Biology Forum › Genetics › Human eugenics, are you for or against it?
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- October 26, 2006 at 5:42 pm #6132UltrashogunParticipant
What is your opinion on applying selective breeding to humans? How would you enforce it?
Personally I believe it would be positive for mankind, we do it to basicly everthing biological around us(animals, plants) why not also to ourselves?
- October 27, 2006 at 12:52 am #57442Dr.SteinParticipant
I am against it. That’s Nazism, Hitler’s dream 😈 For me it is similar as genocide!
*hits the table*
8)
- October 27, 2006 at 6:28 am #57461UltrashogunParticipantquote Dr.Stein:I am against it. That’s Nazism, Hitler’s dream 😈 For me it is similar as genocide!
*hits the table*
8)
Hitler also built the german highway, that doesnt mean that everybody who drives fast is a fascist.
- October 27, 2006 at 6:29 am #57462UltrashogunParticipant
Anyway, did you know that the americans were actually the forerunners in the field of eugenics before the nazis came?
- October 28, 2006 at 7:44 pm #57583G-DoParticipant
Against.
Reasons:
1) Diversity is valuable. What seems like a crappy allele now might be critical for survival a hundred years down the road, when we’re all sucking smog and living on grubs a thousand feet below the irradiated surface of the earth. It is difficult to predict in advance how the environment will change, so we should keep the genetic diversity we have. This rule applies to agriculture, too. Imagine that we artificially select for a certain rice crop, and that this selection process weeds a lot of variation out of the rice genome. What happens when a blight hits and there’s no innate resistance in the rice? A famine, that’s what.2) It’s impractical to get rid of recessive alleles, for three reasons: (a) removing the homozygous recessives from the breeding pool alone often takes hundreds of generations to produce an appreciable effect on the allele’s frequency in the population, and the government may not have a eugenics policy in hundreds of generations, let alone ten generations, (b) you can try to get rid of carriers, too, but carrier detection methods aren’t always perfect; they suffer from problems of sensitivity and specificity, and (c) you won’t be able to convince people to give up the right to have children – especially in certain western societies, where that right is all but sacred – especially if carrier detection methods suffer from high false positive rates (this would mean that a person gets marked as a carrier and is forbidden from having children when s/he doesn’t even have the disease).
3) The most important reason: it is unethical for a body of people to regulate whether a single person can or cannot bear a child. The real rub, here, is in your initial statement: "Personally I believe it would be positive for mankind, we do it to basicly everthing biological around us(animals, plants) why not also to ourselves?" If you replace "ourselves" with "each other" you’ll see what I mean.
- October 30, 2006 at 2:19 am #57626Dr.SteinParticipantquote Ultrashogun:Hitler also built the german highway, that doesnt mean that everybody who drives fast is a fascist.
Yeah I know the "Deutschland über alles" thing. It is great, no doubt, they can conquer the world with their thought and technology but they cannot make "superhuman", because that’s too far IMO 😕
- October 30, 2006 at 3:01 am #57643mithParticipant
We could use a lot less stupid people but it would be hard to do because idiots are very hardy people lol
- October 30, 2006 at 4:39 am #57647Dr.SteinParticipantquote mith:We could use a lot less stupid people but it would be hard to do because idiots are very hardy people lol
😆 😆 😆
- October 30, 2006 at 6:04 am #57652sachinParticipant
NOT Totaly against It.
Because This Have Some Great Advantages Too.
Just we have to limit the Uses of It.
It looks difficult but not Impossible.
- October 30, 2006 at 8:23 am #57660Dr.SteinParticipant
I like the idea, it is a genius thought but I don’t expect anything for the practical 😉
- October 31, 2006 at 6:28 pm #57754MrMisteryParticipant
I’m with mith… i look around me each day and am astonished by the immense, ever increasing number of idiots…
- November 1, 2006 at 1:08 am #57765rvidalParticipantquote G-Do:Against.
Reasons:
1) Diversity is valuable. What seems like a crappy allele now might be critical for survival a hundred years down the road, when we’re all sucking smog and living on grubs a thousand feet below the irradiated surface of the earth. It is difficult to predict in advance how the environment will change, so we should keep the genetic diversity we have. This rule applies to agriculture, too. Imagine that we artificially select for a certain rice crop, and that this selection process weeds a lot of variation out of the rice genome. What happens when a blight hits and there’s no innate resistance in the rice? A famine, that’s what.2) It’s impractical to get rid of recessive alleles, for three reasons: (a) removing the homozygous recessives from the breeding pool alone often takes hundreds of generations to produce an appreciable effect on the allele’s frequency in the population, and the government may not have a eugenics policy in hundreds of generations, let alone ten generations, (b) you can try to get rid of carriers, too, but carrier detection methods aren’t always perfect; they suffer from problems of sensitivity and specificity, and (c) you won’t be able to convince people to give up the right to have children – especially in certain western societies, where that right is all but sacred – especially if carrier detection methods suffer from high false positive rates (this would mean that a person gets marked as a carrier and is forbidden from having children when s/he doesn’t even have the disease).
3) The most important reason: it is unethical for a body of people to regulate whether a single person can or cannot bear a child. The real rub, here, is in your initial statement: “Personally I believe it would be positive for mankind, we do it to basicly everthing biological around us(animals, plants) why not also to ourselves?” If you replace “ourselves” with “each other” you’ll see what I mean.
Great answer. I agree.
- November 2, 2006 at 2:21 pm #57888wbla3335Participant
I’m for it.
Racists, fascists, selfish and aggressive people, those who think they are better than others, should have more than others. If we could only prevent these people from breeding, the world would be a better place.
- November 2, 2006 at 8:35 pm #57912mithParticipant
you’re assuming it’s genetic?
Maybe we need more of a cultural eugenic, to point out that we shouldn’t be admiring the wrong types of people *paris hilton and other idiots* ahem.
- November 2, 2006 at 9:08 pm #57915druidParticipantquote Ultrashogun:What is your opinion on applying selective breeding to humans? How would you enforce it?
Personally I believe it would be positive for mankind, we do it to basicly everthing biological around us(animals, plants) why not also to ourselves?
The question is "Who is the breeder?"
If the breeder is me I agree.
If the breeder is you I don’t. - November 3, 2006 at 2:19 am #57939Dr.SteinParticipantquote wbla3335:I’m for it.
Racists, fascists, selfish and aggressive people, those who think they are better than others, should have more than others. If we could only prevent these people from breeding, the world would be a better place.
Yeah, I don’t think they are genetics. It could be external environment to make them learn and to choose to be that way. A proper education could be applied for them as long as the method is good and could open their narrow mind 😉
- November 3, 2006 at 3:06 am #57941Dr.SteinParticipantquote druid:The question is “Who is the breeder?”
If the breeder is me I agree.
If the breeder is you I don’t.😆 😆 😆
- November 3, 2006 at 7:09 am #57957wbla3335Participant
A Jethro Tull song comes to mind.
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