We were learning about this in school. I’d imagine the majority said they wouldn’t do this, but there’s definitely some who thinks it’s a good idea (like my uncle, ahem ahem).
But if you had the option to mess with genes and give you the “perfect” baby and you knew what they would look like beforehand, would you do it? You could give your child “desirable” traits while the children who don’t have those traits are inferior, or you could love your child considered “inferior” by society as they are.
The only thing I would personally use it for is to prevent known genetic diseases or birth defects. This is in line with a talk the wife and I had not long ago. They can now test for a lot known genetic disease pretty early in the pregnancy. We both agreed if a severe one came back on the test we would do an abortion. It’s just nothing something we can probably handle properly, and I don’t want to bring a child into this already harsh world that is made even harder for them.
I’d never have children at all.
I’d love to repair the mutated DNA that causes my daughter’s disabilities.
But I know that it’d only ever available to balding CEO’s and their mar-a-lago faced wives.
If you haven’t seen the movie Gattica, you really should.
The issue comes down to the misalignment of what’s best for an individual, and society.
Individually, genetically pre-screening embryos (or even altering them) to maximize a kids chance for success is a no brainer. Of course the vast majority of people would do that for their kids if they could.
But that bumps up against the problem of then creating an extremely homogeneous society. They tend to be brittle and stagnant. Deversity is strength for large populations.
Since individuals will absolutely embrace eugenics given the chance, it needs to be strictly regulated and stigmatized by the government. But democratic governments are (ideally) responsible to the will of the people. Given that, unpopular regulations are unlikely.
What happens, happens.
All we can do, is all we can do.There’s also The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert that covers this kind of thing too.
My uncle wants to do stuff genetically where the child is perfect, such as him hating the fact that I’m autistic and refusing to believe it. he also wants to genetically engineer a child that has no autism and is perfectly heterosexual, white, able-bodied, etc.
We’re probably within being able to do it within the next 10 to 100 years.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s not going to be any turning back.
There might be a few isolated groups that refuse the treatments, but I am sure that once the option is out there, people will take it.
I can see some interesting lawsuits in the future. Suppose the child develops, say cancer, and knows that the parents could have given them an anti-cancer gene*, could the child sue the parents?
*I picked a disease at random. I couldn’t think of a genetic disease off the top of my head.
Then is being considered inferior a choice? To like play the game on hardcore mode. Kinda would like a respec option or to be given the choice later on but if I had the option I’m sure there’s trade offs.
Ayyyy I love this kind of discussion. Is eugenics? Is it not? Where does and boundary lie and is there a chance we’re already doing it low-key?
Five years ago there was a doctor who already got in trouble for this: He Jiankui
He saved some kids lives but what do we do know that the CRISPr gene editing tech is out of the bag and the elite can simply pay to have “flawless” children? Where does that leave everyone else? It could get really ugly if we let markets decide what is or isn’t human flaws. Actually, we kind of already do and maybe we should stop ¯\(ツ)/¯
Children are fun because they’re unique and a surprise IMO. I wouldn’t want to decide everything about one myself. But I would want to prevent a child from having a disease that would ruin their life.
I think maybe I would go that way to prevent real diseases like extra chromosomes, sudden death, etc
But that still doesn’t differ much from your uncle, only in where to draw the line of what a disease is and what is normal, some seem to think blackness is also something to be cured, smh
Voy a contestar en español ya que es más eficiente para mí (¡y más rápido!). Pues, yo creo que, pq es eugenesia y implica seleccionar rasgos “deseables”, es muy malo hacerlo. Verás que, como alguien ya dijo, los nazis hicieron esas cosas. La mayoría de la gente no le importará si eres “inferior” o no.
I keep going here despite wanting to be a non-political account because I feel stuff needs to be said. Anyway, no, I think picking out desirable traits and hating on those with “inferior” traits is what the Nazis did, and the Nazis are (obviously) bad. Maybe your uncle is, sadly, a Neo-Nazi? Or close to one?
