@Mr_NutterButter yeah, eugenics and natural selection is a super ethically questionable topic. modern medicine allows genes which may not be the greatest to continue, however even people who are FUBAR can provide meaningful contributions to society, sometimes BECAUSE of their "poor genes." i mean, take autism for instance.
i think it is fair enough to say that we shouldn't be the arbiter for that sort of thing.
@MaleGoddess @Mr_NutterButter i don't believe that for a second, can you back that up? this is just the first result that comes up when i do a search for "is autism genetic"
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/new-genetic-clues-uncovered-largest-study-families-with
autism probably doesn't come from genetics alone, but i feel like it does play a factor.
regardless, the point remains the same.
Yeah, but there's no gene for autism.
Basically they're saying it's a combination of genes.
It's been a while, but they can tell eye color, skin pigment, hair color, sex, and all that from looking at genes, but if they took your blood for testing at birth, they would basically have no way of detecting whether or not you'll have autism.
Maybe a combination of genes that don't match up.
One thing that was discussed in biology class is that genes also have on/off switches. If certain conditions are met a gene will be activated or deactivated. For example, wisdom teeth. Fewer and fewer people will grow wisdom teeth that need to be pulled because we're not cave men eating raw nuts, so the gene isn't being activated.
mRNA can be used to send these signals. I think that's what they are doing with CRISPR.
My personal theory is that while it may be genetic, there's something environmental flipping these genes on or off and causing malfunctions. 20 years ago there were not nearly as many autistic people in the world. Go to any university classroom and there's at least 2 hitting themselves in the face autistic people in the room. When I was in high school, many moons ago, there were maybe 5 autists in the entire school.
@MaleGoddess @Mr_NutterButter i assume there are environmental factors, even ones that don't affect genetics but do affect psychological development. i have a very autistic cousin and i'm willing to bet he'd be better off if his parents didn't use it as a crutch and an excuse for everything. i'm sure the existence of things like parents leaving their kids alone with ipads and being more or less vacant doesn't help either.
although i haven't studied this really and it is just a pure guess, i've also always thought that it is becoming more common because whatever genetic makeup leads to it has proliferated. if you have parents that have the potential to have autistic offspring but don't, then their child may be even more likely to have an autistic child. just a thought.
also it's funny talking about this underneath nagatoro hentai xD fedi in a nutshell.
Oh, I just thought of something relevant to this conversation.
There's a genetic marker the type of ear wax you have. If they had a sample of your DNA, they could tell if you have soft ear wax or hard ear wax.
But taking the DNA from an autismo, they wouldn't be able to say this guy is autistic or not.