[pessimizer]

> "Hey, you've got a broken gene? Sucks to be you, my rigid ethics requires you to play the lottery with worse odds than the others!"

Nobody requires you to have children. Your problem could just as easily have been infertility. So instead of gambling, you can choose to treat having a genetic disease like being infertile, or you can dabble in eugenics. My "rigid ethics" frowns on eugenics. We have lots of children who have already been born who need help. They may never satisfy your desire to see your (admittedly bad) genetics reflected in the world, but maybe they could give a legacy to your intellect and compassion?

Eugenics was once very popular among the middle and upper classes, though, before there were incidents. There's no reason to think that it won't be popular again. I think that society as a whole has to decide how we treat human lives though; your children don't strictly belong to you, they belong to themselves and are protected by the state (even against you.) I'm totally comfortable if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be criminal, or if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be mandatory. I just know where I sit on the issue.

And I also know that the places that eugenics survived was in things like dog and cat breeding, and the preferences of people for dogs and cats did not make them healthy, it made them interesting. Ready for the human version of "Twisty Cats"?

[ctoth]

> instead of gambling, you can choose to treat having a genetic disease like being infertile ... I'm totally comfortable if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be criminal,

I was born with retinoblastoma.

You want the state to use criminal law to control my reproduction based on my genetics.

You're "totally comfortable" with that. Easy position when it's not your eyes, not your children, not your choice being criminalized.

You invoke eugenics like it's a magic word that wins the argument. But you're the one advocating for state control of reproduction based on genetic fitness. I just want to select among my own embryos.

Your adoption argument only applies to people like me - people whose genetics you call "admittedly bad." Everyone else gets to reproduce freely.

The cruelty is that you get to advocate for my childlessness from perfect safety. You'll never face the choice you want criminalized. You just get to feel righteous about it.

[lo_zamoyski]

We are childless. We could use legal reproductive tech like IVF, but we refuse to do so on moral grounds. This is painful for us, but we accept the reality of it, because, among other reasons, we refuse to commoditize human life and to kill human beings[0] to satisfy our desire to be parents.

So please avoid the ad hominem and do not presume that moral opposition is merely some kind of flippant and insensitive response coming from those who are not affected. There are plenty of couples who make this moral decision, because they grasp the moral reality of the situation.

No one is entitled to children. No one is entitled to any kind of child. This entitlement is precisely what makes it commodification. Children are not property. They are not a product to be customized. They’re human beings, and no one is entitled to another human being. It is good and natural to want children. It is good and natural to want healthy children. It is good and natural to marry and to try to have them. But it is not good to think you deserve them or that you are entitled to have them - and to have them in a desired condition - at any cost or by any means. A real parent puts his child’s good - real or potential - before his or her own, but this attitude of entitlement gets it exactly backwards. It involved begetting children from a fundamental position of disrespect toward them as human beings and toward all those who were thrown out in the process.

While there is no moral issue in principle with gene therapies that involve correcting genetic defects in an embryo in the abstract; in practice, there is a lot we don’t know about genetics, the details of the process matter, and the flippant overconfidence of startups is worrying But doing screening and terminating ‘undesirable’ embryos is gravely immoral.

[0] An embryo is not some ontologically other that later magically transubstantiates into a human being. “Embryo” and “fetus” describe stages of human development, like “infant”, “toddler”, “teenager”, or “adult”. It boggles the mind how blind and numb we are as a society to this reality, and so easily dehumanize human life in its early stages, simply because it doesn’t look like it does at more mature stages, and because it suits our desires.

[greygoo222]

Human life is valuable because of critical properties, such as the ability to have complex thoughts, feelings, and desires.

A couple cells in a petri dish don't gain moral status owing to having DNA matching Homo Sapiens. That's ridiculous.

[lo_zamoyski]

> Human life is valuable because of critical properties

Specifically, the capacity for rationality and the capacity to choose among alternatives (insects feel things, too, in their myriad insect ways). And these properties, far from being properties among many, are definitive, constitutive, essential* to what it means to be human. (The instantiation of other human properties is always as human-specific instantiations rooted in these above essential properties; while a cat also feels something analogous to human anger and experiences something analogous to the human desire for food, they are not univocal.)

In other words: human value comes from the kind of thing humans are, which is to say rational animals.

And these essential properties exist in potentia during the embryonic stage. A rock does not have the potential to be rational, nor does a dung beetle at any stage, nor do even human gametes, as their development does not lead to a rational being. But at fertilization, from that first cell when a new human being comes into existence, we have a being in the most literal sense that has exactly that rationality scheduled, as it were. And the degree of rationality we express is always a continuum. How much rationality has developed in an infant? How much rationality does a toddler express? The teenager or even most adults? A bed-ridden person with Alzheimer's in old age? A comatose patient? To say that human life at some stage or other does not possess humanity is drawing lines in the sand, an arbitrary threshold that we choose to rationalize some action we wish to take that is opposed to the good of such a being.

[greygoo222]

Existing "in potentia" means it doesn't exist, duh.

[lo_zamoyski]

Not actually, but it is not identical to nonexistence. It's capacity. If something didn't first have the potential for something, it could never become actual in that manner. And which potentials something has depends on the kind of thing it is. Thus, only human beings in their early stages have the potential to be adult human beings.

You're basically committing the error of Parmenides all over again.

[bonsai_spool]

I disagree with your framing around embryos being human (largely because we're using our current scientific understanding to change what was intuitive into some abstraction that, itself, we don't understand - consider that pregnancy may be much more common than we know, but that otherwise 'normal' acts may harm these otherwise unknown pregnancies. Do we then prescribe the behavior of women after every sexual act they complete? But a mother causing the unintentional death of her progeny has always been wrong and socially punished.).

I do agree that we don't consider the morality of what science is allowing us to do and I appreciate your arguments.

[lo_zamoyski]

> consider that pregnancy may be much more common than we know, but that otherwise 'normal' acts may harm these otherwise unknown pregnancies

But unintentional harm during the normal course of living is a different matter, right? There's a difference between an accident or acting out of ignorance on the one hand and intentionally harming someone. You don't provide an example of anything "normal", so I can't address it specifically.

Furthermore, moral actions involve proportionality. For instance, consider a pregnant woman who has developed cancer. Chemotherapy is quite dangerous to her child, but it may give her a very good chance of surviving. Can she licitly take chemo, knowing this risk, or even knowing that certain harm will come? Yes, she can, not because her unborn child's life is less valuable than hers, but because her life is on par with that of her unborn child, and for that reason, she may take chemo to save her life with the unintended side effect of her child's harm or even death. (She isn't using the harm or death of the child to benefit, hence "side effect".)

> I do agree that we don't consider the morality of what science is allowing us to do and I appreciate your arguments.

I appreciate your recognition. Human beings have a bad track record in the morality department, and with the power that the scientific process gives us, we are like toddlers with a a shotgun.

[Teever]

I'm curious where you place organisms like HeLa cell line[0] in your personal moral framework and world view on human biology.

It seems to me that you would consider the harvesting of these cells to be immoral but also that you'd consider killing these cell lines to be unacceptable.

In your opinion Henrietta Lacks still alive as long as this cell line is alive somewhere in a lab? What if the cells are frozen? If she died what remains? How is it different from an embryo?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

[lo_zamoyski]

These are good questions. Let's enumerate the essential ones.

1. Is harvesting cells in the manner of the HeLa cell line morally licit?

2. Is killing such cells morally licit?

3. Is Henrietta Lacks still alive through this cell line?

4. How are the cells in this line different from an embryo?

(1) No, I would not say this is immoral. First, these are cancer cells. If removing cancer cells from a human body is immoral, then it would follow that removing tumors would be immoral, which it isn't, because a tumor is a defect - it deviates from the norm of a healthy, functioning body and interferes with its operation. Removing such cells is a corrective procedure. It restores the body's healthy function, which is the entire point of medicine.

Now, what if the cells were healthy? Here, it would depend on the aim of doing so as well as the impact. For example, removing cells from a healthy heart because you wish to diagnose a patient with a minor illness would be bad if doing so also damaged the heart in some way surpassing the good enabled by such extraction and diagnosis.

However, say the person in question is suffering from a serious illness, and the damage or resulting risks of such an extraction is proportionately less than the good of the life-saving effect it would enable, then this would be morally licit.

(2) No, I would not find killing such cells immoral either, because...

(3) ...Henrietta Lacks is not alive anymore than a hand severed from my body and kept alive artificially is still me. Indeed, that hand is no longer a hand, because a hand is only a hand when it is a integral part of an organism and functioning as part of that organism. If you reattached that hand to my body while I am still alive, then it would be my hand.

(4) These are not embryonic cells. They will not develop into a human being.

Now, even if we ignore that they are cancerous, you may say that such cells can be modified or "reprogrammed" into embryonic cells. Yes, they can, but that involves modification. The result of that modification would not be Henrietta Lacks, but a clone, or a distinct person with the same DNA. I would reject such cloning as immoral.

--

Now, developing cell lines derived from adult cells is different from developing cell lines from the destruction of embryos, which brings us back full circle. It's the destruction of a human being in the embryonic stage that is categorically immoral.

[acadapter]

What if, for example, a dentist refuses to remove malformed wisdom teeth because his morals don't allow him to fix problems that a person is born with, and only fixes tooth damage caused by accidents?

The taboo against genetic repairs is more comparable to antivax, rather than eugenics. Every part of the medical sciences is an intervention against "nature taking its course", in order to prevent harm to the individual.

[fruitworks]

>What if, for example, a dentist refuses to remove malformed wisdom teeth because his morals don't allow him to fix problems that a person is born with, and only fixes tooth damage caused by accidents?

If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve.

The difference between anti-vax and anti-eugenics is that eugenics makes society more fragile by producing a monoculture, whereas vaccinations make society more durable due to the network effects in the spread of disease

[estimator7292]

> If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve

I grew up in rural Kentucky. One of the worst, most ineffectual education systems on this continent.

We were still taught, very clearly, and with zero ambiguity about how genetic inheritance works.

A 7th grader in bumfuck Kentucky knows more about genetics than you've demonstrated here.

Since you apparently missed class, I'll explain: evolution by natural selection only applies when the adaptation in question affects survivability before reproducing.

A genetic problem that causes you to die or become infertile before you've had children can be evolved away. Anything that happens to you after reproductive age does not get affected by natural selection because the selection pressure of reproduction is gone.

This is called an evolutionary shadow.

Again, this is what we teach to middle school kids in rural Kentucky. You really don't have any excuse to be so ignorant.

[czl]

> evolution by natural selection only applies when the adaptation in question affects survivability before reproducing

> Anything that happens to you after reproductive age does not get affected by natural selection because the selection pressure of reproduction is gone.

You are mostly correct but must also consider traits that affect the odds children will fail to reproduce. People can for example be genetically predisposed to depression or impulsive anger or substance abuse or ... any of which can impact the survival of their children thus selection pressure does not entirely disappear after a child is born.

[Hammershaft]

I agree with you and I think the comment you're replying to was callous, but maybe try to show more grace in tone. HN is starting to feel a little more hostile every day, which isn't healthy for open intellectual conversation.

[fruitworks]

I am well aware of that effect and how it does not refute my claim.

If parents have some sort of health issue after reproductive age, that diminishes their ability to help their offspring.

Not to mention that juveniles also get dental problems. We live in a society where you need to get braces in order to look attractive and get a mate. We are breeding people who do not have the features they need to survive without artifical intervention.

[Luker88]

> If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve.

Not really, especially since this is widely regarded not as much of a genetic problem, but as a difference in diet of modern society.

I am also unsure if eugentics *necessarily* brings monoculture. We did it for hundred of years to dogs, and while some races are definitely worse off than others, we literally created more than any here care to remember, and many absolutely love races I find truly ugly.

So the problem with eugenetics lies in understanding what culture lies behind it, imho. While there is a pull to uniformity, people don't like too much of the same, because instinctively you understand it loses value. No difference == no worse, but == no better too.

[thaumasiotes]

> My "rigid ethics" frowns on eugenics.

This is a funny message to attach to "if you have bad genes, you shouldn't reproduce".

[pessimizer]

> "if you have bad genes, you shouldn't reproduce"

It would be, if I had said that. If I had something extremely screwed up about my genes, I definitely wouldn't reproduce, though. Reproduction is irreducibly narcissistic, even though it's fine - it's our purpose if we could be said to have one. But I don't need to watch a child suffer intensely to feed my ego.

Also I, like everyone else, have plenty in my genes that I hope my kids don't get but it doesn't keep me from having them. They can have a big noses, or weird teeth; hopefully they'll have the character to overcome it.

But I think you need to realize that people will be trying to breed extremely skinny girls with huge breasts, or extremely skinny boys with huge breasts, or that a trend will catch fire about girls with eyes really far apart because of some movie star, and there will be a generation with a million girls with brain damage and constant migraines. All because we couldn't tell wealthy people "no."

Even if we're doing eugenics as a society, it would have to be tightly regulated in every way (what do we define as an illness?), and now you instantly have government eugenics. Are you happy with that?

[inglor_cz]

"But I think you need to realize that people will be trying to breed extremely skinny girls with huge breasts, or extremely skinny boys with huge breasts, or that a trend will catch fire about girls with eyes really far apart because of some movie star, and there will be a generation with a million girls with brain damage and constant migraines. All because we couldn't tell wealthy people "no.""

No wonder that you are calling yourself "pessimizer".

Maybe your confident assessment of the horrors of the future is wrong?

[lunar-whitey]

Uncharitably - GP likely believes (as many do) that the current zeitgeist of reproductive norms is ideal, as the possibility of it excluding themselves has never occurred to them.

[fruitworks]

It has occured to us, that is why we strongly oppose it

[johnny22]

There are also many (some in the comments to this post) who have excluded themselves because of it.

Not that they should have the final word the subject of course. I'm just saying you can't assume they they didn't because they have a contrary opinion.

[lunar-whitey]

This is true. However, people with that position tend to reveal it because it supports their argument.

[fruitworks]

The fundamental problem with eugenics, besides the immorality, is the misalignment of artifical selection with natural selection. The eugenicists always think they know best, but mother nature always gets the last word in the end

[nradov]

For better or worse, modern sanitation, medical care, industrial farming, and predator control have virtually eliminated the effects of natural selection on human genetics. Any changes going forward will inevitably be mostly artificial.

[kenjackson]

Well then natural selection has spoken. No need to select when it provides no survival benefits.

[fruitworks]

There is no need to select... until there is

[LtWorf]

Healthcare is part of the environment an organism lives in…

[greygoo222]

Utter nonsense. Anything that is possible is "natural."

[svnt]

These are terms of art in evolutionary theory.

[nlitened]

I am confused with your position. On one hand you seem to think that eugenics is bad and wrong, on the other had you have a preference on what people should and should not have children — but isn’t it literally eugenics?

[pessimizer]

> you have a preference on what people should and should not have children

You read something that wasn't in my comment. I said that nobody is forcing anyone to gamble. You can choose to gamble, but nobody is forcing you to.

[fruitworks]

OP doesn't express a preference, just references GP's preference.

[nradov]

Eugenics is still extremely popular and widely used in the form of sex selective abortions. This is one of the main reasons why population sex ratios are skewed in some countries.

[Teever]

Eugenics never went away, we just stopped calling it eugenics.

Modern forms of family planning that include access to birth control, genetic testing, abortions, and prenatal screening can empower individuals to make choices that they feel will bring about the healthiest and happiest progeny. That's eugenics.

We as a society should continue to allow individuals to make these kinds of choices rather than leave it up to fate or a central authority.

[expedition32]

Interesting have we all forgotten how American politicians literally came out and said 11 year old rape victims should be forced to give birth?

But if a billionaire wants eugenics well that's different then.

[greygoo222]

Some group of people: I believe X, which contradicts Y

Some different group of people: I believe Y, which contradicts X

You, looking upon the masses: X and Y are contradictory. Why is everyone a hypocrite?