[CobrastanJorji]

It's a recessive/heterozygous thing. If you get the gene from neither parent, you're vulnerable to malaria. If you get the gene from either parent, you're immune to malaria and don't get sickle cell. If you get the gene from both parents, you get sickle cell. A hypothetical future person who's going to be born in an area with a lot of malaria would really want exactly one parent with sickle cell and one parent lacking the gene completely to guarantee the best personal outcome, or they'd want exactly one heterozygous parent (for a 50% chance of being immune to malaria with no downside), or they might settle for the gamble of two heterozygous parents (50% chance of immunity, 25% chance of sickle cell).

[Infinitesimus]

(You already know this but for the general audience)

The train doesn't make you immune to malaria but it does increase resistance after infection.

[graphe]

This sounds like Tay Sachs for Africans. Read that carriers of Tay Sachs might have defended them against tuberculosis, and they're also looking at gene therapy for it.

Prevention is the preferred method of passing this trait on however.

[eszed]

Can they do sperm (or egg) selection to change those odds for IVF?

[CobrastanJorji]

In fact yes! https://punchng.com/value-of-ivf-in-elimination-of-sickle-ce...

But practically, it'd be a huge challenge. Nigeria's one of the main victims of malaria and, not by coincidence, one of the main victims of sickle cell. There are IVF clinics in Nigeria, but they're very expensive even before you consider sickle cell testing. It likely wouldn't scale to all of the births per day, and something like a quarter of the country would need it.

But it's not IMPOSSIBLE. You'd need to do maybe 75 or so per day to cover the 25% or so of the country that have the gene and would need it. Hard and expensive and impractical, but perhaps possible?

[quickthrower2]

Or add the DNA tests to dating apps.