| ▲ | hemabe 4 days ago |
| And yet, in the US, the first start-ups are offering the possibility of testing embryos for their IQ. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-c... |
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| ▲ | torginus 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > they claimed selecting the “smartest” of 10 embryos would lead to an average IQ gain of more than six points Ethics aside this sounds like BS - how do you measure the IQ of someone against someone else who was never born? |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Fertility is a field with a lot of weird BS because it’s mostly direct pay and there’s no insurance company to deny bullshit. They probably do some weird test, then pick the embryos that look the prettiest. How do you prove that little Jimmy wasn’t the smartest embryo? | |
| ▲ | nradov 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's at least mostly BS. Researchers have found certain genes which have a weak statistical correlation with high IQ but the mechanism of action is unknown. And it's not an additive thing: the interactions and relationships between individual genes must play some role but that has barely been studied at all. There's no guarantee that an embryo with those genes will grow up to be intelligent, or that they won't have other problems. But there's enough "dumb money" in Silicon Valley to provide a customer base of insecure suckers for these startups. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/silicon-valley-high-iq-children-... | | |
| ▲ | whatshisface 4 days ago | parent [-] | | One of the dark comedies playing out in the world right now is that if random physical features are correlated with IQ testing due to co-heritability, users of IVF selection will be imprinting them on their own kids. |
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| ▲ | breakyerself 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| So if a start up makes a claim it must be real? Theranos investors would like a word. |
