Reprogenetics News Roundup #20: ReproChad will see you now
Reprogenetics News Roundup #20: ReproChad will see you now
Social justice & genome editing, NYT on China's new 3-child policy, Seoul subsidizes fertility care, fertility of wealthy rising, lottery winning & fertility, Enlightenment & race, reviving mammoths
Welcome to the latest issue of the Reprogenetic News Roundup! In this edition, you are welcomed by ReproChad, our new mascot. ReproChad stands for supporting women and men’s reproductive choices. Be like Reprochad! (Background for the non-meme-literate.)
Highlights from this week’s edition:
Repro/genetics
Social justice group CGS releases guidelines on genome editing
Expanding fertility centers in U.S., India
Pro-life group tries to link abortion pill to eugenics, racism
Population Policies & Trends
New York Times on China’s jarring propaganda and policy shift from One-Child Policy to Three-Child Policy
Ultra-low fertility Seoul (0.55 children per woman) expands subsidies to IVF and other reprotech procedures to boost fertility
Bloomberg analysis: the rich are starting to have more children
Winning the lottery boosts male fertility in Sweden
Genetic Studies
Dr. Coel Hellier on Enlightenment race science and modern genetic studies
Further Learning
George Church’s Colossal Biosciences moving to revive woolly mammoths
Repro/genetics
Social Justice and Human Rights Principles for Global Deliberations on Heritable Genome Editing (CGS)
The Centre for Genetics and Society’s (CGS) Gender Justice and Disability Rights Coalition a document of Principles on debating human genome editing.
The 11 Principles have been endorsed by nearly 70 individuals and organizations around the world.
These include “ensur[ing] the reproductive health and safety of women and pregnant people,” “valu[ing] all lives and diversity in bodies, intellect, and ability,” and “dismantl[ing] eugenic legacies and confront[ing] eugenic temptations.”
“Fertility center expands with location in Bellevue” (Pudget Sound Business Journal)
Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA) has opened a 12,000-square-foot fertility center and in vitro fertilization lab in Bellevue, Washington State.
In addition to IVF, the clinic will offer intrauterine insemination, preimplantation genetic testing, egg freezing, and donor egg, sperm and gestational surrogacy services.
RMA’s clinic will also provide “family planning resources and options for LGBTQ+ individuals and fertility preservation treatments for those individuals with autoimmune diseases or cancer diagnoses.”
RMA, founded in 1999, has more than 60 clinics across the U.S. and says it has helped welcome more than 50,000 babies into the world. RMA in 2017 merged with Spain-based IVI, forming the parent company IVI-RMA Global.
According to the National Institutes of Health, around 9% of men and 11% of women of reproductive age in the U.S. have had fertility problems.
Lynn Mason, CEO of IVI RMA America, said “individuals and couples in Seattle’s eastern communities will be able to access fertility treatments and family-building support close to home.”
“India IVF revolutionizes infertility treatment with cutting-edge technologies” (TimesTech, India)
India’s TimesTech interviewed Nitiz Murdia on Indira IVF, a leading Indian fertility company with over 120 centers.
Indira IVF is using AI to help select embryos with best chance of implantation. AI is also used to grade gametes (oocytes and sperms).
Indira IVF screens for aneuploidy (an unusual number of chromosomes), single-gene disorders, and chromosomal structural abnormalities. This increases successful pregnancy and reduces risk of genetic disorders and emotional distress.
“Vijayawada’s FertiCARE IVF Centre breaks infertility taboo with joyous baby shower celebration” (Business News This Week, India)
FertiCARE IVF Centre (Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India) held a baby shower in honor of mothers-to-be who have successfully conceived through IVF.
Infertility remains a sensitive and often stigmatized issue in many societies, causing emotional distress and societal pressure.
In India, around 10-15% of married couples are affected by infertility, according to the Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction (ISAR).
FertiCARE IVF Centre aims to challenge these societal norms by fostering a supportive environment where individuals and couples can seek fertility treatments without fear or judgment.
“Pro-life group points out inconvenient history of abortion pill” (World)
Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit pro-life legal organization, is attempting to have an abortion pill—mifepristone—banned by linking it to eugenics.
The abortion pill will be discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court by the end of June in a lawsuit brought against the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).
Liberty Counsel’s brief calls mifepristone a “tool of modern-day eugenics,” accusing promoters of trying to eliminate minorities and people with disabilities.
The brief was filed on behalf of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and the Frederick Douglass Foundation, two organizations representing more than 70,000 Hispanic and African American churches.
“Our focus is on the history of this abortion pill, mifepristone, its origins, and its racist and its eugenic history and purpose,” Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver. “And it’s still being used this way.”
Liberty Counsel argues that pro-abortion judicial rulings in the United States were often grounded in eugenic thinking.
More on repro/genetics:
“Will USA cease to be a safe space for embryo selection?” (Clear Language, Clear Mind)
“Genetic enhancement: Reshaping humanity or playing with fire?” (County News Digital, Kenya)
Julian Savulescu et al, “The morally disruptive future of reprogenetic enhancement technologies” (Trends in Biotechnology, May 2023)
“Exploring the impact of AI in reproductive healthcare” (The Health Site)
“Contra the ACMG on polygenic embryo screening” (Parrhesia)
“Opponents of IVF should oppose natural conception too” (Parrhesia)
Population Policies & Trends
“One Three Is Best: How China’s Family Planning Propaganda Has Changed” (New York Times)
The Chinese government is offering financial incentives for couples to have two or three children. The efforts have not been successful so far.
The birthrate in China has fallen steeply, and last year was the lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
The government is promoting a “pro-birth culture,” organizing beauty pageants for pregnant women and producing rap videos praising life with children.
The state broadcaster’s annual spring festival gala, one of the country’s most-watched TV events, has prominently featured public service ads promoting families with two or three children.
Official Chinese rhetoric depicts larger families as the cornerstone of attaining a “prosperous society,” known in Chinese as xiaokang.
China’s population is aging rapidly. By 2040, nearly a third of its people will be over 60. The state will be hard pressed to support seniors, particularly those in rural areas, who get a fraction of the pension received by urban salaried workers.
Under the one-child policy, local governments levied steep “social upbringing fees” on those who had more children than allowed. For some families, these penalties brought financial devastation and fractured marriages.
As recently as early 2021, people were still being fined heavily for having a third child, only to find out a few months later, in June, that the government passed a law allowing all married couples to have three children. It had also not only abolished these fees nationwide but also encouraged localities to provide extra welfare benefits and longer parental leave for families with three children.
Last year, local governments across various provinces systematically erased outdated slogans on birth restrictions from public streets and walls.
Seoul enhances infertility aid in response to 0.55 total fertility rate (Chosun Daily)
The Seoul Metropolitan Government is taking steps to boost its infertility procedure program in response to its severe low birthrate.
Seoul will eliminate both the sixth-month “residency period” and “age-based” requirements for subsidy eligibility.
All recipients can receive up to $833 regardless of age.
The supported treatments have been expanded from 20 to 25, encompassing 20 IVF and 5 artificial insemination procedures, without distinction between fresh or frozen embryos.
According to Statistics Korea, the total fertility rate in Seoul was 0.55 last year, the lowest of all 17 cities and provinces in the nation, and significantly below the next lowest, Busan, at 0.66.
The total number of births dropped to 394,000 last year, a decrease of 32,000, or 7.6%.
A representative from the Seoul Metropolitan Government said: “This change will alleviate the financial strain on older couples struggling with infertility who are eager to have children.”
In March 2023, Seoul unveiled the Fertility Support Expansion Plan, the first in the nation to cover women’s egg-freezing costs. The initiative emphasizes offering tangible benefits to those wishing to have children as a more effective way to boost the fertility rate rather than pressing the uninterested.
What’s more, the policy that linked fertility treatment subsidies to income level was abolished in July 2023.
“The wealthy are starting to have more babies than the poor again” (Bloomberg)
For most of human history (and probably prehistory), higher male status was linked to having more children.
This relationship between positive status and offspring seems to have reached its peak with despotic rulers such as reputed father-of-thousands Genghis Khan (a 2003 genetic study found that 1/200 men worldwide may carry his Y chromosome).
Researchers have been finding more and more evidence that, among and within countries that have already passed through the demographic transition, the old positive relationship between status/affluence and number of children on the other is beginning to reestablish itself.
Within developed countries, there’s often a positive relationship between men’s income and education level and fatherhood.
In a 2014 U.S. Census Bureau survey, 70.1% of men with graduate or professional degrees had children, compared with only 48.8% of those without a high school diploma.
In the U.S., the overall relationship between income/education and births remains negative for women (for whom the most recent data are from 2022), but among White, non-Hispanic women the curve is becoming U-shaped, with those with bachelor’s degrees or higher having more kids than those with some college.
A 2022 study by Stockholm University demographer Martin Kolk found a modestly positive gradient between accumulated lifetime income and number of children for Swedish women born in 1960 and later.
The new dynamics of fertility have been study in the book Not So Weird After All: The Changing Relationship Between Status and Fertility and the article “The economics of fertility: a new era,”.
In many advanced economies, those where men take on more housework and child care responsibilities have higher fertility rates.
The economists found similar if weaker links between fertility and female labor-force participation and public spending on childcare.
“How unearned wealth impacts marriage and fertility: Evidence from Sweden” (VoxEU)
This study analyzed a sample of Swedish lottery players to understand the effects of a large, positive wealth shock on marital, divorce, and fertility decisions.
For men, lottery winnings increased the chance of marriage, raised fertility rates, and reduced the risk of divorce.
For women, the winnings increased their short-run (but not long-run) divorce risk.
More on population policies and trends:
“We can’t stop population decline (Paul Skallas/Lindy Newsletter): good recap of fertility data and largely unsuccessful policies across the world.
“Reversing the fertility collapse” (Aporia)
Falling fertility mean India’s population will peak sooner than expected: “Fewer than one billion Indians” (Samo Burja)
Genetic Studies
Coel Hellier: Enlightenment science got more right on race than we like to think (Quillette)
University of Keele professor Coel Hellier provides an overview of the work of Johann Blumenbach, one of the first scientists studying biological differences between human populations.
Professor Hellier argues that Enlightenment-era European race scientists were often more right than commonly thought.
A 2016 study uses statistical analysis to cluster the genomes of 300 people from around the world. The five biggest clusters corresponsed to Sub-Saharan Africans, Oceanians, East Asians, Native Americans, and West Eurasians.
Collier argues it is unsurprising to see ethnic/genetic clusters corresponding with geographic barriers to gene flow (oceans, deserts, mountain ranges).
Further Learning
“Scientists say they are closer to reviving mammoths. What could go wrong?” (Washington Post)
Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology company based in Dallas, announced it has produced a line of Asian elephant stem cells that can be turned into other types of cells needed to raise a mammoth-like elephant designed to thrive in the cold.
“It’s probably the most significant thing so far in the project,” said George Church, a Harvard geneticist and Colossal co-founder. “There are many steps in the future.”
For proponents, bringing back vanished animals is a chance to correct humanity’s role in the ongoing extinction crisis. Breakthroughs in their field may yield benefits for animals still with us, including endangered elephants.
Some are troubled by the ethical questions posed by de-extinction efforts. “The lack of knowledge is the thing that worries me about the welfare of animals,” said Heather Browning, a philosopher at the University of Southampton in England and a former zookeeper.
As mammoths died out 4,000 years ago, some carcasses froze over in icy tundra, preserving DNA fragments. By 2015, scientists sequenced its genetic blueprint well enough to offer a potential manual for remaking a mammoth.
Test what exactly each of these genes do — which give the beast their curved tusks, fatty build and, of course, thick fur — Church wants elephant stem cells in which he could engineer mammoth DNA and grow tissue samples.
“It hasn’t been straightforward,” said Eriona Hysolli, the company’s head of biological sciences. “It hasn’t been immediately obvious. There were a lot of innovations along the way.”
Scientists have produced such stem cells in the lab for other animals, including humans, mice, pigs and even rhinos.
Eventually, the company wants to genetically edit a nucleus of a stem cell with mammoth genes and fuse it into an elephant egg. From there, they would implant the embryo in an elephant surrogate and wait for it to give birth.
Modern elephants are highly social beings, passing down knowledge about the location of watering holes and other survival skills from one generation to the next. Their ancient cousins may be similar. “They’ve got no elders to raise them, to teach them,” Browning said. “They’re got no way of learning how to be mammoths.”
Colossal said its long-term goal is to use artificial wombs to gestate the animals. Its research into elephant cells can help with current conversation efforts, such as potential treatments for a form of herpes that kills young elephants. The company hopes to make money by licensing or selling technologies it creates along the way.
“It’s not so much bringing back the mammoth, it’s saving an endangered species,” Church said. “It’s working out technology that’s useful for conservation and climate change.”
More biotech and evolution stories:
AI over 90% successful in distinguishing male and female brains based on MRI scans of human brain activity (Gen Eng News)
On anti-natalism: “An unholy alliance” (The Drift)
“Gene therapy allowed a deaf boy to hear. But some deaf people object to the treatment” (Philadelphia Inquirer)
“Social skills outweigh genetics in intelligent magpies” (Mirage)
Disclaimer: The Genetic Choice Project cannot fact-check the linked-to stories and studies, nor do the views expressed necessarily reflect our own.