# Is there any defensible value to "eugenics" in this day and age? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 30, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496 "2012-05-30T00:16:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/41 "2012-06-20T08:40:18Z")
I’m currently translating this legal document. In a nutshell, the parents of the plaintiff, who has cystic fibrosis, are suing their doctor for not referring them to genetic testing during the pregnancy. The parents are first cousins, and their are a disproportionately high number of CF patients in their village. Now, let me ask you - if the Ministry of Health sent some people to their village to try to convince people to stop marrying family members, would that be eugenics? ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/42 "2012-06-20T09:15:35Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > On the other hand, we’ve all seen [_Idiocracy._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) The problem with Idiocracy is that it’s taken _way_ too seriously. It’s a joke premise; intelligence isn’t directly heritable. Plenty of smart people are born to dumb parents, and plenty of dumb people are born to smart parents. Look up as many geniuses as you wish on Wikipedia, in whatever fields you like. The great majority of them came from average parents and created average children. Family has a greater effect, in that a family that values learning encourages it, but even so, it absolutely does not always take. Yes, there are multi-generational families of idiots, and of clever people, but there are also many _many_ stories of gifted people coming from average or below-average families. And every family has a dumbarse or two. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/43 "2012-06-20T22:39:39Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’m currently translating this legal document. In a nutshell, the parents of the plaintiff, who has cystic fibrosis, are suing their doctor for not referring them to genetic testing during the pregnancy. The parents are first cousins, and their are a disproportionately high number of CF patients in their village. > > Now, let me ask you - if the Ministry of Health sent some people to their village to try to convince people to stop marrying family members, would that be eugenics? The problem is it wouldn’t work. It would actually increase the frequency of the gene in subsequent generations. Replace that with a mandate that they only can reproduce through IVF **and** can only implant embryos tested to be homozygous for a normal CFTR gene and then you would drive down the frequency of the gene in the population. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/44 "2012-06-20T22:52:09Z")
What if the government encourages them to undergo genetic testing and terminate pregnancies where the fetus is discovered to be a CF gene carrier? ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/45 "2012-06-20T23:36:56Z")
Yes, they would have to effectively remove a certain proportion of the “bad” version of the gene from the gene pool. That could happen by encouraging/forcing an abortion of a CF carrier. The math works. The morality doesn’t. The Ashkenazi Jews have a high incidence of carrying the Tay-Sachs gene. Within their communities genetic testing is encouraged. Carriers are generally discouraged from marrying. The result is that fewer Tay-Sachs babies are born and more carriers are born than would be without the genetic testing. In the next generation there are more carriers, who again are encouraged not to marry other carriers, and so on. Over time the frequency of the bad allele increases. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/46 "2012-06-21T08:59:21Z")
On the other hand, as a person with a “severe” genetic disorder (let me put it this way. The syndrome I have, if you looked it up in a medical textbook it would describe me as one of those kids who is in a wheelchair with a communication board and about ten billion medical problems) I do think that there needs to be some sort of preventive system to make sure that profound and degenerate familial genetic conditions are not passed on. Some of the conditions are just…horrififc …and you look at the family sites, and they’re gushing over a kid who can’t even reconize their own mother…Granted that sort of thing is really rare. …but still…maybe a good idea might be to have a very strict (to qualify you’d have to be a carrier of something profound or degenerate) program where parents who are carriers could get sterilized and have assitace with adoption. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/47 "2012-06-21T09:32:42Z")
Given just how badly attempts at eugenics have worked in the past, and how slow the beneficial affects of any selective breeding of humans would be to manifest even if we could pull it off ethically, it makes more sense to just wait until genetic engineering can solve genetic defects. No need for sterilizing people, or killing them, or telling them who they can have children with; just replace the bad genes. We are quite a ways away from being able to do that, but breeding defective genes out of humanity would be a generations-long project, and much less likely to work. Most likely even if we started to pull it off genetic engineering would make it obsolete before it really accomplished much. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/48 "2012-06-21T11:40:34Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > Yes, they would have to effectively remove a certain proportion of the “bad” version of the gene from the gene pool. That could happen by encouraging/forcing an abortion of a CF carrier. > > The math works. The morality doesn’t. I don’t see how morality is a factor if everything is done voluntarily. That’s not the question, though. What I asked was: is this eugenics? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/49 "2012-06-21T12:19:50Z")
Yes. It is the consciously controlled breeding of humans with the intent of eliminating bad genes and/or promoting desirable ones. The fact it is done voluntarily on an individual (or couple) basis does not mean it’s something else. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/50 "2012-06-21T12:38:41Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Is there any previous generation whom you would entrust to determine the make up of the human genome? > > Yeah, me neither. Even if it wasn’t a horrible idea, we don’t know nearly enough to be able to make good decisions. We could all start over from Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/51 "2012-06-21T12:48:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If your program is using coercion or force, it’s wrong. Can you define coercion and force? For example, I, an individual, offer you $500 to undergo voluntary sterilization. Coercion? ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/52 "2012-06-21T13:02:35Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I don’t see how morality is a factor if everything is done voluntarily. > > That’s not the question, though. What I asked was: is this eugenics? Sure it’s eugenics. If it is voluntary then there isn’t really any significant moral concern. I had referenced forcing an abortion. With such coercion there is a serious moral concern. And… there are some conditions for which being a heterozygous carrier (only one copy of a bad gene) of a trait which would be serious/lethal/deleterious in the homozygous recessive (having two copies of the bad gene)gives a selective advantage. By taking steps to eliminate such alleles from the gene pool through a program of eugenics we may be weakening humanity’s ability to adapt and survive certain selective pressures. It is thought that being a carrier for CF provides a survival advantage if infected by cholera. Similarly carriers of sickle cell trait seem to have a survival advantage when infected by malaria. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/53 "2012-06-22T07:44:22Z")
The defensible value is in [maintaining modern economies](http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=rindermann%20smart%20fraction&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iratde.org%2Fissues%2F1-2009%2Ftde_issue_1-2009_03_rindermann_et_al.pdf&ei=ZiLkT_vPL-KdmQXF8tiGCw&usg=AFQjCNE8p_dyXWKwaYB5V4ww3cA7NN2UCA&sig2=neh6Mplfv90QlWXERwULjQ). To this end making it affordable for educated women to have children should be something governments support where possible. Professor James Flynn had an interesting [comment](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1045031) on dysgenic trends a few years ago: > [@](#): > > An internationally recognised expert on intelligence warns New Zealand children could get dumber in three or four generations unless women with higher education started producing more babies. > > Otago University emeritus professor Dr Jim Flynn was commenting on census figures that show mothers without a higher education were the anchor of New Zealand’s current fertility rate. > > “Everyone knows if we only allowed short people to reproduce there would be a tendency in terms of genes for height to diminish. Intelligence is no different from other human traits,” he told the Sunday Star-Times. > > “A persistent genetic trend which lowered the genetic quality for brain physiology would have some effect eventually.” > > Statistics show women without tertiary qualifications who had reached their early 40s had produced 2.57 babies each. > > In contrast, women with a higher education were producing just 1.85 babies each. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/54 "2012-06-22T11:06:36Z")
That entire thought rests on the unproven assumption that women without advanced degrees are inherently less intelligent, rather than simply less educated. Not every highly intelligent woman has the money or motivation to get advanced education. Highly intelligent people are not compelled to attend college. Therefore, there is most likely a certain number of highly intelligent women who _don’t_ have advanced education who might well decide on a career of raising a large family but if you use advanced degrees in lieu of intelligence tests you’ll never spot 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/55 "2012-06-22T12:46:42Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > That entire thought rests on the unproven assumption that women without advanced degrees are inherently less intelligent, rather than simply less educated. Not every highly intelligent woman has the money or motivation to get advanced education. Highly intelligent people are not compelled to attend college. Therefore, there is most likely a certain number of highly intelligent women who _don’t_ have advanced education who might well decide on a career of raising a large family but if you use advanced degrees in lieu of intelligence tests you’ll never spot 'em. You strike at the genotype vs phenotype problem. Is the trait that the eugenics program aims to select against actually inheritable? If it isn’t then it won’t work. But on a population level it doesn’t matter so much that not all highly intelligent women get advanced degrees. So long as the non-degree holding group has a lower level of intelligence on average, **and** so long as intelligence is inherited then there is a population level difference for the group which could be influenced by artificially applied selective pressure based upon holding a degree. It just woulnd’t be as efficient as selection based on intelligence alone. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/56 "2012-06-22T13:27:03Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Can you define coercion and force? > > For example, I, an individual, offer you $500 to undergo voluntary sterilization. Coercion? Keep in mind that there are already many circumstances – not limited to bribery of public officials – where offering somebody money to do something is a crime. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/57 "2012-06-22T13:47:16Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > You strike at the genotype vs phenotype problem. Is the trait that the eugenics program aims to select against actually inheritable? If it isn’t then it won’t work. > > But on a population level it doesn’t matter so much that not all highly intelligent women get advanced degrees. So long as the non-degree holding group has a lower level of intelligence on average, **and** so long as intelligence is inherited then there is a population level difference for the group which could be influenced by artificially applied selective pressure based upon holding a degree. It just woulnd’t be as efficient as selection based on intelligence alone. OK, let’s look at another possible fly in the ointment: Higher intelligence is not necessarily correlated with positive outcomes. A _slightly_ higher than average intelligence might be advantageous, but super-geniuses are not notably wealthier, happier, or more likely to possess successful attributes than average people. Einstein, for example, was undoubtedly extremely intelligent but his personal/family life was a bit of a mess and he didn’t seem to get why he should accumulate a lot of money. Arguably, the super-geniuses know something the rest of us don’t, but it seems a lot of them don’t match up to the success yardstick set by the majority. There is also a hypothesis that problems like Asperger’s and autism may be linked to both parents having high intelligence. It could be that some “intelligence” genes work fine in heterozygous form but if you get a double-dose it’s a problem. So, really, breeding the very intelligent to the very intelligent may yield impoverished geniuses and autistic people, which may be a net negative more so than letting the uneducated and on-average-less-intelligent masses breed, who will most likely produce offspring clustered around the statistical average with fewer disorders associated with hyper-smarts. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/58 "2012-06-22T14:47:04Z")
Aha! The problem of unintended outcomes. We don’t currently know a whole lot about the hertibility of intelligence. Which gene(s) are involved? How do they function? Recessive, Dominant, Co-dominant? How does one particular gene influence any other. We do know enough to understand, in a fairly general way, that something about intelligence seems to be somehow heritable. We can increase the frequency of whatever those heritable traits are. But we don’t know what other effects we might end up with. So we don’t really know enough to be clear what sort of selective pressue to apply to achieve the desired results efficiently. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/59 "2012-06-22T14:53:23Z")
^ And that is why the imposed-from-outside, legislated and/or coerced eugenics is a bad idea. We don’t know enough about heritability to really make good (however you define that) decisions with minimal unintended consequences. Leave the decisions in the hands of the individuals/parents. They’ll tend to eliminate the very worst genes without getting to cutthroat and it will be enough decisions that poor/mistaken decisions will tend to average out across a population so the downsides will be minimal. There has always been selective pressure on the human race, with the worst disorders either causing fatalities without offspring or the disadvantaged being less likely to reproduce at all, or leaving fewer offspring. The difference is that these days there is slightly less guesswork and slightly more actual knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496/60 "2012-06-22T15:58:43Z")
[Feet or pods?](http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76cgenetics.phtml) Tongue or dipstick? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-defensible-value-to-eugenics-in-this-day-and-age/623496.md?page=2)