhancement.

• In China, India, and Thailand public attitudes have been more favorable to genetic enhancement.

• Some have advocated for the creation of a Global Deliberative Assembly to facilitate global citizen discussion on genome editing.

• The authors highlight limitations of public engagement:

  • Social acceptance does not equate to ethical acceptability.

  • The public is not a monolithic entity, but rather made of different publics with varied values, beliefs, socioeconomic conditions, and risk perceptions.

  • Public opinion (represented particularly through non-deliberative surveys) is not always the result of well-informed and careful reflection, but frequently the consequence of misinformed, biased, and emotionally charged preferences.

• The authors stress that heritable human genome editing is an evolving discussion and public opinion is not stationary but may change over time. As such the future public (whose views are uncertain) should also be considered as part of public engagement. Current public engagement is a necessary but insufficient condition for anticipatory governance of heritable human genome editing.

• Some moral changes are precipitated by technological and biomedical advances. These “techno-moral changes” and are the subject of study in a growing scientific literature. Examples include the contraceptive pill prompting remarkable changes in sexual morality by separating sex from reproduction. The home pregnancy test similarly increased women’s reproductive autonomy.

• Future biotechnologies may reshape our current moral beliefs and practices.

• Normalization of emerging biotechnologies may also reshape moral attitudes, as has occurred with IVF.

• Humans tend to have status quo bias opposing change in general: “Favouritism of our technomoral status quo can be among many other cognitive factors that lead to motivated reasoning that reinforces people’s initial moral views.”

• The authors make four recommendations to reduce anticipatory gaps:

  • Governance of emerging biotechnologies must be iterative, that is updated periodically. Given the possibility of future technomoral changes, the authors advocate for epistemic humility, open-mindedness, and adaptability on the part of governing institutions. Ethical evaluation cannot be once-and-for-all but must be revisable and dynamic. As provisionality is a characteristic of regulatory efforts on human gene editing, using legislative models with sunset clauses (expiration of a period of time) can be useful way to ensure temporary moratoriums do not become effective bans resistant to change. Adaptive planning is a useful strategy for readjusting policies according to how moral attitudes and biotechnologies evolve.

  • Build a societal response capacity, based on the conjunction between expert support and public participation. With multiple possible technomoral scenarios, the authors reject technological determinism and urge strengthening foresight to be prepared for various plausible futures in which technologies and moral values interact differently. Promoting public engagement can be a way to make this social preparation for the various biotechnological futures more participatory and democratic.

  • Pay attention to how moral evaluations may change according to the particularities of different populations. Biotechnological developments do not affect everyone equally. Although many people might not today have a defined moral views on the future uses of heritable human genome editing, this may change as it becomes clearer how technological advances may affect the collectives to which they belong. An interesting strategy, which has also been proposed in the climate change debate, is to use methods of representation of groups that may be more adversely affected in the future. Representing the interests of future collectives is undoubtedly difficult, but it should be considered in discussions on heritable human genome editing.

  • Consider the long-lasting impacts of biotechnologies that may become entrenched in society. This may include technological “lock-in” whereby it becomes hard to move on from a technology once it has been adopted en masse, as has occurred with gas-powered cars.

More on repro/genetics:

• “Genetic enhancement: An avenue to combat aging-related diseases” (Life Medicine)

Population Policies & Trends

“Education reform is needed to alleviate South Korea’s demographic decline” (East Asia Forum)

• Andrew Eungi Kim, Professor in the Division of International Studies at Korea University, argues that overhauling South Korea’s notoriously demanding and competitive education system could alleviate the country’s demographic crisis.

• South Korea’s fertility rate fell to 0.78 in 2022, the lowest in the world. The country’s fertility rate is forecast to fall to as low as 0.61 in the next few years.

• If fertility is not increased, South Korea is set to become an extremely rapidly aging and shrinking society.

• The economically active population (15–64 year olds) may shrink from 37.4 million in 2015 to 20.6 million in 2065, a 55% drop in half a century.

• South Koreans are getting married at older ages due to longer schooling. 73.3% of high school graduates enrolled for college education in 2022, perhaps the highest in the world, and working commitments.

• South Korean mothers’ average age at their first birth was 33.5 in 2022, compared to an OECD average of 28.3 in 2019.

• A growing number of people are staying unmarried, ostensibly due to lack of financial resources and job security.

• All adults in South Korea are aware of the country’s “educational hell”: having no free time, going to cram schools after school, and being under pressure to excel at school with the failure to do so leading to a sense of guilt and shame.

• Education costs in the country are extremely high. Nearly 80% of students in elementary and secondary education take private lessons. South Korean parents spend more than $400 per student per month.

• The record low fertility rate has prompted the government to implement a number of policies to reverse the trend, spending billions of dollars each year to incentivise parenthood since the early 2000s. Some of the initiatives include cash bonuses for childbirth, child allowance support, subsidies for childcare, extended maternity and paternity leave, free medical check-ups for pregnant women, and medical expense support for children. These efforts have failed.

• Professor Kim argues for overhauling the education system so parents do not spend so much money on private education, providing children time to play and engage in extracurricular activities, and providing lower- and middle-class children more chances of gaining admission to prestigious universities.

More on population policies and trends:

• “Editorial: Parenthood desires in South Korea rise, sparking hopes of reversing birthrate decline” (Chosun Daily)

• “The opportunity costs of having children: Or 9 things I no longer have time for” (Richard Hanania)

Genetic Studies

“Literary tastes are as heritable as other human phenotypes: Evidence from twins’ library borrowing” (PLOS ONE)

• The study uses nation-scale registry data on library borrowing among Danish twins (N = 67,900) to assess the heritability of literary tastes.

• Literary tastes were measured via borrowing of books of different genres (e.g., crime and biographical novels) and formats (physical, digital, and audio). Variance was decomposed into shares attributable to shared genes (heritability), shared environments (social environment shared by siblings), and unique environments (social environments not shared by siblings).

• The study found that genetic differences account for 45–70% of the total variance in literary tastes, shared environments account for almost none of the variance, and unique environments account for a moderate share.

• These results suggest that literary tastes are about as heritable as other human phenotypes (e.g., physical traits, cognition, and health).

• Heritability is higher for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups than for advantaged groups.

More on genetic studies:

• “Genome-wide association study identifies high-impacts usceptibility loci for liver cancer in North America” (AASLD)

• “Sex- and ethnicity-related differences in pheochromocytoma / paraganglioma” (Journal of the Endocrine Society)

Further Learning

Humans, not climate, likely caused mass extinction of megafauna (Extinction)

• Across the last 50,000 years (the late Quaternary) terrestrial vertebrate faunas have experienced severe losses of large species (megafauna), with most extinctions occurring in the Late Pleistocene and Early to Middle Holocene.

• This extinction event is unique relative to other Cenozoic (the last 66 million years) extinctions in its strong size bias: only 11 out of 57 species of megaherbivores (body mass ≥1,000 kg) survived to the present.

• The authors synthesize the evidence for and against climatic or modern human (Homo sapiens) causation, concluding the spread of humans is the likely cause of these mass extinctions.

• Evidence indicates that the megafauna extinctions have caused profound changes to ecosystem structure and functioning, such as making plant life more dense and thus prone to destruction in wildfires.

• The authors conclude that megafauna restoration can be expected to have positive effects on biodiversity.

• See Jonatan Pallesen on X for more highlights from the paper.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Health: “NHS funding approved for hemophilia B gene therapy” (PET)

• Agriculture: Why is the EU’s New Genomic Techniques (NGT) for plants Regulation important for biotechnology? (EuropaBio)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • How robotics and AI are support assisted reprodution

  • Evolving practices in preimplantation genetic testing

• Population Policies & Trends

  • CNN on the the global fertility crisis’ socioeconomic consequences, including the booming adult diaper industry

  • Will there ever be a high-fertility East Asian religious sect?

• Genetic Studies

  • The genetic architecture of aging organs

  • Genetic variants underpin some diabetes racial disparities

  • The genetics of variable response to sepsis

• Further Learning

  • Neal Baer’s edited volume, The Promise and Peril of CRISPR

  • How Andalusia and the European Union helped multiply the Iberian Lynx population 20-fold and improved their genetic fitness

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“The Impact of Robotics and AI in Assisted Reproductive Technology: A Comprehensive Review” (Cureus)

• In recent years, integrating robotics and AI has emerged as a promising avenue for advancing assisted reproductive technology (ART).

• Robotics enables precise and minimally invasive procedures, enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of various reproductive techniques such as sperm retrieval, embryo handling, and surgical interventions.

• AI offers predictive analytics, personalized treatment protocols, and decision support systems tailored to individual patient needs, optimizing treatment outcomes and expanding access to reproductive care.

• The researchers find that robotics and AI have enabled improved success rates, reduced risks, and enhanced patient experience.

• Challenges such as regulatory considerations, adoption barriers, and ethical dilemmas must be addressed to realize the full potential of these technologies.

“Updates in preimplantation genetic testing” (BP&RCO&G)

• Preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) has evolved hugely in the last three decades and has become an important part of assisted human reproduction (AHR).

• In the United States (US), over one third of IVF cycles use PGT for aneuploidy (PGT-A).

• Obstetric and neonatal outcomes from PGT conceptions are favorable, although there may be an increased risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (high blood pressure).

• Inequity exists globally regarding access to PGT, which is not publicly funded in most countries.

Best quality vs. sex selection – an analysis of embryo selection preferences for patients undergoing preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy over a 10-year period (JARG)

• This study investigates patient preferences in embryo selection for transfer regarding quality versus sex in IVF cycles with PGT-A.

• A total of 5,145 embryo transfer cycles from a single university research clinic were included. 54.5% chose the best-quality embryo, while 45.5% selected based on sex. Among those choosing based on sex, 56.5% chose male embryos and 43.5% chose female. Preference for quality remained consistent over the decade.

More on repro/genetics:

• “First case report of a successful delivery of a healthy boy by preimplantation genetic testing for Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome” (JARG)

• “A precise and cost-efficient whole-genome haplotyping method without probands: preimplantation genetic testing analysis” (Reproductive BioMedicine)

• “Privacy fears sap potential of female fertility tech start-ups” (Financial Times)

• “Surrogacy and Motherhood in Neoliberal Times: Narratives of Developing India” (The Asian Family in Literature and Film)

Population Policies & Trends

“The fertility crisis is here and it will permanently alter the economy” (CNN)

• Falling fertility rates have long been a concern for economists worried that aging societies could diminish the labor force, exacerbate inflation, and overwhelm government programs meant to care for aging populations.

• A new study by the OECD says that declining birth rates will permanently alter the demographic makeup of the world’s largest economies over the next decade.

• If forecasts hold up, 2064 will be the first year in modern history where the global death rate surpasses the birth rate. But the world’s largest economies are already there: The total fertility rate among the OECD’s 38 member countries dropped to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022, from 3.3 children in 1960.

• In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person. Today, the ratio is closer to three-to-one. By 2035, it is expected to be two-to-one.

• Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week.

• While net immigration has helped offset demographic problems facing rich countries in the past, the shrinking population is now a global phenomenon.

• By 2100, only six countries are expected to be having enough children to keep their populations stable: Africa’s Chad, Niger, and Somalia, the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga, and Tajikistan, according to a study in the Lancet.

• CEOs and politicians are already preparing for the baby bust.

• Elon Musk, father of 12 children, has remarked that falling birthrates will lead to “a civilization that ends not with a bang but a whimper, in adult diapers.”

• P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which together make up more than half of the US diaper market, have seen baby diaper sales decline over the past few years, but adult diapers sales, they say, are a bright spot in their portfolios.

• Nestlé’s chief executive, Mark Schneider, recently said he’s shifted the company’s priorities from producing infant formula to serving the nutritional needs of people over the age of 50.

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that the U.S. birth rate in 2023 fell to a record low, reversing a small uptick seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Those findings underpin the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) economic forecast and budget projections. “What you’re seeing is increased spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security as the baby boomers are aging into those programs. And then of course, fewer workers relative to the number of people who are receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits,” said Molly Dahl, a senior advisor to the CBO.

• Social Security payments provide about 90% of income for more than a quarter of older adults in the United States, according to Social Security Agency surveys. But without intervention, the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by the mid-2030s, meaning that only a portion of retirees’ expected benefits will be paid out.

• “Here are the facts. We are not having enough children, and we have not been having enough children for long enough that there is a demographic crisis,” former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London last year. “In aggregate, all the demographics say there’s going to be a shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years.”

• Schmidt added however that AI will ease those problems significantly. Some experts say it is too soon to tell how AI will impact the global economy.

“Will there ever be an East Asian Amish community?” (Mercator)

• Demographers and demography enthusiasts have always had a deep fascination with the Amish as the prime example of an exclusive and conservative religious sect or community with a high fertility rate unthinkable in most modern societies.

• It appears that none of the high-fertility religious sects—Laestadians, Hutterites, Quiverfull Calvinists, Mennonites, and Haredi Jews—are East Asian.

• This is despite the plethora of sects, new religious movements, and even cults originating from the region in the past centuries.

• The author argues that if East Asia had a fervently religious community such as the Amish or the Haredim, it would be of huge demographic value and benefit.

• He laments that most East-Asian religious sects are focused on personal gain rather than actual principles or family formation. Many have faced sexual, financial, and other scandals.

• In China, religious subcultures are persecuted by the Chinese Community Party (CCP).

More on population policies and trends:

• “How to build a family-friendly city” (IFS)

Genetic Studies

“The genetic architecture of biological age in nine human organ systems” (Nature Aging)

• Investigating the genetic underpinnings of human aging is essential for developing actionable therapies for chronic diseases.

• The study describes the genetic architecture of the biological age gap (BAG; the difference between machine learning-predicted age and chronological age) across nine human organ systems in 377,028 participants of European ancestry from the UK Biobank.

• The study identifies 393 genomic loci–BAG pairs linked to the brain, eye, cardiovascular, hepatic, immune, metabolic, musculoskeletal, pulmonary and renal systems.

Gene variant may underlie racial diabetes disparities: study (Vanderbilt University)

• A genetic variation common in people of African ancestry is associated with an increased risk of complications from diabetes, including diabetic retinopathy, which can cause blindness.

• Investigators found that the diagnosis of diabetes and treatment needed to prevent diabetes complications may be delayed in people who carry the variant, G6PDdef, because it is associated with reduced levels of HbA1c, a widely used clinical marker of blood glucose levels. 

• Testing for genetic variations that cause G6PD deficiency could lead to improvements in the way clinicians diagnose and treat diabetes, helping to reduce the long-observed disparity in diabetes complications between individuals of European and African ancestries.

• “This discovery could lead to changes in the way diabetes is managed for millions of patients in the U.S. and around the world,” said Dr. Todd Edwards. “More needs to be done, such as health economics and policy studies, and clinical trials, to establish the best way to use this knowledge to prevent diabetes complications.”

• “While this discovery may impact how millions of individuals manage their diabetes, it also highlights the importance of including diverse populations in biomedical research,” said the paper’s first author, Dr. Joseph Breeyear. “By including underrepresented individuals, we can identify genetic variations that affect health outcomes.”

• Diabetic retinopathy, damage to retinal blood vessels and nerves at the back of the eye that can cause permanent vision loss, has estimated prevalence in the U.S. of 24% in non-Hispanic white people and 34% in non-Hispanic Black people. 

• The multi-institutional study was led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System and Million Veteran Program (MVP), Emory University School of Medicine, and the Joseph Maxwell Cleland Atlanta VA Healthcare System.

• The study was published in Nature Medicine. 

“Study reveals genetic basis of sepsis response variability” (Medical Xpress)

• New research uncovers how different people respond to sepsis based on their genetic makeup. This could help identify people who would benefit from certain treatments and lead to the development of targeted therapies.

• The study details the genetic basis of variability in sepsis response and the different regulators and cell types involved in the different immune responses.

• Sepsis causes an estimated 11 million deaths worldwide per year, or one death every three seconds. In the United Kingdom, at least 245,000 people are affected by sepsis, and 48,000 people die each year.

• “Our research found two groups of people, with opposite immune responses, and identified the genetic regulators involved”, said Dr. Katie Burnham, first author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute. “Being able to molecularly categorize patients with sepsis allows clinicians to correctly identify who could benefit from the available treatments and gives new direction to those developing targeted therapies.”

  The study was published in Cell Genomics.

More on genetic studies:

• “Dissecting heritability, environmental risk, and air pollution causal effects using > 50 million individuals in MarketScan” (Nature Communications)

Further Learning

Neal Baer (ed.), The Promise and Peril of CRISPR (JHU Press)

• TV producer and lecturer on global health Neal Baer brings together a collection of essays by influential bioethicists, philosophers, and geneticists to explore the moral, ethical, and policy challenges posed by CRISPR technology.

• Gene-editing technology holds the promise of curing more than 7,000 known genetic diseases.

• The book discusses how CRISPR may also be used to manipulate human evolution, enable genetic enhancement, or create pathogens and bioweapons, as well as ways to supervise the technology.

• Essay contributors offer informed predictions and guidelines for how the uses of CRISPR today will affect life in the future.

• The contributors are Florence Ashley, R. Alta Charo, Marcy Darnovsky, Kevin Doxzen, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Jodi Halpern, Katie Hasson, Andrew C. Heinrich, Jacqueline Humphries, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Ellen D. Jorgensen, Peter F. R. Mills, Carol Padden, Marcus Schultz-Bergin, Robert Sparrow, Sandra Sufian, Krystal Tsosie, Ethan Weiss, and Rachel M. West

“The Iberian lynx: a species on the brink of extinction is now a success story” (IDOM)

• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently announced that the Iberian lynx is no longer under threat of extinction. There are more than 2,000 specimens living on the Iberian Peninsula, up from just 90 in 2002.

• With co-financing from the European Union’s LIFE programme, the Regional Government of Andalusia, which is responsible for the remaining specimens has conducted four projects to help the Iberian Lynx recover.

• Among other actions, these projects aimed to improve the habit and prey populations, found new Lynx populations, and foster genetic enhancement by bringing new blood into limited gene pools.

• The four LIFE projects involve a total of 35 partners, including public administrations, scientific institutions, NGOs from different sectors, and private companies, as well as local people and communities.

• While the Iberian Lynx is no longer considered at risk of extinction, it will remain an threatened species until its population reaches at least 3,500 individuals.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Agriculture

  • “EU split on deregulating gene-edited food as Council deadlock persists [on patentability]” (EurActiv)

  • “Gene-edited products will arrive quickly: Major crop producing areas of the world have figured out regulatory pathways” (Farmtario, Canada)

  • Italy’s first CRISPR crop trial, a gene-edited fungus-resistant rice, destroyed by vandals (Science)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Vanessa Brown Calder (Cato Institute): why Republicans should protect IVF to support natality, health, and reproductive freedom

  • How AI is being to improve IVF in the United Arab Emirates

• Population Policies & Trends

  • South-Korean President Yoon declared ultra-low fertility a “national emergency,” citing decline of Sparta

  • Fertility in majority-Mormon Utah is declining, mirroring national trends

• Genetic Studies

  • Type-2 diabetes estimated to be 18-34% heritable in African Americans

  • Certain Neanderthal genetic variants contribute to autism

• Further Learning

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Repro/genetics

“Republican lawmakers should continue effort to protect in vitro fertilization” (Cato Institute)

• Vanessa Brown Calder of the libertarian Cato Institute argues that Republicans legislators should support protection of IVF.

• Last week, all 49 Senate Republicans signed a letter stating their “strong” support for continued nationwide to IVF.

• Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Katie Britt put forward legislation to discourage states from restricting IVF, which Senate Democrats blocked on the ground it does not go far enough.

• Calder argues protection of IVF is an invaluable pro-natal policy that expands reproductive freedom and enables forward-looking prevention of or preparation for health problems.

• Regulatory measures limiting the number of embryos created, banning preimplantation genetic testing, or reducing the number of eggs fertilized would hinder IVF’s efficacy and reduce the number of children born. As such, these are anti‐​natal policies.

“AI could improve IVF success rates, health experts ay” (The National, United Arab Emirates)

• Health professionals are increasingly using AI to tackle rising infertility.

• The World Health Organisation (WHO) has found that about 17.5% of adults, or one in six, are affected by infertility.

• Dr. Shiva Harikrishnan of Medcare Women and Children Hospital in Dubai said AI is helping clinicians craft personalised reproductive treatment strategies.

• “AI methods are being utilised to improve the selection and prediction of sperm cells, oocytes, and embryos and to generate better predictive models for IVF treatments,” Dr. Harikrishnan said

• A study published by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology found that AI models can more accurately predict the likelihood of successful clinical pregnancies than can human specialists.

• Diagnio is a UAE company seeking to transform women’s health diagnostics into an easy, lab-accurate at-home experience. It uses saliva-based testing to track ovulation, identify fertility risks, reduce stress, and maximise the chances of conception.

  “If we don't embrace these technologies, within one or two generations, we will find ourselves in a position where only the wealthiest among us can start families,” said Sophie Smith of Nabta Health, a women’s health clinic in Dubai.

• Diagnio and Nabta Health are part of a growing FemTech sector focused on addressing women’s health issues

More on repro/genetics:

• “Concurrent preimplantation genetic testing and competence assessment of human embryos by transcriptome sequencing” (Advanced Science)

• “Navigating IVF politics: Insights from a fertility specialist” (Positive Step Fertility)

• “Liberal eugenics and preimplantation genetic diagnosis” (Bioethics Observatory)

Population Policies & Trends

South-Korean President Yoon declares “national emergency” on low birth rates, citing decline of Sparta (Chosun Daily)

• South-Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared a “demographic national emergency,” outlining a comprehensive strategy to combat the country’s ultra-low birth rates with a series of bold policy measures and initiatives.

• President Yoon said: “We will undertake nationwide, all-out efforts until we overcome the issue of low birth rates.”

• During a meeting of the Presidential Committee on Aging Society and Population Policy, Yoon said: “The most fundamental and fatal problem is the demographic crisis caused by ultra-low birth rates.”

• Yoon cited the example of the ancient city-state of Sparta, which, despite its primacy, rapidly declined due to population decrease. “This holds significant implications for our society today,” he said.

• This was the second time President Yoon chaired a meeting of the committee (the first was in March 2003).

• Yoon announced there would be a “Ministry of Population Strategy Planning” instead of the previously promised “Low Birth Rate Response Planning Ministry.”

• The new Population Strategy Planning Department would be endowed with pre-review authority over the budget for low birth rate countermeasures and pre-consultation rights on local government projects, functioning as a powerful “control tower.”

• Until the Population Strategy Planning Department is fully operational, Yoon stated emergency meetings to address ultra-low birth rates would be held monthly under the Presidential Committee on Aging Society and Population Policy. He also urged the National Assembly to cooperate to establish the Population Strategy Planning Department swiftly.

• On work-life balance, President Yoon announced plans to increase the current 6.8% usage rate of paternity leave to 50% during his term and to raise childcare leave pay to 2.5 million won ($1,807.96) per month for the first three months.

  He also announced plans to extend paternity leave from 10 to 20 days and raise the age limit for children eligible for reduced working hours from 8 to 12 years.

• President Yoon plans to introduce a new system for short-term childcare leave that can be taken every two weeks. He proposed providing about $860 per month as replacement labor support to employers for employees on childcare leave.

• Yoon said: “The national responsibility system for children aged 0 to 11 will be completed within this term by transitioning to public care.” He aims to implement free education and care for children aged 3 to 5 and ensure that children of all grades in elementary schools can access the after-school programs.

• Measures will also be taken to facilitate new families’ access to housing.

“Utah fertility rates still on the decline, mirroring nationwide trends” (KSL)

• Utah’s fertility rate continues to decline and seem likely to continue in the immediate future.

• “For a while, people just thought it was an effect of the Great Recession,” said Emily Harris, who authored the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s latest report on state fertility rates. “It’s been hard for people to reconcile the idea of declining fertility with … the dominant [Mormon] culture in Utah.”

• Utah held the title of highest fertility rates in the nation until 2016. It now fourth with 1.85 children per woman, behind South Dakota, Nebraska, and Alaska (none of which reach the replacement rate of 2.1).

• “There’s a cultural shift where people are having conversations and thinking about whether or not they want to have kids instead of just assuming they’ll have kids,” Harris said.

• The biggest fertility drops in Utah are among women who are less than 30. Women ages 40-44 are seeing an increase in fertility rates.

• Nationwide fertility rates declined for unmarried women but increased for married women from 2021 to 2022. However, more people are postponing marriage.

Fertility Beliefs and Outcomes: The Role of Relationship Status and Attractiveness (NBER)

• Unique data from the Berea Panel Study provides new evidence about fertility outcomes before age 30 and beliefs about these outcomes soon after college graduation.

• Individuals who are unmarried and not in relationships at age 24 are extremely optimistic about the probability of having children, while married individuals have very accurate beliefs.

More on population policies and trends:

• “A family-friendly pronatalism” (IFS)

• “Government can’t fix America’s baby bust: The obstacles to having more babies can’t be moved by tax incentives or subsidized child care” (Reason)

• “China’s demographics will be fine through mid-century” (Noahpinion)

Genetic Studies

“Variant level heritability estimates of type 2 diabetes in African Americans” (Scientific Reports)

• Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is caused by both genetic and environmental factors and is associated with an increased risk of cardiorenal complications and mortality.

• African Americans are disproportionately affected by the condition, African Americans but largely underrepresented in genetic studies of T2D.

• Using genome-wide association study (GWAS) data paired with phenotypic data from ~ 19,300 African Americans in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, the Genetics of Hypertension Associated Treatments (GenHAT) study, and the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network, the authors estimated narrow-sense heritability of T2D.

• Heritability estimates adjusting for age, sex, and genetic ancestry ranged from 18% to 34%. The study narrows the expected range for T2D heritability in this race group compared to prior estimates, while providing new insight into the genetic basis of T2D.

“Ancient Neanderthal DNA may contribute to the development of autism” (PET)

• Loyola University New Orleans researchers have discovered that certain genetic variations traced back to Neanderthals are more common in people with autism.

• “In our study, we’ve found that autistic people, on average, have more rare Neanderthal variants, not that they have more Neanderthal DNA in general,” explained lead researcher Dr. Emily Casanova. “That means that while not all Neanderthal DNA is necessarily influencing autism susceptibility, a subset is.”

• Neanderthal DNA makes up 1-4% of the genome of people from outside Sub-Saharan Africa.

• The findings were published in Molecular Psychiatry.

More on genetic studies:

• “Gene essential for metastatic cancer cell growth identified” (PET)

• “The wrong genes for the job?” (PET)

• “Biosecure Act impacts genomics researchers amidst strained US-China relations” (GenomeWeb)

• “Genetic knowledge and attitudes towards genetic testing among final-year medical students at a public university in Ecuador” (Frontiers in Medicine)

Further Learning

• “The gender equality paradox and genetics” (Clear Language, Clear Mind)

• “Gene editing’s next big targets” (Axios)

• “Billionaire Jeff Bezos donates $30M to push for more lab-grown meat” (MSN)

• Many varieties of banana are at risk of extinction, gene editing may offer solutions (GLP)

• “Slight genetic tweak can increase sugarcane yield by almost 20%” (ZME Science)

• “Cana city on Mars secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? People will decide for themselves?” (Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Conservatism)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

The development and deployment of reprogenetics may be the ultimate example of what evolutionary biologists call “gene-culture coevolution.” The latter simply means that a population’s genetic heritage influences the kind of culture produces, while culture in turn affects that population’s reproductive patterns. Chimps, for genetic reasons, cannot produce nearly as vast a range of cultural patterns that humans can. Human cultures, for their part, are extraordinarily diverse and powerfully affect behavior, including by influencing who successfully reproduces and how. “Custom is king of all,” as Herodotus said.

No doubt the cultural area with the most obvious genetic impact is marriage customs. These can be astonishing diverse. Many cultures favor some variation of endogamy, that is marriage within an in-group. This in-group can be defined as an ethno-religious group (Judaism), a caste (within Hinduism), or seemingly almost any other way. With gene sequencing and analysis, we are learning more and more about the profound genetic impact of such divergent marriage customs.

Perhaps the most prominent consequences are medical: a high degree on endogamy, such as cousin marriage or uncle-niece marriage, leads to a higher risk of offpsring developing recessive congenital diseases. I have long thought that reprogenetics will develop most rapidly in nations combining A) biotechnological capacities and B) a high congenital disease burden. Such nations most obviously include Israel, the wealthier Arab states (essentially the Gulf Arab states), and India (at least for the upper classes).

Now a team of Saudi health practitioners, researchers, and policymakers have released a study on the perception of genetic diseases and premarital screening tests in Saudi Arabia, which is highly instructive on thinking in the country.

The authors note that around half of Saudis are involved in consanguineous marriage and “the prevalence of autosomal recessive genetic diseases has increased.” Because of the high prevalence of hereditary disorders, the Saudi government established a premarital screening program in 2004 with mandatory screening for couples planning to marry.

The screening targets diseases that pose a significant health burden on both the government and individuals. Priority diseases include thalassaemia, sickle cell anemia, and infectious diseases, such as hepatitis B and C and HIV. The screening aims to provide carrier or affected couples with the option to proceed with the marriage while understanding the likelihood of their children being affected by the inherited condition and to refer them to a genetic counselor for further guidance.

The study gauged Saudis’ awareness of genetic diseases, premarital screening tests, and genetic counseling via an online questionnaire (2,057 participants). The results are striking:

• Over 96% of respondents said they were willing to proceed with genetic testing if they or their partners had a history of genetic disease.

• 89% said they would call off a wedding if they knew that each child would have a 50% chance or more of developing a genetic disease.

• About 91.3% of participants expressed agreement regarding the need to enhance public awareness and knowledge concerning genetic disorders.

• Only 47% were aware of the option of avoiding transmitting a genetic illness through preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

• 87% agreed that increased government regulations are required to prevent the spread of genetic diseases in affected families.

• 68% of participants were discouraged from genetic testing because of the cost, while 73.9% said they would be encouraged to proceed with testing if it were covered by the healthcare system.

There was then a high degree of support for using reprogenetics among Saudis for reducing the congenital disease burden.

To address this burden, the authors argue there is a need to address entrenched marital customs in Saudi Arabia favoring consanguineous unions, expand the pre-marriage screening program to cover molecular testing, raising awareness on alternative reproductive options, and expanding coverage of PGD by insurance companies.

The field of reprogenetics is fast-evolving, contested, and global. Different nations will use these emerging technologies in different ways, according to their values and goals, such as broadening reproductive freedom or raising the birth rate. Some nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, have policies in place to systematically reduce the risk of genetic diseases. Many nations currently lack the capacities and resources to engage in assisted reproduction on any significant scale. Just as divergent customs in the past have affected different nations’ genetic heritage, so will differences in the adoption of reproductive technologies. We are entering a new age in the history of gene-culture coevolution.

• Repro/genetics

  • European scholars’ review of epidemiological, clinical, and ethical issues in polygenic screening

• Genetic Studies

  • Mega-study of 17 million Scandinavians found genetic factors contributed about 50% to the comorbidity (simultaneous presence) of certain mental disorders (schizophrenia, affective disorders, and autism spectrum disorder) with cardiometabolic disorders (such as stroke and heart failure)

  • Study finds hundreds of genes may influence breast cancer risk and aggressiveness

  • The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) has multiplied by 10 the amount of public data on space “omics,” i.e. genomic, epigenomic, microbiome, and other data on astronauts and the impact of space on humans.

• Further Learning

  • Top French crop scientist Catherine Regnault-Roger’s Biotech Challenges outlines the history and potential of agricultural biotech, including CRISPR.

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Repro/genetics

“Screening embryos for polygenic disease risk: a review of epidemiological, clinical, and ethical considerations” (Human Reproduction Update)

• A group of European scholars conducted a broad review on polygenic embryo screening for disease risk (PES or PGT-P).

• Recent advances have made genome-wide genotyping of IVF embryos feasible and affordable, raising the possibility of screening embryos for their risk of polygenic diseases such as breast cancer, hypertension, diabetes, or schizophrenia. The technology is already available in some countries.

• The main theoretical benefit of PES is a reduction in lifetime polygenic disease risk for children born after screening. The magnitude of the risk reduction has been predicted based on statistical modelling, simulations, and sibling pair analyses. Results based on all methods suggest that under the best-case scenario, large relative risk reductions are possible for one or more diseases.

• As these models abstract several practical limitations, the realized benefits may be smaller, particularly due to a limited number of embryos and unclear future accuracy of the risk estimates.

• Possible negative personal harms of PES include an unindicated IVF treatment, a possible reduction in IVF success rates, and patient confusion, incomplete counseling, and choice overload.

• The authors argue possible societal harms include discarded embryos, an increasing demand for “designer babies,” overemphasis of the genetic determinants of disease, unequal access, and lower utility in people of non-European ancestries.

• The authors argue that because of practical limitations and potential harms, particularly unnecessary IVF treatments and discarded viable embryos, PES should be offered only within a research context before further clarity is achieved regarding its balance of benefits and harms.

More on repro/genetics:

• “The use of expanded carrier screening in reproductive medicine” (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists)

• “Genome sequencing differentiates a paracentric inversion from a balanced insertion enabling more accurate preimplantation genetic testing” (AOGS)

• Erik Widen et al, “Correspondence on “Clinical utility of polygenic risk scores for embryo selection: A points to consider statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG)” by Grebe et al” (GIM)

• Theresa Greb et al, “Response to Widen et al” (GIM)

• “It is too soon for clinical trials on artificial wombs” (Scientific American)

• “Practical applications of AI in IVF laboratories: Addressing key challenges and opportunities” (MIM Fertility)

Genetic Studies

“Quantifying the relative importance of genetics and environment on the comorbidity between mental and cardiometabolic disorders using 17 million Scandinavians” (Nature Communications)

• Mental disorders are leading causes of disability and premature death worldwide, partly due to high comorbidity with cardiometabolic disorders, such as heart failure and stroke. Reasons for this comorbidity are still poorly understood.

• The study used nation-wide health records and near-complete genealogies in Denmark and Sweden (covering 17 million people) to reveal the genetic and environmental contributions underlying the observed comorbidity between six mental disorders and 15 cardiometabolic disorders.

• Genetic factors contributed about 50% to the comorbidity of schizophrenia, affective disorders, and autism spectrum disorder with cardiometabolic disorders.

• The comorbidity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and anorexia with cardiometabolic disorders was mainly or fully driven by environmental factors.

Hundreds of genetic variants may influence breast cancer risk and aggressiveness (PET)

• Researchers looked at the genetic sequences of breast cancer tumours from 5529 women, along with the sequence of the DNA they were born with, to better understand how genetics influence the subtype of breast cancer that develops.

• “We wanted to understand how inherited DNA might sculpt how a tumour evolves,” said Dr. Kathleen Houlahan of Stamford University and lead researcher of the paper published in Science.

• The findings suggest hundreds of other genetic variants could affect cancer risk and aggressiveness. 

• “Our findings not only explain which subtype of breast cancer an individual is likely to develop,” said Dr. Houlahan, “but they also hint at how aggressive and prone to metastasising that subtype will be. Beyond that, we speculate that these inherited variants may influence a person’s risk of developing breast cancer. However, future studies will be needed to examine this.”

The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and international astronaut biobank (Nature)

• Spaceflight induces molecular, cellular, and physiological shifts in astronauts and poses myriad biomedical challenges to the human body, which are becoming increasingly relevant as more humans venture into space.

• The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) is an integrated data and sample repository for clinical, cellular, and multi-omic research profiles from a diverse range of missions, including the NASA Twins Study, JAXA CFE study, SpaceX Inspiration4 crew, Axiom, and Polaris.

• SOMA represents a >10-fold increase in publicly available space omics data.

• The Atlas includes extensive molecular and physiological profiles encompassing genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and microbiome data sets.

• SOMA can help accelerate precision aerospace medicine, bringing needed health monitoring, risk mitigation, and countermeasures data for upcoming lunar, Mars, and exploration-class missions.

More on genetic studies:

• “Disentangling multiple sclerosis heterogeneity in the French territory among genetic and environmental factors via Bayesian heritability analysis” (MS)

• “Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies reveals genetic mechanisms of supraventricular arrhythmias” (C:GPM)

• Lack of diversity data standing in way of gene-editing medicine (Vox)

Further Learning

Book review: Biotech Challenges by “tech optimist” Catherine Regnault-Roger (GLP)

• Catherine Regnault-Roger, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pau and a Member of the French Academy of Agriculture, has written Biotech Challenges, a short book (150 pages) on the history of agricultural biotechnology and recent development of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in agriculture, including CRISPR gene editing. She is a former member of the Scientific Committee of France’s High Council of Biotechnologies.

• The first wave of the agricultural biotechnology revolution, in the 1980s and 1990s. Driven by advances in genetically modifying organisms (GMOs), transgenesis, and random mutagenesis, first-generation of genetic engineering tools yielded many important farming advances such as weed and pest control.

• The book covers animal and plant applications of biotech, profiling leading researchers and their breakthrough products.

• Biotech Challenges also covers political aspects: the disagreements among scientists, farmers, and environmentalists on the benefits and dangers of agricutlrual debates; divergent national approaches grounded more in politics than science; and geopolitical debates on local control of food production, national sovreignty, and international competition.

• The second wave of biotech techniques are more precise, and have been revolutionizing both agriculture and human and veterinary medicine.

• Countries around the world have greeted these innovations very differently, reflecting their internal politics, trade needs, cultural traditions, and their comfort level with change.

• For many years, sub-Saharan African countries resisted adopting genetically engineered technology, fearing a frosty reaction from the European Union. Only recently, with the development of NGTs, have the African countries shaken loose of Europe’s influence to launch biotechnology research projects of their own.

• The author, a “techno optimist” argues the agricultural biotech revolution will especially benefit developing countries, unless it is blocked for political reasons. The EU in particular is urged to adopt a more favorable approach towards agricultural biotech.

• The book was originally published in French as Enjeux biotechnologiques, des OGM à l’édition du génome by Presses des Mines (Paris).

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “More births, please”: Richard Hanania interview Dan Hess (@MoreBirths) (Hanania Newsletter)

• Louise Perry, “The quiet return of eugenics” (The Spectator)

• Agriculture

  • Editorial: “Cis-editing for all” (Nature Biotechnology)

  • “CRISPR improves a crop that feeds billions: The gene-editing system, normally used to disrupt a gene, is applied to improve the function of a gene in rice” (Nature)

  • “China adds gene-edited wheat to growing biotech crop list” (AgDaily)

  • Report: “Policy support for alternative proteins could free up 44% of European land and boost self-sufficiency” (Green Queen)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Ghent University Hospital calls for free genetic testing of prospective parents

  • Japanese researchers raise technical and ethical challenges to polygenic embryo selection

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Report on “demographic rearmament” in southern Europe

  • Institute for Family studies launches Pronatalism Initiative

  • China’s Three-Child Policy: Neo-Confucianism, ads, and pervasive state intervention to boost family formation

• Genetic Studies

  • Phenome India project secures 10,000 samples to boost precision medicine

  • GSA-MiXeR: a new tool to estimate individual genes’ impact

• Further Learning

  • Survey finds people with better relationships and more children tend to find life more meaningful

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“Ghent University Hospital requests reimbursement for genetic tests for couples who want to have children” (Le Spécialiste)

• Ghent University Hospital in Belgium is asking the government to reimburse genetic testing for couples who want to have a child.

• Too often, parents concerned about the health of their future child forego genetic risk screening because it is too expensive. However, such a test can clarify the likelihood of hereditary diseases before pregnancy.

• “Approximately 3% of couples run the risk, with a probability of one in four, of having a child with a serious hereditary disease,” according the hospital’s clinicians. “Examples of these include cystic fibrosis, SMA [spinal muscular atrophy], metabolic diseases, etc.”

• The screening costs 1,500 euros per couple and is not reimbursed by the national health insurance. The cost may particularly be a deterrent for less educated couples.

• “Couples who want to benefit from it must have this opportunity, regardless of their financial capacity,” argues medical geneticist Sandra Janssens.

• About 68% of parents who do not choose screening indicated that cost played an important role in their decision.

• “We are campaigning for reimbursement of the test so that everyone has equal access to it,” says molecular geneticist Paul Coucke.

• Couples who refuse screening also cite as motives information overload or that the result would make no difference. However, general genetic carrier screening could prevent serious illness in 500 children every year in Flanders alone.

• Embryo selection can enable parents predisposed to passing on a genetic disease to have children free of the condition.

Technical and ethical challenges in polygenic embryo selection (medRxiv)

• Japanese researchers argue that the efficacy of pre-implantation genetic testing for polygenic risk score (PGT-P) is currently “questionable” due to technical challenges and also raise ethical concerns.

• In Japan, the target diseases of the established PGTs are limited. Only parents approved by specialists’ review are able to receive PGTs after repeated genetic counseling.

• The authors call for a society-wide discussion of the technology.

More on repro/genetics:

• “New Italian guidelines allow single women to transfer embryos… but only following a heterosexual relationship” (PET)

Population Policies & Trends

Is There Hope for Low Fertility? “Demographic Rearmament” in Southern Europe (IFS)

• The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has published a report by Lyman Stone and Erin Wingerter on demographic trends and pronatal policies in southern Europe, with particular attention to relatively successful policies in France.

• Plummeting fertility rates in southern Europe have led governments across the region to consider pronatal policies.

• Italian Prime Minister Meloni recently spoke alongside Pope Francis about the importance of boosting Italian fertility, Spain’s fertility rate is at record lows, and Malta’s Parliament has called low birth rates an “existential challenge.”

• The report assesses where fertility in southern Europe is headed, what factors are driving its decline, and whether anything can be done.

• The authors find reasons for hope: pronatalism has worked where it has been seriously undertaken and sources of demographic underperformance are readily identifiable.

• The report does not provide one-size-fits-all policy recommendations for boosting fertility, arguing that these must be tailored to different countries’ circumstances.

• Fertility rates within marriage remain fairly high in much of southern Europe. Only Spain has seen a major decline in married fertility in the last 40 years. However, marriage rates have fallen sharply in all countries. 

• Fertility differences around Europe are not primarily due to differences in prevalence or sources of immigration, but rather to differences among native-born women in each country. 

• Desired family size is relatively low in southern Europe, perhaps due to adverse economic conditions leading young people to reduce their family ambitions.

• France’s pronatal policies undertaken between 1920 and 1950, and expanded in subsequent decades, have caused French fertility to remain durably elevated (0.1 to 0.3 more children per woman). This has led to France’s population being several million people higher today than it otherwise would have been.

• The authors argue governments should pursue a harmonized multinational data collection effort focused on assessing factors shaping fertility and marriage, similar to the country-specific surveys in Spain and Portugal in the late 2010s.

“Institute for Family Studies Launches the Pronatalism Initiative Under New Senior Fellow Lyman Stone” (IFS)

• Demographer Lyman Stone has been awarded an IFS senior fellowship to establish the Pronatalism Initiative.

• The IFS Pronatalism Initiative will pioneer new research to create a suite of policies to counteract global fertility decline.

• Stone, chief information officer of the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, joins the team at IFS where he was previously a research fellow.

• “I am delighted to be joining the Institute for Family Studies as a senior fellow,” Stone said. “The IFS is respected by policy makers and the media for its high caliber research. The IFS Pronatalism Initiative will lead the broad and urgent interest in fertility to a clear, well-researched suite of policy solutions. Fertility rebound is not only possible, it may even be likely.”

• The IFS Pronatalism Initiative has been seed-funded with a $50,000 award from Emergent Ventures.

• “We are thrilled to receive this award from Emergent Ventures. The fertility crisis in the United States and around the world demands rigorous research identifying drivers and solutions of the collapse in fertility rates,” said IFS Executive Director Michael Toscano. “The IFS Pronatalism Initiative will build a team around Stone’s research to show countries, willing to make a concerted effort, how to address their fertility problems.”

• The IFS Pronatalism Initiative is anticipated to produce a major report a year which will be made available to policy makers and journalists. 

“Biopolitics of the three-child policy” (Made in China)

• An analysis of comments on Weibo, a major Chinese social media, suggests that the announcement in the mid-2010s of the Two-Child Policy was met with excitement and hope. The Three-Child Policy however suggested the government not interested in empowering citizens’ reproductive choices as such.

• Surveys suggest there is little interest in large families among young Chinese. Educated young people in the cities value personal growth, self-realisation, and freedom to enjoy life. They want to stabilise their careers before starting a family and see marriage and childbearing as personal affairs, not matters of state.

• The author argues that the Three-Child Policy is part of a broader project to engineer a new, stable, and harmonious family-centric society and family-friendly economy that will smooth out demographic irregularities in two main ways: by re-traditionalizing family culture and by reconcentrating power over reproduction in the Chinese Community Party (CCP) and Party-led institutions.

  

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping has argued that the nation’s ancient Confucian ideals have made China great in the past and they lived on in the CCP’s plans for national revitalisation. With the Three-Child Policy, the country encourages the formation of large neo-Confucian families to support the young and the old.

• Three-child families became promoted through a broad campaign of ideological education and a set of sweeping socioeconomic incentives and disincentives labelled “supporting measures.”

• The author argues China’s new population project is grounded in Xi Jinping’s vision for the restoration of a neo-traditional family order rooted in the Confucian fundamentals of hierarchy, respect for the old, women’s responsibility for domestic roles, and harmony among the generations. Such a development would turn China’s increasingly individualistic society into a more familistic one.

• The 2021 Central Committee and State Council Decision announcing the Three-Child Policy set out the core cultural themes to be advanced countrywide:

  Promote the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation; respect the social value of childbirth; advocate marriage and childbirth at an appropriate age and better childbearing and rearing; encourage couples to share child-rearing responsibilities; break with outdated customs such as exorbitant betrothal gifts; and foster a new culture of marriage and childbearing.

• Wang Pei’an, Executive Vice-President of the Party-led Birth Planning Association (BPA), said: “This is a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of the marriage and childbearing culture in the new era.”

• The Chinese government is attempting to build a comprehensive social infrastructure comprising a family-centric society and a family-friendly economy and social service sector to raise the birthrate. The 2021 decision mentions the following “systems”:

  1. A population service system that covers not just reproduction, as under the One-Child Policy, but the entire life cycle.

  2. A fertility support system that uses government finance, tax collection, insurance, education, employment, and housing measures to stimulate childbearing and ensure the quality of services for childbearing and rearing.

  3. A birth-friendly working environment that offers mothers flexible work schedules, generous maternity leave, improved maternity insurance systems, and re-employment training after childbirth; and safeguards women’s legal rights and interests in employment.

  4. An inclusive childcare service system that vastly increases the quantity and quality of childcare services.

  5. A population monitoring system that covers the entire population over the whole life cycle, integrating information on education, public security, civil affairs, health, medical insurance, and social security.

• How much of this is accomplished will depend on political and economic matters (e.g., how much pressure the center exerts, how much funding is allocated).

• With the construction of this comprehensive social infrastructure, the scope for state surveillance of and intervention in family life has vastly increased.

• Like the One-Child Policy in 1980, the Three-Child Policy today is being rolled out in stages, starting with target populations most likely to comply. In September 2023, Xi Jinping, as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, signed an executive order charging the armed forces with taking the lead in carrying out the amended population law. The measures included 33 provisions that urge military couples to do their patriotic duty by marrying and having children “at the right ages” and considering having three.

• For the general public, media reports reveal piecemeal introduction of supportive measures in various localities. Among the more common inducements are matchmaking events, cash awards for those marrying “at the right age,” group weddings to curb “exorbitant bride prices,” childbirth allowances, childrearing subsidies, paternity leave, and income tax deductions for expenses related to caring for children under three.

• Some localities have pushed enforcement in the direction of more forceful birth planning. Tactics include refusing young men’s requests for vasectomies, forbidding illegal (such as gender-selective) abortions, and maintaining a 30-day pre-divorce waiting period that strongly discourages marital breakups.Rapid growth of such measures can be expected over the next few years.

• The author sugggets that many surveys show that the Chinese overwhelmingly support their government. In the most recent World Values Survey (conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic), 94.6% of Chinese questioned said they had significant confidence in their government.

“Falling birthrates: can Western nations reverse the decline?” (Miriam Cates MP on LBC)

More on population policies and trends:

• “Tokyo government to launch dating app to boost birthrate” (Japan Today)

• “Pro-parent policies can raise birth rates” (The Critic)

• “More child care freedom, higher fertility?” (IFS)

• “The fertile formula A modest proposal to sharply raise fertility” (Bryan Caplan)

• “Two relatively cheap ways to make raising children more affordable: Invest in Medicare for Kids and Universal Free School Lunch” (Gary Winslett/Medium)

• “Miyazaki might be right: Cases of a town, a city, a province & a country that boosted birth rates” (population.fyi)

• Study found higher parental insurance and leave boosted birthrates in Quebec (population.fyi)

Genetic Studies

Phenome India project hits target with 10k samples; aims for new era in precision medicine (HealthWorld)

• India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has completd the first phase of the “Phenome India-CSIR Health Cohor Knowledgebase” (PI-CheCK) project. Launched on 7th December 2023, the PI-CHeCK aims to assess risk factors in cardio-metabolic diseases among Indians.

• 10,000 samples have been secured to develop an enhanced prediction model for cardio-metabolic diseases, especially diabetes, liver diseases, and cardiac diseases.

• Indians have a high burden of cardio-metabolic diseases, but the reasons are not entirely clear. “The risk factors in the West may not be the same as the risk factors in India,” said Dr. Shantanu Sengupta of the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology.

• Currently, most risk prediction algorithms are based on epidemiological data from white populations. These may be not very accurate for the Indian population due to ethnic diversity, varied genetic make-up and lifestyle patterns including dietary habits.

• By generating a comprehensive phenome database tailored to the Indian population, the project aims to catalyze similar initiatives across the country, thereby ensuring that risk prediction algorithms are more accurate and representative of India’s diverse genetic and lifestyle landscape.

Improved functional mapping of complex trait heritability with GSA-MiXeR implicates biologically specific gene sets (Nature Genetics)

• While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are increasingly successful in discovering genomic loci associated with complex human traits and disorders, the biological interpretation of these findings remains challenging.

• The GSA-MiXeR analytical tool for gene set analysis (GSA) estimates the impact of individual and groups of genes.

• “GWAS, which are often produced by large international consortia, analyze the genomes of many individuals to find genetic variations associated with specific diseases,” said Oleksandr Frei, Researcher at the Center for Precision Psychiatry at University of Oslo. “Our tool, called GSA-MiXeR, is designed to analyze the genetic data collected from these large-scale studies, aiming to identify how groups of genes contribute to the risk of developing a disease.”

• Such biologically relevant gene sets, often with fewer than ten genes, are more likely to provide insights into the pathobiology of complex diseases and highlight potential drug targets.

More on genetic studies:

• “Testing quantitative and qualitative sex effects in a national Swedish twin-sibling study of PTSD” (American Journal of Psychiatry)

Further Learning

“People with better relationships and more children tend to find life more meaningful” (PsyPost)

• A survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that individuals with more children and better relationship quality tended to perceive life as more meaningful. The strength of the association between life meaning and relationship quality was stronger in men.

• The research was published in Frontiers in Psychology.

• Meaning in life refers to “the extent to which people comprehend, make sense or see significance in their lives, accompanied by the degree to which they perceive themselves to have a purpose, mission, or overarching aim in life.”

• Individuals reporting greater meaning in life also tended to be more religious and feel more socially connected.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Biotech policy

  • Dr. Jason Kelly, Chairman of the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology: “Teaming up to build our bio future” (BIO)

  • “U.S. officials describe national security partnership with biotech” (BIO)

  • “Let’s make sure the next biotech revolution is an American one” (Telegraph Herald)

  • Étienne Decroly, “There is an urgent need to harmonize international biosafety regulations in research” (Le Monde)

• Health

  • “Mummies over 4,000 years old had atherosclerotic heart disease” (Forbes)

  • “Sunscreen advice should factor in ethnicity and skin colour” (Guardian)

  • “Getting fit is great—but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk” (Guardian)

• Agrifood

  • “Edible mold as meat alternative? Scientists create fungal food, look to boost nutrition, ‘mouth feel’” (MSN)

  • “Genetically engineered animals to be regulated by FDA” (CSPI)

  • China’s Genetically Modified Dilemma (Asia Society)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Gattaca Genomics to launch study on aneuploidy and embryo development to improve embryo selection during IVF.

• Population Policies & Trends

  • The Guardian profiles Malcolm and Simone Collins, an American couple promoting big families and practicing genetic enhancement via reprotech.

  • Flemish nationalists propose doubling child benefits for women under 30, slammed by Greens as real-life “Handmaid’s Tale.”

• Genetic Studies

  • Major U.S. study maps genes regulating brain activity and development, including conditions such as schizophrenia, PTSD, and depression.

• Further Learning

  • Why has the human brain shrunk over the last 100,000 years?

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Repro/genetics

Reprotech company launches major study on embryo selection in IVF (Gattaca Genomics)

• Gattaca Genomics has received approval for a study to combine timelapse imaging and genetic testing to examine the relationship between embryo development and aneuploidy (an abnormal number of chromosomes).

• Partnering with IVF clinics worldwide, the study aims to identify developmental patterns that predict healthy embryos, potentially improving IVF success rates. Gattaca Genomics aims to collect a large and diverse dataset

• “Aneuploidy is a major obstacle for many couples pursuing IVF, and we believe this study has the potential to unlock new insights into how we can better identify and select embryos with the greatest chance of resulting in a healthy pregnancy," said Dr. Eva Schenkman, Director of Embryology Services at Gattaca Genomics.

• Aneuploidy can lead to various genetic disorders, including Down syndrome (trisomy 21), and increase the chance of miscarriage. Identifying and selecting embryos without aneuploidy is crucial in improving IVF success rates.

• Gattaca Genomics’ expertise is in Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT) and Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), which aim to give prospective parents crucial insights to inform meaningful decisions. The company aims to enhance the chances of healthy pregnancy, minimize genetic risks, and provide prospective parents insights to inform meaningful decisions.

More on repro/genetics:

• “Ten families and counting: Time for global limits on donor-created (half-) siblings?” (PET)

• “Perspectives of preimplantation genetic testing patients in Belgium on the ethics of polygenic embryo screening” (Reproductive BioMedicine Online)

Population Policies & Trends

America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world” (Guardian)

• The Guardian has released a profile of American pronatalists Simone and Malcolm Collins. The 36/37-year-old couple are expecting a fourth child and plan to have a minimum of seven.

• The couple runs the Pragmatist Foundation, a pronatalist charity.

• The Collinses are atheists who believe in science and data. Their pronatalism is born from the hyper-rational effective altruism movement, which uses utilitarian principles and cool-headed logic to determine what is best for life on Earth.

• The world’s most famous pronatalist is father-of-11 Elon Musk.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has invested in several reproductive technology startups, one aiming to engineer human eggs out of stem cells, another screening embryos for health outcomes.

• The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn (father of five) has donated just under half a million dollars to the Collins’ pronatalist foundation.

• Birthrates are plummeting across the worldwide.In England and Wales the birthrate is currently 1.49, in the U.S. it is 1.6, in China it’s 1.2. Politicians in South Korea have referred to their birthrate as a national emergency: at 0.72 (with 0.55 in the capital, Seoul) it is the lowest in the world.

• According to a paper published in the Lancet, 97% of countries will have birth rates below what is necessary to sustain the population by the end of the century.

• This is creating a pension timebomb, with not enough young people to support an aging population.

• “The average Catholic majority country in Europe has a 1.3 fertility rate,” said Malcolm. “You see this in some Latin American countries. That’s basically halving the population every generation. For anyone who’s familiar with compounding numbers, that’s huge.”

• Malcolm sees South Korea as a vision of our near future: the problem is most acute in countries that are “technophilic, pluralistic, educated, where women have rights.”

• The only places where the birthrate is not falling to unsustainable levels are countries where the average citizen earns less than $5,000 a year. Malcolm said: “The only way countries like ours can survive is through immigration from those very poor countries where birthrates continue to be high. You’re outsourcing the labor of childrearing to a separate group. And importing people from Africa to support a mostly non-working white population—because you didn’t put in labor to support non-working white people—has really horrible optics.”

• “We don’t mind being human clickbait—that’s kind of our job—so long as we get the message out before things get too bad,” Malcolm said.

• Pronatalism is beginning to be accepted as a core conservative value. “Babies are good, and a country that has children is a healthy country,” Republican senator J. D. Vance said in a 2021 speech to a conservative thinktank.

• Donald Trump agrees. “I want a baby boom!” he declared at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference. “You men are so lucky out there.”

• The average pronatalist is “young, nerdy, contrarian, autist,” Malcolm says, proudly. “Usually, they will be running a tech company or be in venture capital.”

• Malcolm insists pronatalism is about pluralism and not only whites: “Humanity improves through cultural evolution. For that you need cultural diversity.”

• “I don’t care if environmentalists don’t want to have kids,” he said. “The point of the movement is to help those that do.”

• “The vast majority of right-leaning people in Silicon Valley are pronatalist,” Malcolm said. “You’re probably looking at 100,000 people or something that subscribe to our specific vision.”

• Bryan Caplan, an American economist, has written Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think, a treatise against helicopter parenting that argues that upbringing matters less than genetics in childhood development.

• “Pronatalist parenting is intrinsically low-effort parenting,” Malcolm said.

• The Collinses say women’s rights will suffer unless birthrates improve. “The only cultural groups that survive will be the ones that don’t give women a choice. And that’s a terrifying world for us,” said Malcolm. “People are like, ‘You’re bringing a Handmaid’s Tale into the world!’ That’s exactly what we’re trying to prevent.”

• The Collinses have “quite a beef with anti-abortion people”, said Malcolm, because restricting abortion is actually bad for birthrates. “Romania tried this. They had a spike in fertility rates and then a quick fall.” Banning abortion gives pregnancy an image problem. “This is a very bad way to motivate high fertility.”

• Their brand of pronatalism isn’t about trapping people into having children or coercing the unwilling. “Our movement is, if you want to have more kids, or you want to have kids, let’s take away all the stuff that makes it hard.”

• Simone has a history of eating disorders that have affected her fertility: she can only get pregnant through IVF. The Collinses have had the genomes of their frozen embryos tested and are selecting which ones to implant according to how well they score on intelligence and future health. They don’t just want a big family: they want an optimal one.

• Several companies can test embryos for the risks of certain conditions, including the Sam Altman-backed Genomic Prediction, which the Collinses used for health scores. For “the controversial stuff” they took Genomic Prediction’s data and gave it to another team of scientists who claim to be able to predict better likelihood of happiness or future income. (The geneticist Adam Rutherford recently said there might be “an IQ point or two” of benefit in doing this.)

• “Obviously, we looked at IQ,” says Malcolm. They discounted embryos with high risk factors for cancer and what Simone calls “mental health-related stuff where there’s just no good known treatments” including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, depression, and anxiety. They didn’t select against autism, which they consider part of a person’s identity. “People do trait selection all the time when they prioritize certain kinds of spouses,” said Simone.

• The couple has 34 embryos left and plans to give away the ones they don’t use; three have already gone to a lesbian couple in California.

• Malcolm and Simone are engaging in “polygenics,” using technology to give parents the choice over which traits they value most. “Different cultural groups will choose different things to optimise around. Eventually, that will lead to genuine human diversity.”

• The journalist finds it hard to imagine that any parent with access to this technology wouldn’t select for intelligence or a decent future income. The Collinses tell me I couldn’t be more wrong.

• “Have you talked to parents these days?” Malcolm said. “‘I just want a child that’s happy and self-expressive.’” “‘Funny and kind,’” Simone chips in. “The most common ask is happiness and kindness.”

• The Collinses are campaigning to make this technology free for everyone to use. Screening for health outcomes is a “no brainer” in countries like the UK where healthcare is free at the point of delivery, Simone said. “You’re producing healthier people—less expensive.”

“Motherhood ‘strengthens the nation’: Vlaams Belang [Flemish nationalists] under fire for natalist policies” (Brussels Times)

• The Vlaams Belang (VB), Belgium’s Flemish nationalist party, has come under fire for its program’s emphasis on “pushing” women to have children at a young age. The party has hotly denied the framing.

• The party blames existing policy for preventing families from having as many children as they might like to and proposes doubling child benefits for any woman who has children under the age of 30, as well as extending both maternity and paternity leave.

• “A healthy community welcomes children,” its manifesto states. “Choosing to have children is a positive act of self-confidence. When this is repeated, it strengthens the nation as well as the family.”

• Many of the incentives proposed by the party only apply to parents who have had EU nationality eight years before the child’s birth. One of the parents must have worked or studied for at least three years.

• “Due to practical and financial obstacles, the balance between work and family is completely lost,” said Vlaams Belang Vice President Barbara Pas. “Flemish people who want children cannot realize this desire.”

• Vlaams Belang is expected to emerge as the largest party in next month’s national elections, with over 25% of the vote in Flanders.

More on population policies and trends:

• Russia’s 2024 “year of the family” and Alexander Dugin’s dreams of a mass return to rural life (Public Orthodoxy)

Genetic Studies

Genetic control of the brain—comprehensive cell maps published (PET)

• Fifteen new studies comprehensively mapping the genes responsible for regulation of activity and development of the brain have been published.

• Neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia are common, yet underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.

• The PsychENCODE Consortium is a multi-institutional collaboration funded by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) aiming to understand gene regulation’s impact on brain (dys)function, including neuropsychiatric diseases.

• Dr. Daniel Geschwind, ofthe University of California Los Angeles, said: “This collection of manuscripts from PsychENCODE, both individually and as a package, provides an unprecedented resource for understanding the relationship of disease risk to genetic mechanisms in the brain.”

• The studies, published across Science, Science Advances, and Scientific Reports, examined several neuropsychiatric diseases as well as the neurotypical developing human brain, and used standardized methods to create multidimensional maps of gene regulation networks.

• NIMH Director Dr. Joshua Gordon said: “These groundbreaking findings advance our understanding of where, how, and when genetic risk contributes to mental disorders such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. … Moreover, the critical resources, shared freely, will help researchers pinpoint genetic variants that are likely to play a causal role in mental illnesses and identify potential molecular targets for new therapeutics.”

More on genetic studies:

• “Depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder linked with ancient viral DNA in our genome” (Gavi)

• “A polygenic score method boosted by non-additive models” (Nature Communications)

• “A systematic review with meta-analysis of heritability estimates for temperament-related traits in beef and dairy cattle populations” (Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics)

Further Learning

“The mystery over why human brains have shrunk over time” (BBC)

• The brains of modern humans are around 13% smaller than those of Homo sapiens who lived 100,000 years ago. Exactly why is still puzzling researchers.

• Our big brain is thought to be what sets our species apart from other animals. Our capacity for thought and innovation allowed us to create the first art, invent the wheel, and land on the Moon.

• The human brain has nearly quadrupled in size in the six million years since our species last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees.

• In 2023 study, Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, found that rapid brain expansion occurred independently in different species of hominins, and at different times across Asia, Europe, and Africa. However, the trend for brain enlargement over time was turned on its head with the arrival of modern humans.

• Theories for why the brain shrank include: that the invention of the language led to rewriting neural pathways and more efficient brain use; climate change requiring more efficient energy use ; the end of hunter-gatherer societies and pressure on diets; and self-domestication.

• “What we have done over the last 10,000 years is created tools and technologies that allow us to offload cognition onto artefacts,” says cognitive scientist Jeff Morgan Stibel from the Natural History Museum in California. “We’re able to store information in computers, and use machines to calculate things for us. So our brains might be delivering less capacity for intelligence and brainpower, but that doesn’t mean that we as a species collectively are growing less smart.”

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “Deaf baby hears for the first time after ‘groundbreaking’ gene therapy trial” (Washington Post)

• “Uruguay wants to use gene drives to eradicate devastating screwworms” (MIT Technology Review)

• “Gene edited wheat planted in test plots for the first time in Canada” (GLP)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Polygenic risk scores will be increasingly useful for personalized healthcare and predictive analyses

  • The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion may open way to more restrictive regulations on assisted reproduction

  • Between 2014 and 2020, assisted reproductive in the U.S. has seen a 155.7% rise if genetic testing for aneuploidy and a drop in multiple gestations and miscarriages

• Population Policies & Trends

  • IMF suggests expanding childcare and gender equality could boost birth rates in Japan and South Korea

• Genetic Studies

  • Genetics influences risk of heart attacks during presidential elections and other stressful periods

  • Genetic ancestry influences Black Americans’ risk of brain diseases (ischemic stroke, Parkison’s, Alzheimer’s).

• Further Learning

  • Can genetically modified crops be organic?

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“Genetic and polygenic risk scores—advances and limitations and overview of associated tools” (Briefings in Bioinformatics)

• The article provides an overview of the history and workings of genetic and polygenic risk scores (GRS/PRS), which estimate the risk of developing disorders based on genetic factors.

• The authors argue that GRS/PRS have immense potential in support of precision genetics, personalized healthcare, and predictive analyses.

• Significant progress in data collection, genomics and computational methodologies will enable incorporation of even more genetic variants into GRS and PRS calculations. Refined models will offer improved accuracy and enhanced predictive power, enhancing risk assessment for a wide array of complex traits and diseases. Continuous research could deepen our understanding of the intricate interplay between genetics and environmental factors.

• A primary focus in the future will be the integration of GRS and PRS into clinical practice, allowing healthcare providers to tailor treatment plans based on each patient’s unique genetic risk profile.

• While PRS tools are still in their early stages of development, they hold the potential to revolutionize disease screening and early detection.

“The impact of Dobbs on emerging reproductive technologies” (PET)

• The ELSI Hub held a webinar on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling on emerging reproductive technologies.

• IVF and preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) have historically escaped prohibitive regulation. However, the recent Alabama Supreme Court’s decision to equate embryos created through IVF with living children has introduced a new level of uncertainty.

• While the Dobbs decision does not explicitly discuss reproductive technologies, this ruling is likely to impact assisted reproduction.

• Law professor of law Judith Daar, who serves as dean of the Salmon P. Chase College of Law in Kentucky, predicted a new wave of restrictions on assisted reproduction with “the next frontier in reproductive regulation.”

“Gestational carrier cycles: embryology trends, national guideline compliance, and resultant perinatal outcomes in the United States, 2014–2020” (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology)

• Practice patterns in assisted reproduction changed significantly between 2014 and 2020, with a 155.7% increase in preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (an abnormal number of chromosomes) and a 79.2% reduction in multiple embryo transfer.

• The latter was associated with a decreases in multiple gestations and miscarriages, and a slight increase in the live birth rate.

More on repro/genetics:

• “The use of preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy: a committee opinion” (Practice Committee of the ASRM and SART)

• “Enhancing clinical utility: deep learning-based embryo scoring model for non-invasive aneuploidy prediction” (Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology)

• Lab-grown sperm and eggs: ‘epigenetic’ reset in human cells paves the way (Nature)

• “How genetic testing lights the path in India’s fight against rare diseases” (Times of India)

Population Policies & Trends

“Empowering women could boost fertility, economic growth in Japan and Korea” (IMF)

• Analysts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) argue that creating a supportive environment for women through family-friendly policies, flexible labor markets, and progressive social norms will yield economic and demographic gains in Japan and South Korea.

• At 0.72 and 1.26, respectively, the fertility rates in Korea and Japan are among the lowest in the world.

• South Korea and Japan are marked by conservative gender norms that reduce female workplace participation. Representation of women in senior management roles is less than 15% in the two countries, among the lowest in G20 countries. South-Korean and Japanese women perform around five times more unpaid housework and caregiving than do men.

• Working arrangements in these countries are often not family-friendly. Long working hours, inflexible schedules, and limited use of telework make balancing career and childcare responsibilities extremely challenging for women.

• Japan and South Korea have acted to support women, including through enhanced childcare and maternity leave policies, but more efforts are needed from these governments, business communities, and society at large.

• The IMF analysts suggest expanding childcare facilities and facilitating fathers’ contributions to home and childcare, including establishing stronger incentive mechanisms for paternity leave use.

• Japan’s fertility rate mostly stabilized after the country expanded childcare facilities over a decade ago, and recent IMF studies on Japans suggest increasing such facilities further would have a positive impact both on fertility and women’s career advancement.

• Facilitating a cultural shift in the workplace by expanding the use of telework and flexible working-time arrangements could support increased women labor participation, while also allowing men to share more responsibilities at home.

Genetic Studies

Genetics influences risk of heart attacks during presidential elections and other stressful periods (Fox News)

• Your genes can put you at a higher risk of heart attack during very stressful times, according to new research from Massachusetts General Hospital.

• People who have specific genetic traits, paired with anxiety or depression, are at a “significantly higher heart attack risk” during periods of social or political stress, such as presidential elections, winter holidays, or even the Super Bowl.

• The study was the first to examine stress sensitivity based on genetics as a driver of acute coronary syndromes (ACS). These syndromes include heart attacks and other “serious conditions where the heart is suddenly deprived of blood supply.”

• The researchers estimated the participants’ stress sensitivity by measuring their neuroticism polygenic risk score (nPRS). People with above median nPRS, or high genetic stress sensitivity, had a 36% higher risk of ACS.

• The impact of genetic susceptibility on heart attack risk could be an important factor for cardiologists and general care physicians to consider.

• “Based on that identification, we could develop targeted intervention, or maybe preventive strategies, that could help us protect those people from developing heart attacks in the future,” said lead study author Shady Abohashem, instructor of cardiovascular imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

• The researchers are currently working on a study to discover how lifestyle modifications can benefit people with a high genetic risk for stress.

• Dr. Laxmi Mehta, an American Heart Association medical expert and cardiology director at Ohio State University, said: “The mind-heart connection is strong, and this study highlights that not only our bodies, but also our minds, need rest and care. The public needs to be aware of the impact social and political stress has on us, that it is OK to take a break from these stressors, and also that it is good to learn more about interventions like yoga, exercise and mindfulness.”

“Analysis of gene expression in the postmortem brain of neurotypical Black Americans reveals contributions of genetic ancestry” (Nature Neuroscience)

• Ancestral differences in genomic variation affect the regulation of gene expression. This study examined the impact of genetic ancestry on gene expression and DNA methylation in the postmortem brain tissue of admixed Black American neurotypical individuals to identify ancestry-dependent and ancestry-independent contributions.

• Ancestry-associated differentially expressed genes (DEGs), transcripts, and gene networks are enriched for genes related to the immune response and vascular tissue and explain up to 26% of heritability for ischemic stroke, 27% of heritability for Parkinson’s disease, and 30% of heritability for Alzheimer’s disease.

More on genetic studies:

• Find My Understudied Genes and Unknome: “Software tools identify forgotten genes” (Nature)

• “Genome-wide association study of treatment-resistant depression: Shared biology with metabolic traits” (American Journal of Psychiatry)

• “Genome-scale analysis of interactions between genetic perturbations and natural variation” (Nature Communications)

• X chromosome revival in older women increases autoimmune disease risk (The Hindu)

• “Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviours: a meta-analysis” (bioRxiv)

• “Genes and heritability in intergenerational transmission” (Research Handbook on Intergenerational Inequality)

Further Learning

“Organically-grown genetically modified crops? Scientists unveil plan to bridge the ideological gap” (GLP/Journal of Biotechnology)

• Current regulations do not permit genetically modified (GM) food to be labeled organic. However, genetic modification can enable plants to be less reliant on chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

• The authors argue for the development and use of “biofortified and multiple stress tolerant GM crops” without the use of synthetic agrochemicals.

• New gene edited (GE) crops should be developed that are “bio-fertilizer response” and/or “trait-reversible.”

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “A fundamental stage of human reproduction is shifting: Can humans ever break free of menopause?” (The Atlantic)

• “Why do people make music? Researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting music evolved in our distant ancestors” (New York Times)

• “The second law of behavior genetics” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• “Why are differences between men and women being denied?” (Modern Wisdom podcast interviews Steve Stewart-Williams)

• “Bizarre bacteria defy textbooks by writing new genes: Bacterial defensive systems scramble the standard workflow of life” (Nature)

• “Will coffee plants survive climate change? Genomes reveal clues from the past” (DNA Science)

• “Neanderthal–human baby-making was recent — and brief” (Nature)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Almost 4/5 Americans support polygenic embryo screening against diabetes, heart disease, cancer

  • 70% of Americans say access to IVF is a good thing

  • The Times of London’s Danny Fortson interviews Noor Siddiqui on “super-babies”

  • How to have polygenically screened children

• Population Policies & Trends

  • South Korea to create ministry to tackle plummeting birth rate

  • French President Macron will increase access to IVF and institute “fertility check-ups” to boost the birth rate

• Genetic Studies

• Further Learning

  • The New York Times reports on how Australian conservations are modifying endangered species’ genome to help them survive.

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

Survey: almost 4/5 Americans support polygenic screening against diabetes, heart disease, cancer (Harvard Medical School)

• A survey reveals almost four-out-of-five (77%) U.S. adults support using polygenic embryo screening during IVF against certain physical diseases—such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

• Over seven-out-of-ten (72%) approved of polygenic screening against psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and depression.

• Over four-out-of-five (82%) said they would be at least slightly interested in using polygenic embryo screening if they were already undergoing IVF.

• Almost a third (30%) said they would consider using IVF in order to access polygenic screening.

• The survey results were published by JAMA Network Open.

• Patients undergoing IVF can choose which embryos to implant based on DNA tests that detect chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down syndrome, and diseases caused by mutations in a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis. Such screening, known as preimplantation genetic testing, is well-established and widely used.

• Polygenic embryo screening (also known as preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic outcomes) estimates probabilities for conditions and traits influenced by many gene variants that each raise or lower risk by a small amount.

• The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics has said that polygenic embryo screening is not yet suitable for clinical use.

• The first part of the study surveyed more than 1,400 participants representing the wider U.S. population in age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Findings showed that:

  • 72% of respondents approved of using polygenic embryo screening in general. 17% were ambivalent and 11% disapproved.

  • 36% approved of selecting embryos based on likelihood of certain behavioral traits.

  • 30% approved of selecting embryos based on likelihood of certain physical traits.

  • 92% expressed at least slight concern about polygenic embryo screening leading to false expectations about the future child.

  • About half were “very” or “extremely” concerned about negative outcomes for individuals or society.

70% of Americans say access to IVF is a good thing (Pew Research)

• An April Pew Research Center survey found a large majority of Americans say people having access to IVF is a good thing.

• Just 8% say access to IVF is a bad thing, while 22% are unsure.

• There are only modest differences in views of IVF access across most demographic and partisan groups.

Podcast: Danny in the Valley interviews Noor Siddiqui on “super-babies” (Times of London)

• Sunday Times correspondent Danny Fortson speaks with Noor Siddiquui, founder of Orchid Health.

• They discuss the company’s launch, targeting ageing at conception, how polygenic screening works, why Siddiqui thinks this is the future of conception, the need for regulation, the potential to exacerbate societal problems, why longevity enthusiasts invested, and the potential conservative backlash.

“How to have polygenically screened children” (LessWrong)

• GeneSmith of the LessWrong forum provides a useful overview of IVF and the emergence of polygenic embryo screening.

• This includes estimates of the current power of selection for or against various diseases and traits, as well as practical information on accessing the service.

More on repro/genetics:

• “Taming IVF’s wild west: Real regulation is long overdue. But consumer protection is not enough.” (The New Atlantis)

• “The parents who want daughters—and daughters only: Sex selection with IVF is banned in much of the world. Not in the U.S.” (Slate)

• “The DNA Test Delusion: Mass-market genetic testing has little to offer most people. That’s a big problem for 23andMe” (Bloomberg/BusinessWeek)

• “A gay couple couldn’t access IVF benefits. They’re suing New York City” (Washington Post)

Population Policies & Trends

“South Korea to create new ministry tackling plummeting birth rate” (The Independent)

• South-Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced the country will set up a a ministry to address the country’s plummeting birth rate, calling it a “national emergency”.

• Yoon said the South-Korean parliament will be asked to cooperate to create a “Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-Planning”.

• “We will mobilise all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said. “This is not a matter we can take time to work on.”

• The birth rates in the country dropped to 0.72 babies per woman in 2023, the lowest national birth rate in the world.

Macron: access to IVF and “fertility check-ups” to boost birth rate (Ouest-France)

• French President Emmanuel Macron gave more details on his plans to boost fertility in an interview with Elle magazine.

• “Every woman must have freedom over body. But there is a striking figure: the fertility rate is 1.8, while the average number of desired children is 2.3,” he said.

• Macron’s plan against infertility will focus on prevention, pathway, and research.

• A “fertility check-up” will be proposed and reimbursed by national health insurance around the age of 20 in order to “establish a complete assessment, spectrogram, (or) ovarian reserve.”

• “We are going to organize campaigns in favor of self-preservation of oocytes for women who want to have children later,” Macron added.

• To reduce waiting times for access to IVF—currently 16 to 24 months—Emmanuel Macron intends to “open up oocyte self-preservation to private centers” which was “until now reserved for hospital establishments.”

• The French president remains opposed to surrogacy: “I’ll say it again, I’m not in favor of it. It is not compatible with the dignity of women, it is a form of commodification of their bodies.”

• Macron had previously announced an upcoming “great plan against infertility” as part of France’s “demographic rearmament.”

More on population policies and trends:

• “The far right’s campaign to explode the population” (Politico)

• “Swedish study: Economic and social costs of infertility” (population.news)

Genetic Studies

• “Genes underpin health risks associated with puberty growth spurts” (PET)

• “New genetic cause of Alzheimer’s disease identified” (PET)

• “New breast cancer genes found in women of African ancestry, may improve risk assessment” (Reuters)

• “Decoding the interplay between genetic and non-genetic drivers of metastasis” (Nature)

Further Learning

“Should we change species to save them? Science is using ‘assisted evolution’ to give wildlife a chance” (New York Times)

• Scientists are using a variety of techniques, including crossbreeding and gene editing, to help vulnerable Australian species survive.

• “We’re looking at how we can assist evolution,” said Anthony Waddle, a conservation biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney.

• “We’re searching for solutions in an altered world,” said Dan Harley, a senior ecologist at Zoos Victoria. “We need to take risks. We need to be bolder.”

• Endangered species’ reproduction and health are often hampered by limited genetic diversity, leading to excessive inbreeding.

• Among helmeted honeyeaters, the most inbred birds leave one-tenth as many offspring as the least inbred ones. Inbred females’ lifespans were half as long.

• Without some kind of intervention, the helmeted honeyeater could be pulled into an “extinction vortex,” said Alexandra Pavlova, an evolutionary ecologist at Monash. “It became clear that something new needs to be done.”

• A decade ago, experts suggested an intervention known as “genetic rescue,” proposing to add some Gippsland yellow-tufted honeyeaters and their fresh DNA to the breeding pool. While members of the same species, they are genetically distinct subspecies that have been evolving away from each another for roughly the last 56,000 years. The Gippsland birds live in drier, more open forests and are missing the pronounced feather crown that give helmeted honeyeaters their name.

• Crossing the two types of honeyeaters risked muddying what made each subspecies unique and creating hybrids that were not well suited for either niche.

• “There was a lot of angst among government agencies around doing it,” said Andrew Weeks, an ecological geneticist at the University of Melbourne who began a genetic rescue of the endangered mountain pygmy possum in 2010.

• Dozens of hybrid honeyeaters have now been released into the wild. They seem to be faring well, but it is too soon to say whether they have a fitness advantage.

• Scientists are also investigating how to use CRISPR gene editing to make corals more heat resistant.

• Dr. Waddle hopes to use CRISPR to engineer frogs that are resistant to the chytrid fungus, which causes a fatal disease that has contributed to the extinction of at least 90 amphibian species.

• Genetic interventions are “likely to have some unintended impacts,” said Tiffany Kosch, a conservation geneticist at the University of Melbourne.

• To Dr. Harley, it has become clear that preventing more extinctions will require human intervention, innovation, and effort. “Let’s lean into that, not be daunted by it,” he said. “My view is that 50 years from now, biologists and wildlife managers will look back at us and say, ‘Why didn’t they take the steps and the opportunities when they had the chance?’”

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Evolutionary psychology

  • “12 things everyone should know about evolutionary psychology” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• Research

  • “Scientists are trying to get cows pregnant with synthetic embryos” (MIT Technology Review)

• Health

  • “Gene therapy enables deaf baby to hear” (PET)

  • “Can global genomic surveillance forecast the next pandemic?” (DNA Science)

• Agrifood

  • “How crop biotechnology is regulated in the United States” (GLP)

  • “Gene-edited, low-cost, ultra high-density protein soy greenlit for sale by USDA” (GLP)

  • “The debate over lab-grown meat: Are concerns about cultured meat justified?” (Quillette)

  • “Ghanaian court upholds approval of 14 new GM crops” (Science Nigeria)

• Security

  • “How to avoid a genetics arms race” (Hastings Center)

  • “U.S.-EU synergy to bolster transatlantic biotechnology and biomanufacturing” (NSCEB)

• History

  • “A eugenicist history of the county fair” (MSN/Boston Globe)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • How to make public dialogues on human germline gene editing successful

  • Video: Orchid Health’s case for whole-genome sequencing

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Craig Willy (yours truly) in Palladium Magazine on demography in American political thought and its importance underpinning the growth of U.S. power

  • Remote work’s mini baby boom ends: U.S. fertility rate hits record low in 2023

• Genetic Studies

  • Norwegian study suggests right-wing authoritarianism has a genetic foundation

  • Researchers analyze genome of ancient Chinese Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou

  • Study identifies 103 new genomic regions associated with high blood pressure and shows polygenic risk scores can successfully predict huge differences in chance of developing hypertension

  • Genetic variant in South Asians undermines diabetes test accuracy

• Further Learning

  • Study suggests ancient human evolution driven by inter-species competition and extreme speciation

  • Luke Lea’s A Part-time Job in the Country

This newsletter now reaches the inboxes of almost 700 people, including high-level geneticists, bioethicists, natalists, medical practitioners, demographic historians, pundits, and interested members of the public.

If you have a story you would like us to link to or would like to contribute your own article that would be of interest to our growing community of readers, please email me at craigjwilly[at]gmail[dot].com.

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“The need to set explicit goals for human germline gene editing public dialogues” (Journal of Community Genetics)

• Given the potentially large ethical and societal implications of human germline gene editing (HGGE), there is an urgent need for public and stakeholder engagement. However, the goals of such efforts often remain poorly defined.

• The article presents the goals defined by the Dutch project “De DNA dialogen” (The DNA dialogues). The authors argue that setting explicit goals in advance is essential to enable and evaluate meaningful public and stakeholder engagement.

• The project suggests the following four goals:

  • 1) Enable publics and stakeholders to deliberate on “what if” questions, before considering “whether” and “how” questions regarding HGGE.

  • 2) Investigate agreement and disagreement in values and beliefs regarding HGGE in order to agree and disagree more precisely.

  • 3) Involve diverse publics with various perspectives, with a focus on those that are typically underrepresented in public and stakeholder engagement.

  • 4) Enable societally-aligned policymaking by providing policymakers, healthcare professionals, and legal experts insight into how values are weighed and ascribed meaning in the context of HGGE by various publics, and how these values relate to the principles of democratic rule of law and fundamental rights.

Is whole genome screening relevant for everyone? (Orchid Health)

• Orchid Health has released a video explaining why whole-genome sequencing of embryos may be relevant to everyone having a child with IVF, and not only people with a family history of disease.

• Genetic mutations may occur in an embryo which are not present in either parent’s genome. The likelihood of these de novo mutations increases with age.

• By covering 99% of the genome, whole-genome sequencing can detect more disease-causing genetic variants than can traditional monogenic testing which target for a few specific diseases.

More on repro/genetics:

• “Ethnic disparities in gamete donors must be tackled” (PET)

• Jon Rueda, “Value change, reprogenetic technologies, and the axiological underpinnings of reproductive choice” (Bioethics)

• “Impact of preimplantation genetic diagnosis for chromosomal disorders on reproductive outcome” (Reproductive BioMedicine Online)

Population Policies & Trends

Craig Willy, “The demographic roots of American power” (Palladium)

• This article explores demography in American political thought and how demographic dynamism has underpinned the United States’ rise as a global superpower.

• Early American statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson were keenly aware of the importance of demographic size and/or human capital to national power.

• Sub-replacement fertility has spread throughout the Global North, including, albeit recently, the United States. East Asia in particular is marked by ultra-low fertility. Future power dynamics will be strongly affected by different nations’ birth rates and ability to attract talent through brain-drain.

• More and more nations are enabling access to reproductive technologies in order to boost birth rates. Israel is the pioneer in this area. With its strong reprotech sector, the United States has significant scope to boost its birth rate via broader uptake of IVF, a move which could also decrease the burden of genetic diseases.

“Remote work’s mini baby boom ended: U.S. fertility rate hits record low in 2023” (population.fyi)

• According to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.62 births per woman in 2023.

• This decline is occurring in the context of shifting labor market trends, including a decline in remote work and employee benefits.

• The total number of births in 2023 was 3.59 million, a 2% drop from 2022 and the lowest number since 1979.

• The drop below replacement fertility rate first occurred in the U.S. around 1971 and has been consistently below for the last 15 years.

• The highest birth rate was among women ages 30 to 34, while women 40 and older saw a modest increase in their birth rate.

• The teenage birthrate hit a record low of 13.2 per 1,000 females, a 68% drop since 2007 and 79% since the peak in 1991.

• The general fertility rate decreased by 3% among women aged 15 to 44, with declines across most racial and ethnic groups.

• Nearly one-third of all babies were born by cesarean delivery. Just over 1 in 10 babies born in 2023 were preterm.

Genetic Studies

Norwegian study suggests right-wing authoritarianism has a genetic foundation (PsyPost)

• New research published in the Journal of Personality. suggests political leanings are influenced by our genetic makeup, specifically with regard to two core ideological traits: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

• Right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation are two psychological constructs that have been extensively studied in the context of political attitudes and behaviors.

• Right-wing authoritarianism is characterized by three broad attitudes: submission to authorities perceived as established and legitimate, aggression toward individuals or groups that are seen as deviant or dissenting from perceived societal norms, and adherence to conventional norms and values of the society.

• People high in right-wing authoritarianism tend to value order, tradition, and national unity, with strong support for authorities that enforce these principles.

• Social dominance orientation, on the other hand, reflects an individual’s preference for inequality among social groups.

• Previous research has established that both right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation are powerful predictors of political attitudes and behaviors, independently of the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

• Researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Oslo analyzed data collected from a sample of 1,987 twins registered in the Norwegian Twin Registry, encompassing individuals born between 1945 and 1960.

• The study relied on a classical twin design, which compares the similarities between monozygotic twins, who share virtually all their genes, and dizygotic twins, who share about half of their segregating genes. This approach allowed the researchers to distinguish genetic influences from environmental factors.

• The participants completed measures of the Big Five personality traits , right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. Policy attitudes were also gauged on issues such as attitudes towards deporting Roma (Gypsies), reducing aid for developing countries, accepting more asylum seekers, and implementing strict immigration control.

• The researchers found that the covariation between ideological traits and policy attitudes related to national resources and immigration was predominantly explained by genetic factors.

• By contrast, the Big Five personality traits, while influential in shaping individuals’ general attitudes and behaviors, have a comparatively lesser genetic correlation with specific policy attitudes. This indicates that the Big Five might play a more indirect role in political ideology, perhaps by influencing broader worldview or cognitive style, rather than specific political beliefs.

• The study also highlighted a significant genetic correlation between right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation themselves, suggesting a common genetic architecture partially underlies these traits.

• Another notable result is the lack of significant shared environmental effects for most traits, including social dominance orientation and the Big Five personality traits, suggesting that shared family environment and upbringing do not play a major role in developing these ideological orientations.

• A modest shared environmental effect was observed for right-wing authoritarianism, indicating that some aspects of authoritarian attitudes might be influenced by environmental factors common to twins, such as family values or cultural context.

• “Our results suggest that the two core ideological traits of [right-wing authoritarianism] and [social dominance orientation] have a much higher (genetic and phenotypic) covariation with political policy attitudes than do Big Five personality traits,” the researchers concluded.

• “The covariation of such ideological traits with policy attitudes is best explained by genetic overlap as opposed to common socialization. These findings challenge key influential theories in social and political psychology and suggest instead that hierarchy-related traits are not simply epiphenomena or downstream consequences of standard personality traits, but instead might form a dedicated and heritable package for navigating intergroup struggles over territory and resources.”

• The study’s data was drawn from middle-aged Norwegian adults and therefore may not represent the global diversity in political attitudes. Future research could expand on these findings by exploring other populations.

“Ancient genome of the Chinese Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou” (Current Biology)

• This study analyzed the genome of Emperor Wu (武帝, 543–578 CE) of the Xianbei-led Northern Zhou dynasty, a highly influential leader who reformed the system of regional troops, pacified the Turks, and unified the northern part of the country. The Xianbei were a nomadic group living in what is now Mongolia.

• By analyzing pigmentation-relevant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and conducting cranial CT-based facial reconstruction, the researchers determined that Wu possessed a typical East or Northeast Asian appearance.

• “Some scholars said the Xianbei had ‘exotic’ looks, such as thick beard, high nose bridge, and yellow hair,” said Dr. Shaoqing Wen, a researcher at Fudan University. The study shows Wu had brown eyes, black hair, and dark to intermediate skin.

• Pathogenic SNPs suggest Wu faced an increased susceptibility to certain diseases, such as stroke.

• Wu derived 61% of his ancestry from ancient Northeast Asians (ANAs) and nearly one-third from Yellow River (YR) farmer-related groups. This can likely be attributed to continuous intermarriage between Xianbei royal families and local Han aristocrats.

• The study revealed genetic diversities among available ancient Xianbei individuals from different regions, suggesting that the formation of the Xianbei was a dynamic process influenced by admixture with surrounding populations.

Study identifies 103 new genomic regions associated with high blood pressure (PET)

• Blood pressure regulation and risk of hypertension (high blood pressure) are influenced by over 2000 genomic regions.

• A study in Nature Genetics uncovered 2103 genomic regions, also known as genomic loci, associated with blood pressure, of which 113 are new.

• The study, which included data from over one million people, is one of the largest genomic studies of blood pressure.

• The scientists confirmed the identification of 38 genes with potential as drug targets, including five genes already targeted by other approved drugs.

• “Our study helps explain a much larger proportion of the differences between two people’s blood pressure than was previously known,” said Dr. Jacob Keaton. “Our study found additional genomic locations that together explain a much larger part of the genetic differences in people's blood pressure.”

• Hypertension can be caused by diet, lifestyle, or medical conditions—such as kidney disease or diabetes—but it can also be inherited. It is estimated that 30% of adults in the UK have hypertension.

• The scientists observed that the 10% of people with the highest polygenic risk scores for hypertension hada more than seven-fold increased risk of developing hypertension compared to the 10% of people with the lowest risk scores.

• “There are many different potential applications of genetic risk scores, so it will be exciting to see how our blood pressure scores can be used to address more clinically relevant questions in the future,” said Dr. Helen Warren.

• Most genomic studies are conducted in people of European ancestry, as is the case for this study, which means that the polygenic risk scores may not be applicable to people of other ancestries.

• The researchers tested the polygenic risk scores on 21,843 people of African-American ancestry, from the All-Of-Us research programme, and found that they were also applicable to this population.

• “Knowing a person’s risk for developing hypertension could lead to tailored treatments, which are more likely to be effective,” said Dr. Keaton.

Genetic variant in South Asians undermines diabetes test accuracy (PET)

• A genetic variant found predominantly in people with South Asian ancestry has been shown to affect the accuracy of a commonly-used type 2 diabetes test.

• HbA1c tests indicate the average blood glucose levels over two to three months by measuring the amount of sugar attached to red blood cells and are one of the tests a doctor will use to decide if a person has diabetes or prediabetes.

• According to research presented at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference, the genetic variant may lead to the HbA1c test to show misleadingly low results, potentially leading to missed diagnosis and treatment.

• “Many genetic variants linked to red blood cell conditions are ultra-rare amongst the Northern Europeans who have historically dominated genetic studies,” said study leader Dr. Miriam Samuel. “We demonstrate one such variant that is carried by 7.6% of South Asians which could affect the accuracy of HbA1c and cause delays in diabetes diagnosis.”

  The team analysed data from Genes and Health, which involves approximately 50,000 British Bangladeshi and Pakistani volunteers, and from the UK Biobank, including 500,000 individuals of varied ethnicity living in the United Kingdom. The findings suggest that the genetic variant leads to changes in red blood cells, which affect the HbA1c test results. The researchers found that individuals carrying this variant were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes on average one to two years later than those without it.

• “This evidence showing that the accuracy of a common test to diagnose and monitor type 2 diabetes is linked to a person’s ethnicity should be urgently investigated further,” Dr. Elizabeth Robertson, director of research at Diabetes UK. “It’s incredibly important that healthcare professionals are armed with a precise way to evaluate average blood sugar levels over extended periods. Without this, they are navigating in the dark and potentially at risk of overlooking cases of type 2% diabetes.”

• People with Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani ancestry represent 6.9% of the English and Welsh population.

• “Studies such as Genes and Health, focusing on populations who are underserved in genetic research, are vital to understand the different pathways that may contribute to diabetes inequalities in these communities,” said Dr. Samuel.

More on genetic studies:

• “Genes, stress, and depression: Depression is shaped in part by the environment, but the environment is shaped in part by genes” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• “The chromosomal characteristics of spontaneous abortion and its potential associated copy number variants and genes” (JARG)

• Study of Japanese population suggests cancer heritability of 0.064, much lower than for previous studies on European populations (Clinical Genetics)

Further Learning

Study suggests ancient human evolution driven by inter-species competition and extreme speciation (Cosmos)

• New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution examines the rate at which new species of hominin emerged over 5 million years. This speciation in our lineage, they found, is unlike almost anything else.

• “We have been ignoring the way competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree,” says lead author Dr. Laura van Holstein from the University of Cambridge. “The effect of climate on hominin species is only part of the story.”

• In most vertebrates, species evolve to fill ecological niches. “The pattern we see across many early hominins is similar to all other mammals,” van Holstein says. “Speciation rates increase and then flatline, at which point extinction rates start to increase. This suggests that interspecies competition was a major evolutionary factor.”

• Van Holstein describes Homo’s evolution as “bizarre.” “The more species of Homo there were, the higher the rate of speciation,” she said. “So, when those niches got filled, something drove even more species to emerge. This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary science.”

  The closest comparison is in beetle species living on islands where contained ecosystems can produce unusual evolutionary trends. “The patterns of evolution we see across species of Homo that led directly to modern humans is closer to those of island-dwelling beetles than other primates, or even any other mammal,” van Holstein explains.

• Van Holstein created a database of every hominin species to be found and dated so far, 385 records in total, and used a model to overcome incompleteness of the fossil record. This gave her new timelines of when species emerged and disappeared.

• Several species thought to have evolved through anagenesis—when one species slowly turns into another—might actually have “budded,” meaning the new species branched off the existing one.

• Early hominins may have evolved to expand their niche. For example, Paranthropus might have adapted their teeth to consume different foods. However, the pattern in Homo species suggests that technology played a far greater role in speciation, a form of gene-culture coevolution.

• “Adoption of stone tools or fire, or intensive hunting techniques, are extremely flexible behaviours. A species that can harness them can quickly carve out new niches and doesn’t have to survive vast tracts of time while evolving new body plans,” van Holstein explains.

Luke Lea, A Part-time Job in the Country (Amazon Kindle)

• Luke Lea’s A Part-time Job in the Country: Notes Toward a New Way of Life in America argues for increasing well-paid part-time job opportunities in rural areas. Affordable land and free time would enable families to build their own houses, grow gardens, cook, and care for their children and grand-children.

• Such a socioeconomic structure would thus encourage family formation.

• Lea argues Congress should pass protectionist legislation to encourage the development of rural factories providing part-type jobs.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Artificial intelligence

  • “Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms that can edit your DNA” (New York Times)

• Environment

  • “Human beings have transformed the Earth unlike any other species” (GLP/Big Think)

• Health

  • Over 100 million children have been saved since 1990 thanks to improvement in global health (Our World in Data)

  • Vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years: Every 10 seconds, one child is saved by a vaccine (Our World in Data)

  • “Doctors can now edit the genes inside your body: It sounds like science fiction, but dozens of people have undergone gene editing for cardiovascular disease and other conditions” (Wall Street Journal)

• Agriculture

  • “As Switzerland mulls ending ban on crop biotechnology, organic farmers and environmental NGOs intensify campaign against reform” (GLP)

  • “11 of 54 African countries grow genetically engineered crops” (GLP)

  • “Bill Gates: AI will allows us to genetically modify beef cows to fight climate change” (The Paradise)

  • Lab-grown meat: “The GOP is freaking out about an industry that doesn’t exist year” (Washington Post)

• Security

  • “U.S. report: North Korea has capability to genetically engineer biological weapons” (KBS World)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! We’ll be taking a break for a few weeks as we pause for the Easter holidays. I hope the now over 600 subscribers of this newsletter will not be disappointed.

While we’ll mostly be travelling for leisure—east coast of the USA—I’ll also be meeting with some people working in reprotech policy and advocacy. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to meet up in person or online. See you soon!

Craig

* * *

Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • Poll: over two-thirds of Americans want to expand insurance coverage for IVF

  • A Jewish religious perspective on gene editing

• Further Learning

  • Conservationists have cloned black-footed ferrets to save the species and strengthen its genetic diversity

  • Singapore study finds children better at delaying gratification are more likely to do well academic and have fewer behavioral problems

  • Remembering Daniel Dennett: some quotes from the American philosopher of science and biology

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Repro/genetics

“Survey shows strong support for increased access to fertility treatments” (ASRM)

• A new U.S. poll reveals strong support for improved access to IVF.

• Asked whether health insurance plans should be required to offer IVF coverage, 67% of respondents agreed. 26% neither supported nor opposed, while only 7% opposed such a requirement.

• Similarly, 71% supported the federal government offering IVF coverage to its military and civilian employees and only 7% expressed opposition.

• Many Americans, including military service members and veterans, lack insurance coverage for IVF care.

• “Clearly, a large majority of Americans think insurance companies ought to do the right thing and offer IVF coverage,” said Dr. Paula Amato, President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). “And they clearly support the government requiring them to do it if they won’t do it on their own. … As so many members of Congress have expressed their support for IVF over the last few months, we call upon them to do more than offer words.”

“Judaism and gene editing: Should we be playing God?” (The Roar)

• The article outlines recent developments in CRISPR gene editing, including genetic therapies, and analyzes them from a Jewish religious perspective.

• For now, it is illegal to genetically engineer sperm, egg, or embryonic cells in the United States, as these changes would affect every cell in the patients’ body and could potentially be passed down from parent to child.

• Officials fear that if this technology fell into the wrong hands, such as world militaries, it could be used to create genetic supersoldiers of unparalleled strength and endurance.

• Rabbi Candice Levy argues that God’s instruction to Adam and Eve to “be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth” (Genesis 1:28) can be interpreted as commanding a responsibility to nurture and protect the earth, not exploit it for profit. However, the boundary is often unclear: “I think that there’s a fine line between … using the resources that are available rather than exploiting them.” CRISPR arguably belongs to both categories as it can be used to safeguard human, plant, and animal life.

• The Jewish concept of Pikuach Nefesh, an obligation to preserve human life above all else, overrides most other commandments in the Torah. Since in many cases CRISPR has the potential to extend human life, whether by curing diseases or preventing aging altogether, it potentially falls under Pikuach Nefesh.

• Rabbi Levy argues that therapeutic gene editing to prevent a child from inheriting a genetic disease is licit, but genetic enhancement such as boosting athletic ability, height, memory, or IQ is “more complicated.”

• The Jewish concept of Kil’ayim forbids the creation of new species through intermixing DNA. Whether or not this applies to CRISPR is a subject for debate.

• Rabbi Levy points out that unequal access to medical innovations—such as artificial insulin—are nothing new and that access disparity to gene editing technologies highlight “the economic disparity that exists in society.”

• The author concludes: “As CRISPR/Cas9 technology continues to advance at an ever-accelerating rate, it is crucial that scientists and laypeople alike examine the field with skepticism and a willingness to confront complexities, even those without a clear resolution. As Jews, we are well-equipped to handle such complexities; it’s in our DNA.”

More on repro/genetics:

• “DNA test says it can predict opioid addiction risk: Skeptics aren’t so sure” (Washington Post)

• Scotland outlines strategy to boost genomic medicine: Genomics in Scotland: Build Building our Future (Scottish Government)

• “Canada to remove restrictions on gay and bisexual sperm donors” (PET)

• British National Institute for Care Excellence (NICE) backs genetic testing to guide treatment after stroke (PET)

• “Italy moves to allow anti-abortion activists inside clinics: Critics say ‘providing maternity support’ is doublespeak for harassing women and denying them their rights.” (Politico)

• “23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki plans to take company private: The DNA-testing company’s enterprise value is less than zero as its shares close at a new low” (Wall Street Journal)

• “Eugenics is back: in a range of new flavors” (Science for the People)

Further Learning

“Meet Noreen and Antonia, cloned ferrets who might help save their species” (Washington Post)

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the births of Noreen and Antonia, two baby ferrets cloned from cells frozen nearly four decades ago.

• The successful cloning of these adorable predators is a milestone in the effort to save the black-footed ferret, one of North America’s most endangered mammals.

• Once thought to be extinct, today’s wild ferret population descends from just seven individuals, representing a severe lack of genetic diversity that threatens the long-term survival of the species.

• Conservationists hope to begin breeding the two cloned females later this year to inject some fresh blood into the population.

• “Genetic diversity is critical for resilience to environmental change,” said Megan Owen of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. “It’s basically the raw material of adaptive evolution.”

• With hundreds of thousands of plants and animals at risk of extinction, scientists and policymakers are increasingly turning to extraordinary technological means to rescue sea stars, songbirds, and other species near the edge of oblivion.

Children better at delaying gratification more likely to do well academically, have fewer behavioral problems (National University of Singapore)

• A Singaporean study revealed that children who show greater self-restraint and willingness to delay their gratification in their preschool years also tend to have better working memory and self-control, which were linked to better academic skills and fewer behavioral and emotional problems two years later.

• Withstanding short-term temptation in pursuit of a greater long-term goal is crucial for the functioning and well-being of individuals and society.

  While the famous “Marshmallow Test” developed by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s has pioneered a large body of research on delayed gratification in Western populations, little is known about how well other tasks can measure young children’s ability to delay gratification, particularly in Asia.

• Dr. Chen Luxi and Professor Jean Yeung of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine conducted a modified version of the test to study the development of self-regulation among Asian children.

• The project was funded by the Ministry of Education Social Science Research Thematic Grant and hosted by the Centre for Family and Population Research.

• Age, gender, and parental education were found to influence a young child’s ability to delay gratification.

• Preschool girls were found to have generally outperformed preschool boys in terms of delaying gratification. While girls generally made future-oriented choices at age four, boys started to delay gratification later at age five.

• Children of parents with lower education backgrounds started delaying gratification at an older age.

“Top 10 Daniel Dennett quotes: A small tribute to a great philosopher” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• Daniel Dennett, who died earlier this week at the age of 82, was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist known for his work in evolutionary biology. He was once described as “a cross between Darwin and Santa Claus.”

• Quote 1: “Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else.”

• Quote 2: “Each individual human brain, thanks to its communicative links, is the beneficiary of the cognitive labors of the others in a way that gives it unprecedented powers.”

• Quote 8: “[An ant’s brain can be] commandeered by a tiny parasite, a lancet fluke (Dicrocelium dendriticum), that needs to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle. This little brain worm is driving the ant into position to benefit its progeny, not the ant’s… Does anything like this ever happen with human beings? Yes indeed. We often find human beings setting aside their personal interests, their health, their chances to have children, and devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea that has lodged in their brains.”

• Quote 10: “The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “Neurodiversity and the Autism Spectrum: Autism has become a catchall term to explain and dismiss the problem child” (Quillette)

• “Britain is leaving the U.S. gender-medicine debate behind: The Cass report challenges the scientific basis of medical transition for minors (The Atlantic)

• “EU Ombudsman rejects environmental advocacy group claims that European Commission mishandled favorable impact assessment of gene-edited crops” (GLP)

• “Why the cultured meat revolution has only just begun” (Food & Drink Business, Australia)

• “How Wegovy and Ozempic could transform our food systems” (GLP)

• “More people, more prosperity: The Simon Abundance Index 2024 finds Earth’s resources 509% more plentiful than in 1980” (Quillette)

• “Hunting cloned sheep and other post-modern biotech absurdities” (CGS)

• Synthetic biology market expected to grow 28.3% per year from $16.35 billion in 2023 to $116 billion in 2032 (Biospace)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • The fight to expand access to IVF in Taiwan to stem fertility decline

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Japan votes to expand monthly child allowances and parental leave

• Genetic Studies

  • Special issue on genes and human diseases: heritability of many common diseases can reach 50-80%

  • Two polygenic risk scores validated for breast cancer

  • Breakthrough study identified 95 risk loci associated with PTSD

  • Study finds first-order cognitive abilities are primarily influenced by genetics, while second-order abilities (metacognition, mentalizing) are more influenced by the environment

• Further Learning

  • Steve Stewart-Williams on the Four Laws of Behavior Genetics, which are among the best-replicated findings in psychology

  • Françoise Baylis presents her 6 favorite books on genetic engineering and “designer babies”

Subscribe now

Repro/genetics

“Taiwan needs more babies. But conservative traditions are holding back some fertility solutions” (CNN)

• Same-sex couples and single women are banned from accessing procedures such as IVF or egg freezing in Taiwan, while surrogacy is outlawed entirely.

• The aticle looks at how Alan Hung and Danny Huang, both university professors in their mid-40s, had to look abroad to have a child through reprotech.

• First, they spent more than a week at a fertility clinic in Russia, only to find out the procedure couldn’t be completed due to regulatory changes.

• Later, they found success with a surrogate in the United States – but with a hefty cost in excess of $160,000.

• MP Chen Ching-hui, of the opposition Kuomintang party, last month became the first fertility specialist to win a seat in Taiwan’s parliament. “Taiwan’s medical technology is well ahead of many other countries, so why are we making people spend large sums of money to travel overseas?” she told CNN.

• Chen and others are pushing for a loosening of restrictions, in the face of a shrinking population that threatens not only the economy but also the island’s ability to defend itself against an increasingly assertive China.

• Taiwan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and the number of newborn babies is declining every year. In 2022, its total fertility rate – the number of births from a woman in her lifetime – was just 0.87, significantly lower than Japan (1.26) and Singapore (1.05), and only slightly higher than South Korea (0.78).

• Other governments in the region have tried cash reward programs to encourage parents to give birth. In Hong Kong, parents receive US$2,550 for each newborn baby, while in South Korea, the subsidy ranges from $1,500 for the first baby, to $2,260 to the second or more. In Japan, the government announced last year that it will double the budget for childcare spending.

• Addressing what she called the “burning problem” of population decline in Taiwan, Chen said one of her top priorities as a lawmaker will be to lead efforts to widen access to assisted reproduction.

• Chen said her proposal will prioritize IVF access for single women, lesbian couples, and unmarried heterosexual couples, which she believed would be less controversial than surrogacy to Taiwanese society. “On the topic of surrogacy, it is important to continue discussions in our society,” she said. “I really hope that this can be passed in my (four-year) term.”

• Chen said about 17% of the 135,571 births in Taiwan in 2023 were from assisted reproduction, adding that if the rules are further relaxed, Taiwan could expect a rise in the birth rate of 20% to 30%.

• The issue is particularly pressing for Taiwan because, as its population dwindles, so do its military ranks. Its professional military force had 155,000 members in June 2023, according to a parliamentary report, a substantial decline from 165,000 just two years ago and the lowest figure since 2018.

• Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research has called the population decline a “national security issue.”

  Taiwan’s democracy has been dominated by two major parties who rarely see eye to eye, but the island’s falling population is a rare issue of bipartisan consensus.

• In January, Health Minister Hsueh Jui-yuan said amending reproductive rules was a priority and his ministry is also set to hold public hearings in the next two months on how existing regulations should be loosened.

• Taiwan faces a growing labor shortage and is increasingly reliant on migrant workers from Southeast Asia to fill positions across many industries such as manufacturing, construction and agriculture.

• Chang Hsun-ming, director of the gynecology department at China Medical University Hospital, which is based in Taiwan, said “it makes sense to have a gradual loosening of restrictions” around reproduction.

• Groups opposing reprotech liberalization have held press conferences and called for the legislative amendments to be postponed, citing concerns about the welfare of children born into “incomplete families.” Some also expressed worries that surrogacy could “lead to the commercialization of the uterus.”

• The likely exclusion of surrogacy in the first round of discussions means that gay men wanting to be parents are likely to not be able to access reprotech in Taiwan.

• Since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019, Taiwan has gradually granted full recognition to same-sex transnational marriages and equal adoption rights.

• “I think that any couple who put real effort into starting a family – regardless of whether they are straight or gay – are equally excited in welcoming a new member to the family, and they share identical love to their children,” Huang said.

  “We hope with ample discussions, the new law will afford equal treatment to every person who wishes to start a family.”

More on repro/genetics:

• “Aspiring toward equitable benefits from genomic advances to individuals of ancestrally diverse backgrounds” (American Journal of Human Genetics)

• “5 reasons to say no to genetically modified humans” (CGS)

Population Policies & Trends

Japan’s House of Representatives vote to expand monthly child allowances and parental leave (population.news)

• Japan’s lower house of parliament voted to expand monthly child allowances and parental leave in an effort to raise the country’s low birth rate.

• Child allowances will be expanded to those aged between 16 and 18 and the income limit will be removed.

• The current monthly allowance for a third or subsequent child will be doubled to 30,000 yen ($190).

• Parents taking childcare leave will have more benefits.

• Parents will be eligible for daycare services regardless of employment status.

• Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to drastically enhance child-rearing support, with the number of babies born in 2023 falling to a record low.

• Opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, opposed the bill, criticizing the creation of the new fund as a tax increase.

• The number of births in Japan has continued to drop, with the figure falling to a record low of 758,631 in 2023, down 5.1%. The figure has remained below the 800,000 mark since 2022.

Genetic Studies

Special Issue: “Genes and Human Diseases” (International Journal of Molecular Sciences)

• The article introduces a special issue on “genes and human diseases” with 13 original studies.

• The studies are of particular importance now and in the near future due to the observed/expected increase in life expectancy of the world’s population and, accordingly, the increase in the number of people suffering from various diseases, including cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

• Hereditary factors play a significant role in the formation, clinical course, development of complications, and prognosis of disorders in most human diseases.

• Twin/family studies have shown that the contribution of heredity to the formation of common human diseases varies widely and can reach 50–80% (for example, for uterine fibroids—55–69%, polycystic ovaries—79%, blood pressure—30–68%, endometriosis—47–51%.

• At the same time, the currently known scientific data on candidate genes associated with the risk of developing these diseases only partially describe the genetic determinants of these diseases.

• For example, for breast cancer, GWAS loci “describe” only about 44% of the putative genetic determinants of breast cancer (18% of 41%), for endometriosis, the figure is 10% (5.19% of 51%), and for blood pressure the percentage is 31–65% (19.4–21.3% of 30–68%).

• This indicates the presence of a problem of “unknown [hidden]” heredity and determines the relevance of further genetic studies of human diseases.

• Studies need to take into account the ethno-territorial characteristics of the studied population groups, the specifics of environmental risk factors, and gene–environmental interactions.

• Despite the fairly good knowledge of the genes leading to rare/monogenic hereditary diseases, the emergence and development of new genetic technologies for studying genomes (new generation sequencing, etc.) allow us to obtain new data on the genetic factors (mutations) that cause these diseases, which is of great practical importance.

• Research in the genetics of disease is active in many countries (China, USA, Russia, UK, Italy, Spain, Kuwait…).

• It is necessary to continue active research in this area, the results of which will enable a better understanding of the role of genetic factors in the formation of various human diseases and will create the basis for a wider application of genetic knowledge/techniques/technologies in practical medicine.

“Breast cancer polygenic risk score validation and effects of variable imputation” (Cancers)

• Breast cancer is a complex disease affecting one in eight women in the USA.

• The study robustly reaffirms the predictive capacity of polygenic risk scores for breast cancer by replicating their performance in an independent breast cancer population and showcases the need to average imputed scores for reliable outcomes.

Breakthrough study identifies 95 genetic risk loci associated with PTSD (Nature Genetics)

• This study on the genetic contributions to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) across 1,222,882 individuals of European ancestry (137,136 cases) and 58,051 admixed individuals with African and Native American ancestry (13,624 cases).

• The study identified 95 genome-wide significant loci (80 new) and 43 potential causal genes, broadly classified as neurotransmitter and ion channel synaptic modulators, developmental, axon guidance and transcription factors, synaptic structure and function genes, and endocrine or immune regulators. Additional top genes influence stress, immune, fear and threat-related processes, previously hypothesized to underlie PTSD neurobiology.

Study: First-order cognitive abilities primarily influenced by genetics, second-order abilities more influenced by environment (Cell Reports)

• Human cognitive abilities ranging from basic perceptions to complex social behaviors exhibit substantial variation in individual differences.

• These cognitive functions can be categorized into a two-order hierarchy based on the levels of cognitive processes. Second-order cognition including metacognition and mentalizing monitors and regulates first-order cognitive processes.

• The study used the classical twin paradigm to compare the genetic and environmental contributions to the two-order cognitive abilities in the same tasks from the same population.

• The results reveal that individual differences in first-order cognitive abilities were primarily influenced by genetic factors. Conversely, the second-order cognitive abilities have a stronger influence from shared environmental factors.

• These findings suggest that the abilities of metacognition and mentalizing in adults are profoundly shaped by their environmental experiences and less determined by their biological nature.

More on genetic studies:

• “Cohort effects on tobacco consumption and its genetic and environmental variance among Finnish adults born 1880-1957” (NTR)

• High heritability and strong correlation have been observed in breast and ovarian cancers: this study investigated their shared genetic architecture (Genetics and Molecular Biology)

• “Distinct explanations underlie gene-environment interactions in the UK Biobank” (medRxiv)

• “Discovering non-additive heritability using additive GWAS 2 summary statistics” (medRxiv)

• “Howm uch does genetics influence behavior?” (ADNTRO)

Further Learning

The four laws of behavior genetics (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• Behavior genetics deals with the origins of individual differences in human personality. To what extent are individual differences due to nature and to what extent are they due to nurture?

• Behavior geneticists notably use twin studies and adoption studies to disentangle nature and nurture.

  The “Four Laws of Behavior Genetics” are four well-supported generalizations that have emerged from more than half-a-century of research.

• First Law: All psychological traits are partially heritable.

  • Evidence: Identical twins reared apart are more similar than fraternal twins reared apart, who in turn are more similar than non-relatives reared apart.

• Second Law: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.

  • Evidence: Identical twins reared together are little or no more similar than identical twins reared apart, at least by adulthood. Likewise, adopted siblings reared together are little or no more similar than non-relatives reared apart.

• Third Law: A lot of individual differences in psychological traits aren’t attributable to either genes or the family environment.

  • Evidence: Identical twins reared together aren’t identical, despite sharing all their genes and their family environment.

• Fourth Law: Most complex traits are shaped by many genes of small effect.

  • Evidence: There are no common gene variants that increase or decrease IQ by, say, 5 points. However, there are hundreds or even thousands of gene variants that increase or decrease IQ by a tiny fraction of a point.

• Each of these generalizations is supported by a large mountain of studies. The Four Laws are among the best-replicated findings in psychology.

Françoise Baylis’ 6 favorite books on genetic engineering (including CRISPR and designer babies (Shepherd)

• Bioethicist François Baylis presents her favorite books on human genetic modification, in addition to her own Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing

1. Eben Kirksey, The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans: “This book starts and ends with the story of Dr. Jiankui He, the infamous Chinese researcher responsible for the first CRISPR experiment resulting in genetically modified children. … Kirksey lays bare salient facts about conflicts of interests among scientists, the corporate world’s vaunted pursuit of profit, and the ways in which nationalistic aspirations seed unhealthy competition.”

2. Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution: A memoir by one of the discoverers of CRISPR. Baylis: “In the longer term, imagine how the technology might be used to direct the evolution of our species. In either case, now is the time to think clearly and carefully about how to secure the potential benefits for us all and how to avoid or mitigate the potential harms.”

3. Michael Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. One of the three classic statements against genetic enhancement (the others being by Francis Fukuyama and Jürgen Habermas.)

4. Judy Foreman, CRISPR’d: A Medical Thriller: a novel featuring nefarious use of reproductive biotechnology.

5. Jonathan Glover, What Sort of People Should There Be? Genetic Engineering, Brain Control, and their Impact on our Future: A book from 1984 on the dilemmas of reprogenetic technologies.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “NATO releases first international strategy on biotechnology and human enhancement technologies” (NATO)

• “How to avoid a genetic arms races” (Hastings Center)

• “Cognitive enhancement in a world of superabundance: Addressing an objection to genetic enhancement for IQ” (Parrhesia)

• The first of a series of essays on eugenics in the Los Angeles Review of Books: “Legacies of eugenics: An introduction” (LARB)

• “The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence” (First Monday)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • IVF-assisted pregnancies made up 2.5% of births in the U.S. in 2022 (up from 1.7% in 2015)

  • Sterilizations in U.S. spiked after Roe v. Wade overturned, especially among women

  • ChatGPT-4 unable to draft an accurate and consistent scientific review

  • Review of Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People

• Population Policies & Trends

  • EU Commissioner for Demography Dubvraka Šuica calls for “permanent structures,” ministries, and parliamentary committees to work on demography and birth rates

  • Blast from the past: the Singapore ad promoting procreative sex as “civic duty”

• Genetic Studies

  • NPR reports on the U.S. “All of Us” project, which has analyzed the genetics of 245,000 volunteers of diverse racial backgrounds

  • Autism is found to be more heritable in males

  • Genetic variant found reducing Alzheimer’s risk by up to 70%

• Further Learning

  • Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, pens op-ed in TIME on biotech’s “upcoming ChatGPT moment”

  • The London Times argues gene editing will give a “huge boost” to English agriculture

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Repro/genetics

IVF-assisted pregnancies made up 2.5% of all births in the U.S. in 2022 (ASRM)

• The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), an American association of fertility clinics, reports that in 2022 the number of babies born from IVF in the United States increased from 89,208 in 2021 to 91,771.

• This increase means that 2.5% of all births in the United States are a result of successful IVF cycles. This reflects a steady increase in demand for fertility services, even in the face of hostile legislation and threats of political interference.

• In 2015, ART contributed to 1.7% of births in the United States.

• The preliminary national data for 2022 showed an increase not just in the number of assisted reproductive technology (ART) cycles designed to lead to a baby, but also in the number of egg-freezing cycles. Egg freezing cycles increased to 29,803, up from 24,560 in 2021.

• Increasing numbers of patients across all age groups continue to choose elective single embryo transfer (eSET), which decreases the risk of multiple births.

• The overall multiple birth rate decreased from 5% in 2021 to 4% in 2022.

• “Despite the threats of political interference, more Americans than ever are turning to IVF to build their families,” said SART President Steven Spandorfer. “It is clear that any effort to curtail access to IVF would have one simple outcome, fewer babies, fewer happy parents and grandparents.”

• In addition to the aggregated national data, interested patients and potential patients can access clinic-specific data for every SART member clinic.

• SART’s membership consists of more than 380 clinics throughout the U.S. Over 95% of ART cycles in 2021 in the U.S. were performed in SART-member clinics.

“U.S. sterilizations spiked after national right to abortion overturned: study” (RTL Today)

• A study reveals a significant increase in sterilization rates, particularly among young women, following the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the national right to abortion in 2022.

• Sterilization procedures are far more complex and two-to-six times more expensive in women than for men. What’s more, reversing female sterilization requires complex, invasive surgery, which is not the case for males.

• The rate of sterilizations was already inching up in the years prior to the June 2022 court decision.

• The ruling triggered an immediate spike among both sexes, with the magnitude of that jump more than double for women than for men.

• After the initial shock, the rate of men getting vasectomies or "the snip," returned to the previous historic trend. But the new, higher rate of women getting tubal sterilizations continued to rise more rapidly than before the court decision.

“Utilizing AI in academic writing: An in-depth evaluation of a scientific review on fertility preservation written by ChatGPT-4” (JARG)

• ChatGPT-4 was prompted to create an outline for a review on fertility preservation in men and prepubertal boys. The outline was then used to prompt ChatGPT-4 to write the different parts of the review and provide five references for each section.

• The different parts of the article and references provided were combined to create a single scientific review that was evaluated by the authors, who are experts in fertility preservation.

• ChatGPT-4 produced a scientific review with minimal plagiarism, but with factual and contextual inaccuracies and inconsistent reference reliability.

Review of Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People, 2nd edition (Parrhesia)

• Ives Parr says Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People is the best guide available for thinking seriously about the impact of genetic enhancement.

• We are in the earliest stages of a revolution in human reproduction. With new reproductive technologies, science fiction is quickly becoming a reality and bioethical debates once relegated to philosophy journals will soon become major political issues.

• The most important recent advance in this area has been preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P), a method couples can use to choose among multiple embryos during IVF.

• The development of in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), the creation of sperm or egg from somatic cells like blood or skin, and gene editing could also greatly increase the ability to shape future people’s genes.

• Many traits such as height, intelligence, personality traits, and risks for many diseases (such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and schizophrenia) are highly polygenic.

• Creating Future People considers the implications of enhancement for intelligence, morality, beauty, and health, as well as exploring the possibility of creating entirely “synthetic people.” It particularly looks at collective action problems.

More on repro/genetics:

• Vatican: surrogacy infringes on the right of a child to be created with dignity and take precedence over an individual’s desire for a family (PET)

• “Equity of access: Not for northern NHS patients requiring PGT-M” (PET)

• First cell atlas of the human ovary published (PET)

Population Policies & Trends

EU Commissioner Šuica calls for “permanent structures,” ministries, and parliamentary committees to work on demography and birth rates (Riparte l’Italia)

• European Commissioner for Demography Dubravka Šuica said the European Union and its 27 member countries must set up “permanent structures” to work on demography and birth rates.

• Specifically, she called for setting up of dedicated national ministries, EU Commission services and a European Parliament committee to work on demographic issues.

• Commissioner Šuica made the comments at a high-level conference on demographics organized by the Italian government in Rome’s Temple of Hadrian.

• Šuica said: “I am trying to ensure that demography is integrated into every policy. Most of the initiatives will be in the member states and I am very pleased that the number of ministers with explicit mandate on demography is growing, but there is a lack of permanent structures. It is important that there are dedicated ministries and a commitment at European Parliament level with a committee, which is not there at the moment. We do not have Commission services specifically. My commitment is to ensure that all this is available.”

Blast from the past: the Singapore Mentos ad promoting procreative sex as “civic duty”

• In 2012, Mentos released an ad featuring an R&B song promoting procreative sex as a “civic duty.”

• The Singapore government has sought to increase the birth rate since 1983. That year, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew spent his entire National Day speech discussing the collapse of fertility, particularly among educated women.

• Singapore policies seek to raise fertility through awareness-raising, financial support, and matchmaking schemes. The birth rate is currently 1.1 per woman.

• Different commentators on social media have called the video and music track amusing, disturbing, “based,” and/or “cringe.”

Genetic Studies

‘“All of Us research project diversifies the storehouse of genetic knowledge” (NPR)

• All of Us, A big federal research project aimed at reducing racial disparities in genetic research, has unveiled the program’s first major trove of results.

• “This is a huge deal,” says Dr. Joshua Denny, who runs the All of Us program at the National Institutes of Health. “The sheer quantify of genetic data in a really diverse population for the first time creates a powerful foundation for researchers to make discoveries that will be relevant to everyone.”

• The $3.1 billion program aims to solve a long-standing problem in genetic research: most of the people who donate their DNA to help find better genetic tests and precision drugs are white.

• “Most research has not been representative of our country or the world,” Denny says. “Most research has focused on people of European genetic ancestry or would be self-identified as white. And that means there’s a real inequity in past research.”

• Denny says researchers “don’t understand how drugs work well in certain populations. We don’t understand the causes of disease for many people. Our project is to really correct some of those past inequities so we can really understand how we can improve health for everyone.”

• The project aims to collect detailed health information from more than 1 million people in the U.S., including samples of their DNA.

• In a series of papers published in February in the journals Nature, Nature Medicine, and Communications Biology, the program released the genetic sequences from 245,000 volunteers and analysis of that data.

• “We found more than a billion genetic points of variation in those genomes; 275 million variants that we found have never been seen before,” Denny says. “Most of that variation won't have an impact on health. But some of it will. And we will have the power to start uncovering those differences about health that will be relevant really maybe for the first time to all populations.”

• This includes genetic variants influencing risk of diabetes.

• Some observers criticize the program for potentially overstating the impact of genetics on health and/or for reifying traditional racial categories.

• Denny notes that All of Us is collecting detailed non-genetic data too: “It really is about lifestyle, the environment, and behaviors, as well as genetics. It’s about ZIP code and genetic code—and all the factors that go in between.”

• While genes don’t explain all health problems, genetic variations associated with race can play an important role worth exploring equally, Denny says: “Having diverse population is really important because genetic variations do differ by population. If we don’t look at everyone, we won’t understand how to treat well any individual in front of us.”

“Sex differences in the heritability of autism” (Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche)

• A large Swedish study (12,226 children) in JAMA Psychiatry explores sex differences in the heritability of autism.

• Graph (a) shows the cumulative incidence of autism diagnoses for males and females from birth to age 20, while graph (b) shows the cumulative incidence of autism diagnoses for three age groups.

  

• In short, more males than females are diagnosed with autism and second, that autism diagnoses are becoming more and more common.

• The study found that the heritability of autism is higher for males than females (87% vs. 76%). While autism is largely genetic for both sexes, non-genetic factors play a somewhat larger role in autism in females.

• The

  Here’s an excerpt from the paper discussing these findings and their implications. Notice the impressive sample size, and the fact that the family home seems to play no role in the development of autism (“there was no support for shared environmental contributions”).

“Genetic variant founds that reduces risk of Alzheimer’s” (PET)

• Researchers at Columbia University have discovered a genetic variant which reduces risk of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 70% in people who are predisposed.

• The study found that unaffected individuals carried a gene allows amyloid, the toxic Alzheimer’s protein, to filter out of the brain into the blood.

• “We may need to start clearing amyloid much earlier and we think that can be done through the bloodstream,” said Professor Richard Mayeux, chair of the Department of Neurology at Columbia University and co-leader of the study, which was published in the journal, Acta Neuropathologica.

• Individuals with two copies of the APOEe4 allele have a ten times increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. However, some people appear to be immune to the effects of APOEe4. Dr. Badri Vardajaran, assistant professor of neurological science at Columbia University, said: “We hypothesized that these resilient people may have genetic variants that protect them.

Further Learning

Eric Schmidt, “We need to be ready for biotech’s ChatGPT moment” (TIME)

• Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and current member of the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), argues that “[t]he next big game-changing revolution is in biology.”

• Biotechnology may enable production of plastics and concrete from biomass, prevention of pandemics, treatment of previously incurable genetic diseases, lab-grown meat, and enhanced nutrient climate-resistant grains.

• Last year, the U.S. approved the production and sale of lab-grown meat for the first time, Google DeepMind’s AI predicted structures of over 2 million new materials which can potentially be used for chips and batteries, and Casgevy became the first approved commercial gene-editing treatment using CRISPR.

• “If I were a young person today, biology would truly be one of the most fascinating things to study,” writes Schmidt.

• Schmidt argues that “[l]ike the digital revolution, the biotech revolution stands to transform America’s economy as we know it—and it’s coming faster than we expect . . . AI models trained on biological sequences could design novel proteins, predict cancer growth, and create other useful consumables. In the future, AI will be able to help us run through millions of theoretical and actual biological experiments, more accurately predicting outcomes without arduous trial-and-error—vastly accelerating the rate of new discoveries.”

• He claims we are on the verge of biology’s “ChatGPT moment” with significant technological innovation and widespread adoption.

• Schmidt wants to avoid the U.S. losing leadership in biotech after being a first-mover, as has occurred in other sectors. “Relying on other countries for key components in biotechnology presents enormous economic and national security risks,” he writes. “For instance, leaving our genetic information in the hands of our adversaries could potentially aid them in developing a bioweapon used to target a specific genetic profile.”

• Schmidt argues “investment in both human capital and physical infrastructure will be critical to continued U.S. leadership in biotech. There’s no overstating how central the bioeconomy will be to U.S. growth over the next fifty years. At present, the bioeconomy generates at least 5% of U.S. GDP; in comparison, semiconductors only constitute around 1% of U.S. GDP. By some measures, 60% of physical inputs to the global economy could be grown with biological processes.”

• He concludes: “By now, most of us have likely eaten, been treated by, or worn a product created with biotech. Soon, the technology will disrupt every industry and fundamentally reshape our regular lives: new fertility treatments will transform parenthood; cellular reprogramming could start to reverse the aging process; biocomputing will power the computers of tomorrow.”

“Gene-editing has the potential to give a huge boost to agriculture” (The Times, United Kingdom)

• This Times lead article argues England will reap significant benefits from the post-Brexit legalization of gene-edited crops.

• Later this year, gene-edited crops will be planted at about two dozen commercial farms across England for the first time to see how plants previously confined to the laboratory and glasshouse will fare in real-world conditions.

• No other European nation is conducting such trials because, for now, the European Union treats gene-editing the same as it does traditional genetically-modified products, effectively banning cultivation.

• Historically, painstaking experimentation through plant breeding to increase crop yields has, when successful, proved to be a significant factor underlying population growth, urbanization and the development of complex civilizations.

• The Times argues that at a time of climate fluctuation and international upheaval, the benefits of developing domestic food sources more resistant to weather, pathogens, and pests are clear. The gene-edited crops being trialed could reduce methane emissions of cattle, cut ­carcinogens and produce a larger wheat grain.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Israeli study shows ChatGPT rivals doctors in many medical exams, and beats them in psychiatry (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• “Debating sustainable agriculture: Weed management and crop biotechnology” (GLP)

• “Gene editing can bring sustainability of fish farming” (Israel21c)

• “From banana slugs to human beings, there are just two sexes” (Quillette)

• “The taboo hierarchy” (Clear Language, Clear Mind)

• “Superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness: How billionaire transhumanists want to converge humanity and AI” (GLP)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.

Welcome to the latest issue of Repronews! Highlights from this week’s edition:

• Repro/genetics

  • WIRED interviews Orchid Health Founder and CEO Noor Siddiqui on genetic embryo selection

• Population Policies & Trends

  • Italian government holds high-level conference in Rome on family formation and future demographics

• Genetic Studies

  • Heritability and prevention of gout

• Further Learning

  • History of suppression of Aboriginal fertility in 1960s Australia

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Repro/genetics

“This woman will decide which babies are born” (WIRED)

• WIRED interviewed Noor Siddiqui, founder of and CEO of Orchid Health, a company pioneering polygenic embryo selection.

• Orchid is enabling prospective parents to select embryos with less chance of developing both monogenic and polygenic disoders, such as Alzheimer’s schizophrenia, breast and prostate cancer, and diabetes.

• Orchid screening costs $2,500 per embryo.

• Siddiqui, a Stanford-trained computer scientist, became involved in reprogenetics in part because her mother became partially blind due to a genetic condition, retinitis pigmentosa. She also started the company to test her own embryos. “Reproduction is one of the most fundamental things in life. It’s like you die, taxes, and, you know, people have kids,” Siddiqui said.

• Siddiqui argues that science should be used to protect future people from suffering. That’s why as a teenage Thiel Fellow she launched a medical startup. (Thiel Fellowships allow promising young people to drop out of college early to launch companies.) At 25, Siddiqui started Orchid.

• In 2022, Siddiqui underwent IVF and had 16 resulting embryos tested by Orchid. The company calculates each embryo’s likelihood of one day suffering from over 1,200 diseases and conditions about which we currently have genetic information.

• Orchid has 16 employees and $12 million in funding. Its services are available in 40 IVF clinics across the United States and have thousands of customers. This includes several big-name figures in tech.

• Siddiqui argues that polygenic embryo selection can reduce suffering and help people participate more fully in society. It can also help populations with predispositions to diseases. “South Asians, for instance, have really high rates of heart attacks and diabetes,” she said. “I think that’s really unfair.”

• Siddiqui said improved genetics will not solve all human suffering: “Unfortunately, not all disease is genetic. There will still be disease and suffering. We are not … an optimistic fantasy. … It’s just going to make it so that more parents can feel more confident and have more information going into the most important decision of their life, which is to have a child.”

• Orchid is able to sequence 99.6% of embryos’ DNA on average. “Whole genome is a big deal and a massive upgrade,” Siddiqui said. “You can mitigate risks for thousands of diseases that previously you weren’t able to detect. It’s kind of like a vaccine for everything that we know, genetic-wise, at once.”

• Siddiqui argues new genetic testing technology should be used when available: “I would consider it negligent to use the old technology. Because you’re by definition missing hundreds of things that could have been detected. Parents who are not told that this new technology exists are being done a huge disservice and will probably be suing if their child ends up with a condition.”

• Siddiqui is concerned that the strains and risks of pregnancy and childbirth are leading many women to not have children. “The population of all of the places we love is shrinking,” she said “In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.”

• Siddiqui recently participated in a podcast with Build the Future on the future of families, conception, and genetics.

More on repro/genetics:

• “IVF and the Alabama Supreme Court decision to protect embryos” (PET)

• “Evolution of minimally invasive and non-invasive preimplantation genetic testing: An overview” (Journal of Clinical Medicine)

• “Generative artificial intelligence to produce high-fidelity blastocyst-stage embryo images” (Human Reproduction)

• “Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling turned professor into a reproductive-rights refugee” (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Population Policies & Trends

Rome holds high-level conference in on family formation and future demographics (Nova)

• Italian Minister of the Family, Natality, and Equal Opportunities Eugenia Roccella held a high-level conference in Rome entitled “For a Young Europe: Demographic Transition, Environment, Future.”

• Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and EU Commissioner for Demography Dubravka Šuica were among the participants.

• Commissioner Šuica said she was “[t]hrilled to join leaders and experts in Rome to discuss the future of demography. Together, we’re shaping policies that support all life stages and strengthen EU resilience. Let’s make demographic change a springboard for innovation!”

• Šuica argued for using EU funds to tackle demographic issues, saying: “We need joint efforts at all levels of governance to mitigate impacts of demographic trends and regional disparities.”

• In her remarks, Prime Minister Meloni flagged the need for all levels of government and international organizations like the EU and the OECD to tackle demographic challenges.

• “For us the demographic challenge, the birth rate, the economic sustainability that is connected to these factors, represent one of the main challenges,” Meloni said. “It was time to have a Government courageous enough to dedicate itself to demographics and birth rates as priority challenges that must be transversal to the action of the whole Government.”

• Meloni cited cultural, economic, and social factors undermining family formation. She said anti-natalist values “risk dragging Italy and Europe to the edge of the precipice and leading us to believe that the myth to be pursued is that of happy degrowth, also applied to the birth rate … breaking that generational pact on which every nation has always existed and prospers.”

• Meloni said she aimed to avoid “demographic glaciation” and cited the fact her Government had invested €2.5 billion for family credits and over €16 billion in family support in general in 2024.

• Currently, no European nation is above the replacement fertility rate, but Italy has among the lowest with 1.24 children per woman.

• Meloni said the EU post-COVID stimulus plan was being used in Italy to invest €3 billion to create 2,600 nurseries.

• Family Minister Rocella said there need to be “policies that support the family, female work, equal opportunities. This government pays close attention to the problem, since it introduced birth-rate targets that didn’t exist before. This is a turning point.”

• “Motherhood must no longer represent an obstacle in the path of professional fulfillment for women,” Rocella added. “It is one of the great objectives that this government has set itself after years of inattention.”

• In Milan, a statue representing a breastfeeding woman was not allowed in a public square. “This is precisely the example of how motherhood is no longer perceived as a value social, but only as an individual choice that does not concern society,” Rocella said. “Instead, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding are not just a personal choice, they are a choice that has a social value.”

More on population policies and trends:

• “Who’s afraid of falling birth rates? Why conservatives are wrong to be obsessed with fertility, but liberals have reason to worry (Medium/Dustin Arrand)

• “Are Americans rediscovering marriage?” (Mercator)

Genetic Studies

Is gout hereditary? Understanding the role of genetics (VeryWellHealth)

• Gout is a type of inflammatory arthritis that tends to run in families.

• The heritability of gout is estimated between 45% and 73%.

• Various genes involved in the development of gout have been identified. Genetic testing can help healthcare providers identify who might develop gout.

• While reducing genetic risk for gout is not possible in people already born, risk of developing the condition can be mitigated by not smoking or drinking alcohol, avoiding a purine-rich diet, losing weight, and managing health conditions like diabetes, kidney disease, and high blood pressure.

More on genetic studies:

• “Shared genetic architecture between autoimmune disorders and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia: insights from large-scale genome-wide cross-trait analysis” (BMC Medicine)

• The study found that in Beagles genetic regulation of immune response to vaccination is antigen-specific and influenced by multiple genes of small effect. “Heritability and genome-wide association study of vaccine-induced immune response in Beagles: A pilot study” (Vaccine)

Further Learning

“‘Too many Aboriginal babies’: Australia’s secret history of Aboriginal population control in the 1960s” (The Conversation)

• In their 1967 referendum, Australians massively voted to include Aborigines in official population counts. This was a major step in recognition of Aborigines.

• At the same time in the 1960s however, many white Australian experts considered Aboriginal population growth was too fast. Government family-planning programs sought to curb their fertility.

• Aboriginal scholars such as Jackie Huggins and Aileen Moreton-Robinson have criticised the story of birth control as liberation. They argue that, while white women demanded contraception and abortion, Aboriginal women have insisted on their right to have and raise their children.

• The Aboriginal population plummeted in the 19th century, through disease and violence. Having children became part of the battle for survival.

• Until the middle of the 20th century, white Australia largely presumed Aboriginal people were a “dying race,” remnants of which should be assimilated.

• When the 1966 Australian census results were published in November 1967, they told a new story about the Aboriginal population: it was growing, rapidly. In August 1968, The Canberra Times reported the Aboriginal birth rate was “twice the Australian average” and the “full-blood” birth rate would soon “equal or exceed the rate of the part-Aborigines”.

• In his 1969 letter to the Courier Mail, John Francis, professor of preventative medicine at the University of Queensland, predicted an Aboriginal population of 360 million by 2200 if current birth rates continued.

• Jarvis Nye, a founder of the prestigious Brisbane Clinic, described the “alarming situation in the quality of our young Australians.” He wrote that Aboriginal peoples were having “much larger families than our intelligent and provident European and Asian citizens.” Nye advocated providing “instruction in contraception” and free intrauterine devices (IUDs), and sterilization to Aboriginal people.

• Administrators often favored IUDs as these were long-lasting and did not require correct daily use.

• In 1969, alarm around the Aboriginal birth rate escalated into national politics. MP Douglas Everingham agreed the “Aboriginal birth rate is excessive” and suggested free sterilization.

• These concerns also focused on infant mortality. Aboriginal infant mortality was double that of white children. In central Australia, it was “10 times the white Australian rate.” The Aboriginal population continued to rise despite this.

• In July 1968, the Northern Territory administration’s welfare branch and the Health Department outlined their plans for Aboriginal women. Pilot projects would address the supposed “special problems” of family planning education “among unsophisticated Aboriginals in remote locations”. The government said these programs would be “sensitive” as it was aware of Aboriginal communities’ fears family planning was “a white plot to wipe out the Aboriginal race.”

• The director for welfare in the Northern Territory, Harry Giese, assessed the success of the “family planning” projects by the percentage of the Aboriginal women who had adopted contraception. Around 250 women out of 4,500 (5.5%) were participating in a family planning programme by 1972.

• The fact that welfare and fertility were linked may have given Australian administrators the ability to coerce Aboriginal women to adopt contraception.

• Even today, the rates of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care are shocking: 43% of children in out-of-home care in Australia are Aboriginal, whereas Aboriginals only make up 3.8% of the general population.

• The article argues for fertility care to Aboriginal women to be run by Aboriginal people. More people than ever in Australia identify as Indigenous and the population is growing.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• “Longevity hinders evolutionary rescue through slower growth but not necessarily slower adaptation” (bioRxiv)

• Sohrab Ahmari, “The new racist right are uniquely dangerous” (New Statesman)

• “History of psychology telling a scientific story and governing the poppulation: The Kallikak story and the historical mutations of the eugenics discourse” (ResearchGate)

Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.