Autism, Autistic, Asperger, what are all these?

Thank you. Seriously, and personally.

Autism does not equal being unable to achieve independence, among other things which are blatantly wrong with your statement.

 

. Worst case scenario it does.

 

There are a huge number of reasons for a child to fail to achieve independence as an adult (and, frankly, several different definitions of "independence"). Selective abortion -- and eugenics in general -- runs into a whole host of problems (both practical and ethical) if you allow for that sort of criteria.

 

Cochlear implants are voluntary. Lepers generally would prefer to not be so. Both are also ailments of the body rather than mental differences; your analogy is hollow.

And as I'm sure you can appreciate I have some personal interest in the non-eradication of my views and outlook.

 

Funny.

Just yesterday BBC radio had a program segment on how Autistic people can benefit and benefit from the modern work force in ways far beyond the regular workers once they get over certain types of challenges. The real condemnation it seems is much like with other disabilities... not trying to fit them in/not actually trying to motivate them into becoming part of society.


Also Negative Eugenics is silly, moving traits out of the genepool is a good way of getting later problems, instead one should concentrate on positive eugenics and intensifying traits (asking people of certain traits to come together and have children with each other rather than trying to 'cull' the negative traits away) which then can be spread to future generations of the wider gene-pools.

 

Neither sort of program actually works, at least without very extreme measures which are impractical in real life.

In evolutionary terms, the level of selection pressure such programs can exert is far too small to have an appreciable effect over the period of time that the programs would be sustainable for.

 

The only autistiscs i have dealt with lived in institutions and could not function independtly so the idea that it is a trait worth preserving
appears ridicoulis to me.
That people higher up on the scale might be function and even be superior in someways does not really compensate the famalies who loose out. Any future screening would have to be able to discriminate to be worth while imho.

 

Have you ever heard of sampling bias?

 

Yes still believe any advantage is outweighed by disadvantages of keeping this flaw around.
If we even develop an ability to remove it.

 

Naturally, given that you presuppose it a flaw.

 

Actually, it can work rather simply: pay people who have certain extreme, genetically-dominant conditions to let you sterilize them. Here is an article written by a man with osteogenesis imperfecta about how he supports eugenics to try to prevent people with his condition from breeding.

(Yes, it's the Daily Stormer, but it's not written by a Nazi, and it's not a racist or terribly political article.)

 

Again, that doesn't work. It prevents one person from having kids; it doesn't eliminate the condition from the gene pool.

What matters, ultimately, is the level of selection pressure that the program can produce. As I noted, these are negligable over human timeframes, and maintaining the program for multiple generations is pretty much impossible from a pragmatic perspective. On top of that, it'd be pretty much impossible to even implement the program over the entire gene pool, so the trait in question would never be completely eliminated anyway and would start coming back as soon as the program ended -- a few generations, and it's like you'd never tried your program at all.

Of course, that's assuming that heredity is the only factor... and it pretty much never is.

Y'see, a whole lot of genetic conditions, especially the autosomal dominant ones, are caused by something called "de novo mutations". This means that the person who has the genetic condition has it... but neither parent did. Estimates on the number of de novo mutations each of us has vary, but they typically range from 50-100 per person on average.

I usually use Huntington's Disease for this part of the explanation, but your article uses OI -- and the effect's even more extreme (if also more complicated) there.

OI, you see, is actually classed as eight different conditions, and is based on mutations to six different genes. It's thus more a conglomeration of different genetic diseases than a single condition... but your argument only talks about conditions which are dominant, so that throws out Types VI-VIII, which are recessive. I also don't have data offhand on the rate at which de novo mutations cause Type V, so let's focus on Types I-IV. Conveniently, they're all caused by mutations to two genes -- COL1A1 and COL1A2 -- so they can be (sorta, kinda) lumped together as a single condition.

(Type V is caused by defects in IFITM5, which is located on a different chromosome entirely. Like I said, I don't know the de novo mutation rate there and can't be arsed to look it up for something like this when it's almost entirely beside the point.)

Roughly 60% of cases of Type I and Type IV OI are caused by de novo mutations. That means that 6 out of 10 people with those conditions wouldn't be effected -- at all -- by your hypothetical program. At the absolte best, you'd reduce the incidence of Type I and Type IV OI to 60% of what it currently is.

This suggests, by the way, that there's already pretty damned severe selection pressure against Type I and Type IV OI. The mutated genes are still in the gene pool because it keeps being eliminated and reintroduced. No eugenics program can do the slightest damned thing about them.

And Types II and III? Pretty much all of those cases are caused by new mutations -- nobody with them reproduces anyway for the very simple reason that people with them don't survive to do so.

In other words, eugenics programs like that don't work.

Now, I mentioned Huntington's? The de novo mutation rate there is 10%. Most genetic conditions -- especially the autosomal dominant ones -- have similar issues. Programs like you're talking about simply don't work... and that's even before I get into things like side effects.

 

No, it can't work. The problem is that you need:
1)Identify a significant percentage of the people with the negative traits you've identified.
2)Convince or coerce enough of those people to accept sterilization to have a statistically meaningful effect.
3)Keep up your efforts for multiple generations.

One is possible, two would require a massive effort on the order of the space program, three is impossible.

 

No, it wouldn't work even then -- as I kinda illustrated in my post. About 60% of the cases of inheritable OI aren't inherited from the child's parents, so...

(The numbers vary depending on the condition, but still.)

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea that people would want their kids to be born with aspergers and not quite managing it. Not because it's something horrible that nobody would want mind you, I've just always been very "Eh, whatever" about being an aspie myself. I just don't really care one way or the other.

 

So, it can work, then - a eugenics program would decrease its prevalence by 40%. It might be a treatment rather than a cure, but that sounds like a success in my book.

 

... did you not read anything I wrote?

No. It wouldn't do that. That 40% isn't how much a eugenics program could decrease the incidence (not the prevalence; they're different things entirely); it's how many cases are even theoretically amenable to being impacted by such a program at all.

For the remaining 60%, it's not even theoretically possible for a program like you describe to do a damned thing about them.

And that's not even 60% of OI -- it's 60% of two types of it. The numbers are worse for the others.

That, of course, leads to the issue of practicality. To be cost-effective and practical on a societal level, your program would have to... you know what? The economic analysis is pointless. You're moving the goalpoasts anyway.

The goal of a eugenics program is "improving" (whatever that means) the quality of the human gene pool, not reducing the numbers of people with specific genetic conditions in the short-term. I just got through with a rather long and detailed explanation of why your hypothetical program wouldn't do that... which means it wouldn't work.

 

It's not that I think it's necessarily superior or anything, I'd just like to keep some of us around.

 

I read your post, and it was very informative, but you seem to be treating it as binary question i.e "can X condition be completely eliminated from the gene-pool yes or no?" and while the answer to that is obviously no it's not the question I was addressing, the question I was addressing is "can this program produce a significant reduction in the occurrence of X", and the point is that no, it can't.

No, it can't. There probably are genetic syndromes you could reduce the incidence of if you could make a eugenics program work...except you can't make those programs work.

 

Sure you can. Pay someone with a crippling, painful disease a hundred thousand dollars to let you sterilize them. The vast majority of them will say "Yes", and voila! You've reduced the prevalence of the disease in the next generation - every person sterilized is that many fewer people being born with the disease.

 

Well, it depends. Destroying humanity in its entirety would eliminate all genetic disorders permanently, and doomsday devices with modern and near-future technology are vaguely-plausible if incredibly expensive (foil shade, redirected asteroid(s), fluorocarbon supergreenhouse, extraordinarily-large salted nuclear weapon).

I think we're getting a bit off-topic here, though.

 

... wow, does this ever carry a shitton of assumptions.

One, no, the "vast majority" would not say "yes". Some would, but those are generally the ones who would be least likely to reproduce anyway.

Two, the majority of people with a whole host of "crippling, painful diseases" don't have kids anyway, especially when you're talking about crippling, painful genetic diseases. Many of them can't, which means that sterilizing them would accomplish jack and shit.

Three, what you're describing isn't a eugenics program. The point of a eugenics program is to make changes to the gene pool in order to influence human evolutionary processes. This doesn't do that.

Four, you're still getting prevalence and incidence mixed up. They're not the same thing.

Five, you're ignoring the expense. practicality, and economics of the program. They're important. Don't forget to take fraud of various types into account, because they will be an issue.

Six, any such program would need to be run by humans. We've seen the sheer abuses that such things invoke before, most recently in the California prison system, and I can assure you that they impact the political sustainability of any such attempt.

Etc., etc.

No, I'm not. The point of a eugenics program -- as noted -- is to influence human evolutionary processes. The presence of conditions like OI isn't being driven by said processes, so a program targetted at them will do jack and shit to meaningfully influence human heredity.

 

It is literally the style of eugenics program that the guy in the article I linked was advocating.

Over the long term, they are, since you're reducing the population entirely to the number of individuals that suffered de novo mutations.

It's still probably cheaper than caring for a bone-shattering cripple for their entire lives.

How the heck are you going to defraud a program that requires you to be a midget in a wheelchair with bones that shatter like glass, and the twisted limbs that accompany that fact? Have you seen what an adult with Osteogenesis Imperfecta looks like? It's blatantly obvious by looking at them.

 

As noted, what you're describing isn't a eugenics program at all.

No. They're very much not.

Many people with OI go on to live productive and happy lives. Beyond this, you're not getting a one-sterilization, one-prevention ratio. The number needed to treat would likely be quite high, especially given that the people most likely to agree to the program would also be the ones least likely to reproduce without it.

Well, first off, I think it's rather "cute" that you somehow think that the predominant form of fraud such a program would face would be people pretending to have OI and getting sterilized to get that "sweet" $100k payout. To put this as politely as I can, I rather doubt that would be the case.

Secondly, your description of OI is horrendously inaccurate. To quote the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation 's FAQ on the matter:

Remember, there are eight different types of OI, each of which is basically its own, separate disease.

 

Isn't 'remove X from the gene pool of humanity' the Nazi's schtick?

And on that note, is aspergers/autism actually proven to be a genetic inheritance thing? Last I heard we still had no idea of the cause - though, last i heard was a loooooong time ago.

 

There are thought to be genetic contributions, but it's not the whole story.

And the whole eugenics thing is kind of a tangent. If autism can be tested for in utero, it doesn't really matter whether it's genetic or not - it can still be curtailed via selective abortion.

 

Yes, it is. You're just being anal about the definition of "eugenics" which literally means "good breeding". If you're instituting a program designed to improve things by removing negative traits from the gene pool, you're using eugenics, whether that's aimed at the wholesale eradication of a trait or just the mitigation of it.

Okay, then answer me this: everyone who has the shatterbones cripple-midget genes no longer breeds. As a result, over time, the original population of the people with the gene dies out due to old age if nothing else, and which means that the only people who enter into that group are the ones who are born to it in the first generation - de novo mutations.

The "number needed to treat" is the ones that have the disease - it's genetically dominant, so everyone with the genes has the disease. There's no hidden recessive carriers.

To be frank, I fail to see any other forms of fraud that could be involved with it, unless you're talking about officials skimming off of the top, but that's a problem with any proposed government program, really.

So you target the obvious ones, then, with the worst quality-of-life (and thus the highest healthcare costs).

 

The population does not equal the gene pool. As noted, the program would and could have pretty much no notable effect on that.

Well, first off, it's inaccurate to refer to people with OI as having "shatterbones cripple-midget genes", as noted above. You're also assuming that every person with OI participates in the program, which I've repeatedly pointed out would not be the case.

For another, the problem is largely self-limiting. The genes for OI are already severely selected against. This is why you have fewer second-generation people with OI than first-generation... and still fewer third-generations, etc. The phenomenon is maintained pretty much entirely by said de novo mutations. But...

No. The number needed to treat is the number of sterilizations you'd have to perform to prevent the birth of a single baby with OI.

First off, as noted, the people most likely to let themselves be sterilized for your proposed incentives are also those least likely to have kids in the first place. Since they wouldn't have kids anyway, sterilizing them does jack and shit to prevent further births of kids with OI. On top of that, there's a slightly less than 50% chance (due to babies with OI being less likely to survive to term) that any kid born to one would not have the condition, so you then have to double the number of sterilizations you need to prevent a birth.

You are apparently markedly naive. No, the people most likely to commit fraud here are doctors.

They don't even need to get a portion of your payout -- they can just (mis)diagnose OI and perform the operation... or not perform the operation. Or perform the operation on someone who's already had a different form of it, or...

And those are the ones least amenable to being impacted by your program, not to mention the ones least likely to reproduce anyway. You can't pick and choose between attributes of the different types like that.

 

Except that it doesn't work that way, first most people would not accept, second you are assuming that you have a condition that is inherited, does not have a significant number of recessive carriers, and that you can locate and make the offer to people with the condition before they have children. I do not believe such a condition which could be described as a "crippling, painful disease" exists.

True. my point was about other conditions, such as Huntington's you mentioned or other conditions where a majority of the cases are inherited. Of course AFAIK all genetic disorders which could be affected by such programs also include a large number of A-symptomatic carriers, which is my point about such a program needing to be maintained for multiple generations.

You're serious? Off the top of my head:
1)Fake agreement and (effectively) forced sterilization.
2)Pressure on doctors to mis-diagnose
3)Falsified procedures, pocketing the money that would have been spent on the medical procedure (and possibly the payoff as well).
etc...

 

Recessive genes and genotype vs phenotype.

To effectively remove that, you're going to have to and sterilize every living member of their blood family, as you have no way of telling who carries the recessive gene and who doesn't. Assuming you do, you'd have to get them to consent to it, and should they have the recessive gene, consent to sterilization.

So, not only is this proposal of yours morally and ethically questionable (see previous comment regarding the nazi's schtick), but also a logistical nightmare in just testing people. Because it's entirely possible for people to carry the gene despite not having that phenotype in any of their ancestors for several generations. And on top of that, all of that money could be spent on better (or, in the case of most governments, unnecessary) things.

In conclusion: It's not going to work. In a simulation maybe, but in real life, no.