
The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction - smaili
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674728967
======
iSnow
>Within twenty, maybe forty, years most people in developed countries will
stop having sex for the purpose of reproduction.

That's a load of hyperbole.

First, the time-line is completely unrealistic. The ethical frameworks in a
lot of developed countries currently are very much in defense of biological
inception and against technological interference. It will take more than a
generation to change that.

Second, a lot of people actually like reproducing via sex.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The evidence is to the contrary. Folks in developing countries are _not_
having sex for reproduction in statistically growing numbers. Japan, Germany,
France and now the US are in or going to be in population decline.

I'd say, unless we advance our timeline, we're in danger of becoming extinct.
So let's hope the article is not all hyperbole.

~~~
astazangasta
You're confusing "not reproducing" with "reproducing using non-sexual means".
The notion that we'll go extinct because of low fertility rates when the world
is vastly overpopulated also seems incorrect to me.

~~~
iSnow
I do think he has a point though. Wherever people are wealthy enough to spend
money on vacations and other activities, they seem to value leisure time over
reproduction.

Currently, the world population is still growing, but that's mostly due to
poorer countries and sub-populations. AFAIK, not even the US's whites are
enough to sustain the population size:

"Expected lifetime births have also fallen for White non-Hispanic women from
1.91 in 2007 to 1.75 in 2013. U.S. White non-Hispanic births have been below
the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for decades."
([http://www.unomaha.edu/news/2015/01/fertility.php](http://www.unomaha.edu/news/2015/01/fertility.php)).

It is even worse in Europe and Russia.

~~~
onnoonno
> It is even worse in Europe and Russia.

Maybe it is a question of a middle ground?

I see a slowly declining population as being positive for humanity.

I think 1e9 children having a materially secure future is much better than
1e11 children fighting wars for the last scraps of resources.

Also if those children are not mine.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But the result is an erasure of the first world. Leaving the huddled masses in
Africa as inheiritors of an exhausted earth?

------
maratd
Those who haven't seen it, should definitely see Gattaca. Good movie, but
aside from that, posits a premise that I think will resonate with virtually
everyone. That we are more than the sum of our parts. That there are
unquantifiable attributes like willpower, perseverance, honor, compassion,
etc. that arise out of adversity and overcoming our shortcomings. Is a
genetically perfect human inferior because they were never subjected to the
travails of imperfection?

Those are the questions that will bounce around in the heads of parents ...
and they may lead them to have kids the old-fashioned way.

~~~
mikeash
I love that movie, but what you say doesn't resonate with me. I see no reason
to think that willpower and the rest are "unquantifiable." And ultimately the
protagonist selfishly endangers his entire crew because he refuses to accept
his physical limitations.

Confronting adversity and pushing our limits is great, but imposing
unnecessary adversity on our children, when there is an alternative, is no
good.

It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about
genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it
comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during
pregnancy.

~~~
maratd
> It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about
> genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it
> comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during
> pregnancy.

This is a valid criticism, it's far easier to portray this issue as
black/white, when in reality, it is unbelievably complex.

Nature of course, does not permit pure defects to exist for any substantial
period of time. They are viciously eliminated from the gene pool. The ones
that stick around are a double-edged sword. A lot of benefit here, some
detriment there. And we separate them and decry the detriment ... but you
can't have one without the other.

I am fearful of the day when we start eliminating these genes, that clearly
have a detriment, but may also have a clear and more substantial benefit that
is not readily apparent.

The computational power of natural selection over millions of years through
trillions of permutations is unfathomable and does not rely on the necessity
of human cognition. We are playing with fire when we start playing whack-a-
mole with genes.

I'm all for trying, but we should tread carefully.

~~~
mikeash
Recessive conditions can persist for a long time. Certainly there are some
diseases which are double-edged swords (having one copy of the sickle cell
gene is great if you live in an area where malaria is endemic and you don't
have modern medical care) but it looks to me like there are a lot which are
just plain bad.

Making all children tall and with perfect teeth is probably not a great idea.
On the other hand, wiping out the mutation responsible for cystic fibrosis,
say, would be a big win. Even wiping out the sickle cell mutation would
probably be fine at this point, unless you're planning for your descendants to
be slightly better off if they end up in the tropics after civilization
collapses.

There's a lot of middle ground where things are unclear, but we shouldn't be
too eager to extend that mystery to the edges and let that stop us from ending
some unpleasant conditions.

------
codingdave
This completely ignores the personal aspect of having children, which is the
desire to have a child with your loved one. Adding a scientific way to pick a
different child seems to me to be comparable to adopting... You are just doing
so at a very young age. So the idea that most of humanity would jump to this
mechanism just because it is possible seem to grossly misunderstand human
nature.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
So it's just a PR problem. All it takes is some non-invasive technology to
enforce that the woman will ovulate the right egg and the man will shoot the
right sperm and it will "feel" natural enough for anyone to be ok with it.

~~~
elcapitan
"Google Jizz"?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Google Goo

------
pi-err
There's very little substance in the summary, hopefully the book is less
clickbaity.

A few reasons why this should join the "pills will replace food" drama:

\- a long-term trend in wealthier societies has been to get more control on
how they have and raise children. Birth control, education, etc. Less, "more
valuable" children. Getting (and losing) a child has more individual and
social significance today than in 17th century Europe where 30-50% kids would
die before adulthood

\- another trend is for people to look and welcome ways to bypass biological
constraint. Low fertility, age, more recently known genetical defects.

\- a very recent trend among very select groups has now embraced the idea of
"perfect children".

Now will this last trend ever go mainstream? Are people willing to _pay_ to
"improve" or even only pick some traits of their children?

Or will most people have to resort to artificial reproduction because of low
fertility and longer life expectancy?

And then does any of this mean "the end of sex"?

To become a market, artificial reproduction would need to be reliable ("I want
my kids to get blue eyes") and confortable. I'm not a specialist, but I get
from my 23andme data that so little is determined by our genes. And we're very
far from understanding how genes affect each others.

Among my friends who resorted to artificial insemination for various reasons,
they had sex - a lot. Hormones are here to stay.

Humans are complex organisms and this (along with the "uploaded brain" fad)
forget about the chemistry that shapes intelligence, behaviors, life.

People would couldn't will soon be able to get kids. Some will possibly choose
to pick a few traits. Most of the planet is _for many generations_ going to
have sex.

------
gyardley
It's not enough for IVF be safe, lawful, and free. For the general, not-
infertile public to actually prefer IVF over the natural way of doing things,
it'd also have to be easy, convenient, and painless, and it'd have to
consistently produce a baby.

Right now, anyway, IVF is anything but.

~~~
frozenport
The only reason IVF isn't always successful is goverment regulations or
medical issues. In a healthy mother we can expect a 15% success rate for each
embryo, so you can just implant a bunch and remove the extras. Unfortunately,
regulations, in particularly in the EU, limit you to a few at a time and I'm
not aware of any human fertility specialists that will remove excess embryos.
It is a numbers game that could easily be won with a change of attitude.

~~~
toomuchtodo
My wife has endometriosis [1]. IVF didn't take until our 3rd cycle (using at
least 3 embryos each time).

Also, we were given the option every cycle to selectively reduce [2] embryos
if too many took (luckily, that was never necessary). This was in the US.

/u/gyardley mentions that its not easy, convenient, and painless. The most
expensive procedure in IVF is where you stimulate a woman's ovaries in order
for them to overproduce eggs for ultrasound-guided retrieval (using an
extremely long, large bore needle); as soon as medical science is close enough
to converting stem cells filtered out of blood into reproductive tissue (and
we're extremely close, believe me; I have done my homework), IVF will be an
outpatient procedure no more expensive than an expensive dental appointment.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_reduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_reduction)

~~~
frozenport
As a full disclosure my percentage comes from my research on bovine embryos.
But I think viability percentage approximately matches your experience,
especially when you consider that I'm used to working with ostensibly healthy
individuals who could conceive naturally.

If they had dumped 10 embryos each cycle the story would have been different.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thanks for whatever research you did/do. Science moves forward one discovery
at a time.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Let's say a generation of humans is born from perfect genetic combinations.
Wouldn't natural children from that generation keep the same strong genes?

What about epigenetics? If some proto-übermensch were afforded - due to
automization and superior talents - to live a far more leisurely life than our
own, and spend it with drugs, food, and entertainment, wouldn't that cause
genetic regression?

I think the problem with Gattaca is that the movie was so damn good at
tackling the issue it's made itself the sole narrative that we understand,
even though science has advanced tremendously in concepts such as epigenetics
and the microbiome. We need a new narrative to understand our new situation.

~~~
lawlessone
"Wouldn't natural children from that generation keep the same strong genes?"

They'd drift if it wasn't maintained. Mutations would always be slipping in.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
And how would we know which mutations are broadly beneficial or not? What if
humans of a future earth or larger society have needs we couldn't imagine,
like radiation resistance or anti-autoimmune protections?

Besides, sometimes there are trade offs with no clear winning picture. Sub-
Saharan Africans with sickle cell syndrome are also more resistant to malaria.
What's worse? What's more necessary? How do we know malaria won't be a bigger
problem tomorrow?

~~~
tablewatcher
>how would we know which mutations are broadly beneficial or not?

In general terms we know what a good specimen looks like and the specific
traits that they have. We can only build to that because:

>sickle cell syndrome are also more resistant to malaria

This is evolution by process of elimination, and unfortunetaly elimination
means lack of breeding from disadvantaged phenotypes. We've largely uncoupled
reproduction from evolutionary advantages anyway, and just like humans are so
dedicated to controlling the world in they inhabit, we'll insist on
controlling the finest details of reproduction too.

------
elcapitan
> most people in developed countries will stop having sex

It's probably more telling to look at the people looking forward to that
scenario than the scenario itself.

~~~
daodedickinson
Japan's government estimates there are 500,000 adult hikkikomori in the
country who have not left their homes in the last 6 months. Far more people
who meet more lax definitions of hikkikomori. I see the Kakuhido (translates
roughly as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women Find Unattractive) as
a group possibly similar to Christians circa 40. Once it becomes the
Revolutionary Alliance of People Governments Find Unattractive the recruitment
opportunities are pretty obvious, right?

------
panglott
U.S. society has decided that it must be very costly for young women to have
children—having children makes it very difficult to obtain the education and
career experience necessary to effectively support young humans. So young
women are under immense pressure to delay child-bearing as long as possible,
delay it to the very border of infertility. But that's an example of the
inhumanity of our society, its lack of humane-ness and human-centered
priorities.

It's as conceivable that we could adapt by making it socially and economically
feasible for young women to have children at the height of their fertility,
rather than normalizing surrogacy, eugenics, and mass abortion. Those things
are fine in limited circumstances, of course—even if each is under legal
limitations in most Western countries (I hadn't realized that surrogacy was
banned in most of Western Europe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy)
).

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>U.S. society has decided that it must be very costly for young women to have
children

I'm pretty sure U.S. society isn't the one responsible for the fact that
raising a child consumes significant resources and makes obtaining other goals
much harder. The time spent caring for a baby makes it harder to complete
higher education. Even if offered help, a baby takes a lot of time.

Also, this isn't something that only applies to young women. A single father
has to sacrifice a lot of time to raise a child. While the initial pregnancy
is not as bad for the single father to deal with, the time spent with a child
that could be spent on anything else is a significant factor for the next 18
years.

~~~
panglott
Human children require lots of care. But high US inequality raises both the
consequences of not investing in your individual human capital and the cost of
investing in your individual human capital.

------
lliamander
I am always slightly amused at the idea of designer babies. On the one hand,
we already do this at a more coarse grained level: it's called sexual
selection. Yet I don't think adding genetic screening will turn out nearly as
well as some people hope.

The relationship between our genes and the high-level traits we care about is
complex and non-orthogonal; it will be difficult to isolate the genes for a
specific trait without producing unintended consequences. With standard sexual
selection we are able to judge by the end result (especially if you can
observe the other person's family prior to reproduction, and you see what
recessive traits they may possess).

------
amelius
I wonder more about what will happen to people's natural mood if we keep
everybody on serotonin boosters for a few generations.

------
mc32
We'll still have the traditionalists and we'll have the ones who have
"accidents" and we'll have "increasing disparity" between the have techs and
the don't have techs.

Wonder what this will do for demographics?

------
cwyers
Oh please, we can barely figure out how to ensure access of stuff like
penicillin for most of the population of the US. How are we going to get to a
point where the larger population can afford to forsake sexual reproduction in
favor of medical fertility treatment? Sexual reproduction is a time-tested and
free method for propagation. The technologies the author talks about are going
to have to compete on cost before they're viable on a large scale.

------
camelNotation
I genuinely enjoy reproducing via sex. It seems ridiculous to me to deny such
a naturally enjoyable experience just because technology claims to have a
better way. Besides, it's tradition. Literally every ancestor I have did it.
To NOT do it seems kind of... arrogant.

~~~
firethief
Was the invention of fire arrogant? Climbing out of the ocean on our fins? The
first sexual reproduction? Without what you call arrogance we would be RNA
replicating in puddles.

~~~
camelNotation
All of those things had a clear benefit in the cost-benefit analysis of the
prior state and after state. Getting rid of reproductive sex isn't worth it at
all. It's way better to do it the old fashioned way.

------
jfaucett
Are we really already far enough along in understanding genetics to do a
better job than the process of natural selection? Given, we've been
manipulating it well for over a century now, which makes me wonder what
percentage of the global population would not have survived to reproduce even
two centuries ago?

Modern Medicinal science is amazing, but in this field I could easily imagine
a scifi future where humans are no longer able to naturally reproduce. Is
there any concern with this in the scientific community or is this just my
writer's imagination on an unfounded basis?

~~~
guard-of-terra
"I could easily imagine a scifi future where humans are no longer able to
naturally reproduce"

Some of us undoubtedly will still be able, and those and their children will
inherit the earth as it always happened.

------
ProAm
Reminds me of the book: The Forever War [1] where towards the end 'humanity
has begun to clone itself, resulting in a new, collective species calling
itself simply Man.' Fantastic science fiction book.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War)

------
cyberpanther
You can't sum a person up by a genetic score, personality test, or any other
score or test. So this may or may not happen, but it will never be effective.

There are too many possibilities and if they get good maybe they will adopt a
model of intuition like "AlphaGo" to win. But intuition often fails and life
isn't as binary as picking winners and losers.

~~~
Retric
Your assuming that no trait is purely negative. There is no reason to assume
this is the case.

~~~
cyberpanther
No I'm saying every trait must be weighed with a complex interaction of known
traits, other immeasurable traits, and the changing environment a person is
in. So yes there could be a purely negative trait but it is very hard to tell
without testing that combination out. Just detecting a trait, I think is
insufficient.

I think the chaotic domain of the Cynefin framework describes this situation
the best.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_Framework)

Probing or sensing is insufficient, acting must occur.

Maybe a simulation could be sufficient way of acting?

~~~
Retric
IMO, simulation should work for a range of things. Over the long term things
like uncorrected Vision may be less harshly maintained by natural selection.
So, a minor level of genetic engineering may be useful over the long term
(100,000 years) if we want to avoid ever stronger dependence on medical
assistance.

~~~
onnoonno
> So, a minor level of genetic engineering may be useful over the long term
> (100,000 years) if we want to avoid ever stronger dependence on medical
> assistance.

We don't know where 'Politicians are able to do 100ky policy planning' comes
in the tech-tree, though :D

From the current state of affairs, it appears to be still far out in the
future...

------
cs702
The author's assumption is that artificial (non-sexual) reproduction will
eventually be SUPERIOR -- safer, cheaper, faster, more predictable, less
painful, etc. -- because unlike sexual reproduction, it benefits from
exponential advances in technology.

The author therefore predicts that more and more people, and women in
particular, will prefer it in the future.

~~~
moogly
I've been pretty sold on the idea for a long time, but maybe I've just read
too much Lois McMaster Bujold.

------
FussyZeus
Interesting to see if people choose to avoid diseases or developments that
aren't necessarily crippling but for many people would be undesirable, like
the various autisms or mental oddities. Maybe it will end up being just like
buying a car, you pick the race, eye color, gender, etc. down a list of
options and then take delivery in 9 months?

------
UnBe
This immediately made me think of the Sting song "Straight to my Heart", and
the 'sex' scene in "Demolition Man". I'm sure there are other examples.

I suspect that if sex/ sexuality were not in such an odd cultural space, ideas
like this would either rarely arise, or at least never raise an eyebrow.

------
banach
Talk about a click-bait research paple title.

------
kleiba
By "developed world" you mean "technically developed" or also "ethically
developed"?

------
sremani
I think we are overlooking the Economic case for reproduction through sex,
even though it is unpredictable.

------
transfire
Not until they can grow it in a bottle.

------
enslaved-human
Sex without reproduction.

Reproduction without sex.

------
senthil_rajasek
Remember the best thing about kids... is making them - Rodney Dangerfield

------
balls187
Future generations will look back at us thinking "I can't believe they let
reproduction up to random chance."

Much the same way we look back at past civilizations and wonder how humans
ever survived childbirth without modern medicine.

------
hashkb
I saw that movie! Totally natural and non-dystopic.

~~~
Delmania
Which one? Gattaca?

~~~
ethanpil
That's what came to me instantly.

------
pyabo
I really like the old way, I may be old fashion!

------
pyabo
Then, we will find new diseases related to the new way, like breed dogs.

------
Arzh
In the year 2525?

~~~
teach
If man is still alive.

------
jqm
I'm surprised to see the amount of negative comments. Widespread adoption of
this kind of technology will likely to be one of the best things to ever
happen to the human race.

The author might be off on timeline but I'm pretty sure this will become
common practice before very long. Some people won't like it, some people will
resist, sure. It won't matter. Eventually they will be like the anti vax
crowd. And everyone else will say "look what you are doing to your kids!"....
there ought to be a law! And then there probably will be a law. And it will be
I'm pretty sure, in the end, a huge gain for the human race.

