Is eugenics ethical?

[Stormrage]

That's usually how it starts.

But power corrupts...

It's not has easy has people think to go loco with eugenics. You have to be a totalitarian state with a strong police force to force people.

Were that it were that simple. Consider that people with sickle cell disease are resistant to malaria. So do you breed out sickle cell? Do you just breed it out in people living where malaria is rare, and allow it to remain in places where malaria is common?

If we were able to do large scale eugenics then it would be possible to eliminate malaria by eliminating Mosquitoes so this question is null and void.

We need to stop cowardly and take this issue by the horns. No more of this stupid "OMG HOLOCAUST" or a vision of totalitarian state where normal humans are inferior. That isn't going on happen.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Stormrage said:We need to stop cowardly and take this issue by the horns. No more of this stupid "OMG HOLOCAUST" or a vision of totalitarian state where normal humans are inferior. That isn't going on happen.

How do you know?

That's not a chance I'm prepared to take.

You want a real Khan Singh, do you?

 

[Balthier the Great]

Stormrage said:

That's usually how it starts.

But power corrupts...

It's not has easy has people think to go loco with eugenics. You have to be a totalitarian state with a strong police force to force people.

But you'd need a police state to get to the point where meaningful eugenics is even possible. I don't think a state can be eugenicist and still believe that its citizens have much right to self determination.

A police state is one that asks a citizen to give up his own self interests for the good of the state. What an individual might want is irrelevant. How can you have a free society when one of the more basic biological urges is regulated by the state? I don't think that's possible -- either you believe that humans have the right to decide for themselves who to mate with, or you don't.

Were that it were that simple. Consider that people with sickle cell disease are resistant to malaria. So do you breed out sickle cell? Do you just breed it out in people living where malaria is rare, and allow it to remain in places where malaria is common?

If we were able to do large scale eugenics then it would be possible to eliminate malaria by eliminating Mosquitoes so this question is null and void.

We need to stop cowardly and take this issue by the horns. No more of this stupid "OMG HOLOCAUST" or a vision of totalitarian state where normal humans are inferior. That isn't going on happen.

I'm not actually suggesting a holocaust. I don't think it will happen. But you have to be very careful when dealing with biological diversity. What we need today may be useless in 1000 years. We may think something is useless now, but in 1000 years we may need it.

Another problem is that with too little diversity in a population, you can get problems with genetic diseases. Purebreed animals get all kinds of problems -- hip and knee problems, breathing problems, deafness, and cancers. Health Problems in German Shepards, just as an example. We might eliminate one disease just to give ourselves another. A large diverse gene pool is required for the health of a population. I don't see much evidence that eugenics does that.