As far as I can tell, the only positive things that came out as a result of the study of eugenics are Spider Man and the Powerpuff Girls, and they were accidents.
This ‘science’ was the basis on which Nazi Germany ran, and is the basis for the ‘one child’ policy in China. The very concepts of the ‘science’ are refuted everyday by humans overcoming their handicaps to become more-than-productive citizens. Of what use is this pseudoscience for us today, except to re-hash racist notions? I say none. Let the human race naturally improve by itself, if it is to be our evolutionary destiny. Don’t try to force it.
Assuming you mean Genetics, I will gladly debate you on this topic.
We are on the brink of an exciting era in medicine, and the science of Genetics will be at the forefront. Soon the entire human genome will be mapped, providing a foundation for the mitigation of genetic based diseases. Some types of gene therapy are already in use today. The aging process will be treated as just another genetic disease, while cloning will help replace worn out or damaged organs.
No, I am not questioning genetics. It has some value, and geneticists in general do not have the prejudices that is inherent in eugenics. Eugenics don’t advocate tweaking. They advocate wholesale changes of humans and of the human condition, which include skin color, having children with high IQ, having one child and one child only, and so on.
hardcore:
It is good you are learning from the mistakes of the past. May those crimes never happen again. And yes, we will put them on other planets. Population pressures will be one of the major forces that takes us to permanently colonize Mars and the moon. capacitor:
Yes, my statement was a compliment in a way. I was saying that what the OP said was so obvious to anyone who knew the history of the 20th Century that nobody in their right mind would dispute you.
Eugenics, as hardcore has discovered, is not the same as genetics. The two bear only a passing resemblence. Genetics is about studying our genes and the genes of other species and curing genetic diseases. Eugenics is an excuse for racism and genocide.
Hardcore does bring up a point though. Let’s make a debatable topic:
Resolved: We should not speed along advances in genetics. In fact, we should slow down the pace.
Genetics can be the most important development in humankind. However, I say that our pace of genetic advances, relative to the ethical development of the use of genetics, is way too fast. We are in the stage of cloning advanced animals. That alone is raising questions about human cloning. There are also other issues related to other aspects of genetics: the storage of embryos from divorced parents, childcare responsibilty of one of which you are not technically the father, and surrogate parents who change their minds. These a but a few issues that the courts resolved, though the decisions may not be stare decisis for other similar cases certain to crop up. This is an indication that genetics is oupacing ethics and the courts by a wide margin. There are several questions that we have to ask ourselves. Among them:
Will advances in genetic therapy be available for all of us, or just those who can afford it?
How will relationships be affected by genetics? How should courts handle a breakdown of a relationship? What if the surrogate mother, for example, changes her mind about having the baby in behalf of a couple, when the baby is in the seventh month of gestation?
These are just a few of the question that should be resolved.
I disagree. The advancement of knowledge should never be restrained due to fear of the unknown. If we do not march down the path of enlightenment, others may who do not share our benign philosophy and thereby gain a competitive advantage.
If this is true, then the acceleration of genetic ethics is imperative, not a call for ignorance. But I further note that the same can likely be said of many significant advancements throughout history.
As with many things, there may be an attainment differential because of individual economic status. It might at least be restricted to those who can afford insurance.
The surrogate mother should have the ability to assert some type of parental right. Perhaps not as much as the genetic parents, but something. Exactly what that would be I leave to the ethicists and lawyers.
Eugenics is a wonderful thing, and has been improving our crops & livestock for over 10,000 years. I assume by your “threat or menace” title, that you are only against applying it to human beings. Well, it would probably be a good thing there too, but who decides what is “desireable”? There are certain VERY undesireable traits/conditions that they DO recommend you do not have children, if you have them. Hard to enforce by law, tho.
You describe some tricky ethical dilemmas, but I can’t really see their connection to genetics (by which I assume you mean artificial manipulation of genetic material, right ? )
capacitor:
sure, unpleasant problems, but they’re more related to in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, aren’t they ? Obviously, genetic manipulation in one form or other might make it necessary to use these techniques more often, but you could ban all research related to the human genome tomorrow, and you’d still be facing these problems.
BTW, I don’t think storage of human embryos is legal in any civilized country. Sperm and ova is something else. (I’m ready to be corrected on this.)
Those who can afford it - and as the price drops, there’ll be more and more of those. But no existing therapy is available for “all of us” - people are still dying from old-fashioned TB round the world because they can’t afford treatment.
Obviously, genetics touch upon eugenics in the sense that modifying a genome sequence means “getting rid of” unwanted bits of the human genome. If those were the genetic sequences that lead to Downs syndrome or hemophilia (sp?), my immediate response would be “so bloody what ?” - who’s the victim ? A child is born without a crippling disease, should I be enraged ?
The grey areas begin if you start to modify gene sequences for fast reactions or better night vision or whatever “improvements” you might think up. I don’t really know how to react to that, except my immediate emotional response is one of “Yecch”.
eugenics n : the study of methods of improving genetic qualities by selective breeding.
Selective Breeding. This can broadly apply to many factors in the process of bringing new people into the world. This doesn’t just concern genetic manipulation, but decisions based on information gathered. What about amniocentesis and genetic screening?
To my understanding, the Chinese “one-child” policy was not driven by eugenics. It was intended as a straight-forward population control policy. No persons were given permission to reproduce or not, based on their allegedly superior or inferior genetic make-up. In other words, the intent of the policy was to limit the population, not reshape it.
I fail to see the connection between eugenics and China’s one child only policy. Eugenics is implemented by restraining some types of people from having any children at all an encouraging others to have as many as they can. China’s policy is designed to slow population growth, not to create a race of “superior” people. And as harsh and draconian as it is, it is fair insofar as it applies to everyone across the board.
Pie-in-the-sky nonesense. Do you have any idea what the costs and difficulties would be in setting up a human colony on an airless planet millions of miles away? They’re so vast I don’t see it everhappening even on a small scale, and yet in order to significantly affect Earth’s population, upwards of a billion people would have to go.
Population control is a main tenet of eugenics, not so in genetics. The one child policy is killing many more girls than boys. That selective killing is applied it is classical eugenics, for eugenics can be ‘applied’ to the sexes as well.
To Danielinthewolvesden: Eugenics is good if you are White, and I guess that you are. You get to live. It was used to disciminate, humiliate and destroy minorities and and immigrants like me. The originator of eugenics even expicitly said that increasing European stock is one of the goals of eugenics.
…it is going to open up a new can of worms. We are preparing ourselves for the new technology, with ethics research and pretty sound policy so far. But what are we going to do when the banned techniques occcur?
skweels, you have no idea whereof you speak. Otherwise, you would know that there are serious plans in the works for doing a lot more than a simple Mars colony. People will want to go to Mars for the same reason they wanted to go anywhere: New opportunities, resources, more space, and basic economics. Mars is unique: It’s close enough to get there in a few months (Assuming current technology. That is, assuming the museum pieces NASA seems content to send up.) and large enough to have enough gravity. People demand space. We get unhappy if we are confined for too long. We become psychotic from stress of our ‘personal space’ is taken from us too often. Rats do unmentionable things to each other if confined too long without enough space. Take a long look at Saddam, Hitler, Baby Doc, and Buchanan. Do you want to be on the same planet that produced these monsters? Do you think it will end with them? Mars or extinction. Choose. Now try to keep things on-topic.
Since when has Population control been a main tenet of eugenics? You usually want your livestock to breed as much as possible. Eugenics is good if you are white? White what? Cows? Horses? I admit, that without eugenics we would not have palominos or other “white” horse breeds, but what is wrong with them, they are kinda pretty. “Eugenics was used to…” and “the originator of eugenics”- ??? the originator of eugenics was some clever shepherd in the babyonian or isreal area some 10000 years ago. I really don’t know how you can quote him, as we likely do not speak his language, and they did not have writing back then. And he did not even know there WAS a “europe”, much less want to increase his stock herd there.
OH, NOW I get it. You’re mixing up the SCIENCE of eugenics, which has been used to improve livestock & crops for some 10000 years, and the Nazi PSUEDO-science of “HUMAN Eugenics”, which is a bunch of racist claptrap. You made the same mistake earlier, when you mixed up “Darwinism”, which is a legit scientific theory of evolution, with “SOCIAL Darwinism”, which is a pseudo-scientific load of hoooey, and is only related to Darwinism because the founders thought it would sound better that way.
Look. bud, you had better stop mixing up legit scientific theories with the psuedo-sciences that share a similar sounding name. You are starting to sound like a scientific illiterate.