Repronews #38: Is your taste in books set in your genes?
Repronews #38: Is your taste in books set in your genes?
Techno-moral coevolution; South Korean education & fertility collapse; literary tastes 45-70% heritable; study finds humans, not climate wiped out large animals
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
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.