Baby girl born from record-setting 27-year-old embryo(bbc.com)
bbc.com
Baby girl born from record-setting 27-year-old embryo
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55164607
137 comments
I thought it was relatively easy to keep zygotes dormant for arbitrary lengths of time, but embryos are more developed and this definitely raises philosophical questions regarding cryogenics. "How big can we go beyond the embryo, and for how long?"
If we manage to reproduce from digitally stored DNA, endlessly.
Where it gets interesting is what happens when we start manipulating and improving DNA digitally before we implant it. Basically things like Crispr are stepping stones towards getting there. But we could be digitally creating and evaluating combinations of genes and genomes from very large databases of historical archives of individuals.
The philosophical and ethical questions around this are largely centered on boys of brazil type scenarios. Most of that stuff is driven by popular fiction rather than reality. Another factor is religion and religious objections against stuff like this happening or even acknowledging that this is possible.
But the reality is we already have celebrities ordering clones of their deceased pets. From there to designer babies is not such a huge technical leap. Some religious people might find this offensive but biologically cloning a human and a chihuahua is ballpark the same level of complexity. Never mind things like souls, nativity myths, etc. Now imagine dog breeders going digital and creating new dog breeds digitally before planting an embryo. Not possible today but also not that far off probably. If that bothers you ethically, think designer grains or rice from digitally crafted DNA. GMO foods have been a thing for decades. That stuff going digital would be about as controversial. When that happens it won't stop there.
Mostly the technical issues that make stuff like this unethical have to do with short term technical challenges such as the low success rate of implanting embryos, the high error rates of dna modifications, the correspondingly high number of abortions needed because of failures, availability of stem cell material (until recently this required embryos), etc. This is not a problem for chihuahuas but kind of a show stopper when it concerns our own genetic offspring. Abortions are illegal in a lot of places that euthanize pets and cattle routinely. We're kind of ethically flexible.
There's a good chance that this already is happening and that we simply don't get to learn about it for a while because it is kind of illegal and the people involved are not likely to want to be exposed. But the combination of billionaires, fertility issues, and technical capability makes this more a question of when than if, I would say. Supply and demand are not going to be the issue.
Where it gets interesting is what happens when we start manipulating and improving DNA digitally before we implant it. Basically things like Crispr are stepping stones towards getting there. But we could be digitally creating and evaluating combinations of genes and genomes from very large databases of historical archives of individuals.
The philosophical and ethical questions around this are largely centered on boys of brazil type scenarios. Most of that stuff is driven by popular fiction rather than reality. Another factor is religion and religious objections against stuff like this happening or even acknowledging that this is possible.
But the reality is we already have celebrities ordering clones of their deceased pets. From there to designer babies is not such a huge technical leap. Some religious people might find this offensive but biologically cloning a human and a chihuahua is ballpark the same level of complexity. Never mind things like souls, nativity myths, etc. Now imagine dog breeders going digital and creating new dog breeds digitally before planting an embryo. Not possible today but also not that far off probably. If that bothers you ethically, think designer grains or rice from digitally crafted DNA. GMO foods have been a thing for decades. That stuff going digital would be about as controversial. When that happens it won't stop there.
Mostly the technical issues that make stuff like this unethical have to do with short term technical challenges such as the low success rate of implanting embryos, the high error rates of dna modifications, the correspondingly high number of abortions needed because of failures, availability of stem cell material (until recently this required embryos), etc. This is not a problem for chihuahuas but kind of a show stopper when it concerns our own genetic offspring. Abortions are illegal in a lot of places that euthanize pets and cattle routinely. We're kind of ethically flexible.
There's a good chance that this already is happening and that we simply don't get to learn about it for a while because it is kind of illegal and the people involved are not likely to want to be exposed. But the combination of billionaires, fertility issues, and technical capability makes this more a question of when than if, I would say. Supply and demand are not going to be the issue.
It’s funny that you say all this. DNA (and many actual living things like plants) last a REALLY LONG time under correct conditions. We haven’t got any kind of digital storage with even remotely that level of information density that would last that long without extreme degradation. DNA can last hundreds of years at non-freezing temperatures and still be read, and for thousands of years frozen.
The point of digital storage is not that you etch it in crystal and store it in a vault somewhere, but that you can make redundant copies for free.
As someone with a very rudimentary understanding of biology, how much data are we talking about in terms of a DNA sequence? I.E. if we wanted to store a human's complete set of DNA digitally, are we at a point where we can definitively say "this will take X GB of storage"?
A complete haploid human genome is 3 billion base pairs. One byte encodes four basepairs, so that's 750MB in total; and it losslessly compresses to less than half that amount.
If you store more than one genome, any additional genome is only 4MB because human genomes are 99% identical.
So you could store the genomes of an entire city on your hard drive.
If you store more than one genome, any additional genome is only 4MB because human genomes are 99% identical.
So you could store the genomes of an entire city on your hard drive.
From elsewhere on the internet (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8954571/how-much-storage...):
"The 2.9 billion base pairs of the haploid human genome correspond to a maximum of about 725 megabytes of data, since every base pair can be coded by 2 bits. Since individual genomes vary by less than 1% from each other, they can be losslessly compressed to roughly 4 megabytes."
"The 2.9 billion base pairs of the haploid human genome correspond to a maximum of about 725 megabytes of data, since every base pair can be coded by 2 bits. Since individual genomes vary by less than 1% from each other, they can be losslessly compressed to roughly 4 megabytes."
Yeah, humans have actually been genetically modifying other life for centuries in a roundabout way through selective breeding and cultivars.
So does this count as a form of intelligent design and would a hypothetical alien race be able to detect this kind of intervention by examining future species?
So does this count as a form of intelligent design and would a hypothetical alien race be able to detect this kind of intervention by examining future species?
> So does this count as a form of intelligent design
No, because the resulting organisms are still very much evolved rather than designed. They still have masses of junk DNA and stupid path-dependencies like the appendix and the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
> would a hypothetical alien race be able to detect this kind of intervention by examining future species?
Yes; we've been able to tell from its genome that brewers' yeast is an ancient deliberate hybridisation of two wild yeast strains, so future aliens could presumably do the same.
No, because the resulting organisms are still very much evolved rather than designed. They still have masses of junk DNA and stupid path-dependencies like the appendix and the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
> would a hypothetical alien race be able to detect this kind of intervention by examining future species?
Yes; we've been able to tell from its genome that brewers' yeast is an ancient deliberate hybridisation of two wild yeast strains, so future aliens could presumably do the same.
> and stupid path-dependencies like the appendix
Recent research has shown that the appendix isn't as useless as it was long thought - there are strong suggestions that it acts as a "safe heaven" for the gut flora: https://time.com/4631305/appendicitis-appendix-gut-bacteria/
Recent research has shown that the appendix isn't as useless as it was long thought - there are strong suggestions that it acts as a "safe heaven" for the gut flora: https://time.com/4631305/appendicitis-appendix-gut-bacteria/
> Another factor is religion and religious objections against stuff like this happening or even acknowledging that this is possible.
> Some religious people might find this offensive but biologically cloning a human and a chihuahua is ballpark the same level of complexity. Never mind things like souls, nativity myths, etc.
The Catholic Church does indeed oppose genetic engineering human beings and the like for very well-developed ethical reasons. However, I'm not sure where you get the idea that "religious people" find it offensive _that_ human beings can be cloned. Which "religious people"? Certainly, many people find the act of human cloning, among others, offensive, but _that_ a human beings can be cloned? FWIW, the term "religious people" is rather meaningless. It's not a meaningful category in the way it is used here and just used as a vague insinuation that people of a certain stripe (typically Christians) are superstitious people with arbitrary hangups and irrational beliefs (your choice of words says as much: nativity "myths", souls). Religion is just what someone holds to be ultimate reality, the highest good, and aim of life. In that sense, everyone is religious, so it's not a question of _whether_ you're religious, but how, and whether your religion is correct (I know, an unpopular thing to say today, but that's just a feature of tacit modern liberal sentiments and not the product of reason).
> Mostly the technical issues that make stuff like this unethical have to do with short term technical challenges [...] Abortions are illegal in a lot of places that euthanize pets and cattle routinely.
Why do you think that is? Why do we think that euthanizing non-human animals is morally licit while doing that to a human being isn't? I leave that as an exercise.
> We're kind of ethically flexible.
Either actions are morally licit or they aren't. To say you're flexible is to say that either you're an immoral person to the degree that you depart from the licit, or that there's no ethical fact of the matter. If there's no ethical fact of the matter, then ethical concerns are pure fiction. You can't have it both ways. Either something is licit or it isn't. It may be determined by circumstance (killing in self-defense), or it may be an absolute (murdering an innocent person), but each concrete action is as such either licit, illicit, or there is no fact of the matter because it is a meaningless category.
> Some religious people might find this offensive but biologically cloning a human and a chihuahua is ballpark the same level of complexity. Never mind things like souls, nativity myths, etc.
The Catholic Church does indeed oppose genetic engineering human beings and the like for very well-developed ethical reasons. However, I'm not sure where you get the idea that "religious people" find it offensive _that_ human beings can be cloned. Which "religious people"? Certainly, many people find the act of human cloning, among others, offensive, but _that_ a human beings can be cloned? FWIW, the term "religious people" is rather meaningless. It's not a meaningful category in the way it is used here and just used as a vague insinuation that people of a certain stripe (typically Christians) are superstitious people with arbitrary hangups and irrational beliefs (your choice of words says as much: nativity "myths", souls). Religion is just what someone holds to be ultimate reality, the highest good, and aim of life. In that sense, everyone is religious, so it's not a question of _whether_ you're religious, but how, and whether your religion is correct (I know, an unpopular thing to say today, but that's just a feature of tacit modern liberal sentiments and not the product of reason).
> Mostly the technical issues that make stuff like this unethical have to do with short term technical challenges [...] Abortions are illegal in a lot of places that euthanize pets and cattle routinely.
Why do you think that is? Why do we think that euthanizing non-human animals is morally licit while doing that to a human being isn't? I leave that as an exercise.
> We're kind of ethically flexible.
Either actions are morally licit or they aren't. To say you're flexible is to say that either you're an immoral person to the degree that you depart from the licit, or that there's no ethical fact of the matter. If there's no ethical fact of the matter, then ethical concerns are pure fiction. You can't have it both ways. Either something is licit or it isn't. It may be determined by circumstance (killing in self-defense), or it may be an absolute (murdering an innocent person), but each concrete action is as such either licit, illicit, or there is no fact of the matter because it is a meaningless category.
It's simply a polite term for deluded. I wouldn't read too much into it.
>Religion is just what someone holds to be ultimate reality, the highest good, and aim of life. In that sense, everyone is religious, so it's not a question of _whether_ you're religious, but how, and whether your religion is correct
Why would everyone be religious? Religious people act on beliefs. Non-religious people act on evidence.
Some people act out the rituals to avoid upsetting their relationships, but revert to evidence based decision making for important choices.
>Religion is just what someone holds to be ultimate reality, the highest good, and aim of life. In that sense, everyone is religious, so it's not a question of _whether_ you're religious, but how, and whether your religion is correct
Why would everyone be religious? Religious people act on beliefs. Non-religious people act on evidence.
Some people act out the rituals to avoid upsetting their relationships, but revert to evidence based decision making for important choices.
In the very first stage of embryonic development, during cleavage, all cells of the clump are totipotent, meaning that if you took out a single cell, you could create a human from it. The article doesn't say at which stage the embryo implanted was, but likely it was in that early stage.
27 years ago, we can infer based on trends at the time that it would have been frozen at day 3 (vs day 5 which is more common now depending on the clinic).
It may be at the morula stage of embryonic development.
It may be at the morula stage of embryonic development.
It might make space travel really interesting.
It might make the "nurture > nature" viewpoint interesting, too. If you create a zygote today and you incubate it 500 years from now, will it behave like someone from today? I would guess: probably not, since humans' physical evolution is vastly dominated by their cultural/technological/societal evolution.
Behaviour is influenced both from genetic origins as well as from environmental ones. The latter includes things like "how you were raised" but also which hormones and stimuli you were exposed to during gestation. Newborn babies already cry in different ways depending on the languages they were exposed to during pregnancy.
Sure, but I doubt how newborn babies cry is heavily correlated with how they turn out at young adults... Medieval man born today could probably learn calculus easily because calculus is a standard now. I don't think intelligence has changed much.
Medieval man definitely had the same genome, but not the same body. Factors such as availability of good food influence your growth. Medieval people were, compared to us, rather small, which can be seen from both their skeletons and various objects of daily use (height of doors, armors).
This indicates insufficient nutrition for most of the population. Famines were common approx. 5-7 years, so if you were one of the small folk, you experienced two to three of them as a juvenile.
And bad nutrition has some effect on brain, too, after all it is part of the body. I do not want to claim that medieval people would be unable to learn calculus, but those with worst food security might struggle.
This indicates insufficient nutrition for most of the population. Famines were common approx. 5-7 years, so if you were one of the small folk, you experienced two to three of them as a juvenile.
And bad nutrition has some effect on brain, too, after all it is part of the body. I do not want to claim that medieval people would be unable to learn calculus, but those with worst food security might struggle.
I also expect that a large part of the average intelligence that has changed would be due to improved nutrition.
It recently (last few generations) went down and then up again because we thought it'd be a great idea to give the whole world lead poisoning.
Just wait until you see the effects of >400ppm atmospheric CO2 will do to the distribution of arable land, and thus the effects on those species which depend on agriculture to survive.
Yeah, nutrition is listed as one of the causes for the flynn effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
The flynn effect has slowed down in the western world. This highly suggests not genetic changes but genetic potential being fulfilled thanks to environmental improvements.
The flynn effect has slowed down in the western world. This highly suggests not genetic changes but genetic potential being fulfilled thanks to environmental improvements.
That was only an example to show that environmental influences start very early. Your environment continues to influence you until you die, even if that influence in your final years is of a supportive nature. Many elderly people can live quite well in their homes they lived in since decades but once they come to a nursing home, they often become disoriented.
And yes, medieval people were as intelligent as modern people. Many of the smartest minds of humanity haven't lived today but hundreds or thousands of years ago. I'd put all behaviorally modern humans are into the same category.
And yes, medieval people were as intelligent as modern people. Many of the smartest minds of humanity haven't lived today but hundreds or thousands of years ago. I'd put all behaviorally modern humans are into the same category.
> humans' physical evolution is vastly dominated by their cultural/technological/societal evolution
Statements like these only make sense in a narrow context. Unless you're suggesting a dog raised like a human would act more like a human than a dog.
Statements like these only make sense in a narrow context. Unless you're suggesting a dog raised like a human would act more like a human than a dog.
There have some rare extreme been cases where children lived with wild animals in forests and indeed they resembled their social behaviours. (Don't recall sources to include :( )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
Some of these stories are doubtful and obviously none of them are all that scientific… for one thing why are all the reports from Russia?
Some of these stories are doubtful and obviously none of them are all that scientific… for one thing why are all the reports from Russia?
The story of Victor of Aveyron has substantial evidence behind it. There are certainly very few feral children, but they do exist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron
That's believable, but it can't teach us much because it's not an intervention study, which obviously you can't do…
> According to Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Victor was a normal child at birth[citation needed] but was neglected by his alcoholic parents from an early age.
Hmm. Did they know about fetal alcohol syndrome then? It's suggested he was autistic, which would've been true at birth.
> According to Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Victor was a normal child at birth[citation needed] but was neglected by his alcoholic parents from an early age.
Hmm. Did they know about fetal alcohol syndrome then? It's suggested he was autistic, which would've been true at birth.
That's true. Unfortunately real cases are few and far between, so they're hard to study in any sort of methodic way. Plus, as time goes on and society becomes more pervasive, these cases will get progressively rarer.
I think FASD is a good guess.
I think FASD is a good guess.
The context used within a single species seems like a reasonable application
We will evolve a lot more in the coming 500 years than we have in the past 500 years. There might not even be recognizable humans around anymore except for some backwards savages in a reservation.
What do you think is going to kill enough people to create such an unprecedented selection pressure?
We will deliberately genetically engineer ourselves.
A few people, I have no doubt. When do you think even half the population will be willing and able to afford doing it?
The desperate poor aren’t going anywhere.
The desperate poor aren’t going anywhere.
When/if the engineered kids turn out to be really great people, most parents will want them.
Desperate poverty is rapidly disappearing across the world. Look it up!
Desperate poverty is rapidly disappearing across the world. Look it up!
It does, but that doesn't mean that the masses will be able to afford it. Its like you've never seen a cyberpunk dystopia scenario. Honestly, this is I think for now our default.
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It’s actually the other way around. Women’s hips are getting narrower because the women that used to die at birth (because of too narrow hips) now survive with Caesarean cuts.
When genetic screening becomes common, gene-based persecution and holocaust can happen maybe?
Since most mutations are bad for you, wouldn't you want to screen for fewer mutations and end up with less change?
I doubt we'll figure out how to do genetic reprogramming on people. It seems like patching a few SNPs isn't going to do much.
I doubt we'll figure out how to do genetic reprogramming on people. It seems like patching a few SNPs isn't going to do much.
Unless everyone starts modifying newborns, it's more like everything around us will evolve more in the coming 500 years and would be unrecognizable to us from now.
Our own evolution is slow, but because of our numbers and tech, we're modifying everything around us at an unbelievable pace.
Our own evolution is slow, but because of our numbers and tech, we're modifying everything around us at an unbelievable pace.
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Hopefully the Falklands will still be around.
There will be no selection pressure.
As long as whether you can survive and make children is independent from your gene, Evolution never occurs.
As long as whether you can survive and make children is independent from your gene, Evolution never occurs.
There is still selection pressure today, not because you are too weak physically to make children, but because of sexual selection. Many people have a hard time finding a partner, often due to genetic issues. On the other hand, many people have genetic traits that help making them highly attractive and able to give their genes to many people.
So selection is still around, but nowadays we select for different things than nature used to when medicine wasn't as well developed as it is today.
Note that this selection alone won't cause any genetic change faster than what existed in the past. What really accelerates changes in the gene pool is us deliberately doing them. We'll start with eliminating hereditary diseases, but I don't think we'll stop there. We'll likely study which genetic variants give rise to desirable traits and then make those mutations to upcoming children of interested individuals.
So selection is still around, but nowadays we select for different things than nature used to when medicine wasn't as well developed as it is today.
Note that this selection alone won't cause any genetic change faster than what existed in the past. What really accelerates changes in the gene pool is us deliberately doing them. We'll start with eliminating hereditary diseases, but I don't think we'll stop there. We'll likely study which genetic variants give rise to desirable traits and then make those mutations to upcoming children of interested individuals.
Could be a good sci-fi plot. A sleeper ship full of time-delayed embryos crash-lands on an alien planet, and the people are left to grow and develop a civilization with only a ship's computer to nurture and guide them.
Sort of like Lost meets Lord of the Flies.
Sort of like Lost meets Lord of the Flies.
This happens in The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, in so far as it is set in a civilisation that started this way.
Except that there was no crash landing - it was an intentional method to colonise other planets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization
Except that there was no crash landing - it was an intentional method to colonise other planets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization
I haven’t watched it yet, but I believe this is essentially the plot of HBO’s “Raised by Wolves”.
E: Of course by the time I typed this, there were several other people already commenting the same thing. We’re all unique snowflakes!
E: Of course by the time I typed this, there were several other people already commenting the same thing. We’re all unique snowflakes!
There is a fun game called Seedship that plays on this idea a bit: https://philome.la/johnayliff/seedship/play/index.html. You play as a ship AI, trying to make the best decisions you can for the cryogenically frozen humans inside, trying to find the best new homeworld.
That sounds like the movie I am Mother.
That's very close to the plot of the very recent "Raised by Wolves" series.
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The plot of Horizon: Zero Dawn (video game) has some elements of this.
I remember a friend of mine tell me about a similar plot from a radio broadcast series in the 90ies: two humans raised by the computers of a stranded spaceship.
There's at least a few books like that, though I can't name the ones I've read. I'm sure it's 2-3.
The TV Show Raised by Wolves is essentially this too.
The TV Show Raised by Wolves is essentially this too.
You still need a host on the other side.
The first generation of embryos are given birth by the original ship's crew, the second generation by the first generation once they've grown old, and continue indefinitely?
There's a pretty hard barrier between embryo and implantation, when it comes to IVF. The cells in the embryos are 3 or 5 days post-fertilization, and they're just working off of nutrients from the egg itself.
Replicating the actual implantation process, where the embryo gets nutrients from the uterus itself, we haven't made substantial progress towards AFAIK.
Replicating the actual implantation process, where the embryo gets nutrients from the uterus itself, we haven't made substantial progress towards AFAIK.
I think the reason we are not making large progress is simply because it's forbidden research. There is an international agreement called the 14-day rule preventing researchers from culturing embryos past 14 days.
Isn’t that rule about human embryos only? Are there similar restrictions on pig or sheep embryos?
These are not philosophical questions.
We should begin to harvest the eggs and sperm (or zygotes) of the most intelligent and productive people on the planet, and then pay people to bring those children to term and raise them. It would eliminate poverty.
Nice try, squid robot from The Matrix. "Harvesting" humans (or human ingredients) is for dystopias.
Good lucking a significant number of people to actually brith and raise these children - even for a decent income.
I also have doubts that people who did this for an income are likely to raise them in a way that results in strongly productive adults, even after accounting for some amount of regression to the mean.
Failing the implantation of zygotes, we could just allow a free market for sperm. Why shouldn't women or couples be able to pay $10,000 for the DNA of men like Elon Musk?
This already exists
There's a book called The Genius Factory about a failed attempt at this.
Google "The Nobel prize sperm bank". Someone had already tried.
Genes is less than 50% for intelligence.
I wonder if eggs and embryos from a time before certain environmental risk factors will be useful in modelling epigenetic changes, in the same way low-background steel is useful for making sensors because it has lower nuclear contamination.
That's an interesting idea. My gut feeling is that we don't have enough of these old eggs/embryos lying around to get sufficient depth or breadth of data points to be informative.
2019: "This millenial is a baby."
2020: This baby is a millenial.
2020: This baby is a millenial.
Two embryos were fertilized 27 years ago. The first was born three years ago, the second two months ago, both records at the time of their birth.
But some parts of the article are obvious fluff and seemingly lies, not science. From the fine article:
But some parts of the article are obvious fluff and seemingly lies, not science. From the fine article:
> Ms Gibson has loved seeing the similarities between
> her girls, including a tiny wrinkle between their
> eyebrows when they're mad or upset.
“Mad” has an object, so no, newborns cannot technically be “mad,” but “upset” is a good description of a hungry baby, and it’s not unusual to use “mad” to mean upset instead of “angry at”.
Babies cry, a LOT. I'd say that's pretty mad and upset
> A two month old baby gets mad and upset?
She's 27 years + 2 months; imagine all the bottled up anger after all those years as an embryo /s
She's 27 years + 2 months; imagine all the bottled up anger after all those years as an embryo /s
You're downvoted, but correct. The Koreans, for instance, count a child's age from the time of conception from what I've been told. That is why Koreans call a newborn "one year old".
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If a male billionaire froze his sperm, or a female billionaire froze her eggs, and offered $1 million for anyone who birthed a baby with it after 100 years, $5 million after 200 years, $25 million after 300 years, etc., I am positive people would accept this offer. A form of legacy desired by humans since Ramesses.
Sort of related is the story of a millionaire in Canada in the 1920s who bequeathed in his will a prize to whichever woman in Toronto could have the most babies in a 10 year period.
It went as well as you can imagine (lots of poor women having more children then they could support), followed by some lawsuits to make sure the "correct" women won the prize (e.g. not immigrants or people having children out of wedlock).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby
It is also discussed in Act 2 of this episode of "This American Life": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse
It went as well as you can imagine (lots of poor women having more children then they could support), followed by some lawsuits to make sure the "correct" women won the prize (e.g. not immigrants or people having children out of wedlock).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby
It is also discussed in Act 2 of this episode of "This American Life": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse
Eggs would be much harder, simply due to numbers. One extraction generally results in around 12 viable eggs. Even if she went through that process multiple times (not sure what repetition limits are), only 1-3 of them really have a chance to succeed through a pregnancy. After 100 years, there is little room for error.
It's an interesting thought experiment although with the unintentional consequence that you would probably end up with some of the poorest people (in every iteration of the word) taking up the offer.
You could also see some actors taking up the offer multiple times, putting up the children for adoption immediately after birthing.
You could also see some actors taking up the offer multiple times, putting up the children for adoption immediately after birthing.
some interesting ethical dilemma's around this.
So she was born at the age of 27. You don't see that everyday.
k_sze(4)
Frozen embryos will eventually become a vital source of information for future historians. Simply defrost one, wait for it to learn to talk and then you can get first hand information about the historical period from which the embryo hails.
how would an embryo have any knowledge about its historical period without having lived in it?
That's easy. Wait for it to learn to read and provide books.
Your theory is sound. ;)
Should use a more local source with actual video interview rather than a foreign source.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285637
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285637
The BBC article has far more information and is better written.
Your source is not loading.
Delaying genetic traits to the new world can have its disadvantages, as the embryo would not likely posses the genes/mutation sets required to live in the current world. 27 years is alright, but to think in terms of 500+ years, that's where they pull the ethical handbrakes on this whole thing (if anyone of our generations make it that far). However, this should pave way for men and women to delay having kids and save that decision for the future.
IMO there should be a personal gene bank for men and women on the Moon or the Antarctic, so they can save on cryogenic costs, it's tricky as it is the success rates are really slim, 'A New hope' or 'The last Jedi' scenario awaits
IMO there should be a personal gene bank for men and women on the Moon or the Antarctic, so they can save on cryogenic costs, it's tricky as it is the success rates are really slim, 'A New hope' or 'The last Jedi' scenario awaits
> the embryo would not likely posses the genes/mutation sets required to live in the current world. 27 years is alright, but to think in terms of 500+ years
I doubt today's people are sufficiently genetically different from those who lived 500 years ago for it to make a difference in most areas. Disease resistance maybe, but modern medicine and sanitation makes that much less significant for survival than it used to be.
The psychological and cognitive demands of modern lifestyles can be quite different from those of previous centuries, but a lot of people aren't genetically well-suited to the modern lifestyles they are nonetheless expected to live – they end up being diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD, when quite possibly if they'd lived 500 years earlier those same traits might have been much more adaptive.
I doubt today's people are sufficiently genetically different from those who lived 500 years ago for it to make a difference in most areas. Disease resistance maybe, but modern medicine and sanitation makes that much less significant for survival than it used to be.
The psychological and cognitive demands of modern lifestyles can be quite different from those of previous centuries, but a lot of people aren't genetically well-suited to the modern lifestyles they are nonetheless expected to live – they end up being diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD, when quite possibly if they'd lived 500 years earlier those same traits might have been much more adaptive.
FWIW I think it is not black and white:
In some ways modern society is hard for people with ADHD: more jobs demand skills that can be hard to aquire for people who have a hard time sitting in a classroom.
In certain (but certainly not all IMO) other ways we are more tolerant towards especially kids these days: I never experienced it, but I still heard about[0] kids being punished with stick/cane in school, or even one particular headmaster who would use electrical shocks on kids.
These days are long gone now both here and were I grew up.
[0]: Skits, cartoons in magazines as well as stories.
In some ways modern society is hard for people with ADHD: more jobs demand skills that can be hard to aquire for people who have a hard time sitting in a classroom.
In certain (but certainly not all IMO) other ways we are more tolerant towards especially kids these days: I never experienced it, but I still heard about[0] kids being punished with stick/cane in school, or even one particular headmaster who would use electrical shocks on kids.
These days are long gone now both here and were I grew up.
[0]: Skits, cartoons in magazines as well as stories.
As someone with ADHD, I would encourage you to learn about it. Describing people with ADHD as 'having a hard time sitting in a classroom' is like describing people with depression as 'having a hard time laughing during movies.' ADHD is a complex neurological disorder involving general impairments to the entire executive functioning system. It shares genetic indicators and even some symptoms with autism, meaning that people with ADHD qualify as neurodiverse. It also persists your entire lifetime, as it is endemic to your brain structure (although symptoms may wax and wane over time).
For one example, my biggest impairments are definitely to a) general motivation, including non-work/school activities like reading a book I'm interested in (well-treated by medicine); general impulsivity, including emotional impulsivity and stimulation seeking behaviors (well-treated by medicine); and significant impairments to working memory (unfortunately not well-treated by medicine). The working memory is the real PITA. Studies show people with ADHD lack a specialized area of their brains for handling working memory, unlike non-ADHD people. This means that for me, my brain handles working memory tasks analogously to how blind people can learn to "see" with their tongues -- I have to marshal unrelated brain areas to try to make up the difference. (For an example of what this is like in practice, walking into a room and forgetting why I am there occurs at least a dozen times per day.) Another huge area of impact is to sleep; the vast majority (almost 90%) of adults with ADHD also qualify for a sleep disorder, usually delayed sleep phase.
As for jobs, actually one big risk tends to be having an emotional outburst at your boss or colleagues. Adults with undiagnosed ADHD usually end up developing a reputation for anger problems, as they have big difficulties controlling primal emotional responses. Another major area of challenge comes from our tendency towards substance abuse problems; many undiagnosed adults end up self-medicating via alcohol or street stimulants.
Anyways, I know this is kind of a big tangent from the OP, but I just wanted to throw that out there. I didn't get diagnosed until I was nearly 30 mainly because I was, in fact, able to sit in classrooms. I have an inattentive subtype, meaning it doesn't materialize as visible restlessness and hyperactivity as much as it does in others. Because I wasn't running around classrooms and acting out, I had to suffer in ignorance for decades.
For one example, my biggest impairments are definitely to a) general motivation, including non-work/school activities like reading a book I'm interested in (well-treated by medicine); general impulsivity, including emotional impulsivity and stimulation seeking behaviors (well-treated by medicine); and significant impairments to working memory (unfortunately not well-treated by medicine). The working memory is the real PITA. Studies show people with ADHD lack a specialized area of their brains for handling working memory, unlike non-ADHD people. This means that for me, my brain handles working memory tasks analogously to how blind people can learn to "see" with their tongues -- I have to marshal unrelated brain areas to try to make up the difference. (For an example of what this is like in practice, walking into a room and forgetting why I am there occurs at least a dozen times per day.) Another huge area of impact is to sleep; the vast majority (almost 90%) of adults with ADHD also qualify for a sleep disorder, usually delayed sleep phase.
As for jobs, actually one big risk tends to be having an emotional outburst at your boss or colleagues. Adults with undiagnosed ADHD usually end up developing a reputation for anger problems, as they have big difficulties controlling primal emotional responses. Another major area of challenge comes from our tendency towards substance abuse problems; many undiagnosed adults end up self-medicating via alcohol or street stimulants.
Anyways, I know this is kind of a big tangent from the OP, but I just wanted to throw that out there. I didn't get diagnosed until I was nearly 30 mainly because I was, in fact, able to sit in classrooms. I have an inattentive subtype, meaning it doesn't materialize as visible restlessness and hyperactivity as much as it does in others. Because I wasn't running around classrooms and acting out, I had to suffer in ignorance for decades.
Studies show people with ADHD lack a specialized area of their brains for handling working memory, unlike non-ADHD people. This means that for me, my brain handles working memory tasks analogously to how blind people can learn to "see" with their tongues -- I have to marshal unrelated brain areas to try to make up the difference.
I don't qualify as ADHD, but I've found that I do the same, substituting my auditory memory for working memory. Apparently it's much easier for me to keep a train of thought on the rails if I use my language processor for additional short-term storage. I didn't even realize I did this, until people started telling me that I shouldn't talk out loud during written exams.
This may be miles off from your experience, it just lit a spark of recognition.
I don't qualify as ADHD, but I've found that I do the same, substituting my auditory memory for working memory. Apparently it's much easier for me to keep a train of thought on the rails if I use my language processor for additional short-term storage. I didn't even realize I did this, until people started telling me that I shouldn't talk out loud during written exams.
This may be miles off from your experience, it just lit a spark of recognition.
Storing sequences in your phonological loop is a common tactic. Not sure whether it relates to ADHD or not.
You can do it sub vocally without making sound.
You can do it sub vocally without making sound.
> It shares genetic indicators and even some symptoms with autism,
Quite possibly because the distinction between ADHD and ASD (among other disorders) is biologically dubious. See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2
> meaning that people with ADHD qualify as neurodiverse
Now this is a really big tangent, but the term "neurodiverse" annoys me. One of the reasons is, there is actually a great deal of genuine neural diversity among so-called "neurotypical" people. For example, while most right-handed people activate left hemisphere perisylvian regions in language processing, a small minority of right-handed people activate right hemisphere perisylvian regions instead. So that small minority are "neurodiverse" in a genuine physical sense, yet absent some clinically significant dysfunction (and this example of neurodiversity has no known clinical significance), nobody will call them that. (I owe this example to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28130875/ who in turn cite it to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10611122/ )
In reality, "neurotypical"-vs-"neurodiverse" is a clinical distinction, not a neuroscience one. People with (certain kinds of) clinically significant dysfunctions get the second label, people without those dysfunctions get the first. Very rarely does anyone actually look at what is going on in the brain (eg via MRI) before applying these labels. (There are studies claiming to find differences in the brain between the "neurotypical" group and various subsets of the "neurodiverse" group, but those studies tend to contradict each other, have problems with reproducibility, and only claim to find group differences not individual ones – there may be a statistically significant difference between the mean of some property in two groups, but the ranges of that property in the two groups will be overlapping.)
Quite possibly because the distinction between ADHD and ASD (among other disorders) is biologically dubious. See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2
> meaning that people with ADHD qualify as neurodiverse
Now this is a really big tangent, but the term "neurodiverse" annoys me. One of the reasons is, there is actually a great deal of genuine neural diversity among so-called "neurotypical" people. For example, while most right-handed people activate left hemisphere perisylvian regions in language processing, a small minority of right-handed people activate right hemisphere perisylvian regions instead. So that small minority are "neurodiverse" in a genuine physical sense, yet absent some clinically significant dysfunction (and this example of neurodiversity has no known clinical significance), nobody will call them that. (I owe this example to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28130875/ who in turn cite it to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10611122/ )
In reality, "neurotypical"-vs-"neurodiverse" is a clinical distinction, not a neuroscience one. People with (certain kinds of) clinically significant dysfunctions get the second label, people without those dysfunctions get the first. Very rarely does anyone actually look at what is going on in the brain (eg via MRI) before applying these labels. (There are studies claiming to find differences in the brain between the "neurotypical" group and various subsets of the "neurodiverse" group, but those studies tend to contradict each other, have problems with reproducibility, and only claim to find group differences not individual ones – there may be a statistically significant difference between the mean of some property in two groups, but the ranges of that property in the two groups will be overlapping.)
> As someone with ADHD, I would encourage you to learn about it.
Don't underestimate my knowledge about ADHD ;-)
Also, much (most? all?) of what you write is correct but I don't feel it detracts from my point.
Don't underestimate my knowledge about ADHD ;-)
Also, much (most? all?) of what you write is correct but I don't feel it detracts from my point.
yeah 500 years is like maximum 50 generations for humans, which is nothing on a genetic timescale
[deleted]
> on the Moon
not with its surface temperature exceeding 120°C
not with its surface temperature exceeding 120°C
The polar regions never see daylight and reach temperatures as low as a few dozen Kelvin.
https://www.space.com/18175-moon-temperature.html
https://www.space.com/18175-moon-temperature.html