| May. 20th, 2012 @ 09:01 pm Now remember, he's MUCH more educated and enlightened than you |
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| I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn’t the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?" Richard Dawkins |
rhjunior
There were some tests that I outright refused in all three pregnancies because if they were positive, it would not in any way change the birthing procedure or pregnancy procedure... the only reason to get the result (and do so as early as possible) was so that you could be encouraged to abort if it was positive.
Cystic fibrosis, for instance, is quickly following the same trend as Down's Syndrome, in which 90% of testing-positive unborn are aborted.
He did state that he had already thought of some arguments why it's not acceptable to selectively breed humans, and that they may convince him.
*You don't cite when or where he said it, so how can we tell it's a genuine Dawkins quote.
So when the argument gets past "Hitler did it" you can talk about harmful recessive alleles and how randomized systems tend to have a better redundancy and flexibility than non-randomized systems. You might even include talking about the repulsiveness of sanctioning only certain types of procreation, but that might not be as persuasive to anyone that can get past "Hitler did it.
Edited at 2012-05-21 07:25 pm (UTC)
If it says one thing in one place, and something contradictory in another, without explaining the distinction between the two situations that reconciles them, then that morality has been "rebutted", so to speak.
We don't dislike eugenics because "Hitler did it", because it's "inefficient", or because we don't like being told who to breed with.
We dislike eugenics because it is morally repulsive to us. And no amount of pro/con weighing will change that.
-Kire Du'Hai
Hitler also ate sugar.
Few even bother to talk about why it actually is a bad idea.
What's interesting is that if the human race wants to get serious about off-Earth colonization, eugenics will very likely have to be brought back to the table. It's been shown that long-term exposure to environments with less than Earth-norm gravity is detrimental to our physical well-being. Most of the nearby bodies that we might colonize(Luna, Mars, Ceres) have much less gravity than Earth. If we want to maintain a healthy long-term population on those worlds, the colonists would need to be genetically modified to augment their bone density. At the very least.
It's also worth noting that if he had died of a heart attack in 1938, he'd probably have gone down in every history book as one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th century.
"It's also worth noting that if he had died of a heart attack in 1938, he'd probably have gone down in every history book as one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th century."
No, no, no and HELL NO. The Dachau concentration camp began receiving victims in 1933, a mere 51 days after Hitler took office. The Nuremberg Laws depriving all people with Jewish grandparents of German citizenship were put in place in 1935. By November of 1938, the country was so deeply in the grip of an evil man that the Sturmabteilung (SA) could perpetuate Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) with no fear of being restrained. He may have done good economic things but there is no justification to put him anywhere near the company of "one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th century."
Genetic manipulation is not "eugenics". Eugenics is more than that. Eugenics is the idea of improving or guiding the genome, yes, but with the caveat that the method used is justified by the results.
There's not much need to discuss why that's a bad idea.
-Kire Du'Hai
What's ironic is that Ralph is apparently posting the idea with comment as if the fact that he's willing to ask the question is proof enough. Apparently Richard's answer is obvious -- no, you cannot simply ask the question.
I posted it because the man actually seems ENAMORED of the idea, and is FUSSED that we should reject as immoral what is self evidently immoral, and blames it on "Hitler Ate Sugar." Well if Hitler was famous for having all his teeth fall out, we'd be stupid to ignore it. But he's not famous for eating too much sugar. He's famous for carrying out Eugenics to their inevitable conclusion..... a fact to which Dicky Dawkins seems oblivious. Yes, we rejected Eugenics because of Hitler--- because Hitler is the goddamn test case that proved the idea MONSTROUS.
Complaining we don't debate Eugenics just because of Hitler is like complaining we don't debate the merits of setting ourselves on fire just because of Timmy "the Human Torch" Thompson who died in the burn ward.
"As the burned finger of the fool/goes wobbling back to the fire...."
Selectively breeding dogs for large size is not the same thing as killing every toy poodle for being "inferior." The former has been practiced for hundreds of years, the latter is simple animal cruelty.
What Dawkins is talking about -- the idea that we might pick out the genes from the very fastest runners to produce a child which is a fast runner -- has only the vaguest conceptual relationship to Hitler's final solution. It may be a bad idea, but surely something which is "self-evidently immoral" can be shown to be self evidently immoral without resorting to "Hitler did it."
Also... enamored? He outright says that he can think of some reasons which would persuade him its a bad idea. The only thing he's "fussed" about is that people define things as "self-evidently immoral" by association, without being willing to actually examine the idea on its own merits.
If Hitler ate sugar and his teeth rotted, that's maybe a data point. But lots of people eat sugar and manage to brush their teeth. Is it stupid to ignore the correlation? Of course not. But the correlation of two things is not the end-all and be-all of rational inquiry.
Also you loose important things when you breed for certain things, look at pure breed dogs, I would never pay money for one cause the vet bills will be crazy high.