Silver lined snowflakes

The issue of what to do with surplus frozen embryos has had high profile recently
As has a recent french study on nature vs nurture in IQ development, in particular both the elasticity of IQ (is it sensitive to nurture early on but "rebounds" towards the genetic mean as you age?) and the role of the opportunities for intellectual stimulation to develop IQ potential (as opposed to diet or environmental insults etc).

So... IF the snowflake baby adoption ever took off big time - enough for a serious sample to be studied.
And, IF, someone simultaneously funded a long time study of the development of those children, tracking both the genetic and family history of the donors and the recipients, it would make for a potentially interesting intermediate sample - where the kid is genetically of one heritage, but almost all the nurture is another (including development in the womb).
'Course you'd have to control for damage during storage, but that's then just another thing to study.

Think "they" would go for it?
As if.

Tags

More like this

If there has been at least one good side-effect of Dr. Watson making a jack-ass of himself, it is that it has given scientists the opportunity to set the record straight about heredity, race, and IQ. (He has since recanted, so everything is all better now. Watson to Blacks: "Sorry Blacks."…
Dave and Jonah have both commented on this piece in The New York Times which is something of a mismash of recent studies coming out of the field of behavior genetics. The best thing about the piece, from my selfish angle, is that it references Contingency Table, now absorbed into my other weblog,…
Our health isn't just affected by the things we do after we're born - the conditions we face inside our mother's womb can have a lasting impact on our wellbeing, much later in life. This message comes from a growing number of studies that compare a mother's behaviour during pregnancy to the…
Microbial ecology, and its relation to the development of infectious disease, is an ever-growing field of study. Of course, there are a vast number of bacterial species living amongst us, most of which do not cause us any harm. Others may infect us only when, so to speak, the stars align in a…

You mean, study the effects of weekly Sunday services (or daily, for that matter) on arrested intellectual development? But how do you distinguish that from having a macho father and submissive mother? And memorizing the Bible instead of education? And being beaten with a belt every time you ask an uncomfortable question?