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+--- Thread: Nanobots glide through living cells + Genetic test scores are not eugenics (/thread-5202.html)
Nanobots glide through living cells + Genetic test scores are not eugenics - C C - Apr 16, 2018
Nanobots Glide Through Living Cells
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/nanobots-glide-through-living-cells
EXCERPT: It’s time to let go of the idea that nanomachines are simply life-sized technology shrunk down to a very small size, vis-à-vis the 1960s movie Fantastic Voyage. In fact, a lot of nanotechnology is much, much cooler. That includes a corkscrew-shaped nanomotor described this week in the journal Advanced Materials. Using small, rotating magnetic fields, researchers steered the itty bitty machines inside of living cells to trace the letters “N” and “M,” corresponding to the word nanomotor. “We not only showed their motion inside a cell, we have engineered a strategy to move them in controlled fashion” and without hurting the cells, said the paper’s co-author Malay Pal...
MORE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/nanobots-glide-through-living-cells
Genetic Test Scores Predicting Intelligence Are Not the New Eugenics
https://leapsmag.com/genetic-test-scores-predicting-intelligence-are-not-the-new-eugenics/
EXCERPT: “A world where people are slotted according to their inborn ability – well, that is Gattaca. That is eugenics.” This was the assessment of Dr. Catherine Bliss [...] when asked [...] about polygenic scores that can predict a person’s intelligence or performance in school. Like a credit score, a polygenic score is statistical tool that combines a lot of information about a person’s genome into a single number. [...]
The trick to polygenic scoring is to use these results and apply them to people who weren’t participants in the original study. Measure the genes of a new person, weight each one of her millions of genetic variants by its correlation with educational attainment from a genome-wide association study, and then simply add everything up into a single number. Voila! — you’ve created a polygenic score for educational attainment.
On its face, the idea of “scoring” a person’s genotype does immediately suggest Gattaca-type applications. Can we now start screening embryos for their “inborn ability,” as Bliss called it? Can we start genotyping toddlers to identify the budding geniuses among them? The short answer is no. Here are four reasons why dystopian projections about polygenic scores are out of touch with the current science...
MORE: https://leapsmag.com/genetic-test-scores-predicting-intelligence-are-not-the-new-eugenics/