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Asked by to Thon, Catherine, James, Natalie, Shaylon on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
Question: what are your opinions on eugenics?
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James Bell answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Eugenics – the practise of attempting to improve the genetic quality of the human race (or any species really) – has been around a long time and has been associated with awful periods of history. However, selective breeding of cattle, dogs and other animals is a form of eugenics that has been going on for thousands of years and has been of real benefit to agriculture.
The dark side of eugenics is usually motivated by racism or beliefs that one group of people is better than another group. What one person believes is an improved population is almost certainly what not everyone else thinks. In principle, eugenics could be used to eradicate really awful genetic diseases like Huntingdons but that would also involve someone with the disease being told they weren’t allowed to have children. Some people might choose not to have children because they are worried about passing on the disease but fundamentally, it’s their choice.
Hitler was a classic supporter of eugenics whose ideas lead to terrible crimes against humanity. People were either killed or given forced sterilisations in support of the belief that they were genetically inferior – even though things like your religion or your sexuality aren’t directly related to your ancestry.
Ultimately, I don’t believe eugenics could ever be applied successfully in the real world because it conflicts with human rights.
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Shaylon Stolk answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Eugenics is based on the idea that we can ‘selectively breed’ a better human species. It’s a tempting idea, and has been popular at different points in history.
The big problem with eugenics is that to implement it, you have to decide that one set of traits is ‘good’ and other traits are ‘bad’. Historically, the ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ traits has been based on things like race. It was basically an excuse to be cruel to groups of people that the people in power didn’t like. Usually it was just because the targeted group was ‘different’ in some way.
There really isn’t an ‘ideal’ human. Humans in different parts of the world adapted to different environments, so traits that are very helpful in one environment are not so helpful in another. For example, light skin is useful if you live near the Arctic, because it means you can get enough vitamin D from sunlight. But if you have light skin and live near the equator, you’ll get a nasty sunburn. So light skin isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it’s just an adaptation to a particular environment.
It’s also tempting to say we could get rid of disease or disability using eugenics. But that assumes people with genetic conditions are ‘defective’, when they’re just people. Many live happy, productive lives. (I have a rare genetic condition myself). So it’s really cruel to tell people that they’re worthless just because their DNA is a bit different.
I *do* support genetic testing though. If someone thinks they might carry the gene for a disease, they should be able to find out and make an informed choice about whether they want to have biological children. I think it’s good for people to have as much knowledge as they want about their health, as long as it’s their choice what to do with that knowledge.
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Catherine Offord answered on 21 Jun 2014:
Like Shalyon said, the difficult part about applying eugenics to living organisms is deciding what a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ trait is.
In animals and plants, the traits that are ‘good’ for humans are not necessarily ‘good’ for the organism. For example, humans have been breeding dogs for centuries. Recently there has been a lot of breeding of dogs to have very short noses (think bulldogs, or boxers). People find this appealing… but it’s actually very damaging to the dog, and causes breathing problems due to the short skull and narrowed nose.
And of course, it only gets more complicated if we consider humans. Even detecting disease or disabilities in unborn children is problematic. There was a high profile case not so long ago where a deaf couple wanted deaf children, and they asked to be allowed to select the embryos to make sure that any babies they had would also be deaf. Their argument was that deaf children would find it easier to be part of their community. They took the case to court and lost on the grounds that deafness is classed as a disability… but you can see that there are going to be tricky borderline cases in the future where the line between what is ethical and unethical is not as clear as we would like.
Yes we increasingly *can* modify the genetics of our children… but when *should* we?
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Natalie Pilakouta answered on 23 Jun 2014:
I agree with what others have already said, basically that it would be difficult to apply eugenics to humans, because classifying traits as good or bad is a very complex issue.
Another very basic issue that makes the application of eugenics impossible at the present time is that we have nowhere near a perfect understanding of genetics. Many traits are determined by interactions between multiple genes and many genes also influence multiple traits. Making things even more complicated, a lot of behavioural (and other) traits are influenced by environmental factors. So even if we decided what the “best” traits are, it is still unclear whether we would be able to figure out which combinations of genes would produce all of those traits in the same individual.
But like Shaylon, I too am a strong supporter of genetic testing. I did this for myself about a year ago (using a service called 23andme). This helps you find out if some of your genes make it more likely that you will have certain health problems later in life, and based on that information, you can change your lifestyle to prevent those things from happening. You might not be able to do this for every health problem, but you can definitely do it in some cases.
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