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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25769 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Curious. Why people do genetics research at all if it's prohibited where it matters the most, or "EA PGS explains 4% of variance"? Do (some) geneticists secretly hold politically incorrect opinions?

What matters most

Most work in human genetics is finding the cause of genetic disease (inherited and cancer)

In all western countries I can think of, they do prenatal screening tests, the results of which are used to kill the genetically less fit.

What is this if not government eugenics program that almost all scientists support? High 90% of people terminate down syndrome foetuses upon positive result.

In polls, most westerners are ok with termination to stop disease, just not ok with anything that looks like making super babies

Though of course, if you look at sperm donation stats I am sure the average chosen donor is above average IQ, height, attractiveness etc

Do you think there are alleles than benefit individual's intelligence when they are found in their mother but not themselves?

Yes:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8456157/

Thanks, but this is for EA, not IQ. I was curious about better prenatal environment for better IQ rather than helping child get degrees.

EA correlates with IQ, and is the best we have in many cases

EA takes seconds to fill out on a form, so there are millions of genotyped samples and thus good GWASs

IQ is harder to obtain, and is controversial so nobody wants to fund it, so nowhere near as many samples

Thanks.

There are still studies ilke EA3, EA4... which is only barely related to finding disease. Why do researchers do that?

High 90% of people terminate down syndrome foetuses upon positive result.

I think you're missing something here, a large fraction (or majority in many countires) doesn't test of Down syndrome even if they can afford it.

Though of course, if you look at sperm donation stats I am sure the average chosen donor is above average IQ, height, attractiveness etc

I'm afraid IQ might be higher than average mostly due to positive correlations with EA and income. Height isn't neccessarily good.

Can you tell if you work in human genetics or not? What can you say about MAOA 2R allele (and 1.5 R allele)?

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