With a recent lengthy discussion here in the comments about genetics and intelligence, I thought Creative Minority readers would be interested in a new study that looked at how good genetics is at predicting disease.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins looked at occurrence of disease in identical twins and found that genetics were not a good predictor of who will suffer from what disease. From The Atlantic:
The just-published study examines how often identical twins get the same diseases. Reviewing records of 53,666 identical twins in the United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway, researchers tabulated how well genes predict the chance of getting a disease. The answer is that they really can’t. Predictions based on genes turned out to be very close to useless. As Gina Kolata summed up in The New York Times: “While sequencing the entire DNA of individuals is proving fantastically useful in understanding diseases and finding new treatments, it is not a method that will, for the most part, predict a person’s medical future.”
So if genetics is not a good predictor for disease, then it is not likely a good predictor for personality traits like intelligence either. Environment is important in shaping a person both medically and socially.
And yet utilitarian ethicists like Julian Savulescu and others continue to argue that we should genetically screen our children when they are embryos for not only disease, but also personality traits like intelligence.
Read more about this study and the folly of genetic determinism at Mary Meets Dolly >>
April 14, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Hmmmm….anyone remember the story of Jessica Queller? She voluntarily decided on a mastectomy of both perfectly healthy breasts and afaik also had her (also healthy) ovaries removed because of her familiy history of cancer. At the time I didn't see how any doctor could ethically agree to do such a thing. Looks like we've come to the "How could we have known phase?"
April 14, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Just an excuse to justify abortion.
April 15, 2012 at 5:33 am
Honestly, babies in the 1970 were being aborted for a condition called "Mosaism" a mottling on the baby at four months in utero before it was discovered that the mottling was normal. It was put forth that genes could predict what disease and when an individual would suffer it. and of course the solution was to abort the baby when it was determined that the person might contract cancer at the age of seventy eight. It sounds surreal but it happened.
April 15, 2012 at 12:11 pm
"Mosaicism" (sp)
April 15, 2012 at 12:13 pm
My pastor provided The National Catholic Register on the church rack and I read it there and these items are still in the archives. Thank God.