Dawkins says, "Eugenics may not be bad’’
by MikeGeneRichard Dawkins wants put to Hitler behind us and resurrect a discussion of eugenics:
IN THE 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change.
Nobody wants to be caught agreeing with that monster, even in a single particular. The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from "ought" to "is" and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.
I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?
It's a typical example of Dawkins and his "consciousness-raising." Let's talk about religious people as child abusers. Let's discuss whether religion is the root of all evil. Now, it's let's discuss whether eugenics is really bad. The new Anti-Religion Movement is off and running.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Just give him a microphone or an interview and get him talking. The more he talks, the more he exposes his extremsism, the more he digs his own grave. Keep on talking, Richard.
Comment by bj — November 24, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Sure, let's adopt your view: No more blood tests before marriage — obviously a part of evil eugenics! Rh factors? Can't test for them. Amniocentesis? Forget it.
See? It's easy to be an anti-eugenecist in the Intelligently Designed Future. It's difficult to be humane or compassionate, however.
Comment by edarrell — November 24, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
The difference is easy to see, and quite significant. The difference is that breeding people to achieve certain abilities exalts those abilities above their personal humanity and dignity. It exalts the idea of humankind as an ability-generating resource, rather than a group of individuals with God-given significance. Forcing a child to learn something is, most often, cruel and demeaning (I'm thinking algebra), but does not of necessity diminish their innate importance as an individual human being.
Comment by Douglas — November 24, 2006 @ 1:13 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
… and of course The Great Dawkins will offer that those who are inclined to religious thinking or supernatural beliefs must be excluded from selective breeding. Only those who are completely cleansed from supernatural beliefs should be allowed to take part in controlled selective breeding …
Comment by Farshad — November 24, 2006 @ 1:28 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Well, no one ever accused Dawkins of consistency or coherency!
Comment by DonaldM — November 24, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Hi Dougals,
Very well put, Douglas.
Comment by DonaldM — November 24, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
And from the "you've got to be kiddin' me department we have edarrell with:
Surely you can't expect us to accept that eugenics in the form of selective breeding for pre-determined traits or in the form of extermination of traits considered "undesireable" are even in the same ball park as a pre-marital blood test! If you've never seen the movie Gattaca, I suggest you rent and watch it, if you want to know what a Dawkinsian utopian future will look like. Maybe you'd desire that kind of world. I doubt if many would. You might re-think your conception of who is being humane and compassionate, edarrell!
Comment by DonaldM — November 24, 2006 @ 8:29 pm
November 24th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
What is this "probably end up persuading me" bit? So Dawkins isn't sure if breeding for traits is moral or not and wants it discussed? I don't believe it. Eugenics is the logical extension of Darwinism. Even Darwins' own son stated his father was in favor of it and became head of the British Eugenics Society.
Comment by Jehu — November 24, 2006 @ 9:24 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
No, I guess I shouldn't expect anyone who advocates ID to understand how disease prevention works, or how prevention of congenital difficulties works. It was silly of me to even think about it.
I'll refrain from capitalizing on the obvious straight line you've handed me. I'm sure you didn't marry your first cousin, at least, not intentionally, nor does any other ID advocate.
Random accidents.
Comment by edarrell — November 25, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Only in the fevered imagination of extremists (from both sides). Evolutionary theory tells us what occurs in nature; it does not tell us how we, as human beings, should behave, any more than quantum mechanics or relativity does.
Comment by Mesk — November 25, 2006 @ 5:49 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
edarrell:
??? This was Dawkins' cited reasoning:
Since when is a lack of musical or athletic ability a disease to be eradicated by selective breeding? If you're that concerned, you can marry a musician and hope for the best, or marry an Olympic gold medalist and see what comes. Science/medicine doesn't know what genes, in what number on which chromosomes, in what combination presented in the histone code and accompanied by what orchestrated expression suite causes this sort of inheritance of acquired traits, and couldn't engineer it even if they did (since they don't know how). Most other people would tend to rely upon practice and body building to develop outstanding ability.
What you're talking about is genetic screening for the possibility (hardly ever more than 75%) of 'defective' offspring. But either way there has to be legal ability for the state to outlaw certain marriages or require sterilization to make sure no un-musical or otherwise troublesome babies (by their definition) are born.
Perhaps you and Dawkins and the other notables in the "New Eugenics" portion of the authoritarian "Neo-Atheist Movement" are fine with that. I'm not.
Comment by Joy — November 25, 2006 @ 5:58 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Only in the fevered imagination of extremists (from both sides). Evolutionary theory tells us what occurs in nature; it does not tell us how we, as human beings, should behave, any more than quantum mechanics or relativity does.
Darwinian reasoning is based on degenerate epistemic standards that are far from the equivalent of physics and it has often included values of "fitness" of a sort that go beyond mere numerical values. That's why the theory of natural selection is not stated in the language of mathematics and then verified or falsified empirically. Darwinian reasoning remains hypothetical goo that fits any type of formation because it was never a specified form of information and a hard form of knowledge/scientia like physics in the first place. The Darwinian tendency to merge the conceptual and the perceptual is also illustrated in how Darwinism tends to merge the ethical with whatever its proponents feel is "natural." In the past that was eugenics, so it was what was natural and therefore "scientific." History shows that those with the Darwinian urge to merge have always had such a tendency to simply merge "is" and "ought" together according to whatever they imagine is natural instead of seeking a moral marriage where what ought to be is in union with what is.
Darwinists have often used natural selection as their guide to what is moral (as opposed to design or transcendent ethics, which are all supposedly an illusion). Not that it makes any sense to believe that natural selection can act as a valid way to see the Blind Watchmaker while also maintaining that it selects for illusions, bad religions that don't fit spiritual monism, etc.
Comment by mynym — November 25, 2006 @ 7:59 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
It's a typical example of Dawkins and his "consciousness-raising." Let's talk about religious people as child abusers. Let's discuss whether religion is the root of all evil. Now, it's let's discuss whether eugenics is really bad.
According to the wedge strategy the thin edge of the wedge goes in first, then once discussion becomes more common the wedge gets thicker as the issue is discussed and so on. But I can't imagine eugenics ever becoming prominent in America again though because the real religion of most Americans seems to be hedonism so they probably won't let some bureaucrat tell them who they can marry or have sex with.
Chesterton on the charlatans of his day:
–Chesterton, 1922 cf. (Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized Society
By G.K. Chesterton,
With Additional Articles by his Eugenic and Birth Control Opponents
Edited by Michael W. Perry)
Those who coo and ah at the word "science" as if it entails all human progress and civilization and does not afford a hiding place for charlatans probably won't understand how Chesterton could write such a book. So be it. I'm just glad that he and others took a stand against the scientism of their day so that I don't have a government employee deciding if I should be sterilized or not. Not that I would be based on any of the old standards but as one opponent noted:
("In The Finest, Most Womanly Way:" Women
in The Southern Eugenics Movement
by Edward J. Larson
The American Journal of Legal History,
Vol. 39, No. 2. (Apr., 1995), :142)
Comment by mynym — November 25, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
I'm with Mesk on this one. I see evolution's relationship with eugenics as similar to intelligent design's relationship with religion. A lot of scientists have in the past used evolution to support eugenics, just like many ID supporters advocate intelligent design because they think that it supports their religion. But the logic of evolution no more leads to or requires eugenics, just like the logic of a design inference neither leads to or requires the truth of any religion.
Comment by Krauze — November 25, 2006 @ 8:30 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
No, I guess I shouldn't expect anyone who advocates ID to understand how disease prevention works, or how prevention of congenital difficulties works. It was silly of me to even think about it.
It is absurd for you to even think that you are thinking in the first place.
I'll refrain from capitalizing on the obvious straight line you've handed me. I'm sure you didn't marry your first cousin, at least, not intentionally, nor does any other ID advocate.
Random accidents.
ID advocates don't marry their cousins based on intention and intelligence but you didn't marry your cousin by accident?
Comment by mynym — November 25, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
November 25th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
But the logic of evolution no more leads to or requires eugenics….
I say nothing of evolution but value laden statements about the "fit" and "unfit" have always been a part of Darwinian reasoning. Historically such sentiments were combined with the notion that organisms invent the values that they fit through a struggle for life combined with natural selection.
Putting Darwinism aside, what do you think that the logic of evolution is?
Comment by mynym — November 25, 2006 @ 9:02 pm
November 26th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Joy said:
Since never. No one suggested that it was, except (as someone noted) in the fevered imaginations of the ID folk.
Musical ability is a gift. You guys act as if it's a disease to be avoided. Why? Dawkins wonders what's wrong with a person marrying another with musical ability in an attempt to get kids with musical ability — you claim it's a Nazi-esque sin. Why? What's wrong with worrying about healthy babies and babies with genetic potential? Since when is it a sin to even consider such things? Will you not be happy until every child is born with a serious genetic disease?
Joy said:
But when Dawkins suggests we talk about that, you guys start running around shouting "NAZI! NAZI! NAZI!" Dawkins suggests we talk about it, and you guys come unglued. NOW, you say we can do it — but not talk about it? I'd say I was confused, but I don't think I'm the one confused here.
If you're that unclear on what Dawkins says, is there ever any hope for solid discussion with a realistic exchange of ideas?
Comment by edarrell — November 26, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
November 26th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
You're projecting. That's not what you quote Dawkins as saying at all.
Comment by edarrell — November 26, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
November 26th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
One of the discussions that would be had among serious scientists would be whether any governmental or societal entity should be engaged in such a discussion at all. Generally the Jacobsen's Organs would function to help humans select mates who would provide good genes for healthy and happy kids; generally the intellectual overrides humans provide would be simply to look for financial or other stability in addition to health.
The fact is we do make such considerations — as in the pre-marriage blood tests to look for rH factor problems. It's instructive that anti-science folk get so blustery when the issue is raised. We couldn't even get pre-marital blood tests required in such a charged political atmosphere. No wonder scientists are leery of the issues.
Comment by edarrell — November 26, 2006 @ 9:04 pm
November 27th, 2006 at 4:46 am
Sure it is. As an example, I'm currently writing up a paper that draws explicitly on well-characterised mathematical models of selection (although I'm by no means a mathematician). Pretty much every issue of the journal Genetics has at four or five articles exploring the mathematics of evolution, and usually at least two that deal with selection. Although evolution, like any non-linear system, is fiendishly hard to model in the particulars, there has been an incredible amount of work done on probabilistic models that are both predictive and practically useful - for instance, check out the extensive literature on using patterns of genetic polymorphism at a particular gene to determine whether or not it has been subjected to recent selection (and if so, what type).
Since popular articles about evolution generally don't discuss the maths, it's easy for the layperson to imagine that evolution is all wishy-washy adaptive fairy-tales. However, behind the scenes, thousands of theoreticians and experimentalists have spent the last few decades refining and testing quantitative models of evolution. The models certainly aren't perfect - and they likely never will be - but they're good enough for practical research.
Evolutionary theory changes with the evidence, sure. How do you suggest a scientific field should operate? Posit a theory, and then ignore anything that contradicts it?
That's generic to the point of meaninglessness. I'll certainly accept that some people, throughout history, have used evolution to justify hideous acts. That doesn't mean that evolution necessarily entails atrocities, any more than 9/11 means that religion is always evil.
After all, the people who have the most profound understanding of the implications of evolutionary theory are evolutionary biologists. Do you have any evidence that evolutionary biologists are less moral than other people? Are they more likely to commit rape or murder? If not, then all this is just noise.
Comment by Mesk — November 27, 2006 @ 4:46 am
November 27th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
edarrell:
You've missed the context entirely, ed. Human beings have been practicing selective breeding among themselves and their livestock for thousands of years. It has only been the last few decades (at least, here in the US) that indiscriminate breeding with "whoever's available that night" has taken over from serious considerations of lifelong pair-bonding and the quality of offspring to the pair that invests the time, energy and wealth to develop them toward their best prospects.
And along with the changes in sexual selection of the past few decades, there has been the availability of birth control and abortion (which were not generally available before). This has allowed a lot of the natural results of poor sexual selection to be prevented or terminated - the very definition of eugenics. Thus we're already practicing what we have practiced all along (selective breeding), plus eugenics for the newly-opened frontier of non-selection of sexual partners for immediate gratification.
This is NOT what Dawkins is talking about. It is a little unclear what he IS talking about, I agree. It could be "designer babies" that one obtains from for-profit gene-splicers guaranteed to have blonde hair, blue eyes, Barbie bodies and musical talent (or athletic ability, since he mentions that specifically). If that were available, no one could stop rich people from using the service to design their offspring.
But the fact of the matter is that science doesn't understand the fine points of genetics well enough to design such things as talent, and their engineering techniques are way too crude to apply to human beings. So this isn't an issue and isn't likely to be an issue for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, the rabble are still reproducing brown-skinned, brown-eyed babies at a fantastic rate. Even if designer babies were available to the rich, it will never overcome the working class' selection criteria and production of babies the old fashioned way.
…unless a negative eugenics is deployed along with the offer of positive designer babies. This could be done without too much trouble, so it's certainly something to think about. The easiest method would be to genetically engineer staple crops to induce sterility which can be reversed by chemical means to enable reproduction. The poor underclasses stop having babies, the middle class can afford only one or two at most, and the rich can have as many as they want (and hire servants to gestate and birth them so rich Barbie-babes don't get stretch marks).
Or the social engineers can just do the negative stuff the old fashioned way too - forced sterilization of the underclasses, forced abortion and infanticide for the middle classes who reproduce illicitly, infanticide and euthanasia for any deformed, sick, non-productive and/or elderly the state decides shouldn't be allowed to live.
MY point being that selective breeding - choosing a mate for qualities and traits one values - isn't a controversial subject at all and never has been. The term "eugenics" applied to the breeding choices of humanity at large is silly, because sexual selection has always been practiced by humanity at large. There's nothing to "talk about."
Comment by Joy — November 27, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
November 27th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
By the way ed, it was Dawkins who introduced Hitler. Not me. And it was YOU who introduced the 'disease prevention' sideline, which Dawkins didn't mention at all. He talked about musical talent and athletic ability - "designer babies." Which, if they were available, rich people would avail themselves of no matter what the law says, and poor people couldn't afford even if they wanted a designer child. Ergo, not an issue.
By the way, premarital blood testing was instituted to screen for syphilis, not Rh incompatibility. Most states have stricken regulations requiring blood tests for STDs, but you can always lobby to change that in your state. Rh incompatibility will make itself known soon enough if it isn't already known. Women who don't get treatment can only have one successful pregnancy, so that's hardly a pressing eugenics issue.
If it's all about genetically transmitted diseases for you, perhaps you can get your state to require prescreening for such, and forbid marriages that have a 50%+ chance of producing 'defective' offspring (will brown skin be a 'defect'?), or require sterilization for those who carry any 'defective' genes/gene copies. Or you can maybe get your state to require fetal screening, but it wouldn't have teeth unless you also force abortion for any fetus who doesn't pass muster, plus provide free, accessible prenatal care for all women of childbearing age (so you don't miss any 'defectives'). Good luck with that.
Comment by Joy — November 27, 2006 @ 2:43 pm