Genetic Choices

Razib Khan again.  He predicts that genetic choice is coming soon, driven by couples that are wealthy and are having their one child late, perhaps using assisted reproduction anyway.  So...Singapore and Scandinavia, he says. Coastal elite America, of course. They will already be choosing which fertilised egg gets implanted.  They are not likely to go for high-risk strategies to get super-brilliant, musically or mathematically talented children, but for companies that can eliminate a hundred problems. They can afford to let the chips fall where they may in terms of general health, attractiveness, IQ, and personality characteristics.  In one sense, those children with chosen genetics won't seem very different from what we would have expected from those couples anyway. They will just have a low incidence of genetic problems.