Is eugenics ethical?

[Unicron]

In catching a piece of "The Masterpiece Society" the other day, I kind of wonder about concepts like cloning and genetic engineering. Assuming we reach the point someday where either or both of these technologies are considered practical, how do we decide whether they're ethical? There are obviously advantages and disadvantages from an ethical standpoint.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't think they're ethical. I think eugenics leads to a cold and lifeless society. When nobody has any worth other than their genes. I couldn't live in a world like that.

Eugenics would lead to a world like Gattaca, and I couldn't handle that.

 

[Deleted 2]

I think it's ethical and even desirable. Diversity has advantages of its own, but eugenics needn't rule out diversity, unless you distill into the kind of caricature of the practice we've seen in tv sci-fi; inhuman, stale societies all striving to a single unattainable (boring) ideal.

But think of what body modification afficionados do to themselves. Give those people access to genetic engineering, and there's no saying what their children might look like.

 

[Timo]

There would be two sorts of ethical considerations there when a new opportunity such as efficient eugenics presents itself. One could be dubbed ethical inertia: since X was impossible before for mere mortals, making it possible now is playing God, and thus bad. This is the sort of thing that wears off if X turns out to be beneficial... Many a thing related to agriculture and preventative and life-saving medicine, for example, has moved from playing God to doing what is necessary, desirable and even one's moral obligation.

It's the other half of the ethical equation that truly warrants discussion. That is, the judging of X by its perceived consequences, both direct and indirect. And even though we have practiced eugenics on "lower life forms" for thousands of years, we have very little idea what the effects would be on a lifeform that doesn't have a supervising God like ourselves. We can watch thoroughbred dog breeds wither and die and make adjustments to the breeding program as the result. But who's gonna watch us when we screw up big time in a breeding experiment of global scale?

Eugenics would probably be relevant to the species only if practiced on such a scale. But in practice, one would do eugenics on a small subset of the population, leaving a "survival pool" to take over if the experiment fails spectacularly. I see little ethical problem with that as such - but there is a major problem if the two groups are treated dissimilarly in terms other than interbreeding rights. Eugenics is unlikely to produce a Master Race biologically, but the very act of practicing eugenics is likely to produce such a thing socially. And that, I think, is The Thing about eugenics, ethically speaking. Not breeding laws, not abortions or other fetus screening or manipulation techniques, but the general social consequences.

GATTACA portrayed a relatively benign society in that the thoroughbred class supposedly got dibs on jobs and perks solely on the basis of the results of their breeding. It was a classic meritocracy, and it only happened to miss on what merits it valued - the protagonist's initiative and drive was obviously a trait that should have been favored and made a eugenics priority!

However, it would be more likely and far more frightening that a society would favor thoroughbreds on the basis of the history of their breeding. You don't have to be a superior specimen in order to get the job, you only need to be a eugenically selected one. And you don't have to be an inferior specimen to lose out in the race, you only need to lack a history of eugenics. A real society wouldn't have machines that tell your excellence from your blood sample, it would have "citizen files" that would be unable to record the abilities of the individual, and development thereof, accurately and in real time.

The more general ethics of meritocracy vs. ideals of equality are not related/limited to eugenics as such, IMHO.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Zero Hour said: unless you distill into the kind of caricature of the practice we've seen in tv sci-fi; inhuman, stale societies all striving to a single unattainable (boring) ideal.

That's exactly the kind of society that eugenics would eventually lead to.

Hitler's Master Race, writ large. (Hitler would be the ultimate eugenics advocate.) A world where anyone with the slighest physical flaw is eliminated (often before birth). At the very least, those without access to advanced genetic engineering techniques would be left behind in the race to perfection.

Again: Gattaca, people. Gattaca!

 

[PlixTixiplik]

There are degrees of ethicality involved. And I think that many of the dystopian portrayals rely too heavily on the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate when it comes to aspects like personality or intelligence. In addition to purely genetic factors, there are environmental influences beginning in the womb and continuing during the child's upbringing, not to mention nuturing by the parents during childhood.

I think most people would agree that genetic therapy to correct Downs syndrome in the womb would be ethical and should be encouraged if such a treatment becomes available. However, is it ethical to make genetic changes so that your child has brown eyes rather than blue? That seems harmless enough so I imagine most people would not complain. But then you get into more ethically troubling territory. If a hypothetical genetic modification was discovered to make sure your child would be heterosexual, is that ethical? I guess that depends on your perspective (and sexuality is likely more complicated than that anyway).

How about making your child taller, or smarter, or "better looking"? Those type of changes would be a boon to society if they were accessible to everyone - but it's unlikely that would be the case. There is the potential for wealthy families having smarter and taller children (and there is a definite link between height and salary, for example), further increasing the gap between rich and poor. However, I see no reason to have a knee-jerk ban on genetic therapy, but a set of ethical guidelines for access to and application of those treatments should be set out before such procedures become feasible.

-MEC

 

[Timo]

Hitler would be the ultimate eugenics advocate.

Why?

As Charlie Chaplin so nicely demonstrated, this dark-haired stub of a man was himself as far from the ideal Aryan as one could be, and thus among the first to be neutered or purged if a policy of strict eugenics were to be evoked. He would use antisemitism and masterracism and any other ism that suited his purposes merely for getting rid of his enemies, and then he'd forget all about it, or adopt the diametrically opposite policy.

The ultimate eugenics advocates would be found in the ranks of scientists with their heads in the clouds, not political leaders with real-world concerns like Hitler. Not that Hitler's head wouldn't have been equally clouded, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arrqh]

In some ways, I think some amount of eugenics is going to be necessary at some point.

Survival of the fittest dictates that members of a species with traits that make them weaker without giving some other sort of benefit are less likely to survive and less likely to pass on their genes. The species as a whole gets stronger. But we have created a society for ourselves where environmental factors that mediated this process don't really apply to us.

In other words, I think it's possible for unfavorable traits to be introduced into our gene pool at large. We'd have two ways of dealing with it... some technological solution, like a drug, or correcting the trait itself. Which is more efficient in the long run? Imagine if the majority of all people needed to wear glasses. Fashion aside, wouldn't it be more efficient to correct people's eyes on the genetic level before they were born? In a few generations you could eliminate the problem as a whole. Isn't that a good thing?

On the other hand, I did just finish playing Bioshock which has a lot of things to say about unregulated markets and wanton genetic modification... and not good things. Damn spider splicers

 

[Stardate]

Zero Hour said: unless you distill into the kind of caricature of the practice we've seen in tv sci-fi; inhuman, stale societies all striving to a single unattainable (boring) ideal.



That's exactly the kind of society that eugenics would eventually lead to.

How can you know that this is purely speculation how impact Eugenie will be in the future. There is both positive eugenics aspects and negative aspects. Question is what route will mankind take is undecided.

. (Hitler would be the ultimate eugenics advocate.)

He probably would but eugenics was also supported by prominent people, including Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill and Margaret Sanger and probably many other.

Eugenics must be wrong because it was associated with the Nazis" As a similar example, Hitler was also a vegetarian during his later life, but it would be absurd to deduce that vegetarianism is evil because Hitler considered himself one.

people ask if eugenic are ethical? I think it can be if it is done right f.e. for cureing genetic disorder and also reasonable human enhancement like making people taller, prettier, stronger, smarter would also be ethical in mine judgment. To end this i do believe eugenics are unavoidable as next step of Human evolution.

 

[Stardate]

Scientific interest in the correlation between genetic factors and violence dates back to the eugenics movement of the 19th century. Because of the Nazi and racist associations with eugenics, this study fell into disrepute from the 1960s through the 1980s, when the prevalent view was that environment was the primary determinant of behavior. With the advance of genetics in the beginning of the 21st century there has been renewed interest in finding possible genetic causes for crime and violence Wiki.

I find this very interesting. Can we in the future weed out Human violent behavior by using eugenics.

 

[jeff lebowski]

We are going to need to build better humans in order to compete with the robots!

 

[Unicron]

I do plan to still breed some mutant atomic supermen, of course. But I find the idea very interesting, since it seems like aspects could work on a limited scale - weeding out biological diseases and defects for example, but not trying to make a "perfect" human or trying to eliminate choice.

 

[EyalM]

It would be unethical not to use eugenics to cure genetic diseases, and unethical to use it for anything else.

 

[anti-matter]

Tough call with eugenics...in agriculture as with other pursuits like horticulture or dog breeding we're all trying to improve the species. But when it come to ourselves there's a lot of debate...I dunno.

I guess the bottom line with me is that I know that eventually governments would corrupt that science in the name of national security and then what kind of world would our children inherit?

 

[Deks]

What kind of a world would be with the next generation ?
A racist, intolerant and closed-minded one, perhaps ?

The current society we have today is not perfect (nor will it ever be), but it is headed in the direction of being open minded and tolerant when it comes to differences.

Eugenics would most likely benefit humanity, but it raises the question on how it would affect the society when it comes to the subjects I mentioned.

When it comes to genetic diseases, making the immune system stronger, more adaptive/effective in fighting new illnesses, along with, prolonging our life span and fixing the eyesight ... I have no objections.

But ... messing with other aspects such as color of the hair, eyes, skin color, sexuality, gender, being inclined to what areas and all (art, technical and what not) ... and everything else that falls into the category of 'different than the majority' ... such things I am very much so against.

The problem though is that corruption would most likely sooner or later happen ... unless the society we live in becomes more open-minded and tolerant of diversities that exists in humanity for when the technology becomes sufficiently advanced.

If they want to make eugenics legal and optional, then setting the ground rules (drawing the line at certain modifications such as the ones I suggested for example making NO exceptions) and making it equally available for EVERYONE (regardless of how rich or poor they might be) is basically the only way to go.


anti-matter ... you raised an interesting issue with dog breeding for example.
In my personal opinion I never tried nor do I wish to `improve' the K-9 species.
If I like the dog, then it's background (weather it's pure blooded and what not) doesn't matter to me.
Our own dog is a female black Labrador who's supposedly 'pure-blooded Labrador'.
Then later on some questions popped up as to the validity of those claims, and I was stunned to see that people cared that much about it (At first, later on they didn't care as much).

Honestly ... a dog that is bred from 2 different kinds of dogs can prove to have the best of both worlds in comparison to the 'pure blooded'.
I see little to no advantage in `improving the k9 species' through selective breeding.

People mostly have no problems doing such 'improvements' on animals because they are (from our perspective) not sentient and don't have a say in the matter really.

When it comes to ourselves ... there is 'self-awareness' issue, along with the society we created, the rules (most being stupid to begin with and all of them NOT being universal) that same society placed, and a whole bunch of ethical debates on the subject on how much of it is justifiable and how much is not (and what seems justifiable to one person, another one may have a completely opposite perspective).

It's a complicated issue ... but I do know that humanity is not ready for that yet because that would be like you ask of majority of society to behave responsibly (and we see examples to the contrary every day).
Certain people may be ready (basically there are always such people), they would know how to use it without violating any ethics and responsibly, but majority is not like that.

 

[Balthier the Great]

Unicron said:
In catching a piece of "The Masterpiece Society" the other day, I kind of wonder about concepts like cloning and genetic engineering. Assuming we reach the point someday where either or both of these technologies are considered practical, how do we decide whether they're ethical? There are obviously advantages and disadvantages from an ethical standpoint.

I think it would be unethical, simply because you can't engineer a better human without a lot of coercion. You'd have to basicly outlaw sex, or, if you allowed it, choose every person's mate for them. Sterilizing undesireables would also be a likely necessity, because you don't want to infect your society with "stupid" genes, or the genes for a genetic disease. Now, in order to impliment such laws, you'd have to pretty much set up a police state. You'd have to watch all the time to make sure that your population doesn't do any unauthorized snogging (or abort any babies so concieved), do genetic testing on everyone in your country, and frankly arrange marriages based on genetic compatability. The individuals right to make his own decision would have to be put aside.

You'd also have a big genetic time bomb on your hands. Biologically, you want a large diverse population because a sudden change in the environment can change what kinds of individuals have the advantage. Sure, right now smart nerds have an advantage because our society is based on technology and you have to be smart to run technology. But if the earth gets hit by an asteroid or something, and we're back to primitive hunting/gathering and farming, suddenly being strong enough to kill an animal or chop down a tree is more important than being able to program in C++. Eugenics can really only select for what we need now, and if the conditions change, we might not be able to adapt -- if certain genes are all but eliminated.

I can understand the desire to improve humanity, but there are some large downsides. I can't see any good that counter acts these problems.

 

[Johnny Rico]

Zero Hour said:
I think it's ethical and even desirable. Diversity has advantages of its own, but eugenics needn't rule out diversity, unless you distill into the kind of caricature of the practice we've seen in tv sci-fi; inhuman, stale societies all striving to a single unattainable (boring) ideal.

But think of what body modification afficionados do to themselves. Give those people access to genetic engineering, and there's no saying what their children might look like.

And that's desirable to you???

 

[Stormrage]

It is ethical has long has no force is used in my opinion.

Timo said:

Hitler would be the ultimate eugenics advocate.

Why?

As Charlie Chaplin so nicely demonstrated, this dark-haired stub of a man was himself as far from the ideal Aryan as one could be, and thus among the first to be neutered or purged if a policy of strict eugenics were to be evoked. He would use antisemitism and masterracism and any other ism that suited his purposes merely for getting rid of his enemies, and then he'd forget all about it, or adopt the diametrically opposite policy.

The ultimate eugenics advocates would be found in the ranks of scientists with their heads in the clouds, not political leaders with real-world concerns like Hitler. Not that Hitler's head wouldn't have been equally clouded, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

Hitler didn't fit with the so "Aryan Ideal" but then again nor did most germans. Especially Bavarians and Austrians. Hitler was more concerned about Germans has a race rather then a set of definition of the perfect people that would leave him.his friends and most of the german people out.

And that's desirable to you???

A people minus hereditary diseases.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Stormrage said:A people minus hereditary diseases.

That's usually how it starts.

But power corrupts...

 

[David cgc]

Stormrage said:

And that's desirable to you???

A people minus hereditary diseases.

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?

There's no shortage of genetic trade-offs like this. I'm normally not one to shy away from trying something because it would be difficult to get right, but in this case, I'd rather err on the side of caution.