Well, I interpret “children investments” here as “children who will be involved in the augmentation experiments”. I don’t expect germline modification to be something that would succeed at first attempt (it’s one of the reason why it’s considered ethically problematic to begin with). Basically point B might be better than point A, but the path from A to B almost surely involves some very low lows as we learn from trial and error, etc. I found the clinical nature of the expression dryly funny as I think it would realistically hide quite a hefty human cost. That’s not even including the obvious political complications and general societal second order risks.
Well, it wasn’t a complete look at the issues of gamete/germline modification, but you pointed out another problem which I didn’t include to save space and time, though thankfully if you want to avoid extreme modifications, it’s a lot safer to do it, thanks to an important insight by GeneSmith:
Another crucial insight from these studies is that nearly all of the genetic differences between humans can be explained by additive effects; there are very few gene-gene interactions going on; If gene A makes you taller, it doesn’t depend on gene B being present to work its magic. It’s a strong, independent gene that don’t need no help.
This fact is extremely important because it makes both evolution and embryo selection possible. There is a common misconception that genes are tied together in a hopelessly complex web and that if we mess with one part of it the whole thing will come crashing down. While that may be true for genes that are universally present in the human population, it is very rarely true for genes that commonly vary between people.
Ah, that makes sense. I guess if interactions were too complex it’d take some miraculous multi-step coincidence to produce a useful mutation, and there would be a lot more genetic illnesses.
Well, I interpret “children investments” here as “children who will be involved in the augmentation experiments”. I don’t expect germline modification to be something that would succeed at first attempt (it’s one of the reason why it’s considered ethically problematic to begin with). Basically point B might be better than point A, but the path from A to B almost surely involves some very low lows as we learn from trial and error, etc. I found the clinical nature of the expression dryly funny as I think it would realistically hide quite a hefty human cost. That’s not even including the obvious political complications and general societal second order risks.
Well, it wasn’t a complete look at the issues of gamete/germline modification, but you pointed out another problem which I didn’t include to save space and time, though thankfully if you want to avoid extreme modifications, it’s a lot safer to do it, thanks to an important insight by GeneSmith:
Ah, that makes sense. I guess if interactions were too complex it’d take some miraculous multi-step coincidence to produce a useful mutation, and there would be a lot more genetic illnesses.