Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Totalitarianist · 03-25-2003, 10:04 PM

If any disease is hereditable, eugenics can work. If intelligence is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. If obesity is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. The same for skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, facial structure, skeletal pattern, bodily distribution of fat, height, mental disorders -- absolutely everything. All of these are hereditable. Therefore, eugenics can work.

Eugenics is unfasionable; it is not unscientific. If anything is hereditable, eugenics can work.

Galton said that eugenics is "[t]he science of improving stock, whether human or animal." Eugenics works in non-human animals. No one denies this. If it can work for non-human animals, it can work for mankind. If there is reason to believe that this is not the case, I should like to know why; for genes are just as hereditable in every race of non-human animals as they are in mankind.

If we can improve a race, we should. All races should have the right to improve themselves. History is a battle of races (and ideologies and classes, of course). If we the Caucasoids (or negroids, or mongoloids, or whatecer) wish to survive, we must improve ourselves in every possible way.

I am not a Nazi; I am opposed to Nazism moreso than anything else whereof I can think. I do not believe that any one race is superior. However, I see no problem whatever with improving a race. This should be the goal of every race on earth. This is progression. This is scientific. Progress and science are sacred.

winstonjen · 03-25-2003, 10:13 PM

But should 'undesirables' be denied the right to reproduce so that society can advance? Having a wide and varied gene pool can be helpful to society, because we won't all be vulnerable to the same diseases.

Totalitarianist · 03-25-2003, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by winstonjen
But should 'undesirables' be denied the right to reproduce so that society can advance? Having a wide and varied gene pool can be helpful to society, because we won't all be vulnerable to the same diseases.

Of course. No one denies that. Variation is still possible with eugenics. To say otherwise would amount to saying that evolution is impossible.

echidna · 03-26-2003, 12:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Totalitarianist
I am not a Nazi; I am opposed to Nazism moreso than anything else whereof I can think. I do not believe that any one race is superior. However, I see no problem whatever with improving a race. This should be the goal of every race on earth. This is progression. This is scientific. Progress and science are sacred.

But oddly you do seem to share one of their most hated tenets.

What you seem to fail to understand is why eugenics is rejected. It is not about its scientific validity, it is about its moral basis.

Please provide your list of positive human genetic attributes which should be bred into the human race.

Then provide a mechanism by which this breeding should occur.

Then explain why your list supersedes someone else's list & how you can permanently guarantee an "objectively" compassionate list of characteristics.

Then explain how your mechanism can be considered to be moral, compassionate and consistent with the individuality of human free will.

ps418 · 03-26-2003, 05:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by echidna
What you seem to fail to understand is why eugenics is rejected. It is not about its scientific validity, it is about its moral basis.

Exactly. You're free to have children with whichever willing partner you choose. But I dont see that anyone has the right to tell anyone else they cannot have children (excepting maybe child abusers).

Quote:

Totalitarianist:
If any disease is hereditable, eugenics can work. If intelligence is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. If obesity is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. The same for skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, facial structure, skeletal pattern, bodily distribution of fat, height, mental disorders -- absolutely everything. All of these are hereditable. Therefore, eugenics can work.

The word is heritable, not hereditable. And its not quite that simple. The phenotype you wish to select for not only has to be heritable, it has to have a signficant narrow heritability. The narrow heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance attributed to additive genetic variance. While some of these quantitative traits have a signficant narrow heritability (height, obesity, cogntive ability), some do not, and such phenotypes will not respond predictably to selection, i.e. eugenics.

Patrick

King's Indian · 03-26-2003, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Totalitarianist
If any disease is hereditable, eugenics can work[...]

Hello, T.
Just three quick points, two of which are re-iterations of points made previously (as I've just discovered).
To amplify Echidna's point: one thing we're going to have to do is rigourously specify "disease" from "non-disease". Take sickle-cell anaemia: ghastly and pitiable for those who inherit the gene from both parents, but for those inheriting the gene from one parent, a factor in resistance to malaria, and very useful for tropical populations. How in this case can eugenical "pruning" eliminate one form, but not the other?
I'd like some thoughts on winstonjen's point, too, if I may: how, in deciding which heritable units are injurious to us now, are we to determine that they will provide no future advantage when our environment changes in ways that will affect us (as seems inevitable, unfortunately)? Wouldn't a sensible approach be to keep the gene-pool as wide as possible, and treat such unfortunates that genetics throws up with all the sympathy and technology at our disposal?
There seem to be plenty of ways in which culture improves the race, without some authority having to start telling people when they can and can't have babies. If in the name of the improvement of the race (whatever that means), we decide on forced sterilization, how far have we come? If progress and science are "sacred", why not just sacrifice on their altar?
I welcome any comments.
KI

PS: as an idea, I find "eugenics" hateful, but that is not really relevant to your post.

ps418 · 03-26-2003, 06:00 AM

There are some instances in which eugenics may be morally permissible. For instance, if amniocentesis revealed that your preterm child has Down's syndrome or some other profound chromosomal abnormality, I would not think it terrible immoral to terminate the pregnancy. There are many other examples beside DS where you could state confidently that the child would suffer tremendously. But the important point for me is that the parents are choosing, not someone else.

On the other hand, this web page throws cold water on negative eugenics, at least with respect to recessive alleles:

Quote:

In negative Eugenics the aim is to lessen the genetic load of the human population, that is to substantially reduce and even eliminate the harmful genes from the gene-pool and establish a genetically purified humanity free of genetic disorders. The basic method of negative eugenics is sterilization of those who have genetic disorders to prevent their bad genes to be reintroduced into the gene-pool. Therapeutic abortion is the strongest form of this sterilization program. The word therapeutic refers, of course, to the health of the human population, and not to the health of the individual with the disorder. Negative eugenicists often play on the idea of common good.

The probability of the appearance of a genetic disorder is relatively low in an out-breeding population where an incest code prevents marriages between relatives closer than first cousins. (The relatedness between first cousins is 1/8, between parent and child is 1/2, between brother and sister is 1/2, and between aunt and nephew or uncle and niece is 1/4.) On the other hand, the probability of accumulation of bad genes under such system of out breeding is quite high. Such accumulation of bad genes is called the genetic load. The aim of the negative eugenics programs is to lessen this genetic load. The question is whether the methods used are in any way adequate to achieve this goal.

To assess this adequacy we are to measure what can be achieved through negative eugenics in terms of realistic probabilities.

Considering the various modes of inheritance we can describe well-specified scenarios. A genetic disorder may be inherited from a recessive gene, or a dominant gene, or in multiple factor and polygenic systems. The most common form of inheritance of a disorder is from a recessive gene. On the average, the frequency of a deleterious recessive gene in the human gene-pool is q = 0.02. This means that the disorder to be manifested must be supported by two such recessive genes in the genotype of the effected individual. The probability of such event is then 0.02 x 0.02 = 0.0004, that is four in 10.000. According to the negative eugenics program we must sterilize those 4 out of 10.000 effected individuals everywhere in the world. This would, however, not eliminate the recessive bad gene from the population, because many of these genes would still remain in heterozygous condition in the carriers who have only one of the bad genes masked by the normal, dominant allele. Could we include the carriers into the sterilization program? Not likely. They would represent about 4% of a population of 6 billion people. Any sterilization program of that magnitude would be prohibitive. By the way, the number of heterozygotes in a population is given by the value 2pq where p is the frequency of the dominant allele and q is that of the recessive allele. Since p + q = 1, and q = 0.02, then p = 1 - q = 0.98, and 2pq = 2 x 0.98 x 0.02 = 0.0392, close to 4%.

Another way to assess the efficiency of negative eugenics is to see how long it would take to halve the present 0.02 frequency of a defective gene to a value of 0.01. Disregarding new mutations, the answer in number of generations is given by the reciprocal value of the original frequency, that is 1/0.02, which is equal to 50. If we allow 30 years for a generation, then it would take 1,500 years of sterilization of each and every individual worldwide to reduce the frequency of the deleterious recessive gene from 0.02 to 0.01. The task would be impossible, and the result would be negligible. If the sterilization program would not include everyone having the recessive trait, the elimination process would become slower. Similarly if not just a single pair of genes were involved but the system were polygenic, then the same slight result, a change from 0.02 to 0.01, would be reached even more slowly.

However, in fairness it should also be pointed out that sterilization is not necessary -- just selectively bringing children to term.

Patrick

Nic Tamzek · 03-26-2003, 08:31 AM

That previous quote is a great one. And if anyone seriously considers restricting the breeding of the "carriers" of harmful recessive alleles, consider that this would be *everyone* as every single one of us has any number of these.

Even the odds of producing a harmful-recessive-free kid are prohibitive.

It would be far easier to fix the genetic defects of those expressing double-recessive traits...

Misso · 03-26-2003, 12:01 PM

I never know what to think of eugenetica. On the one hand I strongly agree with it, on the other hand it's an abject concept - from a moral point of view.

I do sometimes wonder if human isn't hollowing out it's species. For instance, there are more people with harelips born than, say, 50 years ago, because nowadays harelips are fixed and those people aren't too "ugly" to find a partner and have kids with anymore. Now this is just an innocent example, but there's more like it with more serious consequences.
From an evolutionary point of view, if you want the human race to survive, it might be wise to indeed let the weak die out instead of fix them and keep them alive long enough to procreate and pass on their weaker genes. If humans, as a species, start to rely more and more on technology to keep them alive and able to procreate, a sudden loss of this technology - should this occur - could have serious consequences, and lessen the chances of survival (maybe even if this loss of technology doesn't occur).

The example if sickle-cell anaemia is a good one, but there are certainly things that most, if not all people would agree on that are bad: weak vision, heriditary muscular diseases, stuff like that. If nature were to take it's toll, these people would most likely never pass on their genes, but in the contemporary western world they can.

Of course there's the moral dilemmas like not allowing people the freedom to have children, and the problem of defining "bad genes", but I think Totalitarianist does have a point.

Jesse · 03-26-2003, 12:42 PM

I think most people would agree that forcing people to get sterilized is wrong, but it's a bit more morally ambiguous whether it'd be wrong to offer people financial incentives to be sterilized or perhaps just to use birth control. The danger is that people who are more desparate financially might feel more pressure to take this option if it was available to them (the moral issue here is somewhat similar to the issue of offering people financial incentives to serve in the military), although one could make the case that anyone who'd avoid having kids for money probably wouldn't be the best parent anyway. There is also the possibility of offering financial incentives to couples with "desirable" traits to have more children, or for individuals with such traits to donate more sperm or eggs to infertile couples...this sort of thing could backfire, though...see this article on the high rate of Asperger's syndrome and autism among children of couples in Silicon Valley, for example.

03-25-2003, 10:04 PM	#1
Totalitarianist Banned Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 1,234	Eugenics can work If any disease is hereditable, eugenics can work. If intelligence is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. If obesity is to any degree hereditable, eugenics can work. The same for skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, facial structure, skeletal pattern, bodily distribution of fat, height, mental disorders -- absolutely everything. All of these are hereditable. Therefore, eugenics can work. Eugenics is unfasionable; it is not unscientific. If anything is hereditable, eugenics can work. Galton said that eugenics is "[t]he science of improving stock, whether human or animal." Eugenics works in non-human animals. No one denies this. If it can work for non-human animals, it can work for mankind. If there is reason to believe that this is not the case, I should like to know why; for genes are just as hereditable in every race of non-human animals as they are in mankind. If we can improve a race, we should. All races should have the right to improve themselves. History is a battle of races (and ideologies and classes, of course). If we the Caucasoids (or negroids, or mongoloids, or whatecer) wish to survive, we must improve ourselves in every possible way. I am not a Nazi; I am opposed to Nazism moreso than anything else whereof I can think. I do not believe that any one race is superior. However, I see no problem whatever with improving a race. This should be the goal of every race on earth. This is progression. This is scientific. Progress and science are sacred.

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03-25-2003, 10:13 PM	#2
winstonjen Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Brisbane, Australia Posts: 3,425	But should 'undesirables' be denied the right to reproduce so that society can advance? Having a wide and varied gene pool can be helpful to society, because we won't all be vulnerable to the same diseases.

03-26-2003, 08:31 AM	#8
Nic Tamzek Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: California Posts: 646	That previous quote is a great one. And if anyone seriously considers restricting the breeding of the "carriers" of harmful recessive alleles, consider that this would be everyone as every single one of us has any number of these. Even the odds of producing a harmful-recessive-free kid are prohibitive. It would be far easier to fix the genetic defects of those expressing double-recessive traits...

03-26-2003, 12:01 PM	#9
Misso Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Netherlands Posts: 570	I never know what to think of eugenetica. On the one hand I strongly agree with it, on the other hand it's an abject concept - from a moral point of view. I do sometimes wonder if human isn't hollowing out it's species. For instance, there are more people with harelips born than, say, 50 years ago, because nowadays harelips are fixed and those people aren't too "ugly" to find a partner and have kids with anymore. Now this is just an innocent example, but there's more like it with more serious consequences. From an evolutionary point of view, if you want the human race to survive, it might be wise to indeed let the weak die out instead of fix them and keep them alive long enough to procreate and pass on their weaker genes. If humans, as a species, start to rely more and more on technology to keep them alive and able to procreate, a sudden loss of this technology - should this occur - could have serious consequences, and lessen the chances of survival (maybe even if this loss of technology doesn't occur). The example if sickle-cell anaemia is a good one, but there are certainly things that most, if not all people would agree on that are bad: weak vision, heriditary muscular diseases, stuff like that. If nature were to take it's toll, these people would most likely never pass on their genes, but in the contemporary western world they can. Of course there's the moral dilemmas like not allowing people the freedom to have children, and the problem of defining "bad genes", but I think Totalitarianist does have a point.

03-26-2003, 12:42 PM	#10
Jesse Moderator - Science Discussions Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Providence, RI, USA Posts: 9,908	I think most people would agree that forcing people to get sterilized is wrong, but it's a bit more morally ambiguous whether it'd be wrong to offer people financial incentives to be sterilized or perhaps just to use birth control. The danger is that people who are more desparate financially might feel more pressure to take this option if it was available to them (the moral issue here is somewhat similar to the issue of offering people financial incentives to serve in the military), although one could make the case that anyone who'd avoid having kids for money probably wouldn't be the best parent anyway. There is also the possibility of offering financial incentives to couples with "desirable" traits to have more children, or for individuals with such traits to donate more sperm or eggs to infertile couples...this sort of thing could backfire, though...see this article on the high rate of Asperger's syndrome and autism among children of couples in Silicon Valley, for example.

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