Repronews #25: New edition of Anomaly’s “Creating Future People”

General psychopathology factor >40% heritable; genomics & AI podcast; RAND on biotech & war; Robin Hanson on fertility collapse; Benatar on anti-natalism

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

• Repro/genetics

• Genetic Studies

  • The p factor: the general factor for psychopathology found to be over 40% heritable

• Further Learning

  • Second edition of Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People released

  • G Word podcast: Can AI accelerate the impact of genomics?

  • Study finds Eurasian individuals are perceived more positively in both the U.S. and China

  • RAND study on biotech, human enhancement, and warfare

  • Robin Hanson on “cultural drift” and fertility collapse

  • ABC radio interviews philosopher David Benatar on anti-natalism

Repro/genetics

• “Israel embryo scandal fertility clinic suspended”: the clinic had imported embryos from Georgia carrying the hemophilia B variant (PET)

• “Screening donors: New challenges in the UK fertility landscape” (PET)

• “FDA considers dropping ban on gay and bisexual sperm donors” (PET)

• Nigeria deploys first non-invasive PGT for aneuploidy (NiPGT-A) to avert abnormalities in babies (Leadership)

Genetic Studies

Exploring the genetic etiology across the continuum of the general psychopathology factor: a Swedish population-based family and twin study (Molecular Psychiatry)

• Psychiatric comorbidity can be accounted for by a latent general psychopathology factor (p factor), which quantifies the variance that is shared to varying degrees by every dimension of psychopathology. It is unclear whether the entire continuum of the p factor shares the same genetic origin.

• The study investigated whether mild, moderate, and extreme elevations on the p factor shared the same genetic etiology by examining large samples of (N = 580,891 pairs) and twins (N = 17,170 pairs).

• The association between siblings’ p factors appeared linear, even into the extreme range. The twin group heritabilities ranged from 0.42 to 0.45 and these estimates were highly similar to the estimated individual differences heritability (0.41).

• These results suggest that the entire continuum of the p factor shares the same genetic origin, with common genetic variants likely playing an important role.

• The authors suggest prioritizing low-cost genome-wide association studies capable of identifying common genetic variants, rather than expensive whole genome sequencing that can identify rare variants, as these may increase efficiency when studying the genetic architecture of the p factor.

Further Learning

New edition Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People (Routledge)

• Routledge has released the second edition of philosopher Jonathan Anomaly’s Creating Future People: The Science and Ethics of Genetic Enhancement.

• Creating Future People offers a fast-paced primer on how advances in genetics will enable parents to influence the traits of their children, including their children’s intelligence, moral capacities, physical appearance, and immune system.

• The book explains the science of gene editing and embryo selection, and motivates the moral questions it raises by thinking about the strategic aspects of parental choice.

• Anomaly argues embryo selection for complex traits will change the moral landscape by altering the incentives each person faces. All of us will take an interest in the traits everyone else selects, and this will present coordination problems that previous writers on genetic enhancement have failed to consider. Anomaly ends by considering how genetic engineering will transform humanity.

• This second edition includes:

  • Significant revisions with more details about what will be scientifically possible in the coming years and the moral issues these will raise.

  • New and substantial coverage of embryo selection (guided by polygenic scores) for minimizing the risk of genetic diseases.

  • Engagement with all important new publications on the science of genetic enhancement

G Word podcast: Can artificial intelligence accelerate the impact of genomics? (Genomics England)

• This podcast delves into the promising advances that AI brings to the world of genomics, exploring its potential to revolutionize patient care.

• Ismael Kherroubi García, member of the Participant Panel and Ethics Advisory Committee at Genomics England, and Francisco Azuaje, Director of Bioinformatics at Genomics England. discuss public perspectives on AI in genomics and address the ethical complexities that arise

Study finds biracial (Eurasian) individuals are perceived more positively in both the U.S. and China (PsyPost)

• New research, published in Evolutionary Psychology, provides evidence that biracial people are viewed more positively than their monoracial counterparts.

• The study, conducted in the United States and China, found that biracial individuals were perceived as more attractive, trustworthy, intelligent, and likely to be successful than others.

• “In this study, we took an evolutionary approach to understand facial perception and social judgments of Asian-Caucasian biracial images in the eyes of Chinese and U.S. Caucasians,” said Xiao-Tian Wang, director of the Applied Psychology program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

• The core of the study revolved around a set of 196 photographs depicting faces with varying degrees of Caucasian and Asian features. These images were crafted using advanced graphical morphing software to blend 100% Caucasian and 100% Asian faces into composite images that spanned seven racial categories.

• Among both Caucasian and Chinese participants there was significant own-race classification bias. Caucasians tended to perceive the biracial composites as more Caucasian than they actually were, while Chinese participants tended to perceive the biracial composites as more Chinese.

• Biracial individuals were rated more favorably in terms of trustworthiness, intelligence, health, and career prospects.

• Biracial individuals were generally rated as more attractive than monoracial individuals, a finding consistent with previous research. This phenomenon could be attributed to the “average effect” in facial perception, where faces that are more “averaged” or symmetrical—a common characteristic of morphed or mixed-race faces—are typically found to be more attractive.

• “We proposed a novel hypothesis that biracial facial cues reveal the ancestral history of intergroup alliances between members of two races or ethnic groups,” Dr. Wang said. “We found that when racial cues are mixed, biracial individuals were viewed more positively than other-race or even own-race members. . . . Overall, our results suggest that biracial facial features signal a successful genetic admixture and coalition in parental generations and thus increase the trustworthiness and cooperative potential of a biracial person.”

• The researchers caution that the use of morphed images might not capture the full complexity of real-world racial identities. Additionally, the historical and cultural specificity of the U.S. and China may not make these findings universally applicable.

Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War (RAND)

• The RAND Corporation, a major U.S. think-tank, released a report earlier this year on how artificial pathogens, genomic enhancements, and other technologies could transform “the human domain of war.”

• According to the report: “From personalized (precision) nutrition and training regimens to advanced medical treatments and even genetic enhancements, genomics could provide the key to supporting a new generation of warriors who are better equipped to overcome the vicissitudes of modern warfare.”

• The authors write: “Potential near-future genomic enhancements of key warfighting traits could be the ability to function with less sleep, more physical stamina, and improved breathing capacity. Genomic enhancement as an actionable tool is early in its scientific understanding and development. Deploying genomic enhancement has several limitations, many of which are associated with scalability, sequencing time, and cost. Although sequencing time and cost have decreased by over six orders of magnitude since 2000, it remains to be seen . . . how well genetic sequences can be interpreted meaningfully with respect to a person’s traits, and how well synthetic biology enhancement tools will scale in the future. It is unlikely that genomic enhancement of the warfighter will be realistic within the next five years.”

• The report outlines both opportunities and risks in these various areas in the coming years, including example scenarios of their deployment, such as genomic screening for military recruitment and assigning of roles.

Robin Hanson, “Beware cultural drift” (Quillette)

• Economist Robin Hanson looks at different examples of cultural drift in different institutions and societies.

• Hanson cites declining fertility as “[t]he clearest proof of biologically maladaptive culture drift.” He attributes this fall to “many strong and beloved cultural trends, including more gender equality, more intensive parenting, longer inflexible career paths, less religion, more urbanity, capstone replacing cornerstone marriage, and less grandparent involvement. On the whole, these look more like non-adaptive value drifts than adaptive learning or context-dependence. And having fertility fall below replacement during times of plenty seems clearly maladaptive.”

• He adds: “many ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome plausibly fell due to low fertility. And humanity may repeat this pattern: innovation causing wealth causing fewer richer cultures, which drift, fall, and fragment. Culture selection then heals drifts, letting civilizations rise again.”

• Hanson considers different cultural responses to fertility decline, including conservatism, totalitarianism, and “deep multiculturalism.”

“The predicament of existence” (ABC, Australia)

• The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) interviews South-African philosopher David Benatar on anti-natalism, the belief that it is better to have never been born.

• Benatar discusses whether we should reduce births in humans and other animals, and whether happiness is a form of false consciousness.

More on human nature, evolution, and biotech:

• Podcast interview with evolutionary biology Randy Thornhill, author of A Natural History of Rape (Diana Fleischman)

• “The IQ threshold hypothesis: Even among the top 1%, higher IQ predicts greater achievement” (Steve Stewart-Williams)

• Richard Dawkins and Alan Sokal, “Sex and gender: The medical establishment’s reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality” (Boston Globe)

• “Is resilience thinking a form of eugenics?” (E-International Relations)

• “China approves 81 GM seeds to boost maize & soybean as Indian biotech is blocked & crop yields languish” (The Print)

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