
The morality of sperm donation - mike_esspe
http://www.gwern.net/Ethical%20sperm%20donation
======
getabike
Wow, they go through this whole spiel without even asking the question of
whether or not IQ is hereditary.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ>

Apparently it is but all the "countless good outcomes" and "positive
externalities" quoted in the article boil down to job performance, income, and
literacy. As long as you're going to start a eugenics campaign why not throw
some other criteria in there like life satisfaction, propensity for illness,
muscular strength, generosity, tendency for violence, lack of elitism, or any
one of a million other possible objectives.

~~~
manmal
That was my first thought - when I read "IQ" I already hit the back button.
Genes alone are not enough to explain _anything_ - Gene expression, influenced
by upbringing, environmental factors etc., better hits the target.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Studies of twins consistently show a heritability of about 85% for adult IQ
and executive function (focus vs. ADHD). The postnatal environment has little
effect unless it is severely neglectful or deprived.

Edit: added "postnatal".

~~~
manmal
Do these twins grow up in comparable environments? Another thing to consider:
gene expression and brain development is kicked off in the womb, and twins
most often share the same mother. I'm not sure your argument applies here.

~~~
pygy_
That's the point of twin studies: comparing genetically identical subjects who
grew up in different environments.

The prenatal influence cannot, practically, be investigated at this point in
history.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
The prenatal influence has been directly tested. They compare pairs of non-
identical siblings, some who are twins and some who are not. The same
pregnancy pairs are about as similar to each other as the other pairs. So the
prenatal environment either has little effect, or it has a significant but
highly nonlinear effect. (Once again, this assumes no extreme hardship.)

~~~
pygy_
Interesting, thanks.

------
MakeUsersWant
In Germany, a recent court ruling means it is impossible to donate
anonymously. Another court ruling makes it impossible to get out of child
support. EDIT: Child support only ends after around 5 years of university
study.

I predict mail-order sperm or sperm bank tourism. Especially for high
acheivers' sperm.

~~~
dbaupp
So the sperm donor has to pay child support??

~~~
Semaphor
As far as I know only the US had sperm donors pay child support so far.

News article about anonymity in Germany for sperm donors:
[http://www.dw.de/no-anonymity-for-sperm-donors-court-
rules/a...](http://www.dw.de/no-anonymity-for-sperm-donors-court-
rules/a-16582786)

~~~
jrogers65
> As far as I know only the US had sperm donors pay child support so far.

I did not think that this kind of insanity was possible outside of a mental
institution but apparently it is.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/02/us-sperm-
donor...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/02/us-sperm-donor-kansas-
court-lesbian-couple.html)

The insanity is that it's not the woman who recieved the donation who was
fighting for child support but the _state_.

------
xutopia
This had little to do with morality but was interesting nonetheless.

~~~
silvestrov
It's a hairline from Eugenics.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics>

~~~
pjscott
If you look in the sidebar of the article, its summary was:

> Is sperm donating a worthwhile form of positive eugenics?

So yes, the author is well aware that he's talking about eugenics, and plainly
isn't bothered by it. The problem with eugenics has never been the concept
_per se_ , but rather, the methods used to achieve it. Sperm donation is
wholly voluntary.

~~~
drostie
Maybe, but voluntarism is only part of the moral equation.

So-called genetic "designer babies" are widely considered morally problematic
but that process is totally voluntary; and in general eugenics provides an
echo-chamber for certain discriminatory beliefs. In a very strong way what
we're talking about is capitalism, which does the same thing -- unregulated
markets adapt to whatever discrimination allows them to have more customers.

So I agree with the comment a couple levels above -- there is a strong batch
of ethical concerns here beyond just "there are kids out there who
biologically trace you as their father/mother" and it's a bit of a pity that
those concerns were not strongly addressed.

~~~
pjscott
I think what we have here is a case of status quo bias -- new things get
subjected to more intense ethical scrutiny because they're new. Selective
breeding of humans has been around for as long as there have been humans; it's
what people do when they choose a mate. Evolutionarily, this is simply a
matter of trying to choose the most advantageous genes to mix with yours, to
maximize the expected propagation of your own genes. In practice, it is a
eugenics program on a vast scale, and nobody seems to have a problem with it,
despite the fact that it "provides an echo-chamber for certain discriminatory
beliefs" and can lead to inbreeding if you're reckless.

All that sperm banks do is amplify this selection.

------
einhverfr
Of course one thing they don't cover is the possibility of the fact that more
sperm bank kids means more of an opportunity for accidental inbreeding. I have
seen news stories discussing concern over the fact that the most popular
donors may have fathered 150 or more children(!). the chance of such half-
siblings ending up married to eachother with kids of their own raises all
kinds of questions which are omited in the article.

No thanks. I think sperm banks should be discouraged (perhaps tax them
heavily).

~~~
prostoalex
This is solvable by running a cheap DNA test for both parties.

~~~
YokoZar
It's also solvable by simply having more donors, which is exactly what the
article is advocating for

~~~
einhverfr
Why not just have a public registry of sperm donors and a limit that says "may
not be used for more than 5 inseminations per donor"

~~~
prostoalex
Cost? Who would cover the bills for such public registry's office and staffing
needs?

The number is also a meaningless baseline - 5 inseminations in a rural
community might lead to a higher probability of inbreeding that 5
inseminations in Los Angeles, CA. Patterns of social mobility differ greatly
across various geographies.

~~~
einhverfr
> Cost? Who would cover the bills for such public registry's office and
> staffing needs?

Excise taxes on services for artificial insemination.

------
hayksaakian
Interesting point that there is greater demand for qualified sperm doners
despite being paid far less than egg doners which are in surplus.

------
tokenadult
As often happens with articles by the same author upon submission here, the
article kindly submitted today has prompted some comments that may not take
into account all the back-and-forth in the article. The article wraps up with,

"All this is suggestive and interesting, but not complete. To make a solid
utilitarian case we would need to establish:

"What is the average IQ or general genetic quality of donors?

"What is the marginal increase in each offspring?

The comments posted here before I arrived in the discussion mostly relate to
the first two issues. They make assumptions based on outdated popular
literature that don't correctly estimate the likely return from the proposal.
The genetics of human behavior is a topic I discuss every day with scientists
who are members of the Behavior Genetics Association, including the
association's current president, and it's a long, hard, uphill climb to help
popular understanding of human genetics get connected with the latest research
findings.

First of all, there is no good way to identify genes that may have a favorable
effect on phenotype for IQ.

Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D.,
van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations
with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological Science.

[http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositiv...](http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositivesGenesIQ.pdf)

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained,
candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics
research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our
results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great
caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our
view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in
the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical
sciences—by a recognition that, for complex phenotypes, individual common
genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have
very small effects.

"Associations of candidate genes with psychological traits and other traits
studied in the social sciences should be viewed as tentative until they have
been replicated in multiple large samples. Failing to exercise such caution
may hamper scientific progress by allowing for the proliferation of
potentially false results, which may then influence the research agendas of
scientists who do not realize that the associations they take as a starting
point for their efforts may not be real. And the dissemination of false
results to the public may lead to incorrect perceptions about the state of
knowledge in the field, especially knowledge concerning genetic variants that
have been described as 'genes for' traits on the basis of unintentionally
inflated estimates of effect size and statistical significance."

Second, whatever the calculated figure is for "heritability" of IQ by the
classic twin study method or its modern refinements, heritability of IQ has
nothing whatever to do with malleability (or, if you prefer this terminology,
controllability) of human intelligence. That point has been made by the
leading researchers on human behavior genetics in their recent articles that I
frequently post in comments here on HN. It is a very common conceptual
blunder, which should be corrected in any well edited genetics textbook, to
confuse broad heritability estimates with statements about how malleable human
traits are. The two concepts actually have no relationship at all. Highly
heritable traits can be very malleable, and the other way around. In
particular, a statement made in an earlier HN post

 _if everybody had the same genes, ~80% of the variation in intelligence would
be eliminated_

blatantly misunderstands what heritability figures show (besides also being
wrong on the best estimate of the broad heritability of IQ). Here's a citation
for a good review article on the subject that you can read online in full:

Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas
(2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20\(2009\).pdf)

This review article includes the statement "Moreover, even highly heritable
traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has
little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the
order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same
genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches
(Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."

Another interesting review article,

Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental
research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20\(2008\).pdf)

admits the disappointment of behavioral genetics researchers.

"But back to the question: What does heritability mean? Almost everyone who
has ever thought about heritability has reached a commonsense intuition about
it: One way or another, heritability has to be some kind of index of how
genetic a trait is. That intuition explains why so many thousands of
heritability coefficients have been calculated over the years. Once the twin
registries have been assembled, itӳ easy and fun, like having a genoscope you
can point at one trait after another to take a reading of how genetic things
are. Height? Very genetic. Intelligence? Pretty genetic. Schizophrenia? That
looks pretty genetic too. Personality? Yep, that too. And over multiple
studies and traits the heritabilities go up and down, providing the basis for
nearly infinite Talmudic revisions of the grand theories of the heritability
of things, perfect grist for the wheels of social science.

"Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isnӴ an
index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the
effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that
somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed. There
are many reasons for making this strong statement, but the most important of
them harkens back to the description of heritability as an effect size. An
effect size of the R2 family is a standardized estimate of the proportion of
the variance in one variable that is reduced when another variable is held
constant statistically. In this case it is an estimate of how much the
variance of a trait would be reduced if everyone were genetically identical.
With a momentӳ thought you can see that the answer to the question of how much
variance would be reduced if everyone was genetically identical depends
crucially on how genetically different everyone was in the first place."

So we have no idea how to compare the trade-off between trying to influence
people's IQs with shuffling different genes into them from the beginning of
life versus influencing their IQs by improving their environments (at a
critical stage of development? throughout life?) and we don't know which might
have greater or more lasting effect.

Today, we can't even say that a person with a higher IQ than another person
necessarily has better genes for IQ. The review article Johnson, W. (2010).
Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182

[http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...](http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/Johnson%20Current%20Directions%20Psych%20Science%202010%20\(G%20and%20E%20in%20IQ\).pdf)

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by
gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial
selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA and height, the likely
influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their
developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and
environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic
variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce
identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the
same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different
genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances. This would
be especially the case if height and GCA and other psychological traits are
only single facets of multifaceted traits actually under more systematic
genetic regulation, such as overall body size and balance between processing
capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic influences on individual differences
in psychological characteristics are real and important but are unlikely to be
straightforward and deterministic. We will understand them best through
investigation of their manifestation in biological and social developmental
processes."

The new gene study for IQ going on in China, discussed in comments in this
thread and on Hacker News this week, has just been responded to by the
president of the Behavior Genetics Association.

[http://ericturkheimer.blogspot.com/2013/02/steve-hsu-
replied...](http://ericturkheimer.blogspot.com/2013/02/steve-hsu-replied-to-
my-blog-post.html)

~~~
gwern
Yes, given that we now know that the genetic influence on IQ is going through
thousands upon thousands of SNPs and genes with tiny effects each, it's
unlikely that we're going to be doing anything fancy with the genetics of IQ
anytime soon. (At best we might get something like Hsu's suggestion that we
engage in embryo selection by making the best guess at which embryo has the
most favorable set.) So from a sperm donation perspective, it's going to be
hard to beat simply measuring phenotypic IQ and correlates.

> So we have no idea how to compare the trade-off between trying to influence
> people's IQs with shuffling different genes into them from the beginning of
> life versus influencing their IQs by improving their environments (at a
> critical stage of development? throughout life?) and we don't know which
> might have greater or more lasting effect.

They're not necessarily exclusive, of course. But since governments and
charities already spend a ton on things like Headstart despite their long
history of seeing IQ gains fading out, and the low-hanging fruit of
nutritional interventions like pre-natal* iodization already taken, we would
probably get more bang for the buck by looking at genetics - since no one is
doing anything about that.

* I say pre-natal because I've been compiling post-natal studies on iodization in <http://www.gwern.net/Iodine> and one outlier aside, the effect on IQ or other cognitive effects is basically zero.

------
signed0
Warning: redirect loop ahead.

~~~
machrider
I can't believe there are sites in 2013 that break the Back button.

------
hugbox
So you mean that I could acheive Genghis Khan-like levels of genetic patrimony
just by becoming a sperm donor?

It's tempting. I'm not sure I could endure the social stigma of being a sperm
donor, though.

~~~
buro9
Is there really a stigma?

I guess, like anything, the question is why you're doing it.

If you're doing it for $20 then that's perhaps more serving of a stigma than
doing it to help out because you have friends who are unable have children due
to the guy. Certainly you'd be a hero to them and wouldn't have a stigma.

Why is always the question to ask before you judge

