Does Reproductive Technology Concern You?

I spent most of my career as a 'genetic engineer' working on tropical diseases, please do not 'other' scientists, or disparage them as a whole. I worked on diseases that kill 500,000 people (mostly children) a year in the poorest nations on Earth. I could have earned far more working in industry and on First World diseases, but chose to devote myself to helping the most vulnerable.

There is actually a very great overlap between common autism-linked genetic alleles and alleles for high academic attainment. There is even a scientific paper called Autism as a disorder of high intelligence (BJ Crespi - Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2016). Weeding out traits for high intelligence would be like the whole of humanity shooting itself in the foot, or head. I think scare stories of eugenicists weeding out autism-linked genes is looking at an unlikely occurrence. Looking for large-scale genetic changes, often de novo (i.e. not hereditary), that are linked to certain uncommon forms of autism with very serious co-morbidities, is more likely, but still difficult and expensive to achieve. 

I agree Martin, and I think all but the most extreme eugenicists would realise this. Where did you get your DNA test done, I'd love to know this much about my families origins, I did a standard ancestry test and found out I'm 89% southern English which I think is quite high? I'd love to know how much Neanderthal I have. Do you wonder if we and Neanderthals have the same X and Y chromosomes? Is that possible? Do we have any idea of what sex chromosomes Neanderthals had?

I think one of the reasons parents are offered an abortion if they're found to have a high likeihood of Downs or other chromosomal abnormalities, is that the parents may feel unable to cope with the needs of such a child and the heartbreak of either outliving them, or watcing their child slowly die. I think it would be a horrible position to be in as an expectant parent, whatever you do is going to be somehow wrong. Where did you get this information from? Despite centuries, maybe thousands of years of exposure of sick or disabled babies being born, we still have things like Downs, so maybe its not as simple as editing a few genes?

Sorry to disapoint but there has always been this tendency for medical professionals to want to play god and they almost certainly would have got away with it and many still do, its like that old joke, 'Whats the difference between god and a consultant? God dosent' think he can practice medicine'.

I used 23 and Me, then I sent my DNA data to My Living DNA as they are much better at fine DNA structure in the British Isles. No sex chromosomal DNA from Neanderthals has survived in modern populations. The same goes for mitochondrial DNA. Strangely, the original Neanderthal Y chromosome was replaced by an early modern human Y chromosome many tens of thousands of years before Neanderthal extinction, Genetic exchange was going on for a very long time, starting well before the 'out of Africa' expansion of modern humans.

23 and Me have a historical match section, which compares your DNA with ancient DNA from archaeological remains. Most of my matches (looking at largish single chunks of DNA) are to Viking Age Scandinavians - including one from a ship burial with weapons - but also with Ötzi the Iceman, the Copper Age individual who thawed out of an Alpine glacier. I also have a match with a pre-Roman Durotrigian tribal man from Dorset and a Hun woman from Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, which is a bit puzzling.

I keep up with publications in the autism field, mainly through Google Scholar. These days many scientific journals are open access, so they are free to view.

I used 23 and Me, then I sent my DNA data to My Living DNA as they are much better at fine DNA structure in the British Isles. No sex chromosomal DNA from Neanderthals has survived in modern populations. The same goes for mitochondrial DNA. Strangely, the original Neanderthal Y chromosome was replaced by an early modern human Y chromosome many tens of thousands of years before Neanderthal extinction, Genetic exchange was going on for a very long time, starting well before the 'out of Africa' expansion of modern humans.

23 and Me have a historical match section, which compares your DNA with ancient DNA from archaeological remains. Most of my matches (looking at largish single chunks of DNA) are to Viking Age Scandinavians - including one from a ship burial with weapons - but also with Ötzi the Iceman, the Copper Age individual who thawed out of an Alpine glacier. I also have a match with a pre-Roman Durotrigian tribal man from Dorset and a Hun woman from Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, which is a bit puzzling.

I keep up with publications in the autism field, mainly through Google Scholar. These days many scientific journals are open access, so they are free to view.

Thanks Martin I may well try that, I stopped my subscription with my heritage, the company I did my test with and now don't know how to access my results, I wasn't happy with that website, I found them very hard to any historical research on my family backgound.

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Wouldn't every potential parent need IVF for all this gene editing to happen? Surely the only way to eradicate all or any genetic disease would be to screen every person and there would need to be no more natural conceptions?