This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born

Does population decline worry you?

I mean, it’s super important. The population of all of the places we love is shrinking. In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.

Uhhh...what? There are a handful of countries with recent population decline, but most of the world is still growing even if growth rates are slowing. I've never seen any credible projections of catastrophic population decline.

Sure, but what if those countries are the only places I love tho?
- This is sounding close to replacement theory.
Yeah it's a bit of a hyperbole, but the rate is what's important. By the time we hit worldwide negative growth rates (which is projected to happen this century), it's going to be way too late to have a discussion about whether or not that's a good thing.
- A good thing for some, a bad thing for others. Good for the environment, most likely. But we're going to have to extensively reorganize the workforce.
In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they're being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
It's a matter of job replacement. Maybe AI will partly help, or maybe we'll open our borders so immigrants can come end masse and do all the jobs we don't have enough people for, but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
I'm by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.
U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/american-population-growth-rate-slow/629392/
- In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they’re being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
  Growth is growth. It's not tracking only births, it's tracking births against deaths. Population decline is people dying faster than they're being replaced, but even "very slow growth" would still mean the population is increasing.
- I'm by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
  Yeah, it matters to capitalists who need an inexhaustible supply of exploitable workers.
  For regular folk, it's not a problem.
- If only there were people desperate for a better life here, alive now, perhaps in a neighboring country or even entire other continent bordering the states.
- but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
  Population decline is a good thing. Raising a child requires more resources than caring for elderly. When the elderly die, that frees up even more land and resources for the next generation.
  The Black Plague caused the Renaissance. WW2 killed almost exclusively all the healthiest and most productive workers at the prime of their working lives. The result was the survivors experienced unprecedented wealth for a generation.
  When the population declines such that a person with a high school diploma can once again own a home and support a family of 4, the population will increase again.
Replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, and there are about 100 countries under that rate. Yes, their populations are still growing, but much of that is through extension of life expectancy and immigration (which requires a higher birth rate somewhere else, lest that other places start seeing shrinking population).
It's not an immediate crisis, but it is turning into a problem that should be addressed soon.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the paywall click: https://archive.is/8WWq2

Link didn’t work for me but ~~suck~~ such a nice wording
- suck a nice wording

As long as you don't use the word eugenics explicitly apparently you can sell anyone on anything.

No they acknowledge that the technology could be used that way. But there's a lot of actual medical problems we can catch this way. Imagine you carry the Huntington's gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don't pass that down to your kids?
- Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
  Nothing. That's what health insurance is for. Also practically noone has any issues with preimplantation diagnostics when it comes to things that are clearly genetic diseases, what rubs people the wrong way is a) selecting by bullshit criteria, e.g. sex, eye colour, curliness of hair, whatever, b) making designer babies the default at the expanse of erm wild ones, worst of all, c) the combination.
  And ethics aside the arguments should be obvious it's also a bad idea from the POV of the honest eugenicist: Humanity's genetic diversity is already low as it is it would be fatal to allow things like fashions to narrow it down even more.
  Humanity is already shaping its own selection criteria, we might need to start doing something extra to avoid evolving ourselves into a corner by non-PID means. Random example: C-Sections. No mother or baby should die in childbirth, yet, the selective pressure towards more uncomplicated births getting removed might, over many many many generations, leave us with very few women who would survive a natural birth which doesn't sound like a good situation for a species to be in, to be reliant on technology to even reproduce. Thus is might become prudent to artificially select for e.g. wide-hip genes.
- It's still eugenics, you just used more words to describe it.
They literally say "Word beginning with 'eu' and ends with 'genics'" inside the article pimping them out.
With a sprinkling of 'Orchid doesn't like us to use that word' as if 'Nazis do not like to be called Nazis' is a valid complaint.

Gene filtering for IVF babies.. gattaca

Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought of that

GATTACA IRL

Ironically, this would enable those with genetic conditions to more safely have kids. I'd argue the problem with Gattaca was that the one man who wasn't genetically perfect was discriminated against, not that everyone else was genetically perfect.
The problem with this is that it sounds like they haven't proven that it works.
(Sorry for the edits, accidentally pressed post before I was done.)
- (Sorry for the edits, accidentally pressed post before I was done.)
  A thousand edits is better than none at all; especially if the bit above needs a colon.

Do you want Khan Noonien Singh? Because that's how you get Khan Noonien Singh.

Eugenics is overblown, they can't even tell the difference between a pre ganglionic fiber and a post ganglionic nerve
- They can be great at darts though.
Do you want Khan Noonien Singh?
YES!

Wasn't there a movie about this? Called Gattaca?

These people are saying “we finally created the utopia of Neuromancer.” And I look at them and I go, “I don’t think you read Neuromancer."
--Cory Doctorow

How much does an Orchid screening cost?

It’s $2,500 per embryo.

And presumably you’d be screening several embryos. What about for families that can’t afford that?

We have a philanthropic program, so people can apply to that, and we’re excited to accept as many cases as we can.

I must now ask a question I’ve been dreading. I’m sorry in advance. Here goes. It’s the inevitable question about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.

No, this is the worst question. This is so mean.

Tell me why it’s so mean.

I find it sad. It’s a sad state of affairs where—my friends who aren’t even in health, they say they get it too. It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud? Do you want to comment on this other random fraud that occurred that has absolutely nothing to do with you besides the person being the same gender as you?

If you’re trying to charitably understand where this question is coming from, how do you do that?

What would be the charitable interpretation—besides that our society is incredibly misogynistic and men’s frauds and failings are passed aside and when one female does it she stands for every other female CEO ever?

So there’s no charitable interpretation.

I don’t think there is. Society treats men as, like, default credible. For a woman, the default is skeptical.

It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud?
This really sounds like she is admitting that this is fraud, and that she doesn't like being compared to other fraud.
- Yeah, she didn't really address fraud comparisons. Went straight to sexism. Both can be true, and if you are a CEO of a medical company you should be ready to prove your shit works.
- That "other" is the possible Freudian slip.
  But she does have somewhat of a point. Though it's female and tech and medical - a closer comparison - women in tech leadership roles do get more questioned on their competence than do men.
- Wtf? No. What relevance does theranos have to this company? Does the interviewer ask the same thing to any other bio tech CEO?
They could just ask who has verified the outcomes... No need to do the 'are you a fraud' line

How to invoke tldr bot?

It automatically replies when it can read/summarize a site, but that isn't always possible (maybe it has problems with some paywalls).

Is there a nonpaywall link?

Check comments, it has been posted.
You can also visit an archive website and paste url on search bar.

Elysium IRL

She can have my babies, wow

bonk Off to horny jail

This is so terribly inhuman. Makes me want to vomit.

People already do similar thing when they decide to not have babies with some bad conditions. The bar is lower now, that's all.