# Future of breeding.



## Princess Ivy (Aug 15, 2005)

So much science fiction is concerned with the future, and a large portion of that which i have read looks in a general way at the family. some, has the family extinct, others has a blanket contraception which can only be lifed with a permit/license/dna screening. there is genesplicing galore and quite a few authors think that the care of the young will be removed from the family unit in general. So, how do you see the future of the family? And the future reproduction of our species (and i mean clean coments only, i don't really want to know about the rise of cyber porn.)


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## don sky (Aug 15, 2005)

You idea relates strongly to a movie called Gattaca (Uma Thurman & Ethan Hawke). With the advent of Genetic engineering and Vast advances in sciences this is what I foresee!

Physically perfect human beings born with Barcodes on their skin that is determined by an implanted genetic code! Hitler's dream of an Aryan race is going to be fulfilled and individuality & uniqueness will cease to exist! Humans are slowly but surely attempting to equate themselves to God. Women will not even need men to produce non-clone offspring!
But this will be hundreds of years in the future so do not worry! As long as Mad Scientists like me and other ethically conscious human beings exist, it wont come to pass for a long long time!


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 15, 2005)

sweetie, i've not seen gatica, but am thinking of things like brave new world, 1984, frank herbert, anne maccaffrey (several of her books touch very briefly on background) and many many others. it is by no means something restricted to or bread from any one fictional piece.


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## kyektulu (Aug 15, 2005)

The future of breeding an interesting subject Princess Ivy.
My view is that for a long time into the future irresponsible people will continue to produce child after child without thought or care for the well being of their offspring or the enviroment it is being raised in. They will continue to reproduce simply for the sake of it and of course the benifit money it grants them. Finally the population will become an issue and countrys will become vastly over populated and like China you will only be permitted to have a single child per family and then all countrys will face the problems China has now... most familys wanting to have a male child to continue the family name therefore far to few females and far to many males... 
The result for the second child if one becomes pregnant by accident, the dying rooms. (did anybody else see the documentary on a few years ago? It was heart breaking ) 
As for the sci fi side of the question who knows I think it might be a excellent idea to have to have a permit to produce a child.. although I believe it would be biased towards those who are physically fit and those of us with illness' will have to reproduce illegally if at all. The modern idea of the family unit will still be in place. I believe that is something will never change.


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## cyborg_cinema (Aug 15, 2005)

don sky said:
			
		

> ...relates strongly to a movie called Gattaca...


...great example. Invalids mopping floors in the cleaning crew.


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## Alia (Aug 15, 2005)

> You idea relates strongly to a movie called Gattaca (Uma Thurman & Ethan Hawke). With the advent of Genetic engineering and Vast advances in sciences this is what I foresee!


 There's a book that is based on that movie... I read it in college.  Does anyone know the name of it by chance?   Was it Brave New World?


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## finvarre (Aug 15, 2005)

You shouldn't forget the cloning, I think.. Why to be pregnant at all, if all you have to do is replicate your own genes or of the person you love, or maybe not even replicate, just choose the right genes for your child and wait for it to be ready to be born?  There are several possibilities.. ie.
1) a society where there are several 'types' or 'classes' of clones, from the brilliant scientists down to the workers, everyone suited to do what the society needs to be done.. like the azis in CJ Cherryh's "Cyteen" for example
2) a society in that you can easily copy yourself - there are several 'selves' of every person, like in Kil'n people by David Brin - if you don't want to perform the boring chores, you just make a copy of yourself that gets the work done, gains money etc, and your main persona is free to do whatever he/she wants to.
there are many other variations on this topic...


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## cyborg_cinema (Aug 15, 2005)

Alia said:
			
		

> There's a book that is based on that movie...



Robert Heinlein's _Beyond This Horizon_?


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## Alia (Aug 15, 2005)

cyborg_cinema said:
			
		

> Robert Heinlein's _Beyond This Horizon_?


  All I remember in the book, (this is bad because we discussed it as a class for weeks) is that there was no human contact with the children.  They laid in a sea of beds left to cry without the love of a mother's arms.  They were breed and raised for a certain job.  They encouraged multiple sex partners, not marriage... the list goes on and on... little physical contact as possible... a more drone like society...


Another book much like this one is _The Giver_... but I know that book and it's not the one I'm talking about.


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## Jaxom_Ruatha (Aug 15, 2005)

I read an interesting science article in this one magasine once and it talked about how in the far future like a few hundred years or even a thousand I can't exactly remember, females will begin to outnumber males until one day there will only be females. It was something about how with the males only being distinguished by a Y chromosome and also having an X, whereas the females have two X chromosomes, the X chromosomes grow stronger since they have more variety to choose from (Three X chromosomes from their parents) whereas the Y chromosome grows weaker as it is the only one of its kind passed on and so it has no chance to be dominated by a stronger Y chromosome until eventually it will be so weak that only the X chromosomes will be passed on resulting in only female babies. But it also said that by then we will have the technology for human cloning, so that is how our species will survive. No offense meant, but with all the same sex partners in the world today, specifically males it will only speed up this process as less males reproducee. This brings an interesting idea for a book I have, although I probably will never get to writing it since I am no author, what would it be like for the last male child born. Would he be so stressed by females demanding he couple with them, treating him like a king but still basically seeing him as a stud for breeding that he commits suicide or tries to escape/hide or even dress and pretend to be like a girl just to live his life in peace? Would he be deleriously happy, with all the most beautiful women begging him to breed with them and living his whole life in comfort? An even more interesting possibility is what if he had not attraction to the female sex and since he was the only male left, they kept attempting to clone him, only to find out that every copy of him was just as uninterested in females as he was. THe list goes on and on, but it is fun to think about  .


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 15, 2005)

that is brave new world.
just to go a bit further, the frank herbert i'm thinking of is The eyes of Heisenberg. where they are all on a contraceptive gas, most are sterile, including the 'optimen' who are the 'rulers' their strongest fear is that of a self viable. ie: a person who can reproduce themselves. wow, shocking.
as to the anne maccaffreys, well there are two examples: 1 is the pegasus series, where the number of ofspring are limited, if the parents have 2 kids they become sterilised. if they have more than that illegaly, the offspring are sterilised (suposedly very humane, but this brings into light the ego aspect. ie people want to be able to have children in order to be considered imoratl etc...
then there is of course the brain ship series. wherein deformed infants are put into shells and turned into useful members of society. the very subtle menace here is that these shell people are then programed to love and accept their lives and to be well adjusted. ie although they are free agents they are still controlled. and although this descision to encapsulate them is taken almost in utro, they still have to pay back all of the costs.
the future of humanity seen through these sort of eyes can be frieghtening.


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## profeaston (Aug 15, 2005)

We'll keep doing it the old-fashioned way--it's cheap!  And since overpopulation is looking more and more like a nonissue, at least in the trad sense (UN projections say we peak at about 11 billion by 2100 and then decline), we won't need draconian permit systems.  It's pretty clear by now that the best way to limit family size is to educate the women.  In large parts of the world, we've been doing that, and fertility rates are dropping so fast that many developed nations are already declining in population.

The deteriorating Y chromosome is also a nonissue.  Further research has shown it ain't so.  Not that that ever stops the media!


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## lazygun (Aug 15, 2005)

Profeaston,slightly off-topic but not by much,..you ever read/hear of something alluding to recessive genes being more prevelent in males,in particular to _negative_ hereditary traits passed on to thier off-spring?.

If this makes sense,...hope you reply.


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## profeaston (Aug 15, 2005)

Haven't heard of it as you describe it, but males are XY, females are XX.  Females get a double dose of all genes on the X chromosome.  When the two copies are one recessive and one dominant, the recessive won't show (which is what recessive means).  The male gets only one copy of genes on the X, so any recessives show.  When they are negative, you see a "sex-linked" hereditary disease such as hemophilia.  Females can get that too, but more rarely, since they need to copies of the recessive for the disease to appear; such females do exist.

Will that do?


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## lazygun (Aug 15, 2005)

Many thx Profeaston!,..was exactly the right subject. 

Now have 2 new questions,...but will not impose.


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## profeaston (Aug 15, 2005)

Private questions are okay, or maybe I should start my own section of the Forum for questions!  Or you could visit my blog and ask there.  I'm lecturing on emerging technologies at the moment, but I'm really a biologist by training, so anything is fair game.


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## cyborg_cinema (Aug 15, 2005)

profeaston said:
			
		

> ...my own section of the Forum for questions!


...good idea Dr. I'd be interested in the threads.


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## lazygun (Aug 15, 2005)

Profeaston,no imposition intended.


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## kyektulu (Aug 15, 2005)

Although cloning has already began, I am strongly against it but I do believe it will one day be legal to 'select' the qualities of your child.
Yes it is great to have the gaurentee of a healthy baby but the diversity in the world we be lost and they wont be individuality anymore.


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## profeaston (Aug 15, 2005)

Cloning has begun, for animals (like the afghan hound in last week's news).  Cloning of humans has begun only in the sense that we have used the process to make very early embryos.  That's still a long, long way from a baby.

Selecting the qualities of your child has nothing to do with cloning.  That's genetic engineering, an entirely different kettle of fish.  Yes it will surely be legal someday, but I suspect it will not be popular until it becomes cheap.


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 15, 2005)

i don't like either cloning or genetic pre-selection. as a mother, it seriously bothers me.and don't even bother bringing up the ' if you could have a baby to save a child would you argument'. i think its spurious and selfish. my son was born with a genetic anomoly which is more prevelant in females. my ex-husband has a genetic imballance which seems not to care which side it takes, male or female. i love them both dearly, but wouldn't try to cure them at the expense of another, or try to get a better model through cloning.


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## Stalker (Aug 16, 2005)

Why so far in the future?

China has already imposed limitations over the number of children. The chinese family may have only one child. Their motto: "One family, one child".
What concerns SF, the problem of overpopulation is often solved with space expantion and colonisation of other planets. 
Every limitation (Gattaka as the example) is related tightly with dystopian point of view because it violated fundamental human rights and freedoms.
On the other hand, can sexual education and bringing up an individual as the responsible member of society do the job? I doubt because it's a long process that requires unified approach all over the world. That is not likely to happen in close future. So, limitations of human freedoms in this aspect?
Are there other ways I missed?


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 16, 2005)

not always. i return to the pegasus series, where the governers had impost the restriction on the number of children. these were democratic governments. but i do like the idea of colonisation. i'd be on the first 'boat' i could catch. unfortunatly we are far removed from that step at this stage.


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## Ash (Aug 16, 2005)

My favourite example of future breeding laws is in Larry Niven's Ringworld. To keep the population they had a "birthright lottery" that would only the winners to have more children. 

So just say.... "luck" was a genetic trait. Then a child that was born because of a lottery might be luckier than average. Teela Brown (one of my favourite Science Fiction characters) was born from six consecutive generations of lottery winners, so she was very, very, lucky 

All this stuff kind of got retroactively rewritten in later Ringworld books, but it was a concept I really liked in the first.

As for cloning. Love it or hate it I think it's an inevitability. There's a social (and perhaps moral) stigma attatched to it, that I think is going to take a long, long time to change. A change I don't think will happen in our lifetimes. But I think there is an inevitability that cloning and genetic manipulation will be part of the future of breeding.


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## cyborg_cinema (Aug 17, 2005)

Princess Ivy said:
			
		

> ...how do you see the future of the family?


Once the divorce rate hit 50%, the future didn't look good for the family.


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## Stormflame (Aug 17, 2005)

I do not believe so much in cloning...but, however, if I could choose the sex and every other characteristic of my child to be born, and that child be healthy without failure, then I say I would do it. 
Imagine when our race is brought to such a superior level, that sickness and illness are not even a factor!


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## Princess Ivy (Aug 17, 2005)

somehow, nature always wins through. a point made with painstaking clarity in Heisenberg.


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## Tim Bond (Sep 6, 2005)

To many this is all science fiction.

I have nothing against cloning and the refinement of such technology – it will be done eventually and reach levels of possible sophistication that outstrip anything we currently conceive of even by our best science fiction writers. I think it will be abused on occasion until we can get a handle on it as a species and hopefully our social consciousness will have advanced enough that the adjustment will be done with little needless pain.

By the way, religious notions aside and selecting a modern framework for discussion to work with, there remains a profound implication present here.

It has been confirmed for the modern human - the top end best of our basic form has evolved to a point where further physical progression is no longer viable. We evolved large brains to utilize tools, language and all the things we do and gave up horns, claws and teeth to do so. A woman’s pelvis will not get larger. At birth we remain underdeveloped require great care. Because our brains are so small and our skulls so soft, we start off very vulnerable and our mental functions start off not much better than a chimp. We evolved to this basic structure for a reason – 

It provided advantage. 

Traits considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’ exist on a spectrum and the spectrum is defined almost entirely of what the general population holds in esteem rather than for the traits actual worth and function in relation to human experience and survival. Most opinions about a truly ‘superior’ humanity come from merely superficial notions of what it would look like and our own ambitions and not from the actual truth of our unacknowledged and unseen possibilities.

Supposedly ‘Bad’ traits in poor performers under limited conditions when compared to the individual ‘gifted’ with all the ‘Good’ traits we all think we want;– with only a slight change in conditions can produce actions and even reveal previously unseen talents that not just compensate but can outperform those supposedly ‘gifted’ with all those fortunate beginnings most envy.

The variations also obviously designate general typo better suited for certain duties than others, that is if we all fall in line like our social engineered planners had initially intended for us – going quietly without much as two or three questions asked at the age of eleven that really mattered and summarily dropping the issue due to the discomfort from those you ended up interrogating.

A student, B student, D student (join the military, resist and make authority stronger or submit and serve – try being a craftsman – blue-collar or a dumb mechanic. You surely aren’t smart enough to figure out yet an education is not about what you learn and can Do with it – it’s about mimicking authority figures and the figures they put before you without much care over meaning and function beyond getting an A.) - sorry, but the truely aware D student is not dumb at all, and in terms of function can excel and outperform most strasight 'A' types dependent on manipulation over 'symbols' and language. Most of those 'D' students need a 'real' result to their thoughts for it to all 'work' - they just think differently.


Actually an truly A student learns it is not even about ‘getting’ an ‘A’ that matters, but rather it’s about control over symbols – a status trick – many S-‘A’ students look nice, ect and concern themselves more with manipulation and control over symbols and eventually people than they do the actual possible use and validity of what they are told to swallow, and regurgitate back to the system in a fashion that flatters their teacher, and eventually their boss.

The main questions of evolution arise in the acquisition higher complexities of mind and its integration with the environment working in harmony, this process can happen to anyone, regardless of any supposed genetic ‘inferiority’ and can be sighted as an obvious extension of physical evolution. 

Adaptation to the environment and changing conditions for the survival and benefit of the species remain the eventual goal in evolution – always toward a more comprehensive and non-static (dynamic) unity/responsibility with the environment and thus the universe. This is known as the principle of negative entropy.

Cloning will most likely produce a more stable genetic distribution and thus blandness. Many genetic diseases and weaknesses will be overcome and we will definitely learn how to extend life dramatically. Indefinitely?

The most important evolution and area for directing your concerns though remains the mind itself and what you can do with it. We only possess the option of discussion on such possibilities because some mind somewhere synthesized all previous knowledge on the subject with his/her own creativity and experiences and out of these higher complexities and with functional integration we came to a point where such is an inevitability. 

Emotions, rigid doctrines, some physical changes and demands all block the minds ability to run effectively at a high level of complexity. ‘Leaders’ use strong emotions to inspire some form of greed or fear in the form of very strong emotions and reinforced by placement within very rigid hierarchies with which they influence 90% (the vast majority) of the population and degrade their ability to think objectively. This is called ‘patriotism’. 

They not only Tax you and demand your thinking process cease beyond a very small line of thought allotted to you at some point – they bend you over and turn you upside down and say by virtue of ignorance alone you all are somehow ‘unique’ and ‘Special’ – even if superficial popular society frowns on innovation. Deviants are the only ones who ever produced a new invention that benefited man, and they also are the type to become a mother Teresa – J-Lo ain’t gonna do it. Deviants fight better.

Popular mediocre society confuses the animalistic side of man that gets applied when not instructed by the leadership and calls these types deviants. I would call them typical, a solder kills, and sometimes without mercy and often cruel and unthinking, yet methodically with plans, targeting a specific minority as do serial killers – the only difference is who commands the action to take place? This pattern is very old and not ‘deviant’ at all; even wolves eat their own children and monkey theirs. 

A true deviant is nothing to fear other than the fear produced by such misconceptions. I find it funny that the most power hungry and bully prone will freely order or even freely take part in callousness, brutality, and murder to uphold what they call ‘goodness’ and the law. We as a species should all become concerned more with the quality of our mind and the actions we take than we are at this stage.


Technically breeding by definition is a precise endeavor. We have done it to horses, some farm animals and the dog - only our own nobility in Europe ever attempted it to any real effect. We never really 'breed' humans the way we do horses and pigs - unless a secret society could somehow manipulate things with our will engaged fully with their selections - I find that level of control by an outside source on the basis of selected traits difficult to accept. Even with arranged marriages basing the value of the mate on social status and beauty, it has always been a difficult thing to attempt to control. Love matters. Cloning is and will be very different from arranged marriages, breeding, and mating pairs.


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## Tim Bond (Sep 6, 2005)

The mind can change, evolve and grow if given the opportunity. You just cannot rush such a thing though – rushing the acquisition of knowledge usually results in the bases of such learning to stem from greed and fear – two very animalistic traits – most education is based on this – it is simple and fast, even reflexive, but truly higher levels of complexity and superior cognition do not flow from such a foundation. You will only ‘freeze’ your thinking with the practice of conditioning allowed to hold domination over the process of your experiences and learning. Unfortunately most people think because the conditioning they always previously underwent and called by others and education got them where they are now, the no other way could possibly exist and that restricted thinking on elaborate terms, as long as someone else justifies it with compliment, an ‘A’, or some credits used by our society to reward what society values – then the things that they see from the filter allowed by such an ‘education’ produces the only states of mind of true worth – nothing could be further from the truth. 



With the acquisition of higher complexities between simpler functions and even higher platforms of complexity developed and refined upon even those, like in a synergetic fashion (if you do not direct your thoughts down only expected and limited line conceived of by your mind from a previous stage of development) the mind can not just develop complexity or prodigious use of simple organic neurological centers, the combinations much like in engineering and with application of various 'advanced' organs (faculties - based on simple uses of the mind that overlap and work in harmony to produce new and even multi-aspect dimensions to thought that seem impossible to those with only a partial awareness of such possibilities) the actions you take and your experiences are the frame - the mind and all the constituent parts (proportions in construction are extremely important - think a carburetor for a car engine with different fittings) are like the engine.



A genetic ‘defect’, or rather a brain alteration with genetic tie-ins like autism can be devastating to the social aspects of interpersonal human relationships with the afflicted and even hinder this persons ability to navigate in his environment safely. But, I have hear tell of at least one so afflicted, actually go through his life and one day ‘cross a bridge’ inside. His physical brain deficiencies overcome by some synthesis of complex interactions between certain connections (coupled with an internally deliberate act on his part) of the mind only touched on in a limited way for most with the disease and he went into remission. He afterward retained the abilities developed from his previous way of living with extremely focused/restricted thought, yet, he could afterward engage in a very healthy social context and began acquiring vital spatial skills and could coordinate a day and interact much like a ‘normal’ human being as me and you understand such things.



These ‘higher’ platforms of cognition and development when based on the ‘correct’ orientation seem very important. A mental evolution for a few who can develop it is very much possible. Even supposedly genetic disabilities can yield abilities beyond what we can do and the superficial assumption that these people are forever inferior or defective and should be treated as such is a poor conclusion. Cloning will remove many diseases – especially the physical, but have you ever thought that maybe some ‘genetic’ mental ‘disorders’ are only called that by the popular vote and that these phenomena reported by the ‘afflicted’ could serve some use if we could just figure out how to get them on page one (smooth social communication) with the rest of us? Maybe, the strange ‘goings-on’s’ from such people carry some bases in reality, but, they themselves are miss educated, and manhandled for not possessing great emotional or social conscious verbal restraint about reporting on these experiences? – and that the real damage happens when society puts an all powerful and all-important label on them and begins an almost irreversible and infinitely damaging social process inflicting further damage psyche and the capacity to manage their own life – that we contribute in making them wrecks and dependant on us and our drugs often enough and they get psychologically demeaned and brutalized for ever showing anything of themselves – this will produces sickness in even so-called ‘healthy’ individuals. The initial sickness they carry and get punished for is really two things in the actions based on their thoughts:




The inability to keep their mouth shut when social concerns demand that anything outside the accepted experience of others could be disruptive to social ‘harmony’. It is we who define abnormal behavior – a public that sees the superficial and allows our opinions to be crafted by non-essential concerns and the word of uncertainty.
Most often they possess a faulty system of logic and semantics where one thing gets equated with another without a gradient allowance for exceptions and precision in definitions. Black and white thinking. When a person like this ‘experiences’ something their previous ‘education’ did not prepare them for they make an approximation to what they were told something like that means. To carry primitive bases of education and centering arousal of fear/greed at the basis of all learning and equating these two things with the highest of sublime forces and the lowest of devolutionary evils – such connections can become devastating. If such people carry obsession or self-centeredness they may hurt others – like solders do when threatened and fearful or commanded by a leader ‘greater’ and thus more sublime than them. When God talks to (what we call crazy) such people, yet they carry a loser script - we put them on drugs make them dependent and destroy what independence they may have previously owned. If a charismatic cult leader (lying or not – why the need to control the actions and wealth of essentially dependant primates?) does it – then some fools follow. Yet, in both cases how do we know no one ‘spoke’ to them? We do not. Miracle workers (Jesus, Buddha, Rumi) who function quite well may also have similar experiences/visions – but they know the truth of things, do not get confused by it and act much differently (for different reasons) than the pervious two or three examples – what they do actually matters and when interacting with ‘reality’ they invariably eliminate the effect of fear and greed in their basic thinking and actions and thereby profit by it.
 

So, even with disabilities – ‘inherited’ traits, I do not think all gene ‘deficiencies’ need total elimination from the gene-pool. We need to come up a notch or two in our thinking as a species. It is something we can do – we may eventually find gems in that scary muck our superficial expectations define as evil or sick. And when we do, we will be much better for it, not just for diversities sake – but for our self understanding and even new avenues of superior performance could open up for our species.



If we do cauterize something that looks unattractive to eyes not yet able to see, consider; maybe we will come to find that the ‘pretty-lights’ we hold such fascination for in exclusion to all else (the superficial opinion of what is beautiful, healthy and strong) we will eventually see when we come out of the haze and blur of current understanding are really nothing more than horrors – and that the malformed shape before us really carried the most delicate and exquisite craftsmanship and sparkles with a subtle radiance that settles to our very depths within our true selves when seen though crystal clear eyesight of real understanding of what our purpose is and the truth of reality. Cuts we make should strike deep within us and not strike outward at others for trivial reasons.


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## Tim Bond (Sep 6, 2005)

Many 'Normal' people under durress revert to an animalistic level of primitiveness and brutality. The vinear they wear that pleases you with a smile often gets used for superficial reasons. Real articulation is minimal.

90% of american industry and production and capital exchange stems from 'non-essential' past-times and thus can be defined precisely as nothing more than entertainment. Most education fits you for carreers that fall in this 90% (that was in 1970's mind you - it has gotten worse) - so, a trivial education fitted for a trivial work, allowed to exist in a trivial life-style and the peoples of trivial pursuit and interest compound and feeds right back into the needs of a very trivial entertainment industry. The very foundation of this 90%'s thought process still exists mostly of extreamly primitive aspirations that hinder and block further possible mental development and eliminate any truely 'effective' actions in a life. Goverments kill eachother for entertainment and non-essentials by definition.

Leadership requires stupid basis to the mass thought process to control the activities and distribution of wealth. They do not appreciate truths - and kill to protect their 'stability'. Knowledge produces wealth. Real knowledge is based on truth. If you know the truth you have nothing to fear and you desire not. All platforms of thought that follow are both stable and unhindered. You may need to throw out all previous notions about knowledge though and most are reluctant to do so.


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