We could double humanity’s genetic “shuffle rate” by allowing couples to have one child naturally but requiring men to donate their sperm to a central bank, and women to carry and give birth to “randomly-fathered” children.
Obviously the institutional and logistical (not to mention ethical) challenges make this impossible in any present society. But for a planned community of fixed size (e.g. a small colony of humans attempting to rapidly populate a planet, or a starship designed to support the minimum possible human population with the highest possible genetic diversity), such measures may be a practical necessity.
I suspect this has been explored in Science Fiction, though I’ve never read anything in which this idea was put into practice.
We could double humanity’s genetic “shuffle rate” by allowing couples to have one child naturally but requiring men to donate their sperm to a central bank, and women to carry and give birth to “randomly-fathered” children.
Obviously the institutional and logistical (not to mention ethical) challenges make this impossible in any present society. But for a planned community of fixed size (e.g. a small colony of humans attempting to rapidly populate a planet, or a starship designed to support the minimum possible human population with the highest possible genetic diversity), such measures may be a practical necessity.
I suspect this has been explored in Science Fiction, though I’ve never read anything in which this idea was put into practice.