Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

The "toddler pitching a fit on an airplan" thread got me thinking of an old idea of mine.

When they were little kids my ex and I had best friends who had three boys similar ages to our kids. Good people. Those boys all had problems. Oldest son molested a neighbor girl when he was 13. He was put into a program, taken out of his own homke during this period and as far as I know he is "normal" today - personally? I'd never trust him. The second boy was a sweet child but developmentally diabled. His mentality is about that of a 6 year old and he is about 22 today. The youngest was smart as a whip and quite a talker but his stature is tiny! He is not a midget or dwarf but he stands about 4'-10"...he ,ay be up to 5 ft now. He's about 20. His dad is 6' and his mother about 5'-6".

Am I the only one that thinks there really is such a thing as "bad gene" combinations? I'm NOT talking about hereditary diseases, I'm talking about otherwise "normal" people that probably can't keep from making children with problems. I feel terribly sorry for these people. How's a person to know?

Everything in our organism is affected by our genes. The genes are the blue print for how we will turn out. Both physically and psychologically. The environment will of course have an impact from birth, but the genes lay out the basic ground boundaries.

In the genetic lottery that conception constitutes, some couples will have a higher risk of bad combinations than others. That goes for everything from hight to temper.

There is no escaping from our genes..;)

all the more reason for a test.
Rika

I suppose I see the need for pre-marital (or would it be pre-conception?) testing for known carriers of a potentially horrendous genetic diseases like Huntington's or Taysach's (sic?) but would you propose genetic testing of everyone?

So, if you find out you and the intended mother of your children have some slight chance of something pretty bad....what do you do about it anyway? I suppose it gives you the option to adopt or something. I kinda feel as though many couples wouldn't do it in the first place, and wouldn't do much about the results once they got them.

well there is one escape
it's just not an acceptible one.

It will not be possible to design a 'test' that catches all possibly bad consequences of inferior gene combinations. Firstly the number of combinations on different levels is not even possible to count. Secondly, we do not know which genes or gene combinations or protein synthesis that causes different 'traits'.

It is a lottery and will always be a lottery.

Re: Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

The mother was having an affair with a horny, retarded dwarf. Just a guess.

My genes are spying on me...oh, wait, wrong thread;)

Re: Re: Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

Very plausible. In different studies the numbers of people growing up with a father that is not their real father biologically are sometimes as high as 10%. Women - can´t trust them, can´t shoot them - except in Alabama..(or so I have heard). :D

maybe both test and lis. (like can you afford it , or are you trying to increase your welfare score)
the reasons you stated are good reasons, a headsup for what you might expect,
but just because you have a d@ck, or a slot doesn't mean you should spawn away..
take some places in Africa..spawn 10 kids with the hope that one will see age 20..while the other 9 starve.
my cleaning lady, a single mom with 2 sons 13 and 15
15yr old has been in jail, and is & will be loser .
13yr old has 2 kids already, mom's are 14 and 15.
or my niece.. We tried being parent's
her real mom&dad had those mental midgets scores.
she was 13 going on 30...after one year.. I had enough.
she has had 5 kids=all different men, at least 8 abortions, all kids have been taken away, she is now serving 20 yrs for attempted murder.
Rika

anyone seen Idiocracy yet??

seen it? I'm soaking in it!

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Re: Re: Re: Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

In several studies done in the US and repeated in Europe, DNA analysis is unable to find any family whose paternal DNA is "correct" for 5 generations. In every family you don't have to look too far before you find offspring that are not genetically related to who was supposed to be the father.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1169664305.jpg

Re: Re: Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

:D :D It'd be funny if the kids weren't really like that.

I saw a documentary where they interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer and his dad. It was very painful to see because (at least in this interview) "Jeff Dahmer" was an articulate, attractive, if somewhat shy person. He seemed to have had as ordinary a childhood as any kid could have. He KNEW he was a monster and from a fairly early age. He found a dead dog or cat as a child and was fascinated by it. He kept the bones out in the woods near where he lived. Later he did the stereotypical nascent muderer thing, he killed small animals and skinned them, kept their bones.

His dad obviously loved his son and was completely at a loss to understand how he could have come out this way. Some people think Dahmer deliberately provoked the attack in prison that resulted in his death to put an end to his own suffering and that of his family. Makes you wonder.

It's a slippery slope. Let's say a gene test is performed (and yes, there are certain prenatal screenings done, like for PKU and other disorders). Is a positive result justification for termination of pregnancy? If so, for which disorders? That's the dangerous one. It's easy to say "for 'extra-chromosome' disorders", or for other serious disorders with a high likelihood of mortality or mental illness/behavioral disorders, but what about a 50% chance of mild retardation? What about something simple like polydactylism? Wrong gender? Eye/hair color the parents don't like? Where do we draw the line and how exactly do we define what an "ideal" human genotype is, since it gets down to (subjective and different) choices regarding the phenotypes expressed. . .

Interesting medical ethics problem. . .

Of course there are bad genes; but in the case of the naughty trantrum throwing toddler it is likely a case of bad parents...who are themselves throwing a tantrum for the world to see.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there such a thing as "Bad Genes"?
 

Fascinating really. Makes me wonder if my brothers really are my brothers. My youngest does not look like me at all!

true with current teck

but ''will always be a lottery''
I donot think so
they donot need to know every combo possable
in fact a lot of the DNA is junk without function

they need just to get a list of the real bad genes
and most of those are recessive so require two bad bits
one from each parent
even that is years off in the future
but not impossable

Maybe not, Scotch?

I wasn't connecting the two discussion Alf. The toddler thread just got me thinking about kids, my kids when they were little and the other kids I knew then.

What?

When I worked in a hospital ER, we often had FLK (funny looking kids) with PPP (piss poor protoplasm) come in with various ailments. You see everything in an ER, especially the results of "swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool"!

VERY politically incorrect and very right on. Haven't you ever seen truly odd looking peopkle? I'm not talking about your average les than attractive person...probably all of us fit in the category even though none of us think we do. I'm talking about people that look like they were put together out of a spare parts bin? Truly odd shaped heads, pinheads, too big or small ears. Features that are all lopsided? I'm not all that much into appearence but since we're talking of this, I am thankful I am just ordinary looking.

Dan,
Yeah, I'm talking REALLY "funny looking" as in "something's really wrong here"... I'm funny looking too, so I can relate!

Yeah, that's who I am talking about too. Man, I feel sorry for those people. Of course I AM not all that funny looking! :D

Funny thing is, of the truly, truly odd looking people I have ever encountered? They're kind of funny minded too. They talk oddly or think oddly too. A connection? I think so. A lot of bacteria growing in the shallow end of the gene pool.

The thing is, in the olden days weak people didn't survive. I know that is cruel as hell to say, and I don't propose we do anything about it, I really don't. I am just making the observation that in days past the weakest among our species expired from disease or inability to adapt. That's not the case anymore.

There are a few billion DNA base-pairs (composed of the four DNA nucleotides) that make up something like 20-25,000 genes. It is true there is a lot of DNA that does not get coded into something meaningful. The Human Genome Project has "coded" most genes (90%+), and the remainder should follow within a few years..

Porsche-O-Phile raises the big problem with this project...undoubtedly, people may discover certain "bad" traits may be present in their children and it will be possible to "engineer" their children differently. Obviously genes are really determine what you are in life, what you are likely to do, accomplish, be, look like, etc. To have another human decide it for someone else really is the day I will move to Mars.

This are my humble opinions on this subject: 95% of problem children are caused by parents with problems - not DNA.

Genetic structure is a "possible blueprint" - not an exact copy / xerox. Temporarily leaving aside the ethical arguments surrounding eugenics, we cannot predict the results of DNA, only probabilities. Examples of poor DNA rejection: Stephan Hawkings (ms), Beethoven (deaf). We run the risk of rejecting those that benefit culture as much as those that do not.

I agree, although I would not go as far as 95%. It has clearly been shown in several adoption / twin studies that the genetic part of the variance (influence) for many personality traits is as high as 60-80% under "normal" environmental circumstances.

Highly abnormal environmental (parents for example) exposure will of course tend to override the genetic influence (if pointing in opposite direction).

That's a very old argument, heredity vs. environment. The "environmental influence" school championed by people like Margaret Mead and others is slowily losing ground to genetics as we master the "code". Eventually, I think genetics will prove to be influential a great deal more than 60-80%, and environment the rest, some of which can be short circuited by adults early in life.

There's a much more sad story about a "environmental school" sex therapist who advised a couple to raise their son as a girl, including physical sexual organ removal, after he'd been injured as an infant. They eventually did that, after being assured that all they had to do was raise him as a girl, and without the proper sex organs, he'd be a girl. Eventually, the man commited suicide, and the life he led was far from satisfactory.

An episode of "Law and order" was loosely based on this real tragedy.