Misso

It might not be completely controllable, and can't be modeled excactly, but there is certain a possibility to "improve" the genepool. It's done with horses, dogs, cattle and crops, also living things with the same varying genes that mankind has. Eugenetica isn't making a genepool, it's limiting a genepool. Of course mutations will keep causing unexpected things to happen but those will most likely be incidents rather than rule. With the subjects that eugenetica is already practiced on, things do seem to go as pretty much as planned, despite the inevitable mutations. The real problem lies in defining what are good and bad characteristics.

CALDONIA

Misso,

We have genetically altered horses, cattle, dogs and crops, but all was done to "improve" them for our own purposes. Take away our need for them and things change. I would not expect a chihuahua or a pekinese dog to compete very well with wolves and coyotes for food were they returned to the wild.

The problem indeed is assigning characteristics as "good" or "bad" as well as deciding just what we want to "improve" human beings for? Natural selection has no agenda, it's a process, but eugenics must have one.

abe smith

Uh.... I have this truly-off-the-wall "connexion" way back in here tap-tap; totally-unsubstantiable forsooth..... that the small squad of various (sic) humanbeings>>> eugenicists (in many times & places, certainly NOT just-here) have some sort of very-personal *need* to *control*; and that -in my weird dream-sourced?
connection, they (the need-to-controllers) have/had a problem with *nocturnal enuresis*. I can't imagine where this personal idea of mine came from; and I'm willing to accept that it ain' worth shit! (to switch excreta....)
I do think this curious motive = to "run", rermake, improve the human species, IZZ odd; and needs accounting-for. Like, what Nathan said to David.

Wounded King

would you say that that applies to the Ashkenazic Jews trying to eradicate certain heriditary diseases from their population?

ps418

At least you're wiling to accept the truth. Now, let's talk about your statement that "human genetic material is ALIVE". . .

ps418

There are plenty of characteristics that most people agree are "bad," by virtue of the fact that they cause suffering to the person possessing it (e.g. cystic fibrosis, early onset Alzheimer's). What's wrong with a minimal eugenics that allows parents to voluntarily select against genes that determine or predispose for those characteristics? Is there anything wrong with allowing parents to choose which of their genes they pass to their children? For instance, two parents who are carriers for the same recessive allele could ensure that none of their children expressive the recessive phenotype or become carriers themselves.

Patrick

abe smith

Huh?

ps418

Huh what?

abe smith

1. Shall I infer that you reject as meaningless the term"alive"? (That position is defensible, of course.)
2. Do you hold (as an opinion) that "genetic material" is different from (any) other sorts of material stuff (a tautology, enh?)? (I'll go-around your next bang by saying my qy here is straightforward, neither rhetorical nor satirical.)

(I also spent time (about 16 years) working in an enormous State institution for all manner of "retarded" persons and a whole lot of miscellaneous "others" including "psychotics" binned there in order to put them *somewhere*.. )
It occurs to me, Patrick, that you may (as I myself do from time to time, or hell, all the time) REJECT the possibility that words (e.g. "alive", "true", "fact" etc etc) can/do ever MEAN anything-at-all. Do you then(I'm repeating) opine that the term "alive" has any meaning?
...............................
As for my offensive-to-you "wacko" connexion of (not-too-well-informed) eugenicist ideas with personal needs-to-control in the persons who entertain eugenicist ideas, I agreed that it's "wacko"; and yet I connect it.... Can we(both) elide any personal invective & just proceed w/ the above discussion, if you think it worth discussing? Cordially....

ps418

No, thou shalt not infer that. The word "alive" obviously has meaning, otherwise I obvious would not/could not dispute your claim that "human genetic material is ALIVE". Cells are alive. Plants and animals, which are composed on cells, are also alive. Genes and chromosomes are not alive. Neither are proteins. Neither are viruses, which are composed of both genes and proteins.

Patrick