Compulsory eugenics

Hell yes.

Many disability rights advocates seem to have forgotten what "disability" means.

I agree in theory. In practice, the costs of making it compulsory would outweigh the benefits. There'd be too many people unwilling to go along with it. There'd be doctors ignoring the policy or quitting, there'd be prospective parents avoiding prenatal care for fear of being forced to abort, and so there'd be higher infant mortality, Death by Childbirth, and treatable birth defects, plus good publicity for the anti-medical-establishment whack jobs.

Great idea, not sure about the feasibility.

Not all disabilities interfere with quality of life. There are plenty of perfectly happy, productive people with disabilities.

The extent I would take eugenics is to simply not allow people who express normally terminal genetic disorders *

to reproduce. Carriers are allowed to reproduce, however.

edited 26th Apr '11 6:54:06 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

The only thing even vaguely resembling eugenics that should be enshrined in law is quarantine, as contagion represents a clear and present danger to others, and is easily defined. Forced abortions or sterilizations are problematic for the obvious reason that the genetic dividing line between normality and defectiveness is imprecise, so it turns into a political hobby horse rather than a medical tool.

Eric,

Only way you could force compulsory eugenics on the population is with one hell of a pie chart.

A similar case was made for social work/foster homes: the statistics showed that children growing up in crappy homes made for criminals later in life, so the state "invaded our lives" to make certain we were raising our children properly. Not in a certain way, but outside of certain parameters like child abuse and such.

If they catalog a gene (or set of gene chains, as it would more likely be) they can link to criminal behavior as thoroughly as they did the home environment scenarios leading to criminal behavior, they most certainly will make gene therapy to remove these chains in unborn children compulsory, if for no other reason than to increase the security of everyone else. "As long as things are in their beginnings they can be controlled, but once they have grown to their full consequences they acquire a power so overwhelming that man stands impotent before them."

I wrote about a fish turning into the moon.

Eugenics strikes me as a poor strategy for the selection of desirable traits and the removal of undesirable ones in homo sapiens anyway.*

With our comparatively long life cycles, it would probably take hundreds of years before we could achieve a significant effect - I am not an expert on artificial selection, but as an entirely uneducated guess I'd suppose that you would need at least a dozen generations or so in order to get some measurable results. The average generation-length is 16-30 years, if I am not mistaken, and it is higher in first-world countries*

, so you do the math...

In any case, gene therapy is starting to become feasible, and some forms of "cyborgization" are already commonplace and accepted - just to make the obvious example, Stephen Hawking is living a much fuller life than he could have led without access to technology.

Technological trends are notoriously difficult to predict; but my guess is that if we started working on eugenics today, the expected results would become obsolete before they are even achieved.

EDIT: Ok, I checked some information about the number of generations required for artificial selection to have effect. According to this article, you only need to control ten generations of mice to achieve a 75% increase in wheel running - this suggests that my estimate was probably a bit off, and that you could get some results on humans with a relatively small number of generations. But still, human generations are just too long: even if you only needed four generations, that'd still be more than eighty years, and that's a lot when it comes to technology.

Perhaps some troper more knowledgeable about population genetics can tell me if I am making mistakes here?

edited 27th Apr '11 1:54:57 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Not that I want to glorify slavery, but I read some where that southern trader had a habit of breeding their 'merchandise' for stronger and healthier slaves. Is there any truth in that?

hashtagsarestupid

I wouldn't be surprised if they did. According to Uncle Toms Cabin there were actually people whose jobs were to breed child slaves and sell them.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

"Eugenics strikes me as a poor strategy for the selection of desirable traits and the removal of undesirable ones in homo sapiens anyway"

Gene therapy of fetuses sounds good. Cyborgization, I don't know how much can be done inexpensively for most people even in principle. Unless real Dexlerian nanobots are possible, in which case cool.

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

Cyborgization is a terrible eugenics strategy. It does not affect the genetics of a human being, so it would not affect the offspring of the cyborgized.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Eh, who cares? As long as you have the technology to fix the defects after the birth (or even before, for that matter) it's not like it matters if the data contained in the genetic code is defective.

On the long term, human DNA needs to go or be reworked anyway. It's a ridiculous kludge of hacks, patches and shortcuts, with no modularity nor source control at all - that's the best that spontaneous evolution could come up with, but with some effort I'd bet that we could do way better than that.

edited 27th Apr '11 6:38:18 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Gene therapy I can understand. Removing or fixing the genes that cause, say, cystic fibrosis or Huntington's is a good idea.

Scanning for genes that cause said ailments? Acceptable. Making it mandatory? A bit leery, but justifiable.

Preventing said child from being born? That's probably where I'd draw a line. Doubly so with forced sterilization or abortion.

Of course, I have a bit of a bias here: I'm not exactly the pinnacle of genetic perfection myself, and I have a few mental ailments that may be ascribed to genetic causes. So I tend to side with the "rubbish" of the species, the genetic refuse that must be culled for the sake of the species' progress and is only fit for spare parts*

. In any case, take my word with a grain of salt.

edited 27th Apr '11 8:09:15 AM by Icarael

"Stealing is a crime and drugs is a crime too BUT if you steal drugs the two crimes cancel out and it’s like basically doing a good."

Without a sufficiently long-term objective function to determine the benefits of a trait versus its cost that is better than microevolution, I do not believe compulsory eugenics makes any technical sense.

Carciofus: I care. Cyborgize if you like, but it is an enhancement strategy and not a eugenics strategy. If you put electronics in your body, your kids are not going to be born with electronics, so you have to keep installing in each individual in each generation.

The only way to reliably improve the human species is to control who is born, and to alter the genomes of those who are yet to be born.

edited 27th Apr '11 8:11:02 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

To be fair to that deaf couple a while back, it would probably be healthier long term for a deaf couple to raise a deaf child, than a hearing child. Just because with two deaf parents, it'd probably be really hard to get in that early-age development needed.

Read my stories!

"A child with a grave disability is a burden to the parents and society, has no future, and will probably know very little happiness and truckloads of suffering."

So this kid knows very little happiness and truckloads of suffering? Doesn't look like it to me.

Honestly, if you've actually known many disabled people, you'll know that they run the full range from generally happy to generally unhappy, with 'generally happy' being the more common option.

And most of them have families who love them and are glad to have known them. Parents often say that they feel they've become better people as a result of caring for a disabled family member, and that their family has gotten closer and their marriage stronger.

As for whether they have a future, that all depends of what support they get. Had I been born into a different family, I could be in either a psych ward or a jail cell by now, given the kind of disabilities I have. Certain disabilities may mean you will never do certain things, but everyone, with the right support, can live a happy and fulfilling life.

And I really hate trying to prove our lives are worthwhile. It freaks me out to realize how many people think I and/or my friends would be better off not existing.

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

I still do not see the problem. As human beings, and as members of a scientifically advanced culture, we are heavily dependent on our technology already: the average Westerner (me, for example) would be dead meat within a week "in the wild".

I can expect this dependence to increase in the future; but as long as the total capacity of humankind increases too, I am perfectly fine with that - after all, considering the survival ability of humans without taking in account their technology makes as much sense as considering the survival ability of termites without taking in account their mound-building abilities.

edited 27th Apr '11 8:17:17 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I lived in the wild (albeit with guidance and eleven other people) for two weeks and was fine. What only kills an average Westerner in the wild is being out of shape and not knowing what you're doing.

I am not saying "don't cyborgize". I am saying "cyborgization is not a eugenics strategy".

The reason why I'm arguing it is not a eugenics strategy because it is like saying birth control pills are a way of protecting against ST Ds. Cyborgization and eugenics (literally "good birth") have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can't control the human genome with cyborgization. You're only physically changing what has already been born which has no impact on future births.

edited 27th Apr '11 8:26:18 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Fair enough, it is not eugenics. But I would argue that it is a valid substitute to eugenics, with many of its advantages and few of the disadvantages.

Cyborgization, I think, would allow far more possibilities for fine-tuning and successive modifications than eugenics does; gene therapy could also be a possibility, but since many genes' main effect is over the development of the growing organism - and since they tend to interact in ridiculously overcomplicated ways - I think that certain kinds of fixes would probably require more technological finesse through this route than through cyborgization.

I may be wrong on that, though, after all I am speculating about hypothetical future technologies; but at least for the moment, it seems to me that cyborgization (even just of the limited sort that we have now) offers more promises for improving the human condition than traditional forms of eugenics.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I find is strange that people are assuming that "better genes = better people".

You can have an amazing body that everyone wants, and still be an unredeemably selfish and horrible human being. (For examples, see celebrities.)

Someone's value is not determined by whether their genes are optimal. It is a person's character and actions that make them worthwhile.

I am not assuming that, I just don't want the species to decline collectively in genetic health. While I'm not for taking eugenics any further than I have suggested it, I am only afraid that the environment humans live in now, that allows both the strong and the weak to survive and reproduce might have a long-term negative impact on the gene pool and make weak and ill humans more common. (The trouble, however, is determining which humans are weak and ill, and which aren't.)

Before modern medicine, people with cystic fibrosis were not able to reproduce because they would die before reproductive age. Now that they can survive to adulthood, they will pass the cystic fibrosis allele on whenever they reproduce (all children will carry the allele, as cystic fibrosis is a recessive trait), and I am afraid that cystic fibrosis will only become more common in the future.

edited 27th Apr '11 11:48:54 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Their lives are the proverbial lemonade. Good for them, but when it comes to future generations, I think it's self-evidently better for them to be born with as few disadvantages as possible. There are too damn many challenges in life as it is. Those that are preventable should be prevented, regardless of how feasible it is to live happily with them. I find it strange that you think people are making that assumption.

edited 27th Apr '11 12:09:17 PM by Tongpu

"It is a person's character and actions that make them worthwhile."

Genes can affect that too. This study found evidence for a substantial genetic contribution to psychopathy.

I'm undecided whether we should screen out psychopaths, by the way. Unlike disabled people, they actually cause substantial harm to those who know them. However, if we locked them up for life we could adequately control that danger. And Science Marches On, so we may find an effective treatment for psychopathy.

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

It depends, Something like missing an arm or a weak heart should be fixed with permission from the parents.

However, a fetus that might develop OCD or Autism Spectrum Disorder should definitely be left alone. Some of the most influential people in the world had these disorders, like Martin Luther having OCD or Albert Einstein having AS.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

I agree. Someone who might appear to have ASD traits may not even have an actual disability at all as a margin case.

I don't agree that Einstein had ASD, but he could have been a margin case.

edited 27th Apr '11 1:24:24 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.