China Is Engineering Genius Babies

www.vice.com

It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower, is it? While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources. But now, not content to simply laugh and make jerk-off signs as they pass us on the geopolitical highway, they’ve also developed a state-endorsed genetic-engineering project.

At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.

Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist and lecturer at NYU, is one of the 2,000 braniacs who contributed their DNA. I spoke to him about what this creepy-ass program might mean for the future of Chinese kids.

VICE: Hey, Geoffrey. Does China have a history of eugenics?

Geoffrey Miller: As soon as Deng Xiaoping took power in the late 70s, he took the whole focus of the Chinese government from trying to manage the economy, to trying to manage the quality and quantity of people. In the 90s, they started to do widespread prenatal testing for birth defects with ultrasound, and more recently, they've spent a lot of money researching human genetics to figure out which genes make people smarter.

What do you know about BGI Shenzhen?

It’s the biggest genetic research center in China, and I think the biggest in the world, by a considerable margin. They’re not just doing human genetics; BGI is also doing lots of plant genetics, animal genetics, anything that’s economically relevant or scientifically interesting.

Are you in touch with them?

I just got an email a couple of days ago saying that they’d almost finished doing the sequencing for the BGI Cognitive Genetics Project, the one I gave my genetics to, and that the results would be available soon.

What was their selection process?

They seem mostly interested in people of Chinese and European descent. They’re basically recruiting through a scientific conference, through word of mouth. You have to provide some evidence that you’re as smart as you say you are. You have to send your complete CV, publications you’ve produced, standardized-test scores, where you went to college... stuff like that.

How will the research be applied?

Once you’ve got that information and a fertilized egg that’s divided into a few cells, you can sample one of the cells to figure out the expected intelligence if it’s implanted and becomes a person.

What does that mean in human language?

Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad’s sperm and the mom’s eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one’s going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It’s not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it’s the genes that couples already have.

And over the course of several generations you’re able to exponentially multiply the population’s intelligence.

Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.
Could it develop into something more sinister?

That same research does open up the door potentially to genetic engineering in the future. But that would take a lot longer to make practical.

When do you think the embryo analysis might be implemented on a large scale?

Actual use of the technology to do embryo screening might take five to ten years, but it could be just a few years. It depends on how motivated they are.

Could this whole process be repeated with other characteristics, like physical appearance?

Absolutely. In fact, almost any trait other than intelligence would be easier to do. We know that intelligence depends on lots of genes while physical traits—like hair or eye color—only depend on a few genes. Things like body shape would be easier to do, physical attractiveness would be pretty complicated, personality traits might be a little simpler than intelligence—how hard working somebody is, how impulsive, how politically liberal or conservative they are would be easier. How religious you are—that’s definitely influenced by genes to some degree.

Shit. How does Western research in genetics compare to China’s?

We’re pretty far behind. We have the same technical capabilities, the same statistical capabilities to analyze the data, but they’re collecting the data on a much larger scale and seem to be capable of transforming the scientific findings into government policy and consumer genetic testing much more easily than we are. Technically and scientifically we could be doing this, but we’re not.

Why not?

We have ideological biases that say, “Well, this could be troubling, we shouldn’t be meddling with nature, we shouldn’t be meddling with God.” I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!” There’s a big cultural difference.

What else is China doing that we aren’t?

Well, they’re also investing a huge amount of money in education, they’re creating new systems of universities that emphasise more creative approaches to learning, and they’re sending hundreds of thousands of college students to America and Europe to see how our education systems operate so they can bring their own systems up to our standards and above.

Do you think global domination is in the cards, then?

The Chinese Communist party has never really sought global domination. They think of it as restoring China to its rightful and historical place as the central culture of humanity. Europe got a temporary advantage, but they’re just restoring the natural balance as the world’s most populous country. I don’t think they have any imperial ambitions to spread China’s borders—they’re not going to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th century—but they do want respect and they do want influence and they don’t trust America or Europe to run the world in the right way, in terms of issues like global warming or equality or economic stability.

Maybe they’re on to something.

Follow Aleks on Twitter: @slandr

Cyprus May Dwarf 2008 Collapse

歐美銀行不再是安全, 中國人的存款還會流去外國嗎 ?

kingworldnews.com

Today legendary trader Jim Sinclair told King World News why Lagarde’s IMF Cyprus disaster may cause far more damage than the frightening turmoil the world witnessed during the collapse of 2008.  Sinclair, who was once called on by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to assist during a Wall Street crisis, was also joined in this interview by Britain’s very popular MEP Nigel Farage, and former US Treasury Official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

Sinclair:  “The propaganda being put out in the mainstream media is a message that things are moving along in Cyprus, and there will be a positive conclusion.  The mainstream media is saying this is a banking problem of minor significance.

This is Joseph Geobbels style propaganda at its finest because Cyprus will ultimately be seen as a defining event in history.  The term ‘Bail-In’ really doesn’t define what it is, which is confiscation.  It’s the removal of part of your deposit.

Sure, they have agreed on everything such as currency controls because if you have a banking problem and you don’t control the flows, there is no way to be able to produce enough cash to meet the demands that would come in on a Monday morning....

“What they haven’t decided on is whether or not a depositor in a bank is a lender to the bank.  This would then define that the lender should assume the risk of the solvency of the bank.  This would then mean that depositors should be contributors to the solvency of that bank when it is under great stress, such as what we are seeing right now in Cyprus.

The other alternative is whether the depositor has retained the services of a fiduciary when he places money with a bank.  This would mean it is the banks responsibility at all costs to protect the depositor against losses.  If the bank runs into trouble, the depositor would have no legal obligation whatsoever to finance the bank.”

King World News continues speaking with legendary trader Jim Sinclair below, but first KWN turned to Britain’s very popullar MEP Nigel Farage today to ask him specifically about deposits in banks.

Eric King:  “Nigel, when you deposit your money into a bank are you putting it in there ‘for safekeeping,’ or by the eurocrat technical definition, are you in fact a lender to a bank?”

MEP Nigel Farage:  “No, I don’t by that definition at all that you are a lender to a bank.  In fact, for centuries now, the reason that people have deposited money in a bank, rather than keeping it under the mattress, is you are putting it there for safekeeping. 

The fact that the bank may then use the money to lend on elsewhere is their business, not yours.  Banks are supposed to be safe, and one of the remarkable things about this Cyprus tragedy that is unfolding, particularly for smaller depositors, is that we had a deposit guarantee scheme. 

This stated that everything up to 100,000 euros was supposed to be insured.  And yet they tried last week to take 7% off of these people’s money (small depositors) too.  But what is really happening here is the European Commission is redefining the rules of banking in the European Union, in yet another desperate attempt to keep propped-up the failing euro.”

King World News then reached out today to former US Treasury Official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, to ask him about the bank deposits.  Here is what Dr. Roberts had to say about this unfolding drama:

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  “The reason that the EU is redefining depositors in banks as lenders is so their deposit is seen as an investment and is subject to risk in the same way as the banks.  So if a depositor is reclassified as a lender, it means they cannot expect to receive back the full value of their deposits in case the bank experiences difficulties.”

Eric King:  “This attempt to redefine the nature of bank deposits, isn’t this being done so that the governments can engage in outright theft of bank deposits?”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  “They don’t want to call it theft.  But they do want to make the depositors have their capital at risk as an investor would.  Of course it comes down to theft, given the traditional nature of a depositor.  But they are trying to get around that so that the cost can be imposed on depositors.  So, yes, it is theft.”

KWN continues below with legendary Jim Sinclair’s take on the ongoing crisis:

Eric King:  “You have warned recently that the IMF cannot afford to make a misstep or the West would be faced with unprecedented financial destruction and massive bank runs.”

Sinclair:  “If Lagarde and the IMF sustain their position that the Troika has the right to tax, confiscate, or haircut the depositor, whatever you want to call it, then what the Troika has announced to the world is that the sacrosanct nature of deposits no longer exists.

This puts the entire concept of ‘insurance’ on deposits in question.  This will mean that deposits of size in banks will move to seek other areas of safekeeping because the banking institutions will purely be seen as houses of confiscation.

The dream that no depositor would be hurt by the collapse of the financial world, based on fraudulent over-the-counter-derivatives, triggered by the flushing of Lehman, will be exposed as an absolute and total lie.  This will trigger tremendous runs on banks any time that a bank or that system has any financial pressure.

This has the potential to create a revolution.  A misstep by Lagarde and the IMF here could do far more damage than what the world witnessed after the collapse and liquidation of Lehman.  That is what is at stake here.

The seriousness of this upcoming decision by the IMF, should they in fact decide to steal from depositors, I firmly believe that Mrs. Lagarde and the IMF will go down in history as causing far more financial devastation than the flushing of Lehman.

The story in Cyprus right now is not about capital controls, that was an obvious side effect of this disaster, the story will be this upcoming decision by the IMF.  God help us if Mrs. Lagarde and the IMF make one of the greatest mistakes in history.”

*thefreedictionary.com definition of a bank deposit:  “present money for safekeeping.”