Repronews #27: IVF now contributes 2.5% of births in the U.S.
Repronews #27: IVF now contributes 2.5% of births in the U.S.
Sterilization in US; EU official calls for ministries of demography; diversifying genetic data; autism heritability; anti-Alzheimer gene; biotech’s ChatGPT moment”; London Times supports CRISPR crops
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
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.