On Jan 24, 11:53*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:

* I've just acquired a copy of Friedman, and his 'The Next 100 Years'
seems to me to want serious reading.

I've got a copy of a book of the same title by C.C. Furnas from 1936.
People who write such books do not lack ego.
Furnas starts out the book with eugenics of course - which was very big
in the US at the time - ten years later, amid the ruins of Germany,
everyone started rethinking that concept and its social effects.

To such an extent that even specious arguments are used against it.

Obviously, "eugenics" aimed at ethnic minorities isn't eugenics.
Taking action against the harm done by genetic defects, though, would
seem entirely legitimate.

One book I read noted that eliminating Huntingdon's chorea by eugenics
would be ridiculous, since because that is a dominant gene which
manifests itself late in life, attempting to prevent anyone being born
with it would prevent many healthy children from being conceived. To
which "So what?" is all the answer that's needed.

Of course, a more common argument concerns recessives. The human
genome is big. The average person has genes for, say, 100 lethal
recessives. Which doesn't inhibit reproduction, since the chance of
even one of those recessives being the same in one's mate is low. But
given that, since "sterilize everybody" is not a recipe for an
improved human species, isn't eugenics impossible?

This is not true, it just shows a lack of thought. Yes, one can clean
up the gene pool in such a circumstance.

Just pick a set of recessives to eliminate in one generation, small
enough so that only part of the population is sterilized. Then, in the
next generation, add some more recessives to the list, since the first
group will be eliminated except for new mutations. And repeat with
each generation.

The objections to eugenics aren't practical ones. Instead, the moral
objection that humans aren't lab animals to be bred as desired, and
the fact that having one's own biological children is a deeply-
ingrained human desire, are the objections that matter.

Ultimately, though, I don't think it would be a nightmare if people
decided that for the sake of their children's well-being, they would
opt exclusively for assisted reproduction so that harmful genetic
disorders could be excluded from their gametes before fertilization
would be allowed to take place. Such a future would not be a
nightmare; getting rid of Down's syndrome, for example, is a good
thing in the way that getting rid of polio is a good thing, if you
don't do it by going around and shooting the sufferers.

John Savard