@orangeban: Oh, you saw Gattaca too? Very interesting movie.
Honestly, I've always thought the base concept of Eugenics was short-sighted. Interesting notion? Maybe. But it's flawed at its core. We might choose what we consider desireable traits, however we have little way of knowing how this selection will work out in the future. A given 'undesireable' trait can become a deciding survival factor in a new environment, or a given 'desireable' trait can become a hinderence in another environment (For instance: working eyes in an environment with no light are useless and only serve as an energy drain and a comparatively easily infected area). Additionally, even an apparently useless genetic trait can become a stepping stone to an environmental advantage (see Lenski's E.Coli experiment, where one mutation played off of an older (apparently ineffective) mutation, an interaction which allowed the bacteria culture to process citrate and gain a tremendous advantage in their environment).
It is because of these unforseeable consequences that I never did like the concept. Almost any criteria we'd choose would be almost arbitrary and as likely as not to blow up in our faces in the long run. Even assuming perfect knowledge (which we lack) of how any given mutation would act in concert with the rest of the genetic code, the concept would only really work if we had similarly perfect control of the environment as well.
Honestly, I've always thought the base concept of Eugenics was short-sighted. Interesting notion? Maybe. But it's flawed at its core. We might choose what we consider desireable traits, however we have little way of knowing how this selection will work out in the future. A given 'undesireable' trait can become a deciding survival factor in a new environment, or a given 'desireable' trait can become a hinderence in another environment (For instance: working eyes in an environment with no light are useless and only serve as an energy drain and a comparatively easily infected area). Additionally, even an apparently useless genetic trait can become a stepping stone to an environmental advantage (see Lenski's E.Coli experiment, where one mutation played off of an older (apparently ineffective) mutation, an interaction which allowed the bacteria culture to process citrate and gain a tremendous advantage in their environment).
It is because of these unforseeable consequences that I never did like the concept. Almost any criteria we'd choose would be almost arbitrary and as likely as not to blow up in our faces in the long run. Even assuming perfect knowledge (which we lack) of how any given mutation would act in concert with the rest of the genetic code, the concept would only really work if we had similarly perfect control of the environment as well.