Friar Bellows

If you hate us as we are, why waste your time merely improving a kludgy, flawed design? Start from scratch and create something really good. Instead of eugenetica, think cybernetica (i.e. AI robots). Take all your angst and frustration, and channel it into becoming an AI scientist.

Mad Kally

Cleft palate and cleft lip result from failure of the two sides of the face to unite properly at an early stage of prenatal development. The defect may be limited to the outer flesh of the upper lip (the term harelip, suggesting the lip of a rabbit, is both inaccurate and unkind), or it may extend back through the midline of the upper jaw through the roof of the palate. Sometimes only the soft palate, located at the rear of the mouth, is involved.

King's Indian

Hello, Jesse.

I agree with you, but moral ambiguities have a habit of sliding down towards the unambiguous. What does, for example, one do with the targeted couples who refuse voluntary sterilization, birth control or financial incentives?

Take care,
KI.

King's Indian

Hello, Misso.
I notice we attach the same moral weight to the concept.
As to your ideas of survival, perhaps the citizens of first-century Rome have something to teach us: cut the cord, and then throw the bundle onto the local rubbish-tip. Perhaps not. We'd approach the problem with more humanity.
By the way, what sort of technology did you have in mind as aiding our ability to procreate? IVF? Viagra? Is your plan of disposal meant to anticipate our evolving into animals dependent on such technology? Luckily such technology doesn't seem as strong an environmental factor when compared with others (famine, for example). In fact, economic forces may save us the trouble of dirtying our hands.

Take care,
KI

Ovazor

I don't think this is still eugenics, as people with DS or profound chromosomal abnormality don't usually spread their genes and eugenics is about "improving" the gene pool of the population in gereral. In any case, Down Syndrome results much more often from mishaps during meiosis than from any inhereditary reasons, which would doom any eugenic attempt to get rid of DS to failure.

Whether it is moral to abort fetuses with severe defects because of those defects is another question , but is is not really about eugencis.

Human races do not exist in the sense you seem to think. The idea of history as a battle of races is mildly put ridiculous.

The idea of Eugenics is almost always based on vastly oversimplified ideas how traits are inherited, especially mental abilities (not to mention those idiots who think that moral qualities can be inherited), and completely unscientific ideas on what is "good stock." Although eugenic thinking borrows from science, it always present conclusions that cannot be called scientific.

Many proponents of eugenics claim it can be used to eliminate inherited diseases. Eugenics cannot reduce inherited diseases significantly, because to do so would basically require that some authority would decree who can reproduce with whom.
This cannot work in an open society, and even a totalitarian society would be better of by using its resources elsewhere.

You might find it interesting to know, that many (medical) dotors who embraced nazism did it because nazism supporter their ideas about eugenics and progress, not because they agreed with nazis social, national or economic ideas.

Anyway the concept of human "race" is unscientific, so idea of "improving race" cannot be scientific either. Anybody who thinks that science has anything to say about anybody's "goal on earth" doesn't understand the nature of science.

Ovazor

I think that such strictly voluntary incentives could be OK for population control purposes for couples who already have children. To avoid "undesirable" genes or genetical combinations, no.

It might also create crazy situations, where "healthy" poor people register as having "bad" genes just to get the money.

Misso

OK fine, cleft palate and cleft lip. That wasn't how it was mentioned in the dictionary though.

Well yes, there's those, but also all of the breakthroughs in keeping people with heriditary alive untill they are 40 that would have otherwise died aged 15, now allowing them to pass on their (faulty) genes. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it could backfire.
Even if we keep all of the current technology and improve on it even further, the system of keeping "weak" genes in the genepool could destroy itself. Kind of like the welfare system in some Western European states is (nearly) collapsing under it's own success.

Imagine a population where 75% was unable to take care of itself because of things like the Syndrom of Down: it would put a tremendous strain on the remaining 25%. Of course a situation like this won't happen, but you probably get the idea.

ps418

That's a good point. Instead of using chromosomal abnormalities as an example, I should have used as an example alleles with deleterious effects, since in that case one would definitely be deliberately altering the frequency of an allele in the human population.

Alright, I agree with that. But once you start influencing the transmission of alleles (rather than just selecting against chromosomal abnormalities), then you are definitely doing eugenics. For instance, if two parents who carry the sickle-cell gene abort a fetus because it is homozygous for the sickle-gene, then that would be eugenics, right? I would see that as morally acceptable.


Which particular definition of race is unscientific? Some definitions of race are clearly scientific (groups of individuals differentiated on the basis of biogeographic ancestry), while others are not (discrete platonic categories). As a blanket statement, I dont see that it is correct to say that race is an unscientific concept, although the common conceptions of race are not scientific.

Patrick

ps418

Presumably, if such a system were brought into existence, one would have to be screened for the genes of interest by whatever agency was administering the eugenics program. I dont see how you you could self-report your own genetic makeup.

Patrick

Mad Kally

I'd be willing to wager you don't have a recent medical dictionary.