You have a petri dish with hundreds of blastocysts or a uterus with two or three blastocysts

You would like to have that blastocyst live that has the genes that go with kindness happiness calm cleverness beauty as well as the fashion of the times

with a petri dish you could actually test each of the hundreds of blastocysts prior to implantation With a uterus you might prefer to choose just one to become a baby

technologically the IgG antibody that tags cytes to be phagocytosized passes through the placenta The blastocysts would generally be immuno invisible

I think The immune system does remove anomolous blastocysts now

wikipedia describes the process of opsonization Both the membrane of a phagocytosing cell, as well as its target, have a negative charge (zeta-potential), making it difficult for the two cells to come close together. During the process of opsonization, antigens are bound by antibody and/or complement molecules. Phagocytic cells express receptors, CR1 and Fc receptors, that bind opsonin molecules, C3b and antibody, respectively. With the antigen coated in these molecules, binding of the antigen to the phagocyte is greatly enhanced. Most phagocytic binding cannot occur without opsonization of the antigen.

basically if you give a blastocysts surface a positive charge it will get eaten

My first thought was that a positively charged version of phosphatidyl choline kind of like a positively charged lecithin would become a part of the membranes of the most rapidly dividing tissues like blastocysts This would make the most rapidly dividing tissues targets of phagocytosis Thus positively charged phosphatidyl choline is an abortifacient

the nifty thing is though that making a positively charged lecithin with a docking site specific to particular tissues like blastocysts is possible Further the surface proteins of different blastocysts will be different with different gender as well as various genetic traits giving the ability to choose which blastocyst to carry to term as a baby
-- beanangel, May 15 2009

IgG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IgG
[beanangel, May 15 2009]

opsonization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opsonization
[beanangel, May 15 2009]

prior art http://www.uulyrics...song-on-production/
[calum, May 15 2009]

please nobody annotate this idea.
-- WcW, May 15 2009


The germ of this idea is that the efficacy of an antibody can be increased by tagging it wil a positively charged molecule. The proposed application is bollocks, as the british bakers might say, for the following:

1: early fetuses must be protected from maternal antibodies somehow, given they express many alloantigens. 2: I do not think the mechanism for ending defective blastocysts is immunologic. 3: I am skeptical that late phenotypic traits like kindness are reflected by antigen expression in the early blastocyst.

And I suspect the bean knows this too but cannot resist a little gentle trollishness.

But attaching a charged molecule to the antibody. Could it help? Bean's presented background rationale is solid enough. This is eminently testable. One would use a proven system. Monoclonal antibodies are now routinely used for cancer treatment (eg: rituximab anti-CD20 antibody). People attach bells and whistles (radioparticles, venoms) but I do not know about a simple charged molecule like phosphatidylcholine. Or polyethylene glycol which is attached to many chemos now.
-- bungston, May 15 2009


This is a stupid idea with no redeeming features. Oh - wait! - one redeeming feature - it's not as long as it might have been.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 15 2009


//I am skeptical that late phenotypic traits like kindness are reflected by antigen expression in the early blastocyst.//

Either [bean] knows the locus of the kindness gene, or these blastocysts are identified by how they interact with others in the petri dish.

I liked this idea until the third word of the title.
-- shudderprose, May 16 2009


//I liked this idea until the third word of the title//
I read it as "arborificient", and thought "Trees for All".
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, May 16 2009


I got lost in the first three seconds... But then i'm not that smart. :-/
-- superjohn, May 17 2009


//I got lost in the first three seconds..// Just because an idea looks stupid at first sight, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not also fundamentally flawed.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 17 2009


I find this hard to follow, but one thing's clear to me: niceness is not genetically determined. There may be a genetic influence but upbringing and environment are major factors.
-- nineteenthly, May 17 2009


you've all failed.
-- WcW, May 17 2009


Glad you liked it, [21Q]. [Grayure] almost threw the rest away this afternoon, which was annoying.
Anyway, i'm more into the idea that there are important genetic factors since our son was born, though i probably shouldn't go into that in too much depth. There are other issues, but one of them is clearly impulse control. How much can that be trained? Besides that, there's the issue of dyssocial behaviour as a disorder. People who are understood to be dyssocial, i.e. psychopaths, may also score high on IQ tests. That suggests their cognitive abilities may be above average, but if so, that brings up a metaethical issue, namely, if ethics follows logically from enlightened self-interest, it makes sense for a psychopath to behave ethically, which suggests their focus is rather narrow, in a descriptive rather than an evaluative sense. For instance, they may overestimate their ability to avoid detection and therefore, for example, imprisonment, which may be at odds with their true desires. On the other hand, they may prefer reigning in Hell to serving in Heaven.
-- nineteenthly, May 17 2009


//People who are understood to be dyssocial, i.e. psychopaths,// Whoa there! I hope that "i.e." was meant to be an "e.g."
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 17 2009


the textbook parts of this idea are, well, textbook, while the rest...

the headline promises wonderfulness, the sub-headline is garbled, and the main text brushes some personality traits to then delve into unrelated territory, never to emerge.
-- loonquawl, May 18 2009


[beanangel] You need to stop smoking that shit.
-- nomocrow, May 18 2009



random, halfbakery