Thanks for your well-informed contributions to this thread. Food for thought. I must admit that I hadn't known the "factory environment" made such a big difference in outcomes.

In your opinion then, do we need to add a 3rd "variable" to the nature/nurture question? "Nature" is generally understood to be DNA, "Nurture" is generally accepted to be the post-birth development environment. If the "embyronic toolkit" at hand is so important, surely this popular concept needs a 3rd leg.

I'd also be interested in your thoughts on surrogacy. I had naively assumed that, so long as the surrogate mother was well-nourished, the baby would likely be fine. But it seems it's a lot more complicated than that, and I feel like a lot of people are underinformed about this.