What are your views on Eugenics applied to human beings ?

octopus · January 23, 2016, 8:03pm

clairobscur:

You don’t need to defend yourself. I’m just asking you to try to define what you think is wrong with selective abortion (as opposed to having a gut feeling about it). Your gut feeling might be misguided. If you’re like me and believe that an action must harm someone to be morally wrong, I strongly suspect that you’ll be unable to find a line of reasoning that makes selective abortion morally unacceptable without making abortion in general equally morally unacceptable or making reproduction a social duty (“people must have baby girls because otherwise men will lack sexual partners”, for instance).

And it’s easy to wrap one’s head about the reasons why fetuses would be selectively aborted, it’s not like such reasons aren’t well known : “A boy will take care of me when I’ll get old”, “I already have a daughter, I want a son this time”, “a boy will carry on the name”, etc…

An 8 month old fetus being killed is an individual being harmed.

clairobscur · January 23, 2016, 8:03pm

Would you really back this right? For instance the right to refuse service to homosexuals or people of colour? Again, you’re picking an analogy where someone is going to be wronged, if not in theory, at least in practice.

But if your prejudices, or your concern about your children fitting in, or your aesthetical preferences lead you to abort fetuses who are destined to become homosexual or who will have a dark skin, who exactly is wronged? What kind of moral obligation do you have to give birth to black lesbians?

CarnalK · January 23, 2016, 8:04pm

When oh when will we just let corporations run the world?!?

octopus · January 23, 2016, 8:06pm

dude5568:

Let me tackle your question from the opposite side . I can define the " best " but it will be perceived as cruel and possibly misanthropic not to mention hubristic on my part as logically it follows that I consider myself as part of that category otherwise why would I post this question at all.

On the other hand , the " others " are pretty self evident. Hordes of humanity who live fractured lives , devoid of progress . You see them everyday . You read about them in the news. An example - habitual and repeat criminals.

A very distinct characteristic of these people IMO is lack of foresight , control and intelligence. They seem to operate at very basic levels of cognition.

I am not in favor of extermination or anything that extreme . I do favor leaving them as is and gradually cease the paternalistic " helping hand " . Let nature take its course.

I think I have said enough. My opinions will not be popular but I stand by them.
I believe in Eugenics . The end.

Would these hordes in different circumstances still be perceived that poorly? How do you decide what aspect of outcome is due to nature vs nurture? Should the first step in improving lives be culling the herd or fixing the environment?

octopus · January 23, 2016, 8:07pm

That wouldn’t be any better. The world needs balance of power.

clairobscur · January 23, 2016, 8:09pm

This is an argument against abortion in general, and not against selective abortion in particular. So, you’re proving my point, since I was stating that you’ll have a hard time finding an argument against the latter that isn’t also an argument against the former (either on the basis that abortion is wrong in itself or on the basis that reproduction is a social duty).

CarnalK · January 23, 2016, 8:09pm

Perhaps you have some Military-Industrial agreement in mind? I know you don’t trust voters.

clairobscur · January 23, 2016, 8:23pm

I already explained it several times, I believe. Unless you make the assumption that abortion is wrong, how is deciding to abort because you don’t want anymore boys wrong?

How are “I don’t want the burden of taking care of a seriously crippled kid” and “I don’t want the burden of taking care of any child, even perfectly healthy” both fine and dandy, but “I don’t want the burden of taking care of a somewhat handicapped kid” isn’t?

octopus · January 23, 2016, 8:24pm

Would you want to live in a pure democracy?

Novelty_Bobble · January 23, 2016, 8:41pm

Actually no, “back” is too strong a word. I’d think they were scum and suggest that people boycott their business but if the law allows that business owner to refuse service then their right to do so is exactly as important as mine even if the motivation behind it is malicious.

Perhaps free speech is a better example. We are free to say what we like and that right must be defended but the actual words uttered and their intent can be benign or malignant. I’m sure you are more judgemental on certain words than on others, even when no material harm has been caused.

CarnalK · January 23, 2016, 8:50pm

Wait, why did you drop the sex selection example?

CarnalK · January 23, 2016, 8:53pm

You mean everybody votes on every single issue that the President or Senate currently decide on? That does seem cumbersome indeed. What is the balance you would prefer?

clairobscur · January 23, 2016, 9:03pm

Can you specify what is this societal harm?

And if there is such a harm, should then people be expected to reproduce according to society’s needs or else be considered a morale failure? For instance, is it wrong to abort a female fetus because you should produce brides for too numerous single men? If I’m Russian or Italian would it be morally wrong not to have any children when the population is declining and growing older?

clairobscur · January 23, 2016, 9:12pm

Why should I need to always use the same example? I just picked yours. What would it change? The concept stays the same : if reason X is good enough, and “just because” also is good enough, how could “reason Y” not be good enough too?

Wesley_Clark · January 23, 2016, 9:57pm

I’m all in favor of it. Creating children that are smarter, healthier, more emotionally resilient, etc. than their parents generation is a good thing.

BrainGlutton · January 23, 2016, 10:49pm

Eugenics is a pseudoscience.

Whilst eugenics is based, in theory, in the perfectly valid science of genetics, its application is always far from scientific. For obvious reasons the room to experiment is limited in the extreme. Furthermore, whereas it is (relatively) easy, for example, to breed cattle for higher milk yield, defining what is meant by a “better” human being is a very difficult question. At this point eugenics stops being scientific and starts being normative and political, and a rather nasty type of politics at that. Eugenics drew heavily from various racist and racialist tracts of the period.

The most obvious flaw with application of eugenics is that its proponents have tended to conflate phenotypical (read: superficial) traits with genotypical traits. Any species that looks fit on the outside may carry recessive traits that don’t exhibit themselves but will be passed on and vice versa. The development of the field of epigenetics,[wp] i.e. heritable environmental factors in genetic expression that occur without change to underlying DNA structures, poses further problems for eugenics.

There is no reason to believe that a selective breeding plan to encourage certain physical traits in humans could not achieve the same results that plant and animal breeders have achieved for centuries (who were without specific knowledge of the genes they were selecting in and out). Odds are that the purebred humans with distinguishing features would be less healthy than the offspring of unconstrained mating would be, for the same reason that kennel-club purebred dogs are often less healthy than mutts. This concept of “purity” is flawed in that it creates many of the same problems as inbreeding — a loss of biodiversity can in fact lead to increased susceptibility to a common concentrated weakness.[19] An example of this would be deer populations. A long time ago, natural selection selected for fitter males with antlers, but cue the rise of sport hunting and antlered populations plunged down fast. Another example of concentration is haemophilia, which became the plague of the royal families.

The extreme reductionism of eugenics often crossed into what is now comical territory. Nearly every social behavior, including things such as “pauperism” and the vaguely defined “feeble-mindedness,” could be traced back to a single genetic disorder according to eugenicists. Many works of eugenics recall the similar trend evident in phrenology (indeed, there was some overlap between eugenics and phrenology).[20]

While eugenics gained widespread support in the early 20th century (even within the scientific community) of a number of nations, there was also strong opposition during this period.[21] The biologist Raymond Pearl, for example, once a supporter of the movement, turned against it in the late 1920s.[22] The geneticist Lancelot Hogben argued that eugenics relied on a false dichotomy of “nature vs. nurture” and that it infected science with political value judgments;[23] Hogben was asked by William Beveridge (the then-director of the London School of Economics) to create a “Chair of Social Biology” department on campus, gave him the finger and prevented any of his eugenic ideas from being taken seriously in the formation of the British welfare state.[24] Clarence Darrow famously denounced it as a “cult.”[25] The Carnegie Institute, which initially funded the Eugenics Record Office, withdrew its funding after a review of its research, leading to its closing in 1939 (before the Holocaust even became public record).[26]

Stephen J. Gould was strongly opposed to eugenics. He wrote extensively on the topic, including his treatment on intelligence in The Mismeasure of Man.

lance_strongarm · January 23, 2016, 11:06pm

As the parent of a child who would be considered worthy of elimination under many eugenics policies, and therefore someone who has met many more, I think the world is better off, not worse off, with them.

lance_strongarm · January 23, 2016, 11:08pm

Absolutely any child can become “crippled” (what is this, 1975?) and/or require constant care. The only difference is that you know before birth for some of them. Just sayin’.

CarnalK · January 23, 2016, 11:12pm

And?

lance_strongarm · January 23, 2016, 11:16pm

Just offering some perspective on the idea that it’s possible to perfect the species, or to any couple having a child. If you would reject an “imperfect” child, perhaps you shouldn’t have children, because there are so many ways a child can go wrong at any point in their life.