Should we be designing our children?

So inspiring. That'd be pretty cool if you could do that just by singing, Yeah, like you kiss him now, glass you break. What you're talking about is Chevy Chase in Modern Problems. I never saw that one. He didn't have to sing, but he gained telekinetic abilities. You can make things happen just by thinking them. I shouldn't even say I never saw that one. That's not that much of a surprise. Everyone knows how my dad raised me, but I've never even heard of that one since now

eighties movie Modern Problems it was. It was very dumb, but it was one of those early HBO movies for me. So I just sat around watched it like constantly, and I had a couple of dirty jokes. Oh I got you? Yeah, Um, yeah, how do we get on that? It was me so chuck. Yes, Josh, we are now UM friends. I guess you could say after four years, we finally crossed that cusp. No, I'm not talking about us. We're not for INDs. Still, you and I are friends, Yes, we are. We're friends with

Science Channel and UM. As such, we are pretty excited that they have something going on pretty soon. Yeah, and this relates to our podcast topic, which is the reason, very reason we chose this podcast topic. UM. Science Channel is UM bringing Fringe, the cult classic television show Fringe UM to its airwaves starting November twenty ye. They're gonna show all five seasons. And uh, we were even lucky enough to meet meet the guy, the guy at at

Comic Con. Yeah not Joshua Jackson, Dr Fringe. Yeah, that's not his name, Mr Noble, and he was very nice and uh, because he's not just on Fringe, he's on Dark Matters too, he's the host of Dark Matters on Science Channel. But I personally watched Fringe. I watched all the first season, me and Emily did. Emily and I excuse me, and um, I really enjoyed it and just it was one of those things that I didn't watch season two Beyond and Beyond because it just, you know,

life got in the way or something. But it wasn't because it didn't like it was really good. I sort of had a X Files vibe. Oh yeah, and the twist that they've managed to work in there. Yeah, but the science was more predominant. So I liked it. And I'm totally gonna watch seasons. We'll probably start with sas and one again. Well, then you should tune in November and I'm gonna watch seasons two through five now and

Science Channel. I'm pretty stoked about that, right, Um? And uh well yeah, in honor of fringe, we chose kind of a fringe science topic. You did, That's right. I think it's a good one. Chuck Yeah. Um. Designing Women, I mean Designing Children? Where did that show? Oh? Yeah? Man? What was the one that followed it with Burt Reynolds Evening Shade? Was that tiede? Was that a spinoff? No? But I think they were packaged together. It's like Tuesday

Night Redneck Hour, Sugar Bakers. Yeah right, Yeah, I watched Designing Women. I didn't watch evening shade though, which surprises me because I love Burt Reynolds. I yeah, I didn't see it either, but yeah, designing Women, it was a good show. Um that we're talking about designing children and not just designing children, designer children. That's right. Uh, the idea that one day in the very very very near future now UM will be able to make kids ready

to order, made to order. Yeah, in certain ways, like I think right now you we have the ability to select eye and hair color. But they're just not doing it yet because they try that in Los Angeles and people are like, who woa, whoaa do you remember that? Yeah, we don't like this. We shouldn't be doing this. And I think that's really significant that that happened. Like the first real commercial attempt for basically just saying hey you want a blonde kid, we can give you a blond kid.

UM received public outcry, international outcry, so much of it. The people are like, okay, sorry, we opened our mouths and just forget we said anything. Here's your brunette, you know, yeah, exactly, roll the dice, jerks. We don't care. UM. But I find that significant, you know, because I wonder, um, you know how it's gonna go. How when it does become really commercially viable to really make your kid a different person than they would have been natural? Really like, how

people will accept that? Yeah? I mean this is the stuff of science fiction that is really happening now. Um, the movie Gatica, this reference in this article really good movie is really good. Yeah, man, it's good. It's like a thinking man's science Uh. I don't know if you call it a thriller. Maybe a thriller intrigue at the very least, But yeah, it's good. And basically the synopsis

there is without spoiling anything. Is that not the not too distant future we are able to in Gatica two build designer children that will grow into designer adults that are like, disease free and highly athletic and very intelligent. And then the rest of the shlobs of the world are you know, sorry t s for them? Basically go with your potato chips. So see, Gatica's a good one. Like it? Yeah, every time you say like this isn't

gonna spoil things, I tried really hard to spoiler. I was watching an episode of Breaking Bad the other day human and I were and Um, I was like, how do I know what's about to happen that? I was like, Chuck, yeah. And the Math episode, Oh I thought you. I thought you meant the one in Breaking Bad that was about meth. I was like, they're all about man, right right, I didn't spoil that, Yeah, I got you. Yeah, all right, So sorry that was not a spoiler for Gatica though.

UM so, chuck, yes, let's talk about all this you're say. In two thousand nine, they came out against that fertility clinic in Los Angeles. That's a good example of a commercial business saying hey, we can do this now. A good example of a government saying, hey, you can do this now, we need to do something about it. Was the UK proposing a bill and we couldn't find out whether it passed or not. So frustrating how hard it

is to find out things like this sometimes. Um, if if you write an article about something that is big enough for somebody else to use in an article, you

better follow up. Yeah, that's what I'm duty journalist. So what we know is it was protested at least, so I'm not sure if I went through well, and the reason it was protested was protested um largely by the deaf and heart of hearing community over there, because this bill would have or did prohibit um selecting kids for disease or disability, right, So if you it allowed you to select against that. So if you if you have a kid that has a disability, you can be like,

I don't want that kid. But it prohibited selecting forum and the deaf community said, hey, um, if hearing parents can select hearing kids, deaf parents should be able to select deaf kids. So if you're gonna call deafness a disability, you need to change this this bill, which is a pretty cool thing to protest, if you ask me. I don't know how it felt about it. I thought it's still the no, Wow, this is gonna be a good

one that I was utterly confused. That was like, why would you want your child to be deaf and be at a disadvantage straight out of the gate in life? But then I thought, well, is it a disadvantage exactly? That is a great, great question. So I don't know. That's where I ended up was did you know that percent that's the highest most recent figure I've seen of all down syndrome fetuses are aborted. I believe that right, And that's the same question. It's like some people are like, well,

why would you want your kid to be disadvantaged? And we are or not not selected through IBF a boarded um, and so some people would say, why would you want your kid to have you know, your kids going to have a disadvantage And other people say, like, have you

ever met a person with down syndrome? Like they're pretty awesome people, you know, And I think that that is That's just one argument throughout this idea of designing children savior siblings was also included in the bill in England let parents select embryos that would make suitable savior siblings. Very controversial. I read a couple of articles on this. Saviors Savior siblings are basically kids that you conceive initially with the purpose of being able to act as donors

for their older brother or sister. Like you're you're the kid that you love is born with like bad kidneys. Have another kid that's gonna be a suitable tissue doner because you know ahead of time, before the kids even born, that it will be, yeah, so that they can give

them one of their kidneys. Yeah, there was a article that I read where these parents had had had a quote unquote savior child and used you know, they said, what we ended up using was a teaspoon of umbilical blood that would have been thrown in the trash and that's what saved our other kids life. And this is not the designer child, it's not some freak of science. This is the reason we have this child. But doesn't make it any less valid. So I think ultimately it's

how you treat the child after they're born. Well, you treat them as like your regular child. You put them in a closet and wait for the kidney. Sure, you'd hope. But at the same time, I mean like you can go down the road and say, well, having a savior sibling is also having a kid to strip for parts. Yeah, you know, there's there's another interpretation of the whole thing. So I mean, like, if if you are going to have your kid like that, is it valid for society

to be like, well, well you can't do that. How are you going to treat your kid afterwards? Like? Is that one of the worries? How would they would treat the kid? I've never heard that as an argument. Yeah, because it's not like you can have a kid use all of their harvest all of their organs and kill them.

Of course not so. I think it's it's like the effect that the impact it's going to have on that child and their own identity is like a human being and and unique individual human being, rather than a walking organ bank for their brother. I would I would think I would appreciate that growing up knowing that I was born with a higher purpose of potentially saving my older

brother if he ever needed it. You know, sure, depending on how you're raised, you know, are you like Danny DeVito and twins right, or are you like the savior sibling. It's a great way to put it, like you're the savior of this other sibling. It just all depends to me on how the parents raised those those children in

that abnormal dynamic that's fostered through our technology. Yeah. I can't imagine though, that a parent who would care enough about their one child to have another to save them would mistreat or shun the other child in any way. That just didn't make sense to me. I just opened my hands in a gesture of I don't know everybody, all right, um, so let let's talk about this, Chuck, let's talk genetics for a little bit. I had to go back and do some um genetics one oh one

priming UM, and I did that. As I did, I realized that I wasn't going back and remembering it. I was teaching myself for the first time. In a lot of ways, I've never really gotten genetics. Even though it's so straightforward and cut and dried, there's always like, even if you read this Designer Children article, like these are two of our best writers, and like, it just doesn't come across quite right. Maybe it's just me so like

me in numbers. So back in two thousand three, UM, the Human Genome Project announced that it had fulfilled its destiny and successfully mapped the human genome. And the human genome is the sum total of the information contained in the human DNA. That's right, right, Um, you're gonna say the word what DNA stands for, Oh, dioxy ribot clayic acid. I would say the oxy. Yeah, I've always heard dioxy, and then I was looking at that E. So either way,

well done. Though. D N A and d N A is simply a couple of strands of sugar that form a helix of double helix, and they're joined by what looks like wrongs on the ladder sugar and phosphate. Yeah, okay um. And these wrongs are made up of nucleotides, one coming off of each of these strands, the little twisty ladder that we all love now. Um. So the wrongs of the ladder are made of these nucleotides, and when they come together, one on each side, they form

this full wrong and those are called base pairs. And there's four types of nucleotides, right, that's right. There is uh at a nine sita scene, thymine, and guanine, and you put them together and what you come up with, ultimately is a four letter language for the blueprint of an organism. Pretty cool, not just making an organism, but

maintaining it as well. And if you look along the strand of DNA, you're going to find little segments where this combination, if read by a ribosome uh can be used to explain how a cell can make a certain kind of protein, usually about three proteins on average, and proteins are what are used as the building blocks of cellular life and its functions, like everything from our behavior to like the structure of your eye is based on proteins, right,

and your your genes. These little segments that are encoded along the d NA um that express these proteins are are blueprints for how to express the proteins. That's how they're made. That's what they do. That's right, right, that's right. We have betweens as a human. Everybody's so happy. You just do that. Human that just mess it up? Hmm, how about that? Had you've been designed properly, it wouldn't

have happened. So what I thought was interesting that out of the three billion BASS bearers, it's about half and half of useful DNA and the rest are junk DNA. Yea junk DNA. And they don't think that it's like

junk DNA, like it's it's totally useless. They think that possibly we haven't found the use yet, or they think that possibly one of the uses is that it says it tells um like stop like here's where, here's where this gene stops, or um, this is how much of this protein you should express, and this this adjacent gene that this junk DNA is next to, or it just provides like structure, like actual structure to the to the

double helix. It's also possible that this is just um DNA left over that was deposited by viruses eons ago that that don't that don't express themselves any longer enough, because that's what viruses too. They insert their own d N, A and rs. It's right, they um. So you've got this DNA, it's making up chromosomes. You've got twenty three in your body. And as complex and as massive as the sounds, chuck, twenty pairs pairs, thank you, um, as

as massive and complex as this whole thing sounds. Every cell except for a mature red blood cell, has a full human genome and many chromosomes in it, every cell. And that's just in the nucleus. That's crazy. It is crazy. So you've got all this. We've got a pretty good handle on this. The human genome. We've we've mapped it. Now we go back and figure out where the genes are.

And they used to think that it was like nineties six percent of DNA was junk, and then they found out that, like if you look at the human genome, some areas are gene rich, there's a lot of genes. Other areas of gene deserts where there's very few. Right, we have to go back and look at this map and basically crack this code of this four letter line Widge and figure out what genes are, what what they do,

and then ultimately how to manipulate them. And once we do that, we effectively have taken humanity out of evolution. That's right, scary, is it? I think? So our friend David Pierce would beg to different who the guy from the Happiness audiobook? We should ratchet up human happiness because we can. Boy, that's it's a interesting argument, That's all I'm gonna say. So, Um, we're already kind of at

a very primitive form of this, aren't we. Uh Well, yeah, like I said, we we feasibly could choose eye color and hair color if we wanted to. Um, And then one thing we can definitely do is well, I guess we should explain about ib F for those of you who don't know. UM. In we first perform in vitro fertilization, which basically means when you're a couple and you're having trouble having a kid. They're a bunch of different steps.

You can take a bunch of different routes you can take, and one of them is IVF, which means you take the sperm from the man, egg from the lady and you get them together outside of the human body to form a z eyegoat and then you put it back in the woman, uh and then she takes it from there. And it is can be expensive. It can be very hard on the woman, um on her body and and emotionally emotionally. I think it's probably hard on the couple emotionally,

But dudes aren't pump full of hormones, you know. Um. So that that is what IVF is, and that is one way that you can have a baby if you're having trouble having babies. UH. With IVF came something called preimplantation genetic diagnosis p g D, which basically means, hey, we can look at at your stuff here, and if you are predisposed in your fanly to certain things like hemophilia A down syndrome tas sac syndrome, we can we can stop this process now and try again, right we

can scream for it. Yeah, fine, And some of its intuitive, like with hemophilia A UH, if you and your husband both have that, that usually tends to strike boys more than girls, so they probably not use embryos that were male, likely male. They would use female embryos instead, which brings

up the sticky point of choosing your gender. Yeah, um, some others we can you can find that evidence of that disease that say, um, I guess malfunctioning gene that creates that disease, because that's what disease is, UM and not use those embryos either. So we are we are kind of at this primitive state. But it's selective, it is,

and these are tough decisions that couple's face in life. Uh, A lot of thought should go into this if you're out there going through this process, it's um, it ain't easy. And don't let anyone else tell you what you should or shouldn't do. You know there's a personal thing. Oh yeah sure, Um, so that's what's that's what's going on

on the ib F tip. So yeah, the point is from that came um PG dye pre implantation genetic diagnosis, which is UM kind of right now the most widely available type of genetic engineering for couples looking to have a baby, right right, And like we said, the sticky point of potentially being able to choose your gender if you really want a boy, you've got three girls, and

man I really wanted a boy. Um. And then in countries like China where they definitely want boys, it's like this could be the future that might upset the balance of of nature and how many boys and girls are born and what does that mean for the future. So I heard to UM to have a soft landing from their one child policy, which they're now starting to like relax they should have stopped at about twenty years ago. Yeah. Yeah,

Does that mean they're in trouble? Does that mean we need to follow up like we recommended writers do on our podcast. Sure, I guess you just did. Oh okay, there was heard, UM, So chuck, we've got this. We've got this genetic screening. That's one way to do it. There's also another way, um that is a little further out as far as humans go, UM, and that is transgenderic therapy, which is where you take the gene of something else that desirous trait and inserted into some into

the human right. So, what is actually adding a gene right where What we've been talking about to this point is unnatural selection. But it's been selection. It's like this is this is it appeared naturally, but we're gonna take away all of the other We're gonna reduce the chances that it won't happen, or we're gonna increase the chances that that will happen. This is straight up copying and pasting or cutting and pasting genes to create something desirable

or new. That's right, And they already do this in animals, UM. So you know, if you can do it in animals, it's not gonna be long before you can do it with humans. And uh long term, maybe that means we can eliminate certain diseases by correcting this stuff along the way, right like before it happens. So that could be good. So so when you take a gene from one animal and UM and planted into another, that's um that's become a transgenic animal or a chimera, which is based on

the goat, serpent, lion, fire breathing animal of legend from Greece. Um. They call it a chimera, which is kind of hurtful, I think, especially if you're a human and know what a chimera is, and you're a chimera, I'm sure you probably hurt your feelings. But um, thus far there aren't any human caimeras as far as I know. It's mostly the big one that we've actually talked about unknowingly before is a bio steel. The goat with the spider. Remember we were trying to figure out how they got spider

silk from a goat and the one turns out. It turns out that spiders and goats share enough traits to where this ultra strong spider silk can be produced in the goat's milk. They have similar proteins. And they said, I don't know how they came across that. I'm sure they had some hint. I don't know why they would start with a goat's milk. Yeah, I don't know either, but the protein, you know, what would happen if we put the spider silk in this goat's milk? What rhymes

with spider silk goat's milk. Let's try to start there. Um, yeah, it worked, but they figured out that like the spider, the protein and spider silk is similar to a protein and goats milk identical. And well, once you inject the goats jeans with that spider me like a glove. It starts producing a ton of that protein UM and its milk, and you harvest that protein and then start weaving spider silk and make the stuff called bio steel, which is

really really good body armor. Yeah, and that's where we talked about it, right, Yeah, Body Armor podcast that you can find on our RSS feed. Yeah, which also happened to be our first ever UM listener request. Oh really Yeah, someone requested that and we acquiesced and we started getting all these emails. UM. So the point of that is

is they're doing this in animals. There are scenarios where we could potentially do this with humans, but UM and another follow up article we read turns out that enhancing ourselves genetically could eventually lead to UM unknown consequences down the road. Uh. Specifically, in this case, we have learned that our human brain is evolving, it's getting larger, it's gaining more cognitive abilities as we evolve, and if you start to bring with natural selection via genetic modification, these

things might not show up right away. It might show up generations later. So you might be doing something you think will help when and in fact, years from now, it might keep your brain from growing. Like everyone else's and this is just one example of something that could go wrong. Organisms evolve right through mutations. Well, we lack the foresight to know what mutation will be beneficial in

what will be harmful years down the line. So even something that may be harmful immediately or somewhat harmful could be extremely beneficial decades, hundreds, thousands, millions of years from now. We would never know. That's too late. Once you've done it, Yeah you're done. No. I kind of had the impression that, like, once you start tampering, you could conceivably, you know, keep improving,

but it would have to be constant. Well, and what this article points out, which is a good point, is natural selection is at its best when you've got a large gene pool. And if you're narrowing that gene pool for a reason you think is great, you're still narrowing the gene pool. And I think proponents of genetic engineering would say, well, that's fine, we're narrowing the gene pool. Who cares. We're taking full control of evolution, so evolution

can kiss off. But this raises all sorts of questions, like some of which we've already touched upon, but like who decides what's ideal? Who decides what traits are good and what are bad? What happens when this becomes you know, commercially viable, but it's still extremely expensive than just the wealthy have designer children? Well, I mean, what kind of

designer children do do we make that? I read this one ethicist who said that we have a moral obligation two genetically engineer and modify our kids so that they're not a harm to themselves or other people, which makes a lot of sense. Like I can see how that is a moral obligation. Like, if you have the technology to improve people and improve society like that, you have to do it, you know. But then of course there's like the other side, it's like God, I don't know,

we don't really know what we're doing here playing god? Yeah, because I mean, what happens if you make a kid that's awful little bit and like they're like just totally messed up, But they wouldn't have been if you hadn't tampered with them. Who's responsible for that? And in what ways are you responsible for it? Well? And more well, not more importantly, but additionally, where the line is drawn? You know, is it okay to say like, that's kind

of like my baby had blue eyes? Right, No big deal? Right? Yeah? Was that the line? Or is the line? Like, um, maybe it'd be cool if they were athletic, right and super smart and had blue eyes and blond hair and then boom boys from Brazil? But what's the again, what's what are the problems with those things? Well? Yeah, you

know it's gonna be athletic and smart, right. Or Happy is another one that David pointed out that I find tough to to to disagree with, Like, if you have the technology to make your kids happier, like ratchet up their baseline happiness is how we put it, Why wouldn't you do that? If you can make society a better place because everybody's happier, why wouldn't you do it? Well, just this is just a lot ee to me saying,

you know, there's always far reaching consequences. There's always ripples, every stone you're throwing a lake, you know, like, what what else is going to happen? If everybody's happy? Are there downfalls or their setbacks? And there what's going on? I know it is a tricky, tricky subject. Anytime we bring up jeans, it becomes a tricky subject. It does, which is why they're fascinating, that's right, and why people really get up on their soapbox when they you know,

this means a lot to a lot of people. Religious circles, scientific circles. A lot of folks are weighing in from different you know, circles. But you know what that means. It's it was just stupid. Okay. If you want to learn more about genetics, how stuff works is loaded with them articles on them on it. Yeah. Um, you can type in genetics, gens, designer babies, whatever you want in the handy search bar and it's gonna bring up some pretty cool articles. Do you recommend you wasted a year

or two meeting them? Um? And I said handy search bar. I think so that means its time for listener mail. It's right, Josh, I am going to call this plug for our friends at q s a C. Remember meeting uh Sandra at trivia night in New York. She give us the hats the baseball Caps. Yeah, what what is the qu s a C Is the Quality Services for the Autism Compati. So this from uh Sandra. She's super sweet, very nice, and she says this, guys, thanks so much

for humoring my over enthusiasm for my cause. Uh and my over enthusiasm for meeting you guys at trivia night who I look up to. It was an amazing night of randomness. All the other people on our second place team met in line total strangers. After my initial star struck nous died down, which never happens to me because I worked with famous people all the time and couldn't care less. I just felt like, Uh, it just felt like a night where I was hanging out with a

few buddies I've known for a while. Um. She still about us start We're very partritable. It was just silly, Um she said, I felt that way about my whole table of strangers. Actually. Uh So, anyway, she told us that night about U S a c M organizaization she's with, and she says, I'm very passionate about QU S a C because they changed my life. Literally. I did a five k to support them because it was local and my nephew was autistic and I wanted to see if

I could actually walk that far. She had broken both her ankles the previous year. Okay, I thought that was funny too. Um Man, I wonder if she was. Was it called cobbled? Cobbled? Was that in misery? Oh yeah, that's there's a name for the cobble. She hobbled. Hobbled cobbled would be if you just than I might even called hobbling. How yeah, you're hobbled, but that's like a a state. No, but the process by which Kathy Bates like broke the ankles, I don't want to talk about it.

She it was called something like you're it was hobbling somebody. Maybe I'll look that up. That was so nasty. Anyway, I don't think Sandra was cobbled or hobbled. Uh So at the time, I had no clue who they were. Cusack made friends with everyone there and many people who worked there, and then three months later I actually started work there as an employee. I was in corporate television as a video editor for ten years and it beat

down my soul. I was always volunteering and donating what I could, and I felt like, maybe nonprofit is what I should be doing. The opportunity arose and I took it and it has been life changing. Dudes, Since you guys are so excellent being philanthropic, I decided to see if he would be interested in knowing more. So, Josh mentioned you guys were considering doing a podcast on autism.

I'm sure we'll get around of that at some point, right, Um, if you do, I have plenty of people that could answer a lot of questions and gladly pass along addresses and phone numbers. Q Sack has been around for over thirty years, truly amazing in helping the New York City and Long Island areas. So do you guys want to help support this great uh cause for autism? You can go to q s a c dot com or she

has a bowling page and I think you do. Like she gets like a fundraisers going through bowling at www dot first giving dot com slash fundraiser slash Sandra sroka slash bowl and that is Sandra s O r O k A s um Sandra. And yeah she was. She was super nice and she's working for autism now. Very cool? Man? UM, can I give one more side out? We heard from another listener of course, Um, a listener named Emily Eisenman is run for LifeStraw. Did you see this to you?

I did, and now I was gonna read that later let's let's go ahead do it now? Okay, yeah, alright, So, um, Emily is running for Life strow. She heard our podcast from two thousand ten on LifeStraw and she decided to raise a thousand dollars to buy lifestraws by running a thousand miles. Yeah. Um, and she is going to cross a thousand mile mark for the year this week. She may have already done it. Um. And she's proving to be a better funder than a better runner than a fundraiser,

she says. So if everybody who listens to Stuff you Should Know would go help help her fundraise, it would be fantastic. You can go to www dot fundly f u n d l y dot com slash run for Life straw um, and you guys can go check that out and help Emily raise some money for LifeStraw. And if you are unfamiliar with LifeStraw, go listen to our podcast on that subject, which you can probably are going to have to find on our RSS feed as well. Yeah.

Is um just you know what you do? You you Google or you get your favorite search bar and you type and stuff you should know rss feed and it's like boom right there, all of our shows ever, Yep, Stuff you Should Know RSS every single one. It's good stuff. Um, all right, well I guess that's it, right, That is it? Sir? All right? Uh. If you want to contact us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast, join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff we Should Know, and you can send us a good old fashioned email

to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com