Again, I really don’t think you can draw conclusions about “effectiveness,” at least as defined as “seizing the lowest-hanging fruit,” by articulating the scale of the problem.
But one other way you might find leverage is by moving the medical ethics community to include miscarriages in mortality statistics. 50% of miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities and occur during the first few months of pregnancy.
Right now, we have all kinds of med ethics concerns around the idea that it’s somehow unethical to give an “advantage” by genetic modification or selection of embryos. But if we viewed that embryo as a person, or a medical patient, it is consensus unethical to make medical decisions on behalf of the welfare of anyone except that patient. So you can then only consider the health of the embryo. As a happy consequence, you not only get moral grounds for embryo engineering for health, you also (from a population growth and maternal health perspective) get ~75% fewer miscarriages if this became a common practice.
Again, I really don’t think you can draw conclusions about “effectiveness,” at least as defined as “seizing the lowest-hanging fruit,” by articulating the scale of the problem.
But one other way you might find leverage is by moving the medical ethics community to include miscarriages in mortality statistics. 50% of miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities and occur during the first few months of pregnancy.
Right now, we have all kinds of med ethics concerns around the idea that it’s somehow unethical to give an “advantage” by genetic modification or selection of embryos. But if we viewed that embryo as a person, or a medical patient, it is consensus unethical to make medical decisions on behalf of the welfare of anyone except that patient. So you can then only consider the health of the embryo. As a happy consequence, you not only get moral grounds for embryo engineering for health, you also (from a population growth and maternal health perspective) get ~75% fewer miscarriages if this became a common practice.