I mean what is wrong with designing future humans to easily build muscle tissue,stronger bones,better immune systems,faster healing etc.
Discounting Hitlers blue eyes,blond hair crap why can’t people see thats not a bad thing?
In order to breed a better stock of humans, others (i.e., those who aren’t selected to be part of that stock) must be necessarily denied fundamental human rights.
That is a bad thing.
How so? If you are some genetically engineered person, and I am some old-school slob, how would that deny me fundamental human rights?
Eugenics got a bad name when the Nazis used it and decided to eliminate all the “undesirables” from their program of breeding a super race.
Brutus - telling someone they can’t reproduce is considered bad form. Sorry.
Okay!
The first issue I have is that the definition of eugenics (at least as defined by m-w) isn’t as much genetic engineering as it is controlled breeding. Dictating who can or cannot breed is something of a violation of human rights. Secondly, it is woefully slow, given human lifespans, their rather small number of children, and the huge amount of genetic material to sift through. A barely noticable effect could very easily take half a century. I believe one mathematician/genetist calculated that if controlled breeding weeded out the people of lowest intelligence, there would be barely a tenth of a percentage point difference if this was done by every society starting at the time of black death (the quote was in “The Borderlands of Science”, I’ll attempt to get more information if there is interest.)
The case with both eugenics and actual genetic engineering is that it removes diversity from the gene pool. For instance, two allelles for sickle cell anemia can be very damaging to one’s health, but only one may protect many people against malaria. Also, there has been a very rare mutation of the immune system that protects people from getting HIV. Consequences of such genes is rarely known in advance, so trying to rid people of them may have unpleasant side effects.
Another issue raised is a possible slippery slope, which I don’t entirely buy. For instance, if you start with removing only harmful traits, some people may move on to taits that may not necessarily actually be fully harmful, and may have value in some circles, like a predisposition to homosexuality, or certain types of mental disorders. This could easily rid the population of its own diversity by ridding groups of people that are considered “unwanted” at a point in time.
Finally, there is the issue of the ability to give someone such an enormous advantage that they did not earn. Although such disparities already exist in our society, this one could be very easily irrevocable. No matter what they did, someone not born with enhanced genes could not compete in many areas with someone whom was, thus creating a lower class. It would entrench further the wealthy or the non-wealthy, as those whom could buy better genes often would, drastically heightening one’s chance for success, and those whom couldn’t afford them would have children even further destined for the lower class.
My personal opinion is that at this point in time, we don’t even begin to know what the effects of genetic engineering of humans (eugenics is quite a bit less controverisal, I view it as more or less irrevocably flawed) would be. At this point, quite a bit more research (and money for research) is necessary before we start making such decisions. Although I do not think we should abandon this altogether, I think that we should not plunge into it, and allow ample time to figure out the side effects, as well as letting our culture grow to the point where it may be more able to embrace it.
These are the reasons I’ve personally found rather compelling. There are other ethical/moral considerations I may not have gotten into yet, and I haven’t even touched on possible religious issues involved for people.
Well, historically eugenics has been associated with a lot of forced sterilizations and the like. I suppose one could do like Robert Heinlein’s science fictional Howard Foundation (which successfully bred very long-lived humans) and take an all-carrot, no-stick approach; just pay (or otherwise encourage) people with qualities you want more of to have more babies, without doing anything to discourage (or compel) the people with qualities you want less of to have fewer babies.
I would think conservatives would be against eugenics, though, because it smacks of a heavy-handed, central planning sort of approach. Although we tend to associate it more with Nazism, in many ways it’s a very Soviet sort of idea–the only reason why Communists never went in for it is that they were strict environmental determinists instead of strict genetic determinists. In other words, how do you possibly decide what qualities are good and what are bad? I mean, sure, eliminate some genetic disease that kills everyone who gets it before they hit puberty. But beyond that, exactly what qualities does society need? Do you breed for physically-weak bulging-foreheaded mutant geniuses, or do you breed for strong but dull yet docile and dependable worker bees? If you breed for both, a genetically-based caste system, what if both types put together aren’t as flexible as ordinary jack-of-all-trades Homo sapiens? Primates in general, and humans in particular, have never been noted for extreme specialization.
To be a bit less B-movie-ish, which is more “socially useful”, someone with an IQ of 150 who has serious bipolar disorder (“manic depression”), or someone with an IQ of 115 who is even-tempered and plays well with other? (Of course, we might want people with IQ’s of 150 who are even-tempered and play well with others. And cheetahs would probably wish they could sprint at 170 MPH, too, if they were capable of that level of abstract thought, but life is full of trade-offs and compromises, and who knows what things human brains and minds have to trade off in order to get this or that quality?)
It seems to me a more properly conservative idea is to let the inivisible hand of the Darwinian “market” settle things, rather than having a Central Population Planning Board try to set quotas on how many Olympic-quality gymnasts we’ll need 20 years from now. In other words, people continue going to singles bars and church socials like they always have.
And on top of that, while genes do play a role, human beings are sufficiently complex that your little genetically engineered Michael Jordan clone is as likely to decide he wants to be a cowboy when he grows up as he is to want to be a basketball player, and then what do you do? We’re the product of genes and environment (with “environment” including all kinds of things that are beyond the control of parents or any surrogate parental authority).
I would say getting rid of obvious lethal or crippling genetic diseases is probably a valid goal; i.e., no more Tay-Sachs or hemophilia or sickle-cell anemia (since we have better ways of treating malaria now–although there’s obviously a cautionary tale there).
Who is talking about anyone not being able to reproduce?
Eugenics does not neccesarily mean that someone will not be able to breed (by force of law.)
A wacky example:
Uber-scientists publish a grand list of who should breed with who, and which of their children should breed, and so forth. It can be entirely voluntary if people decide to go by the list or not; In other words, a given society could, in theory, voluntarily ‘eugenizise’ (?) itself.
But eugenics isn’t about genetic engineering. When the idea was popular, there was no such thing. Eugenics is about breeding superior humans, like you’d breed racehorses or dogs. A government program to encourage “superior” humans to breed, and to discourage “inferior” (that is, poor and/or dark-skinned, and/or mentally/physically handicapped) humans from doing the same, leads to denial of the fundamental human rights of those humans judged unfit to breed.
In the abstract, “Who gets to decide?” Practically, “Why are you sterilizing me without my consent, Whitey?”
Crap. You see all those replies between my post and Brutus’ first post? Those weren’t there when I hit “reply.” Really.
I, and many others, place a high value on freedom. The philosophy behind eugenics is fundamentally anti-freedom. If you could demonstrate that eugenics is necessary, then I would have to consider paying the price to personal liberty, but I have yet to hear any good argument.
Clearly, we must breed a superior new kind of human who is capable of quickly composing and proof-reading Internet message board posts.
As a Moderator, and thus by definition an Uber-Poster, I will naturally get the pick of nubile women with whom to breed.
Eh, screw the humans. What we need are superior hamsters, that do not demand a steady diet of Ops, nor breaks.
But I don’t want to have sex with nubile hamsters.
And as mere Member, and further, example of precisely what not to breed for, I shall be forced to breed with brainless Luddite… um, strippers. Yes. Illiterate, abacus-using strippers.
As a humanitarian, I shall lean over the plate and take this one for the team.
*Note on preview (it learns!): No stripping hamsters for this prole, thank you.
You’re being a little naïve here. First of all, although it would not be particularly well received in modern society, it is perfectly legal for a scientist to publish a “grand list” as you put it. Secondly, do you honestly think a mere recommendation would change anybody’s reproductive habits? A negligible proportion. It would have no noticeable effect. If you want eugenics to work, it has to be legally imposed on everyone or bust.
Everyone is entitled to their own little eugenics experiment; they can chose with whom to breed. The sucess has been mixed.
Any sucessful breeding program, whether one breeds poppies, or puppies, involves culling. Culling human beings, unless done in utero with full permission of the one with the uterus, is nearly always illegal. I think culling humans is unethical; human beings are ends in themselves, not means.
I don’t think the grand Netbrian eugenics program asks for the opinions of it’s underlings of whom THEY want to reproduce with. =p
Don’t be ridiculous. Selective breeding works if you are breeding for a specific pupose, like fast race horses. Oh yes, and such specialized animals require an awful lot of care and would have trouble surviving on their own.
Mankinds success is because we are natural generalists who can fit into a lot of environments and even modify them to be more to our liking. That might get us as a species in the long run, but as Keyes said, in the long run we are all dead anyway.
Whoa, awesome idea there. Let’s table this whole issue of human genetics while we build the sentient 170MPH sprinting cheetahs, and give them all the equivalent of a human 150 IQ, and let them solve the problem for us. And that’s the end of that chapter.
Eugenics is a horrible thing.
On the other hand, meaningful human evolution has ceased (except possibly for certain traits like attractiveness and traits associated with having lots of children).
There is no “Darwinian invisible hand” any more. The more sophisticated our technological and medical skills become, the fewer selection pressures operate on the human genome.
Given enough time, mutation and recombination will begin to “erase” all traits that are directly required for survival. There aren’t a whole lot of traits that are necessary for survival in our current (and probable future) society.
If we take a sufficiently long viewpoint, which is worse: either instituting eugenics/genetic engineering programs and/or allowing selection pressure to operate, or letting entropy slowly degrade the genome?