That is not necessarily true. Keep in mind that some traits may allow one to accumulate more wealth, or otherwise do better in society, thereby allowing them to have more children with a better chance of survival than otherwise. Evolution cannot be stopped. Keep in mind also that being suceptible to certain diseases may also make you less likely to reproduce, even if the margin is smaller than it once was.
Oh, you say that NOW. What, since you’ve become a moderator, you have higher standards now?
the problem is that most people will feel threatened by a race that can definitively be shown to be “better”.
I never thought this would come in useful, but I have a higher total and average post count than you; please have the nubile women washed and sent to my room.
There’s an assumption that we actually know what the useful traits are; by artificially narrowing the gene pool, we may well be throwing away traits that could be essential to the survival of the species in the future.
Diversity is generally good.
everybody has flaws.
flaws make us human.
some of the smartest, most creative people in history have major physical or personality flaws.
would Van Gogh have painted so well if he wasn’t bipolar?
Beethoven composed so well if the threat of deafness wasn’t always hanging over his head?
Newton been so brilliant if he wasn’t such a sickly child?
think of a list of artists, geniuses, inventors, discoverers and pioneers…most of them had something other than their talent that set them apart from the mainstream.
you can’t have everything in the world, and certainly not everything depends on genetics.
also, what about love, fidelity and so on?
it’s not just about deciding who CAN’T breed it’s about deciding who can breed with who.
you and your partner may have to have chidren with strangers, you may be gay, or straight, or whatever, but you’d be forced to bring up other people’s children that had been foisted on your partner.
don’t you think that many relationships wouldn’t survive that?
Maybe i should have clairified my point more 
My idea of eugenics is more genetic engineering,not selective breeding.
Assuming it was possible who would refuse their child genes that cause more calcified bones,more robust immune systems,arteries that don’t develop deposits,cancer resistance.
For an example the rare HIV immunity,what if every human could have it at birth?
I’m not even touching personality or intelligence here,just physical traits that are beneficial.
Basically what i’m saying is if we can design healthier humans we should.
I’m NOT talking about forced programs or sterilizations.
Hair and skin color is irrelavent(except that higher melanin offers some protection from skin cancer.)
I have talked to people about the idea and they immediatly reject it,because of something that happened more than fifty years ago,thats what i think is wrong.
If you had read my link you would know that something was happening more recently then over fifty years ago.
irishgirl touches on a rather bitter debate between my mother and me. She was a psychotherapist. She wants to “cure” everyone’s mental illness – where she and her kind define what is ill. “Oh, ho!” I say, “So you would want to cure Abraham Lincoln’s chronic depressions?” Naturally, she would. “But that would change who he was; he might not have been a good president.” She maintains he would have been a better president. I say: “Prove it. What if his depression led him to battle for lost causes?” She maintains that’s not likely, but at least he would have been a happier person.
This same argument applies to genetics, and the people irishgirl’s mentioned. In my own selfish way, I don’t want them cured. Selfishly, I don’t want their genetics fixed.
That was a youthful point-of-view, and one that was rather optimistic about my family, life, the universe. Now it appears there are several genetic problems with my extended family. There aren’t many children, and those there are have fairly serious health problems. Some of us have decided not to have children. And now the positive side of eugenics – though it hasn’t by any means swayed us – is beginning to look more reasonable. Our family is diminished because we know about genetic problems, but don’t have a way to solve them. Thank you, medical science.
Granted that the people in the family with health problems don’t seem like they will be failures – and that their health problems may have brought them part of the success they have – but I can’t help feeling there are other ways to challenge people besides giving them life-threatening allergies, sub-standard eyes, diabetes, and ADD. (! I’m not trying to claim every problem mentioned here is genetic, or strictly genetic !)
But I’m highly suspicious about what standards these “better” people would be held to. Would the point be to turn out better soldiers, or better artists? To make better athletes, or more spiritual people? People who think quickly, or people who think profoundly? The Nazi view is that a “perfect” human being would do all these things well, but that can’t be so. Somebody would have to make choices. I’ve always found humor as well as truth in that catty remark “I like my men strong as an ox, and dumb as a grape.” No doubt many fascists would like both their men and women that way.
This isn’t a particularly original thought, but it’s been striking me forcible while writing how convenient it would be for mass media, Madison Avenue, extremist militant religions, and the Nazis if all people with emotional, physical and genetic problems would simply disappear from the Earth.
I did,but most people only think of Hitler’s insane campaigns.
And as i said i never intended for anything to be by force.
I just think that research into improving the human genome should’t be dismissed out of hand.
And i’m not concerned with eliminating a “homosexual” gene as some have mentioned,i don’t think it exists and neither does a “straight” gene.
You could never eliminate depression or mental illness either,unless you had control over the enviroment that the person was in.
Well,
I did my part by choosing a genetically superior mate, combining his genes with my genetically superior genes and producing a genetically superior child…doesn’t everyone?
At least, all mothers claim their children to be the cream of the gene crop.
But if what you are talking about is genetic engineering - say, tinkering with the code of a zygote, its something that is of great interest to geneticists, and very disturbing to bioethicists. Primarily because it is experimentation on humans. But, I think that as we can confidently fix genes that cause fatal illness, we may see more individual “fixing” of those illnesses before birth.
It will be very expensive. There is no real way to mass tinker with genetic code. It will be a very long time before we have the confidence and knowledge to tinker with the DNA to get a tall, smart, good looking person.
The science is hardly robust enough to contemplate genetically engineering human beings in any way remotely ressembling your concerns. As such, this might best go in Cafe Society. Another decade or more and perhaps there is something to discuss.
The more limited possibility of zapping single allele caused genetic diseases, which may be more rare than initially thought, may come up in the foreseeable future, but that hardly is the same issue.
Dangerosa is the first poster to touch on the first thought that comes to my mind, namely eugenics goes on all the time and has done so from the beginning. Everyone seeks the ideal mate, intelligent strong and healthy (and tall), even though pragmatic and emotional factors do lead to compromises. In the last several decades we even have single women capable of choosing from a variety of sperm donations accompanied by profiles. That’s about as far as I’m comfortable with.
But if our society (government) embarks on a program that interferes with our God-granted natural selection processes, then I’m afraid we just might have consequences that could end up impoverishing ourselves just like the Russians with their idealistic social/political experiment in the 20th century.
Natural selection ain’t perfect, but its the best selection process their is. It took us from the amoebas all the way to a species that would be envied by the rest of creation if they were capable of envy.
Except that isn’t eugenics. Eugenics has, as a very specific purpose, the improvement of the human genome (of course, which qualities qualify as an “improvement” are always those possessed by whomever is making the decisions). Individuals, in their normal routine of mate selection, don’t give two whits about improving the species; they care only about what they want.
This is closer to eugenics, but still not quite there. Again, such women are still only selecting mates (or only their sperm) based on what they perceive will benefit their own children (though, as with all things, such perceptions will vary), not the species.
Mate selection is sexual selection, not natural selection. We tend to select mates based on qualities we desire, not necessarily those which will enhance the survivability of our children (if any).
Eugenics isn’t cost-effective. Consider the ridiculous amount of time involved and all the hassles inherent in any system that tries to control who mates with whom.
Better by far is to go after environmental causes of injury, illness and retardation. Increase spending on pre- and neonatal care and nutrition. Increase immunization programs, improve education generally, promote physical fitness and discourage smoking and drug use. Your society will improve dramatically, and you won’t even have to wait a full generation or two to see the effects.
My theory is that since we no longer live life by the “survival of the fittest rule,” meaning everyone is free to live comfortably and reproduce, modifying our biology manually is the only way we will evolve a more efficient body.
Efficient by what standards? Who decides what “Efficient” is? Do you mean more streamlined? Able to go longer with less food?
I think a lot of non-scientist proponents of genetic engineering really don’t know what it would entail.
Perhaps genetic mutations happen for a reason.
Look at it this way. Let’s say that, through G.E., we are able to make ourselves completely disease-resistant and regenerating so injuries heal completely by re-growth. Let’s also say that we learn to engineer ourselves to live twice as long or longer.
Hmmm, suddenly overpopulation is a serious issue since people aren’t dying as often. Better engineer ourselves to need less food to live, or be able to consume other things for energy. Perhaps if we engineer ourselves to live off sunlight, like plants!
At some point, we cease to be human and become something else.
While I would like to see some statistics correlating income and/or intelligence with fertility rates, my own impression is that trailer-trash slobs and ghetto denziens are having all the kids these days and this bodes ill for the future. Not much we can do about it tho, it’s a case of ‘tyranny of the masses’.
It’s an issue of The Other, namely racism, superior beings and so on that frighten those of us who are well aware that we aren’t superior, and cause deep denial and anger in those who aren’t aware that they aren’t superior. Personally I think that a variety of eguenics are going to happen, so we had better get used to it. The movie Gattaca had some interesting themes about this, and it also had Uma Thurman and her now husband Ethan Hawke. I like Uma.
Procreation is currently a basic human right, assuming you find a consenting member (hee hee, I said “member” in context) of the opposite sex. After we have uber humans, will this still be allowed? Will poor people have access to the eugenic modifications necessary? Stuff like that. It implies that there will be superior and inferior beings, and inferior beings are currently what we eat for dinner, etc.