A Perfect People, A Perfect World, or; The Eugenics Movement

[AdeptaSororitas]

Recently I posted a thread about playing the devils advocate, however; i found the issue I brought forward to be something I'd like to further discuss and examine, so I figured I'd see how other people respond to the argument I'd chosen to examine.

To give some perspective, the Eugenics Movement was a time in American History when the field of Genetics was still in it's infancy. The theory was that certain characteristics of a person where decided mostly by heredity. Some modern beliefs were identified then, such as vision and hair color being genetically passed down based on those of the parents. However; many things that were also claimed to be genetic, such as work ethic and poverty. This lead to a large group of people desiring to remove this people from the gene pool. But unlike Hitler, instead of rounding them up and killing them, they'd simply wait until they came into the doctors, tell them they were getting surgery for something unrelated, and while they were under they would sterilize them. Hundreds and thousands of these secret surgeries took place before it finally ended, due to legal action and new scientific studies.

However to this day many people believe that people with certain disabilities should be removed from the gene pool, due to either their inability to be fitting parents or due to high genetic disposition to illnesses such as bipolar disorder, mental retardation, physical disability or the like. Provably genetic illnesses that are dangerous and/or deadly or disabling to the potential child. And while secret surgeries would be out of the question, the idea or a civilian or governmental body to determine whether or not someone was fit or safe to be a parent is a more viable idea.

Note that this "new" eugenics movement has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.

So what does the Escapist forums say? Is this something that crosses the line on what our basic human rights are, or simply an intelligent way to prevent dangerous and deadly genetic diseases from progressing?

Edit: For the sake of Neutrality, I will not state whether or not I support this cause.

 

[Tselis]

As a person with Bipolar, I wholeheartedly agree with any treatment that would remove this scourge from humanity. I am honestly terrified that I have passed this on to my children, and I have to almost over-compensate just to be a 'good' parent. Certain treatments should be optional, some should be like vaccines, phased over the child's growth into an adult and other children should simply be sterilized at birth. There are thousands of ways for the human body to go horribly wrong before you're even born. I know. I have Bipolar, I also have an autistic child with a malformed brain (took an MRI pic for me to believe). She's in second grade with no sign of being potty trained anytime soon, and has only just started doing math (I could go on). I wouldn't wish these things on anyone, ever. It really pisses me off when people say that we should just let these people breed, pass on their painful lives. It pisses me off when people have kids like this and then try to raise them with the belief that they're 'special'. Oh they're special, and the rest of humanity is just kind enough to remind them of it every fucking day. I won't bother to tell you how many little shits I've had to inform that they were coming close to a curb stomping if they didn't back the fuck off my baby, you wouldn't believe me. Eugenics should never be about erasing one culture or one type of person. It should be about erasing the pain that our imperfect bodies cause us. It should be about erasing the pain that others would cause because we're imperfect. Anyway, sorry for the mini rant. Just my opinions.

 

[Versuvius]

I...agree. It is i think unethical and amoral; but the pros outweigh the cons a thousandfold. Let me just be clear here, i'm the kind of person who thinks vat grown bodies for parts is a good idea despite knowing full well that the concept is pretty up there in "Dickhead nazi zombie clone warrior" territory.

 

[Tselis]

And since you already godwinned this thread I have to say that that is what I think was the worst thing about Hitlers little campaign. The corruption of ideas. You even mention eugenics or clinical trials on prisoners and people immediately liken it to Nazis even though they are absolutely nothing alike.

Graham from Unskippable had it right, Nazis ruin everything.

Captcha = 'offer; tribuyea'. What kind of offer is that?

 

[KeyMaster45]

I would agree, there are indeed certain diseases that we've been able to pin down as passed on from generation to generation. However, history has shown humanity could not be trusted to simply restrain themselves to only selectively breeding such diseases out of the population. Indeed, where do you draw the line. Why stop at simply breeding out hereditary diseases when we could remove or encourage so many other traits?

 

[Kae]

I guess this could be applied to well developed countries but I don't think such a thing can be eradicated, though the idea of reducing this kinds of genetic diseases with a little more control is nice, so I guess in 1st world countries this might be plausible but it might also be seen as highly oppressive since you would be basically impeding the reproduction of a large part of the populous, quite complicated indeed can't say I'm sure on which side I stand.

 

[ajemas]

So if I understand this correctly, those who are not able to contribute good, solid genes to the next generation are not deemed fit to reproduce. You know what, let's say that you have someone with a family history of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is a nasty neurodegenerative disease that can cause muscle control loss to the point of not being able to breathe without assistance, decreased cognitive function, and is fatal with no solid treatment to boot. It makes sense that they shouldn't have kids, right?
Oh wait, doesn't Steven Hawking have that?
Or what about those with mental retardation and bipolar disorder like you said? Take a person with both serious mental impairments and blindness to boot? Why don't you take a look at him play the piano? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_GUPcg25QI
Or what about someone with bipolar disorder? Ask Georg Cantor, who got the Sylvester medal from the Royal Society, which is the highest mathematics honor they can bestow.

It is impossible to determine one's future based on what they are born with and what they can pass down. Each of these people that I have mentioned have made invaluable contributions to their respective fields, which never would have come about if their parents were unable to breed due to a couple of poor genes.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

I guess this could be applied to well developed countries but I don't think such a thing can be eradicated, though the idea of reducing this kinds of genetic diseases with a little more control is nice, so I guess in 1st world countries this might be plausible but it might also be seen as highly oppressive since you would be basically impeding the reproduction of a large part of the populous, quite complicated indeed can't say I'm sure on which side I stand.

I'm glad you feel that way. It means I've succeeded in giving you something to think about.

 

[Kae]

I guess this could be applied to well developed countries but I don't think such a thing can be eradicated, though the idea of reducing this kinds of genetic diseases with a little more control is nice, so I guess in 1st world countries this might be plausible but it might also be seen as highly oppressive since you would be basically impeding the reproduction of a large part of the populous, quite complicated indeed can't say I'm sure on which side I stand.

I'm glad you feel that way. It means I've succeeded in giving you something to think about.

Well you would have if my attention span wasn't so short that I forgot about it a few seconds after I posted that (-_-) That does not say anything good about me...

 

[Tselis]

So if I understand this correctly, those who are not able to contribute good, solid genes to the next generation are not deemed fit to reproduce. You know what, let's say that you have someone with a family history of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is a nasty neurodegenerative disease that can cause muscle control loss to the point of not being able to breathe without assistance, decreased cognitive function, and is fatal with no solid treatment to boot. It makes sense that they shouldn't have kids, right?
Oh wait, doesn't Steven Hawking have that?
Or what about those with mental retardation and bipolar disorder like you said? Take a person with both serious mental impairments and blindness to boot? Why don't you take a look at him play the piano? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_GUPcg25QI
Or what about someone with bipolar disorder? Ask Georg Cantor, who got the Sylvester medal from the Royal Society, which is the highest mathematics honor they can bestow.

It is impossible to determine one's future based on what they are born with and what they can pass down. Each of these people that I have mentioned have made invaluable contributions to their respective fields, which never would have come about if their parents were unable to breed due to a couple of poor genes.

These are the exceptions, not what is normally going to happen. As I mentioned above, I have Bipolar. I know what I'm talking about. Life in my head is no picnic, ever. My daughter, my autistic baby, is beautiful and a tested gifted genius. She's also not toilet trained and in second grade. I don't complain, I'm lucky honestly. She's a high functioning autistic. Basically, she's so intelligent that she's able to compensate for the malformation of her own brain. What's worse is that she's getting old enough now to know that she's different. She tells me that she thinks some times that her mind is tricking her when she goes to do something, or interact with someone. She has very few friends, and has trouble making them because she's different. You cannot judge the whole by the exceptions. Can you really believe that it's right to make millions suffer just because a few of them might make incredible contributions. That's just cruel, and sad.

 

[Pharsalus]

I did a paper on this in college advocating it as an idea but condemning it in practice. The mechanisms used in the American practice of eugenics are pretty horrible, bad enough to impress the Nazi's. Even if you could implement such an idea without hurting the existing population you could end up with a future like the movie Gattica, wherein only those with good genes are deemed to be of any worth to society.

 

[Labyrinth]

Honestly, Eugenics movements represent a fundamental misunderstanding of how genes work. They're a recipe, not a blueprint. See, what happens in cells is that strips of DNA are translated to strips of RNA which then travel outside the nucleus. The structure of DNA is familiar. The rungs of that ladder are "bases". Each group of three bases codes for a particular amino acid or sends a command such as start and stop. These amino acids are what make up proteins.

Precisely which strips of DNA are used in the first place is determined by the chemicals in the cell environment and outside it. Also, there are a lot of pretty damn cool chemical machines within the cell which can twist improperly coded proteins so that they can still do their job despite flaws in the DNA leading to flaws in the protein itself. Cells grouped together affect each other, the shapes that they form as tissues and the roles they play.

It's not really possible to take a cell, extract the DNA and say "this is the organism it will produce!" because it's so environmentally variable. There's no guarantee that the same DNA run twice will produce the same result. Likewise it's impossible to isolate genes for personality and the like as so much of this is a result of socialisation. Values are much the same.

However, hereditary susceptibility to diseases like cancer can be found, but that's a specific case where the disease results from flaws within the DNA which mean that cell replication is unlimited. This can be passed on because it's bound up as a part of chromosomes. Trisomy-21, otherwise known as Down's Syndrome is a genetic disorder when a third copy of the 21st chromosome is present. Passing on of Down's Syndrome is more complicated due to the manner in which chromosomes divide to produce sperm and egg. For other things like mental illness it's much harder because of the recipe-role of DNA mentioned above.

So when Eugenics comes along and claims to breed out diseases it mistakes the mechanics of what it's doing, how genetic susceptibility works. Selective breeding is a relatively clumsy process, for all it can produce very dramatic results. It does depend on what one is looking for. I'll use hair colour as the example here. There are two 'spots' for genes which code for hair colour. Both of these can be dominant (two copies of the dark hair gene, dark hair in individual), both can be recessive (two copies of red hair gene, red hair in individual), one could be dominant and one recessive (one for dark, one for red, dark hair would show) or there could be a situation of co-dominance in which the characteristics of both genes show (roan cattle where both types of hair exist). If one is trying to breed for say, red hair, which only shows up when there is no copy of a dominant gene for hair colour present, then it can manifest after generations of dark-haired people because no-one knows that they have the recessive gene. One can take only creatures with red hair to breed which would guarantee the eradication of the dark haired gene as it would not be able to carry on to children, or one can produce red haired creatures from dark haired creatures which have the recessive gene as 1 in 4 of the offspring of two of these would only possess the recessive genes. Eradicating recessive genes is much more difficult because unless you have a "pure-breeding" strain of many generations, there's no guarantee that both copies of the gene for say, hair colour, are of the dominant one.

Not to mention that mutations can always make things crop up again.

 

[Cpu46]

I'm actually against this, however my reason is not really a moral one.

Removing entire genes from the gene pool could actually do more harm than good. Sickle cell is 'harmful' for the most part, however it is beneficial in places where malaria is prevalent because the sickle cells are not affected by the disease. Granted Sickle cell is bad enough on its own and it is only beneficial when it is heterozygous and the body produces both normal and sickle cells. But this genetic sequence provides a distinct benefit under certain circumstances.

Also there is a great explanation that professor Dawkins gives (Granted the context is about how the 'gay gene' may have been preserved in our DNA) in this video at about 4:36.


Removing a genetic sequence from the gene pool, even if it is for a disability, can have unforeseen consequences as our situations change.

 

[Tselis]

I did a paper on this in college advocating it as an idea but condemning it in practice. The mechanisms used in the American practice of eugenics are pretty horrible, bad enough to impress the Nazi's. Even if you could implement such an idea without hurting the existing population you could end up with a future like the movie Gattica, wherein only those with good genes are deemed to be of any worth to society.

I agree, Gattica was an intellectually frightening movie, with a satisfying yet tragic ending. However, if you are going to introduce Eugenics to the human population (properly) it would have to be done world wide, in a standardized fashion, with military enforcement. It would also have to have an agreed upon, standardized goal of eliminating only certain genetic diseases/disorders; as well as en extended timeline that would allow for the phasing in of current children, the sterilization of certain adults (probably an uncomfortably large portion of the population), as well as a planned time line accounting for all of the pre-eugenics era adults dying off. Once the WHO/CDC/others could say with any reasonable sense of certainty that all of the populace with the 'undesirable' genes had passed away then the program could be scaled back to only be used for people who slipped through the cracks or the random genetic combinations that just occur in only 4 or 5 people in the entire world at any one time. It would require a massive, intensive, invasive, expensive effort that is wholely unfeasible now, or any time in the near future.

P.S. Captcha = worthless ewgferr
I think Captcha is trying to get in on the discussion.

 

[AperioContra]

Ok, first, I've mentioned before that I am a Trekkie. All of this reminds of an episode of the Next Generation in which the Enterprise encounters a biospere people who utilize eugenics to create a self sustained utopian society. If anyone hasn't watched it, it's called the Masterpiece Society, go watch it, I'll wait.

Done? Good. You see the brilliant part of this episode is that nobody there is really evil. They simply serve as an argument for or against the idea of Eugenics.

Ok, to the meat of the issue. I have a microtumor in the left hemisphere of my pituitary gland, I have OCD, Asthma, and a family history of Cancer. All of these have been found to have links to human genetics and under such order, I would not have been permitted to exist.

On the other hand, I have an IQ of 132, a working knowledge of physics and quantum physics, am an artist, a writer, a game creator, a philosopher, a scholar and a gentleman. I have touched people's lives and allowed others to touch mine. As a measurement of a human being I am often counted as good (though, I would debate that). And under a eugenic society, I would not exist.

As the character Geordi LaForge said in the episode I mentioned earlier, "Who are you to make that decision for me?" And I say that with the same conviction. Should we sacrifice the good human beings that may come because of the risk it plays? Where does it stop? Can we determine that political philosophy is a genetic trait? The ability to question? Once we open the door to allow certain people of society to wiped out, how far will we go?

I guess my argument is simply do we sacrifice our humanity to make the world a little safer? Or do we take the risk that some may suffer with their freedom to exist?

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

Once we have this power, it will go further so people will be choosing their child's hair color, eye color, etc. "Perfect children". A "perfect" world. It's an absolutely horrendous idea.

I like the principle of getting rid of hereditary diseases & conditions but lets face it - what's gonna stop people from taking it too far?

 

[Tselis]

Ok, first, I've mentioned before that I am a Trekkie. All of this reminds of an episode of the Next Generation in which the Enterprise encounters a biospere people who utilize eugenics to create a self sustained utopian society. If anyone hasn't watched it, it's called the Masterpiece Society, go watch it, I'll wait.

Done? Good. You see the brilliant part of this episode is that nobody there is really evil. They simply serve as an argument for or against the idea of Eugenics.

Ok, to the meat of the issue. I have a microtumor in the left hemisphere of my pituitary gland, I have OCD, Asthma, and a family history of Cancer. All of these have been found to have links to human genetics and under such order, I would not have been permitted to exist.

On the other hand, I have an IQ of 132, a working knowledge of physics and quantum physics, am an artist, a writer, a game creator, a philosopher, a scholar and a gentleman. I have touched people's lives and allowed others to touch mine. As a measurement of a human being I am often counted as good (though, I would debate that). And under a eugenic society, I would not exist.

As the character Geordi LaForge said in the episode I mentioned earlier, "Who are you to make that decision for me?" And I say that with the same conviction. Should we sacrifice the good human beings that may come because of the risk it plays? Where does it stop? Can we determine that political philosophy is a genetic trait? The ability to question? Once we open the door to allow certain people of society to wiped out, how far will we go?

I guess my argument is simply do we sacrifice our humanity to make the world a little safer? Or do we take the risk that some may suffer with their freedom to exist?

Once again I say, the exception, not the rule. How many millions suffer, terribly, who might not need to? You sound like a great person, someone I wouldn't mind knowing, and I'm an anti-social recluse (Bipolar, PTSD, Depression, etc). However, the idea of eliminating the genetic scourges that plague us is one I believe firmly that we must pursue. It must be pursued in an ethical fashion, but it must be pursued none-the-less.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

Once we have this power, it will go further so people will be choosing their child's hair color, eye color, etc. "Perfect children". A "perfect" world. It's an absolutely horrendous idea.

I like the principle of getting rid of hereditary diseases & conditions but lets face it - what's gonna stop people from taking it too far?

A board of either fellow citizens or government officials.