Eugenics

6 thoughts on “Eugenics”

1. It will happen, if it's technically feasible. You might as well try to hold back the tide.

   That which provides a competitive advantage will be done. if it's not done in one country, it will be done in others, and those others will have smarter, healthier people, and will come to dominate the world. So it really doesn't matter whether we think it's a good idea or not. Unless it's impossible for some technical reason, it's inevitable.

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2. +Brian Rush The issue (well, one of many issues) being what makes someone "smarter" (or "healthier"). I agree it seems inevitable, and probably (like, say, GMO plants) will have net improvements, but being aware that there are a lot of things we don't know and understand as we move forward would seem to be a useful caution. Literature is full of the potential pitfalls of eugenic experiments and gene modifications.

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3. +Dave Hill while what "intelligence" means overall may be subject to interpretation and disagreement, when you boil it down to specifics with respect to any one desirable task, it's not. Genetic modification to increase mental ability would apply to specific tasks, like mathematical aptitude or creative imagination. Or both.

   Of course we don't know much about this, which is why we're not already doing it. We're surely years away from being able to modify the human genome safely and effectively. If and when that becomes possible, we're going to confront another social question: how do we make the benefits a right rather than a privilege of wealth? The latter road is a nightmare, with a locked-in aristocracy defined by right of birth that genuinely is superior, unlike aristocracies of the past.

   As for past eugenics experiments, they've only been conducted by autocratic governments without the permission of anyone participating, so that's not a good lesson about much of anything, except to avoid autocratic governments.

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4. +Brian Rush "Autocratic" being used loosely here, as eugenics experiments and laws rarely get the permission of anyone participating because they've generally been about stamping out the "bad" traits before they mongrelize the "good" ones. As such pretty much every western government, the US not least of all, participated in eugenics programs before the Nazis took it to enough of an extreme to make it distasteful for the rest to carry on.

   Your comments on keeping positive eugenics / genetic manipulation from being a privilege of the wealthy is spot on. Given our difficulty in making health care a right, though (at least in the US), making genetic care and improvement a right doesn't sound promising.

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5. +Dave Hill as I said, we're not at the point where it's an issue yet. At this time, we're unable to do these things. By the time we are, who knows what changes will have taken place in society? In any case, there are parts of the world where it's more likely to become a right, such as Europe and Japan. Where it is, an advantage accrues just as it does w/r/t education or health care, which is why the U.S. is finding its lead slipping. I don't expect our hegemony to last much longer unless we do a serious about-face.

   Re eugenics, remember that in the past it was attempted through selective breeding, which doesn't allow for voluntary participation. Genetic engineering would be involuntary by the kids, but then so is all prenatal care; on the part of the parents it wouldn't be.

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6. I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave.

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