Friday, March 28, 2008

Eugenics???

I've given up trying to explain this on right-wing blogs, but.....what is the term - eugenics, transhumanism, public health??? - is alive and well.

Consider this: two people, considering themselves to marry and have children, find themselves carrying too many recesive genes and decide to not marry and not have children. Ok?

Consider this: two people, both white, blue eyed, and blond haired decide that they do not want to have children with anyone else unless that person is white, blue eyed, and blond haired...marry and have many blue-eyed blond-haired children.

Honestly...what is going on? The same thing that has been happening for approximately 6000 - 100000 years.

So, tell me...if you genetically isolate your embryos that are blond, blue-eyed, and white from those that are not, for IVF procedure, what have you done wrong?

Well, it's simple.

Nothing, if you believe moral life begins post-embryo.

Or, "you are Hitler," if you believe moral life begins at conception.

I don't have answer for this dilemma. But please, I'm tired of people denying this dilemma even exists. For if you believe that people should not genetically control the next generation - which is against many generations of human history - please explain why this.
Posted by at 11:11 PM

3 comments:

Ken said...

Hitler? ... that is an extreme characterization. I believe life begins at conception and would not embrace Hitler's philosophy. That was below the belt.

As for selection for procreation happening before marriage or after - very good point. What would the difference be?

Now we could argue that some choices to not marry unless you want blond hair blue eyed children is a poor (or even immoral) choice. I think it would be fair to say that at some point preference becomes bigotry.


Could the difference lie with controlling consequence rather than when you are choosing. In other words we want our cake and eat it too. Maybe there is a point where removing consequences of our actions becomes so self-centered that society (and individuals) are harmed.

just thinking.

9:42 PM
Royale said...

re: "Hitler"

Apologies for poor editting. I have since added quotations around "you are Hitler" because that is the general viewpoint that conception-life moralists take. I did not mean to suggest that conception-life moralists were akin to Hitler.

That said, any sort of self-population engineering is frequently acused of being Nazi-esque, which actually is my overall point.

However, for "public health" reasons, we genetically test people before they have children - which like it or not, is a form self-population engineering.

My point is - the difference between the Nazi's and what is commonly accepted is (1) methods of control and (2) they actually admitted what they were doing (i.e., engineering their population).

9:10 AM
Ken said...

that makes sense.

I think all that engineering is dangerous.

10:22 PM

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