Has the Clan eugenics program actually worked?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not expert, but I'm fairly certain we can do effectively the same thing as this now. We've been doing this with sheep and other animals, ya know? Like I can't understand what this is saying directly because I don't think the author understands genetics.

We are, but the technology is so very far from mature- cloned vertebrates have short life expectancies, sex selection techniques aren't entirely reliable, and we are nowhere near the Clans' level when it comes to artificial wombs or the like. As PainRack says, everything the Clans can do is stuff we might actually be able to do within the next fifty to 100 years, luck permitting. But that's mostly because biotech is advancing faster than people predicted in the 1980s and early '90s, when most of the Battletech source material was written. Which is because computer technology advanced way faster than people predicted in the 1980s.

You're very good at quoting obscure fluff text, Painrack-kun. However the strength of your sources seems kind of shakey.
I'm not expert, but I'm fairly certain we can do effectively the same thing as this now. We've been doing this with sheep and other animals, ya know? Like I can't understand what this is saying directly because I don't think the author understands genetics.

Well..... not exactly.
Maeve Wolf is an example of such technology, and is even more....... interesting because she's apparently a full clone of Jamie Wolf. God knows how they made a clone of Jamie Wolf and made him a her, but hey, genetic engineering!

That's not actually all that terribly difficult- file off the Y chromosome and duplicate the X chromosome, and you should get a "her" who expresses all the same genes, and who will develop physically to have a lot of the same biological advantages Jamie Wolf did.

Hell, considering my source article is 6 years old, its probably obsolete now. And entirely off topic, I lost the debate topic today that parents should be allowed to use reproductive technologies to produce designer babies, including selecting the sex of their babies.

Er, when was that?

The Clans' reproductive medicine is damned impressive. I can't think of a feat more difficult than creating a child from the merged genes of two males, the entire natural biology is fighting against you.

not really. Splice your genes into the egg, splice the other into the sperm, that's it. There isn't any real genetic difference in the chromosomes other than X-Y, the only real difficulty is that the Clans need to filter out fertilised Y-Y embryoes..... for all I know, this is already done naturally.

A YY embryo is not viable and will die quickly.

What I mean is that you have to use artificial methods at every step; it's significantly more difficult than more or less any other form of chromosome-level manipulation I can think of. Of course, chromosome-level is itself easier than gene-level.

But I don't know if they actively retained the ability to modify their people's DNA.

Err...... they definitely DID. Again, the ability to create both the aerospace pilot phenotype and the Elemental phenotype, within decades for the Elemental is proof positive that they can do this.

OK. We're sure this wasn't done during the Star League era? And that the technology was not lost to the Clans after they did this?

If so, then yes we have a definite benchmark.