How would the population be affected in the long term if humans started to choose specific genes(Physical traits, intelligence, Disease resistance, Longevity) for their children?
In: Biology
What you are describing is called eugenics, and it has been discredited as not useful. Humans have very low genetic diversity compared to other species of large mammal, and most traits you listed involve a very large number of genes plus environmental factors, meaning it would be very hard to select for any of them effectively and very easy to cause inbreeding and the emergence of negative traits from recessive genes.
Evolution takes a very long time to produce significant differences even with fairly strong selection pressures, on the order of thousands of years. It’s just not a productive idea.
Latest Answers