Karen, At 08:18 18/09/02 -0700, you wrote: <<<< Keith, I was going to ask you to enlighten me as to just how much of the western, industrialized population was actually using eugenics options available to them, presumably for the most part in artificial insemination. Maybe I'm just not in the right circles or haven't read enough, or it is more widely discussed and used in the UK and Europe, but I don't see much evidence of it being a growing tool of science with patients in the US. Someone please correct me here. I'm aware there has been quite a fuss made about growing replacement organs, but perhaps HMOs and health insurance are inhibiting public demand? >>>>
I don't know the figures for what can be called eugenic procedures in England, never mind the rest of Europe, but as our health service is less efficient than most I guess they're at least as well developed in other counties. The main procedure at the moment (about 300,000 cases a year in the UK and US and rising rapidly, I understand) is for AID (artificial insemination by donor) where couples are unable to produce children themselves. In these cases, where the donor male is young and carefully selected (most often, medical students) then the sperm will be at least as good, and probably better, than the genome of the recipient's husband -- were he able to produce it! There is also increasing amniocentesis for spina bifida, hydrocephaly, Down's syndrome and several other unfortunate, not to say tragic, genetic complaints. Altogether I believe that at least 4,000 to 6,000 deleterious genes have been identified. There are about two million known carriers of the gene for cystic fibrosis in England so all the potential mothers in this tranche are tested automatically (voluntarily, of course). In most Western countries, 80-90% of women opt to terminate pregnancies of impaired fetuses. (There was a very brief mention in the FT a few days ago of a cheap and extremely effective box of tricks which would diagnose many such genes based on pavement cells from a simple mouth swab.) So there's quite a considerable amount of eugenics going on already -- even though it's not called that -- and I'd be surprised if it's at least not at this level in America. In the early days of FW I made the suggestion that intelligent engaged couples in western countries would probably take DNA tests in the future in order to obviate the possibility of deleterious recessive mutations matching up if they had children. I didn't know at the time that, among the Ashkenazi Jews in which Tay-Sachs disease is more common, this has been happening for some years. I imagine that all the above will gradually slide into what could be called "elective" eugenics -- positive choices of gene inclusion rather than rejection. Recently, procedures have enabled a woman to ovulate at least a dozen eggs at a time and, after in vitro fertilisation, would give a selection of embryos to choose from. In the future it will be possible for hundreds of embryos to be ovulated and considered before a potential mother chooses one or two for implantation (at birth, a girl has something like a million eggs in her ovaries). Of course, how quickly elective eugenics advances to a dependable service will depend on precise knowledge of the effects of particular genes or groups of genes. I imagine that this would have to be a retail (or even underground) service in the West because, so far, politicians are aware of fierce religious resistance to these procedures and these couldn't be carried out in public health services. As for replacement organs (grown from cloned cells) are concerned, I don't think anybody has any clear idea yet how quickly this technology will come along. But, unlike many others (such as 3G telephones!), biogenetics has proceeded very much faster than even the most enthusiastic proponents originally forecast -- *and*, most importantly, it doesn't need a great deal of capital investment, *and* it will have a very high profit margin. The Chinese are probably further along this road than anybody. It could be in two years' time or 20. Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
