Prisoner Of Ice
02-20-2014, 06:24 PM
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program
It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower, is it? While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources. But now, not content to simply laugh and make jerk-off signs as they pass us on the geopolitical highway, they’ve also developed a state-endorsed genetic-engineering project.
At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.
Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist and lecturer at NYU, is one of the 2,000 braniacs who contributed their DNA. I spoke to him about what this creepy-ass program might mean for the future of Chinese kids.
This is how modern livestock and plant breeding works. For genetics it's often important to be "homogenous" for a particular gene, meaning both of your copies for the said gene are the same, for things to work optimally, including intelligence.
But I doubt they'd go to this much effort to just select out the best possibilities in a match. No doubt splicing in the relevant genes is the next step. There's really no reason not to have everyone have 130+ IQ.
The only problem is looks like it's lots of small gene changes for intelligence. So to really get a big benefit you'd have to basically be someone else completely than what your original DNA would have been, likely with a totally different personality too, which is not an exciting prospect. Of course I doubt the godless Chinese government really cares much.
It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower, is it? While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources. But now, not content to simply laugh and make jerk-off signs as they pass us on the geopolitical highway, they’ve also developed a state-endorsed genetic-engineering project.
At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.
Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist and lecturer at NYU, is one of the 2,000 braniacs who contributed their DNA. I spoke to him about what this creepy-ass program might mean for the future of Chinese kids.
This is how modern livestock and plant breeding works. For genetics it's often important to be "homogenous" for a particular gene, meaning both of your copies for the said gene are the same, for things to work optimally, including intelligence.
But I doubt they'd go to this much effort to just select out the best possibilities in a match. No doubt splicing in the relevant genes is the next step. There's really no reason not to have everyone have 130+ IQ.
The only problem is looks like it's lots of small gene changes for intelligence. So to really get a big benefit you'd have to basically be someone else completely than what your original DNA would have been, likely with a totally different personality too, which is not an exciting prospect. Of course I doubt the godless Chinese government really cares much.