Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
A friend asked me to give him some pointers to the recent evidence on dysgenics, or the selection against valued traits. Challenge was accepted. This is not an exhaustive review. It’s a summary of stuff I found interesting. If you want a longer and more pessimistic review, read the recent book by Sarraf et al…
Continue ReadingAnimal breeding, human breeding (2015) Recent reviews in animal breeding (2019) Breeder genomics is way ahead of human genomics. Whenever something can be and is done in animals, it takes years for human geneticists to realize the same thing. Recently, media fuss has been all about using CRISPR, and there was that human baby born…
Continue ReadingIn a Gelman-like approach to turning email replies into posts. Someone sent me this email: Thanks for answering this and the other email, and the links as well. I am not very familiar with the matter, my interests are usually in population genetics and physical anthropology, but immediately thought it was really curious to see…
Continue ReadingSome time ago, I made a plot of this that Steve Hsu ended up posting. However, here’s a newer one. The public datafile is here. Latest published report is here, which reports data for 2014. They publish a paper every year, or so, which report on ~5 year old data. I see no report for…
Continue ReadingSince I was asked for recent reviews on the topic, I figure I might as well post them here too. Here’s a few published since 2016. I regularly read these review papers as a sort of whitepill against the idiotic anti-genetics perspectives of the mainstream, and the anti-eugenics views of the leftist academics (despite the…
Continue ReadingWoodley reminded me of the dysgenics for health outcomes by linking me to a study about the increasing rates of cancer. I had first reached this conclusion back in 2005 when I realized what it means for evolution that we essentially keep almost everyone alive despite their genetic defects. The problem is quite simple: mutations…
Continue ReadingThere’s a highly interesting new paper out: The Genetic Basis of Mendelian Phenotypes: Discoveries, Challenges, and Opportunities (Mendelians are also known as monogenic disorders because they are inherited in patterns that follow Mendel’s laws.) Abstract: Discovering the genetic basis of a Mendelian phenotype establishes a causal link between genotype and phenotype, making possible carrier and…
Continue ReadingI oppose coercive eugenic policies, so don’t try to quote mine my blunt discussion as support for such policies. Hollywood has a new anti-eugenics movie out, called The Thinning. There’s a trailer, and it will likely spoil the entire movie for you, but I reckon it will be crappy anyway, so: For those too lazy…
Continue Readinghttps://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection#counteracting-dysgenics Gwern has a very long and detailed post/page on embryo selection and related matters. You should definitely read it. He has just added a new section on counteracting dysgenics — the genetic evolution of undesirable traits — and asked for my comments/thoughts. The background for the discussion are the recent genomic findings supporting dysgenic…
Continue ReadingQuoted from Textbook of Human Reproductive Genetics, chapter 13: PGD within the“autonomy model” According to what may be called the “autonomy model,” prospective parents are free to use PGD in order to select embryos on the basis of any characteristic they prefer, whether health related or not. Opponents argue that selecting for non-medical characteristics violates…
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