Re: Punctuated Equilibrium-Eugenics?
- From: "rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx" <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 11 Dec 2005 14:37:21 -0800
David797@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Does PE point to the feasiblity of eugenics?
Not especially more than other scientific theories concerning
reproduction and evolution.
That eugenics is to /some/ extent feasible is obvious if you accept
that our physical characteristics are substantially the result of the
DNA we inherit from our parents. That there are limits to the
effectiveness of simple eugenics by negative reproductive selection
also ought to be clear - for instance, you may be healthy but one
reproductive mutation away from producing a congenitally ill or
handicapped child, or it may be a matter of an unlucky choice of mate -
there's nothing really wrong with either of you but together there is a
problem. One further approach would be to restrict biological
reproduction of people who are shown by genetic testing to be close to
genetic disease. Another angle is to make widely available, and
acceptable, the use of donor DNA from people who pass genetic tests, so
that people with genes that you want to lose from the population will
have kids but the kids will not have those genes. I have reservations
about that idea, because the system we've got seems to work pretty well
for most people - one wouldn't argue against medical care in pregnancy
and infancy on that count (the species did get by with a high casualty
rate), but the obvious risks include reducing the species' genetic
diversity, leaving us more susceptible to pandemic disease, and also
losing useful genes that are not recognised as such.
Adding genes into human DNA is also apparently feasible but with
dubious consequences. However, that isn't eugenics.
> Could a breeding program (aided by genetic manipulation) create a
> sub-population of post-humans?
Doubtful. Making humans with lower collective risk of cancer and heart
disease, we can do. The new population, who are not monsters but our
descendants, probably would just get those diseases later in life than
we tend to now. Maybe we could invent new genes to engineer-out
obesity, so we'd be physically fitter. We could make more vitamins in
our bodies...
> It seems that evolution as a theory is harmless but the application of
> evolutionary theory without regard to morality seems deeply troubling.
Any plan executed without regard to morality is liable to be troubling.
Military ones are amongst the worst. Land mines are disgusting.
Imagine if you were still stepping on land mines wherever the American
Civil War was fought...
An alternative to developing the human species is to replace it. The
current workforce could be substituted with robots with computer brains
and we'd all be unemployed. Many avenues of annual labour have already
been eliminated.
> The openness that scientists express towards using humans as guinea
> pigs is deeply frightening.
It's news to me that scientists are expressing openness to using humans
as guinea pigs. Raelians expressed openness to using humans as guinea
pigs. Perhaps you are thinking about research on human cell embryos,
but embryos are not humans. They are tiny clots of cells. There are
fewer cells of human tissue in an embryo in a laboratory than in the
snot that you pick from your nose, and do you feel guilty about doing
that?
An unethical reproductive scientist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Jacobson
> Mixing human DNA with animal DNA leads to
> ethical quandaries that boggle the mind.
I don't agree. I mentioned vitamins. If I remember, humans have a
damaged gene that ought to manufacture vitamin C. Other species have
an undamaged gene. It's okay if we get enough of the vitamin in our
diet, but it would probably be better to restore the facility in our
bodies that seems to have existed in our ancestors - assuming we can't
eliminate the need for the vitamin (I expect it'd be tricky). I think
there's also room for improvement in our teeth.
However, not all such fiddling around with genes is going to be good,
and it seems to me that it will be difficult to exclude dubious or
downright wicked acts whilst allowing good ones - if we can even pick
good ones. For that matter, even the vitamin C gene might be dangerous
if a disease takes advantage of its presence somehow - say it makes it
easier for a virus to reproduce in the human body? So maybe it's wiser
to say No to novel genes than to say Sometimes.
Again, this applies to other projects, scientific and other. For
instance, industrial emissions of unnatural chemicals supposedly are
rigorously controlled.
> How in general do evolutionary scientists view the possiblity of
> experimenting with human genes?
If you mean "scientists who investigate evolution" then they will
mostly leave it to doctors. If you mean "scientists who accept the
theory of evolution" then I expect there's a range of views. If you
mean "people who write favourable books about evolution" then I expect
it comes up in a late chapter with, again, a range of views, but I
haven't read many books of that sort.
> I suppose most people would have no problem with medical applications.
> However most people would draw a boundary that scientists should not
> cross.
Would any two people draw this metaphorical boundary in the same place?
And is there only one boundary, or are there zones of MUST, SHOULD,
MAY, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT, ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT?
> Have evolutionary scientists expressed opinions on this matter?
I don't recall.
.
- References:
- Punctuated Equilibrium-Eugenics?
- From: David797
- Punctuated Equilibrium-Eugenics?
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