Realize that humans have been breeding themselves since before they were human. That is the nature of life and it becomes a pretty conscious objective during much of human history. Look at all ruling classes. It is just that now we have new tools and new needs. Now, humans can start to do pre-natal artificial selection to replace the often times haphazard, painful and devastating effects of natural selection, that we have worked so long and successfully to remove.
This is phrased in terms of a minimal basic family unit.
Consider a couple deciding to have a family. The idea is to take perhaps 100
eggs from the woman and fertilize them with sperm from her husband.
At gastrula stage when they start to slough of cells, the embryos could
be genetically analyzed.
Note that 100 zygotes is an arbitrary number, but that is a far higher selective
rate than would occur in natural circumstances.
This number might be adjusted up if the parents had more genetic
liabilities or were trying to achieve some special result. It might adjust
down for cost considerations or if the parents were particularly genetically
healthy (perhaps due to previous generations of artificial selection).
Here is a list of (4) hypothetical cases where parents have decided to use
artificial selection to improve the genetic potentials of their children.
It is written as a report prepared for the parents describing the potentials
and results of artificial selection for their family.
This is written almost humorously, but it reveals many things. It
describes something of why we would do this and what we would attempt
to accomplish with artificial selection.
A close examination will suggest uncertainties and judgments. Such is
life. Again, I will point out that if humans are to survive, we will
have to re-introduce selective effects to compensate for all we have
removed as parts of human progress, especially including medicine.
Something to keep in mind. While developing these concepts, I was often asked why would anyone want to do this. I always respond "you are a healthy intelligent person". "What would you think if you had diabetes, heart defects, arthritis or schizophrenia". They then reply "oh".
Note that these reports are to illustrate selection related to:
a. Reduction of undesirable, defective or broken traits.
b. Increase and retention of desirable and selectively advantageous traits.
c. Increase in stable hybridization of traits.
These reports are meant to describe different cases of these situations,
especially as they relate to hybridization.
The first case, is about (genetically) closely related individuals and describes
western Europeans, simply because that is the group that I have the best
knowledge of. That same knowledge will have to be developed for all ethnic
groups. The other cases will describe other ethnic groups, with less genetic
relatedness.
A significant issue here is related to the root of this thesis. I have
said that the most important challenge to humans and the most important
reason for artificial selection, relates to disease. We will need an
improved immune system to survive the changes in ecology. At the same
time, immune responses can cause all kinds of problems including allergies,
arthritis and a variety of other problems including death. It may turn out
that we could end up initially with an immune system that strong enough to
protect us, but shortens our life by a bit. Trade offs will be a common,
though not universal feature of artificial selection. Luckily, that will
most likely be problem largely solvable by knowledge
Really though, this little report was written for another purpose. It
was to help illustrate what wrong or dangerous decisions a person
could make in terms of artificial selection.
It is probably fairly easy to understand that just blindly
selecting for maximum height would be a bad idea. It would
eventually lead to health problems with no obvious benefit.
For a trait like skin or eye color, there seems like no
obvious advantages or disadvantages, but selecting for
extremes of physical development or even intellect are likely
to create health problems or throw off the balances that are
part of human survival.
There are a few traits that warrant particular mention. These are
traits that might be selected due to fashion or prejudice. Height
is a good example. It might become fashionable to select for extreme
height, yet it could have bad health consequences for the children.
More importantly, would be characteristics relating to aggressiveness.
That is quite controversial and also is likely to be quite manipulable
by artificial selection. I assure you that we do not have the wisdom
to make decisions about something like that yet.
This is also true of the trait called faith. Faith existed long
before religion and created religion. Religion can teach faith, but
not create it. Faith is not inherently about religions or Gods. Faith
is a behavior that is presently a powerful survival characteristic,
but only when it is adequately balanced. Like aggressiveness, until we
are far wiser, it is likely that most of that balancing should be left
to nature.
On the other hand, another important and precariously balanced
trait that might be manipulated by artificial selection relates
to basic controls of mood, including natural dopamine levels in
a persons brain. It is another case where manipulating this trait
without great wisdom and caution, could in the short or long term,
be very risky to survival. At the same time though, like immune
systems, this could be trait that needs to change in response to
current changes in human ecology. Enhancing the immune system may
produce hazards, especially as one ages, but these will be more
physical and easier to quantify. As such, given its overwhelming
importance to surviving current ecological changes, it is likely
worth taking the risk. Another common change in human ecology is the
availability of drugs and other things that can be environmental
components of an individuals obsessive compulsive behaviors. As
hazardous as these behaviors have shown themselves to potentially
be to individuals and their society, it seems like an important
place to use artificial selection. One thing that reduces the risk
of this is that the goal of artificial selection would be to achieve
a balance, not an extreme.
This is a summary of something that must be a major consideration. Artificial selection may be the only way that humans can survive and adapt to the huge ongoing changes in human ecology, but it is not without its risks. Using wisdom and individual self interest will have to be enough to offset these problems. Because use of artificial selection will be very wide spread, laws as a solution, is going to be problematic. If someone makes bad decisions for whatever reason, they very well may not survive. Luckily, my research has shown that humans show great wisdom and interest in matters related to their family. More than one might think.