On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 05:21:19AM -0700, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> With TL15or14 avail it seems virtually impossible to me that such
> characteristics aren't corrected well before birth or even
> eliminated from the gene pool altogether but I suppose it's still
> possible even if just barely...

There's little reason to expect that his mother had access to TL15
technology.  If I recall correctly, he didn't inherit that position
himself, and most people don't have TL15 medicine.

Another problem is that genes for infertility are never simple
dominant alleles, for the obvious reason.  Those are already self
removing.  It would require a massive eugenics program on an
interstellar scale to remove every allele that could ever give an
increased risk of infertility, or combine with any others that do so
together, and so on.  On top of that, most of the ones that remain in
the population after millions of years of evolution are those that
usually give benefits that outweigh the risk.

On the smaller scale, genetic modification is likely one of those
things that may disqualify or disfavour a descendant from succession
in the nobility.

- Tim