Eugenics, Ready or Not

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/

by yummyfajitas • 11 years ago

38 57 11 years ago

quadrant.org.au

ilaksh• 11 years ago

I think we can have the idea of improving genetics in a high-tech way without all of the Nazi baggage like Social Darwinism, racism, etc. that comes with 'eugenics'.

amelius• 11 years ago

Well, at least the term "Übermensch" has lost its original meaning, and now seems mostly reserved for a taxi driver.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

Sadly, because the original Übermensch was much better than both what Nazis did to it and the taxi drivers.

tosseraccount• 11 years ago

Travis Bickle. Übermensch.

PavlovsCat• 11 years ago

"eu" literally means "good". So yes, you can use an English word instead, "improving", but that's still eugenics.

jerf3• 11 years ago

The thing is, "Social Darwinism" et al demonstrate that the instant we even thought we might have this power, the Powers That Be instantly started doing things with it that other people found reprehensible, including (using it to justify) wholesale slaughter.

If you think people have morally become greatly advanced in the past 100 years, then this might not bother you. But you would also be operating in a regime of aggressively blind faith, because the evidence for that claim is exactly inverted.

If, on the other hand, you don't believe that, you might spare some thought for the last time this was popular.

And, I mean this entirely seriously, you should seriously take a moment to wonder whether you will be deemed undesirable in any exciting new order of these sorts of things. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NATURAL LAW that your ideological allies will be the ones who get this power. Not even being part of the dominant ideology today shields you from being on the dominant ideology's shit list 20 years from now. To a great extent, it is rational to make sure nobody gets these ideas because you, personally, ilaksh (and jerf) may well discover that you are on the receiving end of the 21st century nastiness. (How many of the 20th century's victims were individually actually on the government's side, right up until they were being slaughtered?)

caskance6• 11 years ago

Or we accept that the net good that will happen is so great that it's okay even for my ideological enemies to have this power, just so long as SOMEONE does. Lots of people would admit this of space travel. Eugenics is closer to the border line.

Moshe_Silnorin• 11 years ago

Some country somewhere is going to legalize this. Their citizens will have IQs several standard deviations higher than ours. Dr. Steven Hsu seems to think IQs far higher than 180 (before renorming) are very possible. All countries will be forced to allow (or even subsidize) genetic intelligence augmentation. This is the nature of the incentives that will develop. We have very little choice in the matter. Any country with reservations will become a cognitive backwater, whose intellectuals will be routinely out-performed by grade-school children.

From my perspective, it is tragic that some children are born with brains that cannot understand basic arithmetic. It is equally tragic that most are born with brains that cannot understand advanced physics. This technology will allow us to remedy a good portion of our ignorance. It should be embraced. Iodizing salt increased average IQ in many regions by a standard deviation. Reducing lead pollution about 8 more on top of this. Were these great evils? Why is removing deleterious mutations?

SCHiM2• 11 years ago

While I understand the problems that one might have with induced genetic differences between classes (that would be inevitable given a capitalists approach to consumer eugenics) I've never understood the moral problem with tinkering with DNA itself (as opposed to the consequences of tinkering, as stated above).

The fact that one might have personal reasons to dislike or abstain from genetic editing does not mean that eugenics are immoral for the rest of the population.

Perhaps it's because of how people identify themselves. Most of my friends identify themselves with the 'voice' they hear in their heads, their thoughts and personalities, as do I. My body is more of a vessel and while it's part of me it's not 'me' in any way that matters for my identity. I wouldn't mind tuning a few bits and pieces here and there...

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

There's two options:

Either genetical improvement will be only available to top 0,5% (this way nothing changes, they're already separated from the rest of us, we don't interact)

Or it will be available to top 70% (middle class)

In both cases there's no scary divide.

We could have scary divide if this option was only available to 10% population, but economically that's unrealistic.

Talking about developed countries, of course.

arbitrage• 11 years ago

Those are some pretty impressive fake numbers you pulled out of thin air, there.

Please try to keep comments to the realm of reality. Just making things up doesn't move the discussion forward.

VLM3• 11 years ago

I wouldn't mind tuning a few bits and pieces

Your employer will be able to afford it before you can. I don't mean your boss, I mean corporate policy. People already tolerate all kinds of ridiculousness for "culture fit" and drug testing and semi-stealthy political tests. You can follow corporate's genetic fine tuning policy, or not work here, its not like we're forcing you to do anything...

SCHiM2• 11 years ago

That is still a consequence of editing as opposed to the editing itself.

Perhaps it's unfair to discuss eugenics in the way it would be used in an ideal world. I agree with you that the scenario you sketch seems far from impossible.

But I would like to submit your example now for your own consideration.

Are computer today not so ubiquitous that it's reasonable for an employer to require you to be skilled in their operation? Don't certain jobs just _require_ you to possess a certain physical or mental trait?

I know I'm begging the question here, and that 'being good with computers' is very different from 'forced to modify body because out of financial necessity'.

But is is also very different from 'accepting that time moves on, and that nowadays (2100AD) it's very normal to get a job-related tune-up'?

As opposed to the 'culture fit' and personality tests (which may or may not have a causal relation to the benefit that you provide to the company) a specific and objectionably verifiable improvement to a part of your body or mental capacity is not something that companies should be barred from expecting from their employees I think.

caskance6• 11 years ago

You mean I can get all kinds of sweet augs and not even have to pay for them? Where do I sign?]

Also, military will do it WAY before private corps if they are still using human soldiers at the time. If you can give people enhanced strength and eyesight, with less sleep required and resistance to all kinds of diseases, you'd be a fool not to.

cpfohl5• 11 years ago

I never read to the end of the article, because as soon as the 'critics warn about designer babies' line came up I stopped reading.

It's a long, long way between "preventing disease by manipulating someone's genes" and "deciding you really wanted a blonde baby".

As someone who lost his brother to a genetic disease it sort of pisses me off to hear people try and tell people in my family's shoes that we're on a slippery slope to 'designer babies' when all we want is to keep our family member from slowly dying of a disease with symptoms like Alzheimer's at age 20.

If "designer babies" is the price for cures like that, we should gladly pay it. This from a pretty conservative guy, esp. on life issues.

matthewmacleod2• 11 years ago

You should have continued reading in that case, because it's not like that's the sole point of discussion.

Dismissing that argument out of hand is disingenuous. I absolutely, fully support no-holds-barred consideration of all the viewpoints involved here – 'designer babies' is a very real issue that we absolutely must think about in the scientific, social and ethical sense (like basically every bit of science fiction touches on).

Taek• 11 years ago

Designer babies represent the potential to step forward as a human race. Genetic manipulation can lead to stronger hearts, better immune systems, bigger working memory, etc, etc. In the nature vs. nurture debate, surely people can at least admit that genetics form an absolutely critical foundation.

We can stop disease, and we can create children who will be better equipped to tackle tomorrows problems. The education system has very similar goals. It's not a sin for a wealthy family to drop tons of money on private schools, tutoring, and other expensive methods of getting their child ahead. But as soon as genetics are involved, it's a problem that invokes images of nazi's and irrecoverably widening income gaps.

cpfohl5• 11 years ago

Hey there. My comment came off emotional; I'm not sorry for that, but I think my stance came across weakly.

I'm not saying there aren't very real issues that need to be addressed with manipulating human genetics. I've seen GATTACA too ;). The issues I had with the article (which I've since skimmed) are this (try to read it in a friendly tone...I'm emotionally invested in this, but I'm not irritated):

* The term "Eugenics" may be correct in this situation, but it's historically loaded with extremely negative baggage. It felt like click bait.

* Comparing disease removal by genetic manipulation to optional enhancements by genetic manipulation is unhelpful. One allows for the other, but that doesn't mean we must allow them as a pair.

* The wealth gap for this treatment is going to be no different from the wealth gap in any other new, expensive treatment we currently use. Poor people will still have less access to any expensive treatment, this isn't going to be different in any way. It's a problem, yes, but it's not specific to Genetic manipulation, it's specific to medicine.

* Our ability to screen people for genetic defects and decide if we want or don't want children is already excellent; I know I'm a carrier for Batten disease, my brother's killer. Had my wife also been a carrier I just wouldn't have had biological children. That's not Eugenics, that's sanity. Abortion of diseased embryos is a far more complex, but orthogonal moral issue which we've already been dealing with for a long time.

* Our legal system limits this sort of experimentation and it's terribly slow to change. Even autonomous cars, which are safer and less accident prone than humans, are going to take a long while to get approved. Saying we're on a slippery slope ignores how much regulation there is over this. I'd even argue what we're dealing with is a slippery slope uphill. Encouraging research into, and legalization of, genetic manipulation to cure fatal diseases is almost certainly not a slippery slope because of the legal structures we've build around such research.

maxerickson• 11 years ago

Genetic screening is already a common practice.

https://www.centerforhumanreprod.com/services/infertility-tr...

So I guess the safety of the genetic modification procedure would be the only ethical difference when altering well understood genes to prevent disease.

notNow• 11 years ago

Can you please shed some light on what the genetic disease that your family is suffering from?

jerf3• 11 years ago

What would that accomplish?

cpfohl5• 11 years ago

Batten disease. I don't mind the question, it's been 6 years now, but thanks to my "defenders" ;)

Also, my family doesn't suffer from it. It is autosomal recessive, so only the unfortunate 1/4 have any symptoms at all. My other brother and I are carriers, so we have a 50% chance of passing our gene on to our kids. Neither of our wives are carriers.

jondavidnd1• 11 years ago

Have you considered that in a world with eugenics, your brother (either as you knew him, or maybe all-together) would have never existed. With that in mind, I think you have to ask yourself, would you give up the time you had with him? Would your parents give up that time? Would your brother choose not to have lived at all over having lived the life that he had?

cpfohl5• 11 years ago

Yes. But again, abortion and eugenic murder are orthogonal issues to genetic manipulation. Plenty of good has come out of my brothers disease. My parents started an amazing non profit to serve parents of kids with special needs or terminal illness. I would still trade it all for a cure that changed him and helped cure more.

RodericDay• 11 years ago

Funny, I just started a re-read of "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley last night.

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

I think we should be aiming for major positive scenario.

We don't have much choice, otherwise genetic malfunctions will get us sooner or later. The way we're having children now (few, low child mortality) is a way to breed genetic defects.

Ygg2• 11 years ago

On the other hand, genetic malfunctions:

A) Can lead to interesting discoveries

B) Can have paradoxical effects - e.g. muscle degeneration in our ancestors lead to our weaker bit and consequently bigger brains, since skull could expand more because the muscles were weaker.

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/news040322-9.htm...

Imagine if you don't want your child to have ADHD, and you screen for it. But it turns out that people with ADHD hold a mutation to even higher IQ.

caskance6• 11 years ago

Then we will either tolerate the associated defect or find a way to achieve the benefit without it.

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

You're talking about human evolution. Human evolution won't work if we have almost zero child mortality and roughly two children per women. All we can do in this configuration is damage control.

UPD: This configuration is also prone to splitting humanity into several casts just by biased marriage practices.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

So in other words, we will have to do eugenics anyway - either high-tech by direct DNA manipulation, or the traditional way of having a lot of children and then getting rid of the weakest.

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

Yeah, that sums it up. Both might lead to civilization failure and new stone age, but in my opinion runaway genetic defects have more chance of causing this

legulere• 11 years ago

Isn't screening sperm donors for inheritable diseases already eugenics?

VLM3• 11 years ago

Its an interesting scalability problem where women not in rape or arranged marriage cultures have been screening sperm donors for inheritable characteristics for quite some time, depending on where they live. The stereotypical sci fi dystopia outcomes don't resemble "American women, turned up to 11" as much as they should, and also don't seem to resemble whatever delta you'd expect to see between populations with different mating standards.

Or put another way, if GE and eugenics rants are a century old thinly veiled anti-feminism rant full of codewords and dog whistles, it doesn't seem to match actual outcomes very well, to the point it can't be taken seriously anymore.

Its possible that some reversion to the norm signal is stronger than the limited fine tuning individual women can perform when they select mates, and that reversion to the norm effect could be overwhelmed by advanced enough genetic engineering. Possibly. Or possibly not.

Usually in soft sci fi and journalistic fiction, genetic engineering and eugenics has been a place holder for cut and paste style plot line of a comic book villain revival of the nazi party. Now that plot line can be interesting as contemporary social commentary or an alt hist if well written, but using genetic engineering as a stage piece is super old and tired and should be retired. Fiction needs a new macguffin to write about nazis or genetic engineering. And at that point somewhat more realistic speculative hard sci fi or predictive social science can intelligently discuss somewhat more realistic predictions, a little less comic book villain.

caskance6• 11 years ago

If you want to be pedantic, having sex with people you find attractive is already eugenics.

gglitch• 11 years ago

What's with the weird righteous indignation on behalf of "moral conservatives?" Has no conservative ever advanced a eugenic cause?

yummyfajitas• 11 years ago

Promotion of eugenics has primarily been a liberal cause, historically. Supporters include progressives like Roosevelt and Hoover, opponents were conservatives like Chesterton and the Catholic church. "Building a better man" was a major tool of socialists, and it wasn't restricted to education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critic...

In fact, the legacy of this exists today - note that the Communist party of China is the main practitioner of eugenics today (see Yao Ming).

It's only in the modern era of identity politics, inequality as a real concern, and racial spoils systems that liberals have come to oppose it. If we acknowledge that intelligence is genetically determined, then we might be forced to recognize the tradeoff between individual fairness and statistically equal distribution of spoils. We might also be forced to acknowledge that inequality is a result of inborn meritorious traits (intelligence, conscientiousness) rather than some external unfairness.

Tuna-Fish• 11 years ago

While there were plenty of individual conservatives who advocated for it, pre-war it was mostly a progressive cause.

It's hard to understand now, but society back then was quite different than today, and the political divisions of the time were also different. Francis Galton had done some early psychometry, and published his results claiming that the English upper class was the upper class because they were genetically superior to the lower classes. This result was widely accepted by both the progressives and the conservatives. The difference between the left and the right was not opposition to the principle of Social Darwinism, but just what should be done about it. The progressives advocated for eugenics to lift the lower classes from the 'genetic deficit' they were born into, while the traditional conservatives believed that this was unnecessary and that the situation as it existed was the natural order that shouldn't be fixed. Neither side would fit at all into modern common morality.

wtbob• 11 years ago

Historically, eugenics was a progressive issue. It makes sense, since conservatives tend to be much more cautious about upsetting the applecart that is civilisation, while progressives are much more eager to change and improve things.

Gatsky• 11 years ago

There are some pretty big assumptions leading to the hypothesis that increasing mutation burden will render us all dullards in a few generations ('dysgenic fertility'). Reading the latest paper by the guy the author keeps citing, Michael Woodley, I'm astounded at the ad hoc nature of the arguments [1]. Eg - Woodley cites a study that did an analysis showing visual reaction time has been increasing over time [2]. This study compared measurements performed in in 1800, to 1941. Woodley has been citing this article over and over again [3], to the point where the author of the original article wrote a letter to the journal 'Intelligence' saying that Woodley is over interpreting his data [4]. Woodley's conclusions have also been criticised elsewhere [5]. Woodley also tries to justify his 'dysgenic fertility' theory by saying that there are now fewer geniuses in the world because we aren't discovering amazing things like quantum mechanics as frequently - which is clearly complete nonsense. I would be highly sceptical of this based on the evidence presented.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4404736/ [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20377125/ [3] http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?es_sm=93&um=1&ie=UTF-8&... [4] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613... [5] http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yury_Dodonov/publication...

crusso• 11 years ago

It's a bit confusing that the term "eugenics" is overloaded. The classic eugenics was about forced breeding or sterilization of individuals or races to produce a "better" society. It was involuntary and racist.

The "eugenics" of this article is about rewriting our own programming in a voluntary and targeted way.

It seems that a new term would be helpful in avoiding the negative connotations of the word "eugenics".

logfromblammo• 11 years ago

All we need to do is modify an entire generation of kids to enhance their ethical development, and then grant them exclusive control over the technology when they grow up. It's a foolproof plan. What could possibly go wrong? ~

gyardley• 11 years ago

We need to worry about 'designer babies' about as much as we need to worry about 'hostile AI' and other far-removed science-fiction concepts.

In reality, in-vitro fertilization is a lengthy, complicated, painful, expensive and emotionally wrenching slog that often fails. The idea of choosing between embryos is laughable when so often you're hoping for one, just one, that actually has a viable shot. Anyone who would object to a little screening that helps prevent a woman from finally getting pregnant only to go through a miscarriage a few months later is a monster.

trey-jones• 11 years ago

As a parent of a child that was born with a "genetic defect" I feel qualified to express myself on this issue. Ethical and moral questions aside, the only question that I need to answer seems to be, "If there were a treatment available that could have spared my daughter the medical issues that she has experienced and will experience in the future (without introducing others), would we have done it?" Of course we would have. Parents want their children to be able to experience life as a "normal" person, and without the distress that lifelong medical conditions bring.

If the risks and side-effects are as small as this article seems to suggest, then it's a no brainer.

copsarebastards• 11 years ago

It's worth noting that there's a huge difference between the eugenics of the past and the eugenics enabled by modern IVF and other genetic technologies. Eugenics of the past primarily reduced the capabilities and rights of people, while the technologies described in the article increase capabilities. Eugenics in the past resulted in discrimination and genocide, but modern eugenics is simply allowing parents to choose their child's genes. I don't see any issue with this.

Others have pointed out that this technology will be available to the rich first, but this is a problem with economics, not with the technologies. Economic inequality has gigantic, far-reaching concerns, many of which have nothing to do with genetics. We should fix economic inequality, not its symptoms. Hampering genetic research because it exacerbates a symptom of economic inequality doesn't fix economic inequality, it just creates a separate problem.

Of course, there are some places where giving some people capabilities allows them to harm the capabilities of others. Genetic testing for jobs, for example. But these concerns are largely off-base because the science doesn't actually back up that genetic testing for jobs would help the employer. It's a problem without an incentive to cause it.

mapt• 11 years ago

Part 2: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/06/eugenics-ready-part...

Eugenics, Ready or Not

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