Thread by @erlichya

saw some folks yelling eugenics for @geochurch dating app. Let's stop the knee jerk reaction for a moment and think about it🧐.

1. It is not eugenics. This dating app does not drive alleles to extinction. In fact, if successful, disease allele should evade negative selection
1/n

2. There is a widely successful dating system based on this concept. It is called "Dor Yeshorim" and is testing tens of thousands of people in the Ultra-Orthodox Jew community.
How it works?

wsj.com/articles/SB100…

18 years-old are tested for Ashkenazi rare diseases
with 95% participation rate. The kids get a six digit number but not their results to avoid stigma. Since they use arranged marriage, one of the first steps is that the two families exchange the six digit numbers. They call to

a hot line and insert the (6+6=) 12 digit number. Then, they get an answer whether they marriage is advisable or not.

Using this "dating app", they nearly eradicated Tay-Sachs from their community. There used to be a 16-bed department for babies with this disease in a Brooklyn

hospital. But since this program, this department does not have kids from the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Think about how much suffer was avoided. In fact, the Rabbi that started this program lost FOUR kids to Tay-Sachs. Eugenics? Hell no.

3. I am not sure that such dating app will work for the secular community for various reasons. But hey, this is academia. Let them test the concept. It is easy to be on the sidelines and be cool by saying "this is evil". You know what's hard? Building a good tech.