Wow. I can’t believe I’m actually worth this much abuse. There’s not much in your life, is there?
Replying to your posts is my new hobby.
Yeah, well, given you lie all the time, the fact you are trying to prove me wrong without cites merely fits in with your history. If it were true that mutts are getting x-rayed at anywhere near the numbers that GSDs are, the information would be available to everyone. You cherry picking information from papers that I cannot access is worthless. Where did these folks get their information? What was their purpose? Who is funding them?
If you want to waste your time on this, try hitting offa.org, where most hip x-rays are sent and the best records are. You could also Google Penn-Hip - I don’t have their web address because I don’t believe in them, but I understand they have lots of x-rays on file as well. See if you can find any serious number of x-rays of the hips of mutts.
People who believe in eugenics want to improve the whole human race to some ideal of their own choosing. I simply believe that people who know they carry for a serious genetic disease (as in, severe negative impact on the quality of life) shouldn’t keep having children, or maybe chose to not have any at all. It’s not like we have a shortage of kids needing homes, so why should people be allowed to keep breeding Pugs - I mean, having seriously ill/disabled children just because they want to?
I really don’t get why so much of society thinks as you do, that anyone and everyone has the moral right to have as many children they want, no matter what they might inherit, whether they will be abused, whether anyone can afford to feed them. Yet turn around and demand things like Pugs be abolished because maybe they can’t breathe as well as is ideal. Do you all not realize that a dog is a lower form of life, that it doesn’t have the ability to think or feel as a human does? Why do you not have a problem with children born to suffer when you think whole breeds should be eliminated due to relatively minor issues?
Predictably, there is no limit to how stupid and stubborn you are. These are peer-reviewed scientific papers in veterinary journals. You generally need access to an academic library to find actual research instead of just pictures of pretty puppies. Since you’ve never even seen the inside of any library, you cannot read them. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And for the billionth time, just because you can’t grasp what I’m saying doesn’t mean I’m lying.
You are just flat-out wrong here. This is why I declined to waste my time detailing your many, many errors in this thread* - you are incapable of learning and only want to stick your fingers in your ears and scream “LIAR, LIAR, LIAR!”. Maybe that’s the result of some genetic disorder you should have been screened for. Regardless, what’s the point? You’re never going to change your mind, no matter how many facts are presented. I have better things to do with my time.
*although I’ll tell you, my personal favourite was “there is no such thing as hybrid vigor in dogs because you just can’t create a hybrid in a dog x dog breeding”. Totally wrong. To make a hybrid you only need two genetically distinct lineages, not two different species. That one’s so straightforward you could have learned it from Wikipedia.
No, eugenics is simply to promotion of good genes over bad. There are several ways to accomplish this, and one of them is to discourage the bad. Which is what you propose - discouraging the “breeding” of people you deem to have defective genes. Or saying they should decide not to breed of their own accord.
In other words, you want a eugenics program for humanity.
I will point out that “quality of life” is subjective - what you find intolerable others find tolerable. You also want to cut short the reproduction of “carriers” when, with modern medical technology, it is entirely possible for carriers to choose to bring to term only those who lack the undesirable genes.
Because past attempts to legislate human breeding ended so badly. As in millions of people dead for the most well remembered one, but also stupidity like forcibly sterilizing people whose disorders weren’t genetic at all.
Ah, and here we go with the usual curlcoat assumptions, that if you don’t agree with her totally you’re a caricature, an anti-curlcoat, nevermind what your actual thoughts and opinions might be.
I’m not saying that pugs be abolished, just that they be returned to the 19th century form of the breed with a snout long enough they aren’t all suffering from obstructed breathing and sleep apnea.
Think as us? No. Feel as us, feel pain and suffering, feel emotions as strongly as us? Yes, dogs do have feelings. It’s appalling you breed dogs and don’t realize that. Or maybe it makes it easier for you to manipulate them as if they were inanimate objects or equations on a page, when you don’t have to take into account how your ideals of what a breed should be causes suffering in the animals of that breed.
I have a problem with suffering children, but I don’t think summary execution or forced sterilization is the answer. Nor am I asking that breeds be eliminated, just that they be modified so the dogs can BREATHE PROPERLY. That doesn’t require that a pug have the snout of a collie. It does require that pugs HAVE a snout, which they presently lack.
Am I supposed to be impressed by that?
I’m bored and easily amused.
Really, I just can’t stand people spreading medical disinformation. So when you do so in this thread I’m going to counter it. Not for your benefit, but for the benefit of those who wander in here.
Being aware of how many times you have lied, and being aware that there is tons of information out there on hip dysplasia in dogs, yet you only quote papers I cannot view is hardly stupid nor stubborn. If you really want to continue this, try again with something I can actually see, so I can point out where you are wrong. At a guess, I’d say that your “peer-reviewed scientific papers in veterinary journals” came to the incorrect conclusion that GSDs have significantly more dysplasia than mutts based on the tens of thousands of hip x-rays on file for GSDs vs the extremely few ones for mutts. Or they x-rayed their own small samples. Or they are including small mutts. Or, or, or.
The fact is, I know far more about this than you do, or most likely you ever will, because I’ve been studying it for decades. I pointed you at the organization that has done the most by far towards reducing and eliminating hip dysplasia in dogs in the US. They have decades of records and research and can tell you all kinds of things about the subject. See if you can learn something.
You are citing Wikipedia? Lord you have sunk low. And you are proving you don’t know what you claim about genetics. In general usage, a hybrid is any crossbred dog, but biologically, it’s a cross between species, otherwise you do not get hybrid vigor. Which was the subject. You even admit that yourself, in that you cannot find two genetically distinct lineages within dogs. For example, breeders of “doodles” like to claim their dogs cannot have hip dysplasia, eye problems, allergies, etc because of their “hybrid vigor”. Except that Labs, Goldens and Poodles can all have the genes for those things, so “doodles” are just as likely to have genetic health problems as any poorly bred purebred.
All of that is a pretty broad definition of eugenics. I am not proposing any breeding programs, health test requirements, etc much less any requirement that “breeding stock” be of a certain type or whatever. Shoot, I don’t even care enough to do more than wonder at the disconnect between what people view as at least acceptable in humans yet demand perfection in dog breeding.
Eh, I have to imagine that one could get a solid majority on quite a few health problems.
I have no faith that future generations will have access on demand to abortion…
I have never even hinted at any of that. If nothing else I am pretty much anti-legislation. No, whenever I say something about this, I’m talking more of the public attitude or the morals of such things.
Which isn’t even close to what I said. What I said was this is what the majority of society seems to believe and I don’t get why it’s so. Do you disagree that most people, particularly those who have or intend to have children, see little to nothing wrong with someone having more children after they have had at least one with a severe genetic medical problem, yet if they buy a purebred puppy they will want a genetic guarantee or they will have swallowed the HSUS propaganda and want a bunch of changes in many pure breeds? Or are you simply unaware of the growing pressure on purebred pet breeders to produce the impossible?
Again, to do so would mean they would no longer be Pugs - picking a picture from one year in the history of a centuries old breed isn’t really representative of what that breed is. We have no idea if the photo you posted was of a typical Pug of that era in that place (England?) or if it was the photographers pet.
Pugs existed prior to that time and were apparently bred pure in China at least a hundred years before, and their muzzles were short then - this painting is dated 1759.
Ya know, if you didn’t jump to all kinds of the wrong conclusions, this could be a worthwhile discussion. Nowhere did I say that I don’t think dogs feel, I said they do not feel the way humans do. Apropos of this subject, dogs don’t understand that something in their life could be different - a Pug will never know that it’s life would have been different if it had been born a Doberman. Therefore it doesn’t know that it could run fast and long, or that it could sleep without snoring (I don’t imagine they even know they snore), or that it needs to take care in the heat if it had been born with a different shape. It’s not like these dogs are in pain, they just aren’t athletes, and because they don’t know any better, they are very happy with their lives.
So, how much snout do you want, and what is your definition of breathe properly? And why are your definitions more correct than the people who have been breeding Pugs for centuries? I really have no dog in this fight - I don’t like the push faced dogs or cats and will never own one, but I also do not assume that I know more about those breeds than those who have dedicated their lives to them. Have you ever owned a Pug or known anyone who has? Or are you basing your strong opinions on what those with hidden agendas tell you?
So I can’t cite peer-reviewed papers but I also can’t cite public websites, and yet you can cite pictures of dog show ads? Okay then.
And it is funny that you picked up on the hybrid thing to try and prove that I don’t know about genetics, because you are still wrong. Interspecific hybrids are the result of crossing two species, intraspecific hybrids are the result of a cross between two breeds within one species. Both are hybrids. Both can show hybrid vigor. In fact, in my experience scientists are more likely to be talking about intraspecifics when they talk about hybrids. And are you genuinely arguing that there are no genetic distinctions between dog breeds? Why do you think they look different?
The fact is, even decades of ‘study’ is useless if it’s all done by a moron (see also, al27052). You have clearly never studied actual biology or genetics, you’ve just played with puppies and think that’s the same. Seeing as you believe that even trained vets writing peer-reviewed articles in legit journals know less than you, you obviously aren’t interested in actual information.
You still promote a eugenic viewpoint. There’s nothing inherently bad about that, it’s how one goes about it that matters. You seem to lean more towards the “verbal persuasion and change societal attitudes” rather than “round 'em up and force 'em”, which is all to the good in my opinion but it’s still eugenics.
Some, but not all. When Bree Walker had children some criticized her for passing on her ectrodactyly as a cruel thing, but fact is she hasn’t felt particularly impeded by her condition and doesn’t see it as a horrible thing. It’s an annoyance, but not some horrific thing to be avoided at all costs. Sure, neither she nor her affected children will ever be concert pianists, but the same can be said of most people with normal hands and feet.
Likewise - and somewhat back to the original topic(s), some view allergies as a horrific thing to be ruthlessly eliminated and how dare people with allergies have children! On the other hand, most allergies are annoyances and not major crippling disorders and the people affected likewise view them as an annoyance and not a disability. Sure, your quality of life is slightly better without them, but the same could be said of mis-aligned teeth or being extremely short.
I wasn’t talking about just abortion. Obviously you haven’t kept up with the science. There is pre-implantation diagnosis, for example, where embryos of just a few cells are analyzed and those with the undesired traits are simply never implanted, thus a pregnancy never even occurs. There are communities where everyone is screened for a particular trait and those who are carriers are discouraged from marrying, one of the more notable organizations of that sort being Dor Yeshorim. There are, of course, criticisms of the above but there really is more to this than simply aborting fetuses.
Yet yours is still a eugenic attitude. A benign one, as you’re not forcing anyone to do anything just repeatedly expressing your opinion.
The number of parents suing doctors for “birth injuries” for their defective children would seem to imply that parents want guarantees of perfect for their children as well as their dogs.
The thing is, there isn’t a sharp line between “annoyance” and “severe medical problem”. Sure, some things like anacephaly are unarguably “severe” - actually, it’s lethal within a short time after birth if not before. It’s not a genetic disorder, though. We’re not entirely sure what causes it. Folic acid supplements reduce the likelihood, but does not prevent all cases. Thing is, a woman who has had a child with that disorder is no more likely to have another child with it than a woman who never had a child with the disorder. So your “don’t have another child if you’ve had one with a severe problem” doesn’t hold up to actual genetics unless the disorder actually is clearly genetic - which a lot of them aren’t. There are a lot of things can mess a kid up in the womb without genes being a fault, and in other instances we frankly don’t know if it genes or environment or both.
Allergies are one of those - there seems to be a tendency towards them, but it’s not clear cut. There’s not an “allergy gene”. Indeed, it appears about 1/5 of any population is prone to allergies if put into a First World environment so your approach means 20% of the population shouldn’t reproduce… except I have to wonder, if it’s the environment that’s triggering all this, if maybe we should change the environment (if we can figure out what, exactly, the trigger is) rather than so many people.
Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity (to take it out of the allergy arena for a minute - because they aren’t allergies) are a case in point. To some extent the rise is because more people are being diagnosed… but scientists have gone back and studied old blood samples from decades ago that were stored and while they did find some undiagnosed cases, it was also clear that the rate really is rising. Why? Well, my guess (which is just a guess) is that 50 or 100 years ago we weren’t putting grain products into every damn thing. Read any processed food label and some grain products seems to be in their whether it’s really needed or not. Sometimes multiple grain products. If every bite you eat contains gluten then maybe a lot of peoples’ systems are getting overloaded. It’s not that humans aren’t adapted to eating grain, they’re not adapted to it being their sole diet. 100 years ago people probably ate a lot of meals that had little or no gluten not because they were fussy eaters but because they weren’t sneaking grain products into everything. We’re omnivores, we’re adapted to eating a variety of different things, not just one thing to the near-exclusion of everything else. Again, we’ve changed the environment and some of us are having trouble with it - should we re-engineer the people or should we change the environment?
Humans define what a pug is. Since we came up with the definition we can change the definition. If we say a pug with an inch long muzzle is a pug then it is. The rules about them are not immutable. They didn’t spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, they were developed from dogs with normal dog snouts.
It’s not like Bree Walker is in pain, she’s just not a concert pianist, and because she’s never known anything different she is very happy with her life.
Except being able to breathe and run is a quite a bit different than being able to play the piano. Pugs that hang out with other dogs can’t keep up with them during play. Does that bother the dogs? I don’t know, but it’s a pretty glaring difference. And their breathing problems isn’t just about snoring (which, in the case of my neice’s pug, the other dogs in the household certainly noticed even if the pug didn’t). It also leaves them more vulnerable to respiratory diseases and prone to complications should surgery ever be needed. They are more likely to be ill, to stay ill longer, and to die of complications. All because some humans arbitrarily liked the look of a smooshed in dog face and bred them to an extreme.
You deplore humans having children that will suffer known problems that will affect their health, yet you applaud dog breeders who do that to dogs. You don’t see a conflict there?
“Breathe properly” means no automatic snoring in all pugs, no airways so deformed that if the dog holds it’s head wrong it’s air is cut off (which pugs “solve” by changing position but it’s still a problem), no noisy breathing when the dog is just sitting there calmly. How much snout? However much is required to restore them to a state where being a pug does not automatically mean living half-choked.
“Because we’ve always done it that way” and “tradition” doesn’t make them right.
Yep, my niece had a pug - poor thing died last year of advanced age but everything gets old. Yes, Carmie had a very nice dog life but it could have been better if her breathing hadn’t been all screwed up due to the arbitrary rule-making of humans. The household labs got a lot more frisbee playing in because they didn’t have to stop and catch their breaths nearly so often. The labs didn’t have to get medicated for every respiratory thing that came along, they just sneezed a couple of times and were done with it, poor Carmie suffered horribly whenever a bug was making the rounds. You could always hear her coming because even at the best of times her breathing was noisy.
The fact most pugs have an enjoyable life doesn’t excuse what breeders have done to them. Someone disabled can have a nice life too, that doesn’t make it OK to deliberately cripple them.
It’s funnier if it’s your only hobby!
[Total Hijack] I met Bree Walker in Crawford Texas during the summer of 2006. Seemed like a nice enough woman but her lips were a little scary. I was floored when I heard she’d paid upwards of $87,000 for 5 acres in a flood plane. Just flat floored.[/Total Hijack over]
What are you on about? No one has said you cannot cite a public website, and there is nothing wrong with using someone’s ad to show their dog can do X.
Not in dogs.
No, I said that you cannot get hybrid vigor because all dog breeds share the genes for 99% of the genetic health issues that dogs can get. There are, I think, two or three genetic health problems that are specific to only one breed, so unless a mutt is a crossbred of one of those breeds, it isn’t any less likely to have inherited something than any purebred.
Except, I didn’t say that. If you don’t understand how taking a sentence or two out of a study can be made to look as it supports whatever view someone wants it too, then you haven’t done near the schooling you claim. OTOH, it appears that you do know that quoting something without context is a great way to support your stance, whether true or not.
Shrug, OK. Of course, eugenics is a loaded word with extremely negative connotations, so I guess you are one of those who sees nothing morally wrong with people being selfish enough to continue to have children when they know they have a chance of producing one/some with a severe genetic problem.
This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what I said - “Eh, I have to imagine that one could get a solid majority on quite a few health problems.” - as “some” criticizing her for having children with an easily corrected problem isn’t a solid majority. OTOH, it appears that she felt that she was disabled enough that she was an activist for handicapped rights.
Again, some. And I’d like to add to what I said - a majority of people generally considered to have a clue, such as doctors. The average citizen is too easily led around by people with hidden agendas.
Oh, no, I wasn’t aware of that. Doesn’t make up very many of the pregnancies out there tho, does it? Or has that become more popular than I realize?
Dor Yeshorim appears to be an excellent idea and I couldn’t fathom why anyone would criticize it. It’s not like anyone is being told to not have children, they are just trying to avoid having carriers of what all appear to be serious genetic problems from reproducing together. And it’s voluntary and anonymous. Is it eugenics?
Not the same since they aren’t holding the “breeders” (themselves) responsible. Suing the doctor is pretty much the same as suing a vet for screwing up a C-section.
I don’t know why not. If it hasn’t been proven to be genetic, then it isn’t one that I am talking about, because I specify what I consider to be the immoral choice to have children when a couple knows they are carrying for a severe genetic disorder.
This is something that is something of a controversy in the dog world as well. Some lines have problems with everyday things like flea control, vaccines, ability to thrive on kibble, etc. Do we attempt to breed away from these problems or do we quit bombarding them with all these chemicals? Which is the best course for the dogs?
The dog that was later named “Pug” was developed centuries ago. Again, why do you think you know more than the people who have devoted their lives to the breed, over the centuries? Why an inch long muzzle? Do you have anything to back up that measurement?
Oh please. No matter how long the muzzle is, they are still a toy breed, meaning they cannot keep up with any dog that is bigger/longer legged than they are.
Do you have any cites for any of that? Because it doesn’t fit with the average lifespan of 12 or more years.
Actually, I specifically said I have no dog in this fight - I neither applaud nor condemn those who breed Pugs because I am not experienced enough in any of the push faced breeds to take a stance either way. I personally feel that Pekes shouldn’t look as they do, but that is simply an opinion based on only visual information. All I am doing here is refuting your parroting of the propaganda you’ve read/heard on purebred dog breeding.
Wait, what? Where did you get that?
The rest of this sounds like dogs out of puppy mills or BYBs. Remember, way back when this started, I was talking about well bred dogs, not products churned out for a dollar. I have known several well bred Pugs over the years and none of them was living half-choked. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that a majority of Pugs have all these problems, since a majority of them come from puppy mills, but none of that has anything to do with the breed standard since millers couldn’t care less about it.
So, all of this is based on one dog? Who apparently wasn’t well bred, and probably was overweight? And all of her dogs routinely caught “bugs going around”?
You should obsessed. I don’t mean that in a jerky way, I mean it honestly.
Whatever. I’m not going to put the same amount of effort into posting here as I put into my masters thesis. Especially when it’s wasted on the likes of you. You could have just admitted that you were wrong when you said “biologically [a hybrid is] a cross between species”, because that’s simply not true. But you never admit that you’re wrong, so further citation is useless. I am once again bowing out of this thread.
Um… how do you go from “broad definition of eugenics” to that assumption you make about what I think? Maybe you should ASK me what I think rather than assume? Geez, I’m right here, you don’t have to guess.
The condition Bree and her children have is NOT correctable. Clearly, you don’t know what it is if you thought that.
Like many people with physical differences, the most handicapping thing about her condition is actually other peoples’ attitudes and assumptions.
The frequency of things like pre-implantation diagnosis is increasing. In some instances couples can get financial help with opting for that over natural conception because the assisted fertility is cheaper than caring for a child with, say, hemophilia over a lifetime. As time goes on it will probably become even more common although I doubt it will ever become universal.
Yes, that is eugenics.
Criticisms include:
1 - it’s eugenics (as you noted, the word has heavy negative connotations)
2 - the communities that most often utilize the service practice arranged marriage (arranged dating, followed by marriage) which some people find offensive. This is arranged marriage where either of the couple has veto rights, no one is being forced into a marriage and all parties are consenting.
3 - they will not test someone who has been tested elsewhere. This is presumably because then the person already has the knowledge to make such choices, and I think it might also be a means of conserving funding
4 - this does nothing to eliminate the bad gene, and indeed, it maintains a constant percentage of carriers within the community, it just prevents anyone from getting a double-dose of the recessive. There is some concern it might actually INCREASE the percentage of carriers though I don’t pretend to understand the math behind that and it’s by no means proven. Since the goal is to prevent expression of genetic recessives that cause disease, rather than eliminate the genes themselves, I’m not sure this is a valid criticism.
[quite]I don’t know why not. If it hasn’t been proven to be genetic, then it isn’t one that I am talking about, because I specify what I consider to be the immoral choice to have children when a couple knows they are carrying for a severe genetic disorder.
[/quote]
The cause of all disorders are not known. In some cases of rare disorders we just don’t know. In other cases symptoms can be a sign of either genetic or environmental insults - for example, seizures can be caused by some genetic disorders, but they are more commonly caused by things like high fever (in infants), brain injuries, and other environmental causes.
Nope - my sister and her daughter researched the breed prior to purchasing one because they wanted to know both the good points and bad points of the breed before buying one. Knowing that there was a risk of certain health problems they educated themselves on how to handle them should they wind up with a puppy with one of those problems.
Nope, they kept the dog’s weight under control her entire life. Not the easiest thing, as pugs are prone to put on weight and with impaired breathing often also have trouble exercising.
Three dogs and two kids in a household? Seriously? There are going to be germs. Perhaps this did not occur to you, not having children. Human children are filthy little beasts, virtual petri dishes on legs.
Tofu dogs are awesome. They make me feel better. You might say that dogs are my favorite anti-depressant!
It seems like anyone who would label my disbelief that most of society sees nothing wrong with knowingly producing children with genetic disorders as eugenics, would be someone who agrees with most of society. As I said, eugenics is a heavy loaded negative term. Since you spent an awful lot of time shoehorning the word onto me, I have trouble believing that you think people who produce severely affected children should quit gambling with the lives of future children. Yes, it’s an assumption but it’s well based.
I think it was your link that said their fingers were fused together? By more than skin then?
Is it eugenics?
Huh. Sounds like society needs to be educated on the benefits of eugenics then.
That has nothing to do with the testing end of it. It also sounds like something people outside the religion should keep their noses out of.
Um, if the person previously tested already knows what they do or do not carry for, why would they even want to be tested again?
It’s not. In breeding populations of purebred dogs, where there is a test for a genetic disorder, carriers are bred to non-carriers because no affected pups will be produced and not eliminating carriers keeps from creating a genetic bottleneck. In humans it would be the same thing and whether or not it increases carriers is not only immaterial, they wouldn’t know either way if they weren’t testing!
Again, I am only talking about known genetic disorders. I don’t know why you keep bringing up non-genetic disorders, or those where it’s unknown if the disorder is genetic or not.
It’s still based on one dog, but with all of that research you shouldn’t have any trouble providing a cite that shows that Pugs have a problem breathing if they turn their heads.
Yes, children are germ vectors but there are not many things they can pass to dogs. The three dogs is immaterial - I have four now and have had as many as 20, yet it is rare for them to catch “a bug going around”, despite attending training groups, shows, trials and hunt tests with hundreds of other dogs. Healthy dogs don’t pick up “bugs”.
Yes, that’s right, we could establish an education camp make all members of society align to one phase of thought. We’ve tried several different phases where there was solute left, but this idea sounds like it’d resolve our issues once and for all… The final solution!