Eugenics.

From Wikipedia:

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through social intervention. The goals have variously been to create healthier, more intelligent people, save society's resources, and lessen human suffering. Proposed means of achieving these goals most commonly include prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, selective breeding, In vitro fertilisation, and genetic engineering. Critics argue that eugenics is a pseudoscience. Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination, and severe human rights violations, such as forced sterilization and even genocide.

Presumably most people would like to believe that scientific racism is absurd and counterfactual while genocide or murder is always wrong but what are your opinions on eugenics in its broader sense?

Do you believe that sterilization is debauched and if so why? Do you believe that genetic engineering is unethical?

Where is your introduction post interzone?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mirren

Where is your introduction post interzone?

---

i didn't make one.

i cannot deny that i believe genetic engineering intrests me and i do believe we will end up incorporating it into our culture (too many sci-fi film probably) however i am not blinded to the ethical aspect of it, i am not religeous, but the best way to describe it is that humans should never be in the position to play god. i feel it would lead to more problems than good.

oh, and do a intro thread :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flip

i cannot deny that i believe genetic engineering intrests me and i do believe we will end up incorporating it into our culture (too many sci-fi film probably) however i am not blinded to the ethical aspect of it, i am not religeous, but the best way to describe it is that humans should never be in the position to play god. i feel it would lead to more problems than good.

oh, and do a intro thread :D

---

It's been said you also beat a metaphor to death..... Cravings! Cravings! Not John Cravings.. NOOOOO!!

anybody... dust!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flip

anybody... dust!

---

Cake Cake... I just love a bit o' cake... I'm just that kind of person!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by interzone

From Wikipedia:

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through social intervention. The goals have variously been to create healthier, more intelligent people, save society's resources, and lessen human suffering. Proposed means of achieving these goals most commonly include prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, selective breeding, In vitro fertilisation, and genetic engineering. Critics argue that eugenics is a pseudoscience. Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination, and severe human rights violations, such as forced sterilization and even genocide.

Presumably most people would like to believe that scientific racism is absurd and counterfactual while genocide or murder is always wrong but what are your opinions on eugenics in its broader sense?

Do you believe that sterilization is debauched and if so why? Do you believe that genetic engineering is unethical?

---

I do not believe we can foresee the unintended consequences of genetic engineering. In "perfecting" the human race, we may destroy it. Humans lack the omniscience to be playing God. We need not even arrive at the moral and ethical questions.

OEC

we allready have manipulated the human genome. do you think that putting all sorts of chemicals into the air water, and our bodies, being constantly exposed to raditaion, erdaciting micorogramisms and introducing new ones, hasn't had an effect on humanity on a cellular level? pretty much every step that we've taken toward what we call medicine and technology is steering us away from natural evolution. We need not some secret seedy Big Brother to push our buttons, we just have to convince everyone to do it to themselves by appealing to thier most shallow concerns. advancement of the species, we couldn't care less... but using that product that's going to make us look young and sexy, we're sold.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morning Glory

we allready have manipulated the human genome. do you think that putting all sorts of chemicals into the air water, and our bodies, being constantly exposed to raditaion, erdaciting micorogramisms and introducing new ones, hasn't had an effect on humanity on a cellular level? pretty much every step that we've taken toward what we call medicine and technology is steering us away from natural evolution. We need not some secret seedy Big Brother to push our buttons, we just have to convince everyone to do it to themselves by appealing to thier most shallow concerns. advancement of the species, we couldn't care less... but using that product that's going to make us look young and sexy, we're sold.

---

Reverse eugenics via crass consumerism?:1orglaugh I think any appeal to the perfectability of man qua man is an appeal to our basest extincts.

OEC

i think the only reason we should genetically ourselves as in the human species is to make better soldiers( pilots that can handle more g's.....soldiers with harder skin and more indurance.......navy that have gills/lungs...those kind of things)

Screw it all... I think that we need to breed out stupidity, and other mental discrmpencies... like bad spelling LOL

Every 100,256th person should be a midget...

that would be bliss

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morning Glory

pretty much every step that we've taken toward what we call medicine and technology is steering us away from natural evolution.

---

Natural evolution isn't exactly defectless.

crap, i just wrote i really good response to this and lost it.... i'll try to rewrite it...

i took a class titled "social and ethical implications of the human genome project", so i've done a ton of research and discussion on this subject. basically, eugenics is a "slippery slope" kind of deal, where you start out with seemingly harmless things like prenatal screening and genetic counseling (i don't consider birth control eugenics, because you're not directly selecting agains anything specific). since things have gotten that far, it's then only a matter of time before someone else takes it further (genetic engineering, cloning, etc.). and actually, the US has a history of using eugenics as an excuse for forced sterilization of "imbeciles" (people who were to some degree mentally incapacitated). it's that type of thinking that gets dangerous. not to say that genetic engineering is a bad thing, but this is why most things having to do with genetics are strictly monitored and regulated, because its all too easy for bad things to come of it.

oh dear, i had better stop, i could go on all day.... can ya tell this is the sort of thing i'm going to school for? ;)

Eugenics is one of those theories that looks good on paper, but if you really look at it how much of our advancement is hereditary? To use an extreme example, what ever hapopened to Einstien's children? Would Einstien have been born with a serious human eugenics program in place?

Then you have to come to an agreement on what makes a better person. Sure the idea of breeding out genetic defects seems like a good idea, but what is the goal of the breeding? What traits are you trying to breed out? If you can get a hundred people to agree on that, much less the few billion we got right now, then maybe you could justify human eugenics, but it is unlikely at best.

Forced sterilization is unethical, genetic engineering has the potential to be, but is not in and of itself. my 3am wisdom.

I've been reading the Dune series for the last month. All I can think about with this subject are the Bene Gesserit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by interzone

Natural evolution isn't exactly defectless.

---

I'm not sure what you're thinking with this statement. really evolution isn't even a hard science. by that I mean you can take an organism and see how it's adpated to it's environment, and say "well, this species is quite well suited to that, so that's evolution." but we can't really observe evolutionary process, or tell what exactly it is. for instance, how do we account for the reasoning why some species are better adapted then others? there's no scientific reason why some species are inherrantly more likely to advance then any others. the argument is not that we, or any species for that matter, is on some biological road to perfection. We can't know that. the fact is that some species strive and others die out. My point is that we are always and have always been enacting that process, indeed every species of organism is, and nothing we do short of wiping ourselves out of the race is going to change that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morning Glory

I'm not sure what you're thinking with this statement.

---

i mean that some things seem completely arbitrary, like cerebral palsy, down syndrome or even alopecia.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morning Glory

the argument is not that we, or any species for that matter, is on some biological road to perfection. We can't know that. the fact is that some species strive and others die out. My point is that we are always and have always been enacting that process, indeed every species of organism is, and nothing we do short of wiping ourselves out of the race is going to change that.

---

of course, our computers get faster, our buildings get taller and our libraries grow bigger. Who's to say that eugenics isn't the next step in this process of 'becoming who we are'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by interzone

of course, our computers get faster, our buildings get taller and our libraries grow bigger. Who's to say that eugenics isn't the next step in this process of 'becoming who we are'.

---

That would be me. By raising the average we are very likely to hammer down a lot of the spikes. What would eugenics do with a cae where the person is a genetic plus in one category, but a minus in another?

A good example would be dog breeding. Despite generations of eugenicswe have never achieved a super dog. We just end up trading in on what features we think are important. If we breed for physical strength we may loose people with good vision.

And again, how do we decide the priority for breeding or genetic manipulation?

maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. I think you're looking at this thing way to much from a humanist viewpoint, and not from a species viewpoint. as I stated before we allready practice selective genetics. In the natural world there simply is no place for inferior genes, it's only in the human mind that morality exists and we feel responsible to put the individual above the species as a whole. I'm not debating the good or ill of that, but such distinctions are rarely made amongst others. We're just playing our part, and we are in no way above or beyond it then a worm in the dirt.

We are so hung up about cultural abstractions that we don't even look at the human species. To us the life of someone accross a continent seems to in no way resemble ours. That's the main reason why I don't see the possibilty of Eugenics or genome manipulation being implimented. I mean shit, why worry about balding or shortness or bad vision, let alone invisible imperfections, when we don't even feel the neccesity to collectivley deal with biological constraints that kill millions a year?