Demography, Genetics, Populations, Fertility

• Study: Christakis, Nicholas A, and James H Fowler. “Friendship and natural selection.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 111 Suppl 3,Suppl 3 (2014): 10796-801. doi:10.1073/pnas.1400825111

• Study: Tang, Hua et al. “Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies.” American journal of human genetics vol. 76,2 (2005): 268-75. doi:10.1086/427888
• See also: Li, Jun Z et al. “Worldwide human relationships inferred from genome-wide patterns of variation.” Science (New York, N.Y.) vol. 319,5866 (2008): 1100-4. doi:10.1126/science.1153717
  • PDF of the study including figure "S3 B".
  • As it appeared in the journal (nice, includes additional figures, but lacking others)

• "There is now a large body of evidence that supports the conclusion that individual differences in most, if not all, reliably measured psychological traits, normal and abnormal, are substantively influenced by genetic factors." - Study: Bouchard Jr, Thomas. (2004). Genetic Influence on Human Psychological TraitsA Survey. Current Directions in Psychological Science - CURR DIRECTIONS PSYCHOL SCI. 13. 148-151. 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00295.x.
• "there is now strong evidence that virtually all individual psychological differences, when reliably measured, are moderately to substantially heritable." - Bouchard, Thomas J Jr, and Matt McGue. “Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences.” Journal of neurobiology vol. 54,1 (2003): 4-45. doi:10.1002/neu.10160 (full study in PDF version)

• Pro-Natal / Natalist Policies & their effectiveness

• Positive fertility factors:
  • the intention to have children
  • religiosity
  • marriage
  • maternal & social support
  • rural residence
  • low IQ
  • pro-family government programs
  • increased food production
  • (in high-income countries) quantity of children that one's parents had
• Negative fertility factors:
  • rising income
    • Fertility-development controversy: As a geographic region develops, its fertility declines
  • education
  • female labor participation
  • obesity
  • high IQ
  • age
  • very low level of gender equality
  • pollution

• Conjoined twins: Twins that are physically combined. For those that are not medically separated, what are the legal implications if one were to commit a crime? In the West, perhaps one could be fined but not incarcerated ("That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer is a maxim that has been long and generally approved" - Benjamin Franklin 1785 referring to Blackstone's ratio).

FST between common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus) is 0.103
FST between two gorilla species, Gorilla gorilla and Gorilla beringei is 0.04
FST between humans and Neanderthals is <0.08
FST between humans and Homo Erectus is 0.17

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018442X04700335
• http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/8/1359.full
• http://www.genetics.org/content/105/3/767.abstract
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730349/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675054/

• DIY Human CRISPR Guide by PhD Josiah Zayner
  • Myostatic AKA Growth Differentiation Factor 8 (abbreviated GDF8) : Limits muscles growth
    • Myostatin gene knockout products:
      (however, the gene is most influential when muscles are being developed early in life, so using this on adults may not provide the desired results, but would instead need to be used when one is younger)
      1. The ODIN's Human Myostatin Knock-Out Targeting CRISPR-Cas9 Plasmid
      2. ORIGENE's Myostatin Propeptide (MSTN) Human Gene Knockout Kit (CRISPR)
      3. amsbio's Myostatin Propeptide (MSTN) Human Gene Knockout Kit (CRISPR)
• Follistatin: An antagonist to myostatin.

• Classical:
  • Positive: Increase the prevalance of preferred genes / births among those with preferred genes
  • Negative: Decrease the prevalance of deleterious/undesired genes / births among those with undesired genes
  • Cultural norms (school curricula, media naratives), taxation rules (e.g. exemptions by child), sterilization (forced / voluntary)
• Modern biotech eugenics:
  • Embryo selection (pick among natural variation)
  • Genetic editing/synthesis (create new varation)

• The "He Jiankui" affair: Chinese scientist that genetically modified human embryos (disabling CCR5). The embryos resulted in purportedly healthy twins, and said scientist was improsioned. The stated goal was that it was an attempt to increase their resistance to HIV (which one of their parents had). That said, there is also research that this modification would significantly increase their cognition.
  https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/21/137309/the-crispr-twins-had-their-brains-altered/
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213777/

• In vitro fertilisation (IVF) ("in vitro" means "in glass"): The in-glass (e.g. a petri dish) fusion of sperm and egg.
  "in vitro can become genetically specific and allow for the selection of particular genes or expressible traits to be dominantly present in the formed embryo"
  Use of IVF may increase chance of pre-term deliveries & lower birth weights. (source?)
  IVF step-by-step:
  1. Consultation
  2. Baseline bloodwork & ultrasound
  3. Ovarian stimulation injection of the wife, causing increased egg release
  4. Oocyte maturation
  5. Egg retrieval from the wife
  6. Fertilization using many of the husband's sperm into many of the wife's eggs
     • This process may involve medical staff literally injecting the sperm into the egg.
       A drawback of this is that this does all of the hard work for the sperm, thus eliminating the natural "test" that the sperm be both fit enough and willing to swim through the uterus to get to the eggs, and to actually fertilize one.
       Thus if this is done using a sperm that is not fit enough to naturally acomplish this task, then this is highly dysgenic, and could long-term result in a population that has only sperm that are unfit/unwilling to naturally (without IVF) reach and fertizie eggs. Thus making IVF a "crutch", and the population effectivly sterile.
  7. Wait ~6 days for fertilizaed eggs to grow
  8. Selection of fertilized eggs:
     • Either as simple as verifying the normal quantity of chromosomes (2), thus avoiding many disorders
     • or as advanced as sequencing the DNA of each one and selecting from the genes / traits available
  9. Embryo transfer back into the wife
  10. Wait 2 weeks
  11. Pregnancy test
      • If successful, congratulations!
      • If unsuccessful, go back to the fertilization step (as there are likely still many collected eggs)
  Costs: The cost of one IVF cycle in the United States averages US $15,000, while for comparable treatment in Mexico it is about US $7,800, Thailand $6,500, India $3,300, and Iran $2,500.
• 3-Parent Child: Having 3 genetic parents (1 father & 2 partial mothers) is possible, standard practice in bovine breeding (method "pronuclear transfer"), and has been performed in humans (method "oocyte spindle transfer").
  This includes
  • 1 "primary"/"nucleal"/"nuclear" partial-mother, whom provides the nucleus and thus provides the nuclear genome which is >99.9% of the maternal-genetic-donation (meaning >99.9% of what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child)
  • and 1 "secondary"/"mitochondrial" partial-mother, whom provides the mitochondria and thus provides the mitochondrial genome which includes <0.01% of the maternal-genetic-donation (meaning <0.01% of what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child)

  Though there are multiple methods ("pronuclear transfer", "oocyte spindle transfer", etc.), the typical method is "pronuclear transfer", which adds a few additional steps to the IVF process. The additional steps include, in addition to some of the husband's sperm fertalizing eggs from the primary partial-mother, some of the husband's sperm are used also to fertilize eggs from the secondary partial-mother.

  Then, from each, the cells' nucleuses are extracted from the cells; The cells retain their mitocondia. The primary-partial-mother's nucleus is inserted into the secondary-partial-mother's cell (now the only nucleus within it). This hybrid cell still has the mitocondia of the secondary-partial-mother.
  Both the primary-partial-mother's now nucleaus-less cell, and the secondary-partial-mother's nucleus are discarded.

  This hybrid cell is now implanted into whichever woman is to carry the pregnancy.

  The maternal-genetic-donation (what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child) comes >99.9% from the nucleus, and <0.01% from the mitochondria, this causes two partial-mothers.

  The other method, "oocyte spindle transfer", is the same except that the nucleaus is transfered to form the hybrid-cell and then only said hyubrid is fertilized. For ethical and religious reasons this may be preferrable due to only 1 fertilization occuring, and thus no fertilized eggs are intentionaly discarded.

  
• Gestational surrogacy
  • Surrogacy laws by country
• See also Spontaneous conception: Use of assisted reproductive technology to conceive and birth a child, causes natural (non-ART) births to become easier.

• to obtain citizenship for the child in a country with birthright citizenship
• to help their parents obtain permanent residency in the country
• to circumvent their home country's offspring quantity limit (e.g. China)

• Study: Neal, Zachary P, and Jennifer Watling Neal. “The (in)compatibility of diversity and sense of community.” American journal of community psychology vol. 53,1-2 (2014): 1-12. doi:10.1007/s10464-013-9608-0
• PDF of the full study: https://web.archive.org/web/20160220040347/https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.pdf)

• Study Putnam. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian political studies. 30.2 137–174. Web.
• Study Abascal, Maria, and Delia Baldassarri. “Love Thy Neighbor? Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Reexamined.” AJS; American journal of sociology vol. 121,3 (2015): 722-82. doi:10.1086/683144

• Study: Das-Munshi, Jayati et al. “Ethnic density as a buffer for psychotic experiences: findings from a national survey (EMPIRIC).” The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science vol. 201,4 (2012): 282-90. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.111.102376

• Study: Papyrakis, E. Environmental Performance in Socially Fragmented Countries. Environ Resource Econ 55, 119–140 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-012-9619-6