It is a real shame that Alice’s power doesn’t work on hybrids. That would have been perfect for eugenics.
“I’m going to pick this one!”
“No, she’s a brat.”
“This one?”
“Bad temper. Eats her classmates in temper tantrums.”
“How about...”
“Dude. Down syndrome. Count the damn chromosomes! Hey, the next one. Use that. He’ll be able to shoot laser beams out his eyes!”
But even with the no-hybrid limitation on foresight it will still be worthwhile pursuing Alice based genetic research. A simple option is collecting various sources of human sperm and getting foresight into how each egg of Bella’s would turn out with each of 100 possible fathers. That will give plenty of scope for selecting in favour of useful traits, even if you still have to rely on luck with respect to selecting Edward’s sperm.
If Rosalie wants to eventually become an adoptive parent too she will have the chance to create a real ‘designer baby’.
While I don’t want to downplay the effect of genetics on personality, Alice’s thwarting by people’s choices mean that she wouldn’t be able to see far enough ahead to give any better information than “spits up a lot” and “hey, this one sleeps through the night pretty early”.
If however, she was given lots of (non hybrid) candidate embryos to work with and knowledge of their gene sequences, then she might be able to efficiently note “hey, the majority of those with this particular sequence seem destined to end up with such and such disease”, etc...
Alternately, gives a convenient way to help test genetic modifications (check for obvious disastrous results) in a slightly more ethical way that, well, giving birth to the enhanced kid and hoping for the best.
It is a real shame that Alice’s power doesn’t work on hybrids. That would have been perfect for eugenics.
“I’m going to pick this one!”
“No, she’s a brat.”
“This one?”
“Bad temper. Eats her classmates in temper tantrums.”
“How about...”
“Dude. Down syndrome. Count the damn chromosomes! Hey, the next one. Use that. He’ll be able to shoot laser beams out his eyes!”
But even with the no-hybrid limitation on foresight it will still be worthwhile pursuing Alice based genetic research. A simple option is collecting various sources of human sperm and getting foresight into how each egg of Bella’s would turn out with each of 100 possible fathers. That will give plenty of scope for selecting in favour of useful traits, even if you still have to rely on luck with respect to selecting Edward’s sperm.
If Rosalie wants to eventually become an adoptive parent too she will have the chance to create a real ‘designer baby’.
While I don’t want to downplay the effect of genetics on personality, Alice’s thwarting by people’s choices mean that she wouldn’t be able to see far enough ahead to give any better information than “spits up a lot” and “hey, this one sleeps through the night pretty early”.
If however, she was given lots of (non hybrid) candidate embryos to work with and knowledge of their gene sequences, then she might be able to efficiently note “hey, the majority of those with this particular sequence seem destined to end up with such and such disease”, etc...
Alternately, gives a convenient way to help test genetic modifications (check for obvious disastrous results) in a slightly more ethical way that, well, giving birth to the enhanced kid and hoping for the best.