[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

welcome to the "Free Speech Zone"

This is where we put wackos with whacky concerns that mean nothing!

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

maybe Canada isn't the place I hoped it was.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

Summer:

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If you mean (2), then please show me one instance where any poster here suggested that this form of genetic engineering is a good idea.
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I was the one that made that implication, but I wasn't saying that it was a good idea, I'm saying aborting based on genetic traits is starting to get there. So you can see why, Kropotkin posted:

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No that is why I was trying to say that it the testing that should be restricted not the abortions. Unless there is an ethical and real medical reason to test fetuses then just leave them be to develop into the humans they become when they are born. Why should we give bigoted people the tools to implement their genetic cleansing?
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Morningstar posted:

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why shouldn't women, if they wish, abort a fetus because it has ,say, blue eyes?
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And there is where we are begining to close in on genetic engineering (which is my post, we need to be careful of this). If women abort fetus's based on eye colour, you then get into the grounds of 'breeding out' certain characteristics. If way down the line in the future (hypothetical), we discover that 'gay' is a gene... That would mean we could theoretically 'breed' it out of society. Gay gene is an extreme example mind you, but I hope you are seeing what I mean by this... Aborting fetus's for "unfavorable" traits is ultimately breeding that trait out of humans and is therefore a form of genetic engineering (at very least 'genetic clensing'). This does have the capacity of leading the way to introducing "favorable" traits to a fetus. As Kropotkin pointed out... Are we just giving people the ability to preform their own genetic clensing with this?

If that happens then the aliens can tell us how to do trait selection. I like Art Bell because he understands.

Gender selection is different because that could never happen and most especially not here in Canada. Even if it did it would be okay so long as denial remains possible. What we won't look at won't hurt us.

Ooops, I veered close to reality there for a second. Did not mean to say anything relevant or important. Thats girlstuff. this is the crazy forum where I can get as off the wall as I wanna be. What more could a man ask for? Really, it is more than he deserves, especially after he has committed the crime of trying to be sincere and serious and logical and male. Give'em a member and they think they are entitled to an opinion. The free speech zone makes me so feel so freaking free! It does not have those nasty fences they used at the Republican convention.

O look there is Pink Floyd with some eskimos! How are you Syd Barret? Did you know we share a mind? Cosmically that is. How is the icefishing?

I want genetic selection to help me have a kid that is half carrot so I can gnaw on him (just the edible carrot part) when I am hungry. they should manipulate the genes so that the carrot part regrows and there is no harm or pain to the child.

Also it would be cool if he could fly because then he might have an advantage in all the gr8 new sports they will invent in the future. Like embryoball and placenta hockey.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

Same reason you don't put abortion threads here. Abortion is a medical procedure and therefore counts as biology, but that is not why you people discuss it and this is not where you people discuss it.

I thought I was being quite co-operative by moving my "offtopic" posts to the youth forum (and without complaining about it), but that wasn't good enough somehow.

I know when I am being marginalized.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

What is considered offtopic for Farces should be considered offtopic for other posters as well.

That is just basic fairness.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
. . . who wanted to talk about the more narrowly-focused topic of whether sex selection should be considered an issue when it comes to abortion on demand could do that . . .

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quote:

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Farces satire posts can have their place in certain circumstance, that being said, posting 20 of them consecutively is probably less effective than posting a single one.

I'll try and post a longer explanation of my views on sexual selection later. While I see it as a women's rights issue, it also falls under other categories I think.

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Those posts (the short ones at top of the thread I mean) were moved here against my will. I could not delete them so I did the next best thing and edited them to indicate my frustration at being marginalized. In light of the whole situation here I think that is fair. I have done nothing wrong, but am being punished. I was subjected to much hostility in the Feminist Forum and there seems to be some deep denial about that around here.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

quote:

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Originally posted by oldgoat:
. . about as nice and understanding with you as a moderator could be . . .

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Let's be clear here: I have done nothing wrong.

[ 23 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

for me, personally, and for most of my woman friends, genetic altering of our offspring would have seemed contrived and silly-i doubt that it would be healthy for any of us to have pretended that we actually have so much control. life isn't about control.

having a baby was an odd combination of animal and magic.
i found it to be a great adventure. the fun of finding out what your prize was, the anticipation, the loving of my man and wanting to combine the two of us-much of that magic would have disappeared had i designed those babies.
those little spirits came as they wished and it was all good. i really had no expectations or plans for them.

i had several miscarriages and just assumed that the fetuses must have had problems-i had no angst over that either.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that if you create a just, safe society for all women and all children the horrors of genetic manipulation will not be a problem. if all children are equally loved and valued by society, why would women wish to sacrifice that wild magic for a 'designed' child. confident, happy people understand the value of the random and the wild.

Quote:

"The number of biological older brothers a boy's mother has carried--whether they live with him in the same household or not--affects his chances of being gay. The findings, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Anthony Bogaert of Brock University, lend credence to the theory that it's not the social or rearing factors that influence a man's sexual orientation, but rather prenatal mechanisms that begin in the womb."

Not sure which way this cuts, but it seems relevant to the eugenics issues we are discussing down here in this right brain forum. This spate of stories just happened to be on the Google news front page. Interestingly GOOGLE news happened to put this set of stories in their "health" section, rather than their "sci/tech" section.

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

What if the physically strong decide that the only way they should use their physical strength is to excel in athletics, who will be there to develop culture and the arts? Who will work in science, who'll do your taxes every April, some Greek-god figured pretty boy that can't use a calculator or spreadsheet because they forgot to "breed-in" the gene for a reasonable level of intelligence?

I think that diversity makes the world more valuable. A child with down syndrome, for instance, has as much to offer as anyone else; every individual I've met with down syndrome was an individual who unconditionally cared for everyone they met. My buddies who lived next door to me growing up had down syndrome, and they treated me every day, the way I hoped to treat people on my best day, with kindness, respect and caring, every single day. Is that the kind of trait we want to get rid of just because they require a little more care than a "normal" child?

Interestingly, what are the healthiest types of dogs? I'm no vet, but it's probably mutts; the “undesirable” dogs that don’t breed “true.” Every purebred has some typical health problem that is "magnified" by selective breeding. Large dogs, for instance, typically suffer from hip and heart problems. If the various kennel clubs of the world made a decision to eliminate all breeds that are pre-disposed to health problems....we probably wouldn't have any purebreds left, only mutts; sa good bye to the Great Dane, German Shepard (Littlest Hobo!) and so forth. So if we start identifying undesirable traits in fetuses and say it's okay to abort if we become aware of an undesirable trait...where does it stop?

Prior to industrialization this moth was primarily light in colouring and blended easily into its background. Only the deviant births within the population where black in colour.

Then the industrial revolution descended and coated the English countryside in a layer of black soot from all its coal burning factories and homes. This made the light coloured moths particularily vulnerable to predation since they stood out so much better in this new background.

But it was the previously deviant black members of this population that saved the day and it was solely because of this genetic anomoly that the species was able to survive this dramatic change in its environ.

i believe that a healthy society understands what you're saying at a very deep and probably quite illogical place

but nowhere on earth has a just and healthy society been given the chance to develope.
i think that this is directly traceable to global, historical, gender inequity.

to worry about the details of something like genetic engineering, which is a symptom of a much larger societal problem won't help much.

we must leave women utterly free to make their reproductive choices in whichever way they are able, and take our lumps as a global society, until we are willing to create a just world where women will feel no pressure to produce [or not] certain types of offspring.

then they will feel free to follow their hearts and reclaim their wildness which will likely produce a more civilized and gentle world.

it will also allow us to evolve into a new framework where ethics don't seem so difficult.

humanity is tying itself in knots right now in trying to get the details right while the underpinnings are off---won't work
genetic engeneering is a detail in the larger view.
women must be freed globally

quote:

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Originally posted by morningstar:
. . . free to make their reproductive choices in whichever way they are able . . .

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"Able" with the help of our tax money or "able" without the help of our tax money?

In a nation where it is illegal (at least technically) to privately purchase many (most?)kinds of healthcare, this "whichever way they are able" rhetoric seems inconsistent with that. Whichever way they are able comes down to what the law lets them do and forbids them from doing. It comes down to what types of genetic screening we, as a society, want to spend our tax money on and which types of screening we do not.

That is what socialized medicine is all about. No 2-tier healthcare!

Edited: as I figured out what I wanted to say here.

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

quote:

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Originally posted by morningstar:
h

for me, personally, and for most of my woman friends, genetic altering of our offspring would have seemed contrived and silly-i doubt that it would be healthy for any of us to have pretended that we actually have so much control. life isn't about control.

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I disagree with your statement that life isn't about control, it most certainly is! I want to control my ability to eat healthy food everyday, to have readily available tampons and condoms and control my own body. Such control and freedom as a woman comes from directly observable scientific advances (yes, the control of our natural environment)throughout history.

I admire your idealism morningstar, but I think you are being a little naive. For women to have control over our bodies and lives, we need modern economies with a specialized division of labour, modern medicine and human manipulation of our natural environment. Condoms don't biodegrade and birth control pills release hormones into marine habitats.

Tommy Douglas declared in his master's thesis that eugenics was the answer to Canada's economic problems. In his time, eugenics was a very fashionable idea, and you were considered uneducated if you disagreed. It is not that unimaginable that women will be choosing eye colour, etc. in the near future.

quote:

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Originally posted by Farces:

"Able" with the help of our tax money or "able" without the help of our tax money?

In a nation where it is illegal (at least technically) to privately purchase many (most?)kinds of healthcare, this "whichever way they are able" rhetoric seems inconsistent with that. Whichever way they are able comes down to what the law lets them do and forbids them from doing. It comes down to what types of genetic screening we, as a society, want to spend our tax money on and which types of screening we do not.

That is what socialized medicine is all about. No 2-tier healthcare!

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Sorry for butting into this ridiculous thread, which was set up only because of complaints that "sex selection" was being used as a pretext to attack choice.

Now, before anyone agrees with Farces' brilliant argument above, just understand where he's going next:

No public funding of abortion in private clinics.

Notice also how, notwithstanding his opening post where he said "let's just talk pretend stuff" -- to make it safe to talk, don't you know -- now he has introduced public spending policy, just sort of slipped it in, no harm intended, not really...

Or, wait, maybe I'm wrong! I'm not telepathic, after all! Maybe he's just an honest, sincere socialist who is fighting against 2-tier health care!

Yeah, that must be it. I apologize for my cynical skepticism.

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
. . . Maybe he's just an honest, sincere socialist who is fighting against 2-tier health care! . . .[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

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I think asking me where I am going next, instead of telling me is more polite. Here is where I am going next:

1. I complained about this thread being dumped down here because I felt dumping it here was an attempt to limit the discussion to science fiction stuf. Your comments support my interpretation and show that my complaint on that head was well founded.

2. I have come out in favor of socialized medicine here on a fair proportion of my posts (see, eg, prostitution thd). I am here in Canada by choice and socialized medicine is one of the reasons I made that choice. I am no mere fair weather friend of socialized medicine and it is offensive that you would accuse me of that. Manners!

3. So, since we are all, as a society, paying for the healthcare and systematically choosing what is permitted and forbidden, I suggest this scheme:

- discretionary early term abortion: permitted

- medically neccessary late term abortion: permitted

- discretionary late term abortion: forbidden

- genetic screening tailored to screen embryos with no substantial chance of long term survival: permitted

- genetic screening tailored to permit other types of trait selection (eg, eugenics): forbidden

Did you predict my pattern of answers correctly?

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 27 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Farces:

Did you predict my pattern of answers correctly?

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Why no, not at all. I was shocked and surprised and taken aback that you manipulated this phony thread right back to pro-life anti-choice territory. And I'm even more shocked that you have EmmaG's enthusiastic support.

i wouldn't--- but i have always regarded much of what society requires of women as silly nonsense.

most women do not have the privileged and wonderful life that i landed in.

most women need to worry alot about the dictates of society for survival.
if society doesn't equally value and support ALL children, then who are we to decide that she not make the very best selection for her fetus that she is able.

we don't actually get to have it both ways.

we don't get to decide that a certain type of being is a 'winner' and others are not--- and then get all self righteous about the so called ethics when women quite sensibily decide that they want to bear only 'winners'

we don't get to be squeamish about only the part of the equation that forces women to pay, yet again.

we don't get to do ethics on the backs of women any more.

I think where I fundamentally disagree with you i that I don't believe a perfectly just society is possible. There will always be winners and losers. It will always be an advantage to be more intelligent rather than less intelligent, to be taller rather than shorter, to be sexually attractive rather than unattractive. These factors are genetically, biologically (prenatal environment, nutrition) and environmentally (social environment as opposed to biological environment) influenced. There's been some efforts at a just society going on in the past hundred years, in my opinion it has merely shifted fairness. Before you were most fortunate if your parents had succeeded - you still are today but to a lesser extent. Nowadays it depends more on your natural capability and how you were raised. These are still "unfair" factors though as some have more natural capabilities than others.

You say you were lucky in life, perhaps you have come out naturally more intelligent, more attractive and healthier, or some combination. That would allow you to live a happier life in any society. You say you would have felt no need to modify your baby - when you say that you remind me of very attractive people I know who say plastic surgery is vain and immoral.

Further, even if it were possible, I believe it would then be several thousand years away. Genetic engineering is at most a hundred years away. It starts off very expensive and people will likely lobby to keep it that way. Do you really want to live in a society where the kids of the rich have an average height of 6 feet 1 (for men), IQs of 150, psychological focus and good health whereas the kids of the poor and middle have the "natural" averages?

[ 28 June 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

i understand perfectly why women would have plastic surgery though.

this problem with idealism

why would you feel that a just society isn't possible?

precisely because we now have the knowledge and means to lead healthy, prosperous lives globally
can free us from the darwinic behavior that is so at odds with modern human ethics.

if we reorganise and determine to behave well we can absolutely learn to not need the illusion of winners and losers.
idealism is the best standard to hold high, no?

otherwise we get stuck with messianism.

As far as theories of human behavior though, mine is heavily shifted towards biological determinism relative to yours. I think more like Steven Pinker and Antonio Damasio.

quote:

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if we reorganise and determine to behave well we can absolutely learn to not need the illusion of winners and losers.
idealism is the best standard to hold high, no?

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I certainly think we can have *more* parity. A lot of issues are caused by the flaws in mainstream education theory, bad food, bad popular culture. I start from the position that there will always be people at the "bottom." With that description, my prescription is then based on the philosophy of damage limitation. Are there diamonds in the rough? Can we have an economy strong enough to support almost all of us? Is the justice system fair? Do we have vestiges of paleolithic instincts like racism (tribalism) that no longer suit us in the world beyond caves?

Most psychologists believe in the g-factor (intelligence), and ive read the heritability correlates to a degree of between 0.4 and 0.6. (correlation coefficients range between -1 and 1, -1 means perfect negative correlation, 0 means no correlation, and 1 means perfect correlation. Possible invented examples would be -0.7 for income and malnutrition, 0 for myopia and length of fingernails, and 0.8 for annual salary and accumulated assets) So if you raise the IQ of everyone who'se below 85 by manipulating their offspring's genes early in pregnancy, are you helping them? I think that's just raising the average, and you'll still have 50 percent below the average - that's the definition of an average. And therein lies my theoretical opposition to genetic engineering. It's theoretical because I don't think it will be around when I'm having kids (I'm 22 now).

we may also decide that the randomness [i call it wildness] of a much broader range of humanity serves the greater good in unforseen ways.

i believe that fetal manipulation or aborting a fetus for any reason is probably not healthy for humanity on many levels-- not the least of which is this illusion of control that i was talking to emma about.

quote:

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Originally posted by morningstar:
in a just society we may not feel that we need a 'top' or 'bottom'--- we may be free to understand the innate value of every person just the way they come.

we may also decide that the randomness [i call it wildness] of a much broader range of humanity serves the greater good in unforseen ways.

i believe that fetal manipulation or aborting a fetus for any reason is probably not healthy for humanity on many levels-- not the least of which is this illusion of control that i was talking to emma about.

however, the ethics of gender equality should trump this everytime.
the more that i see how most social justice issues, environmental issues, poverty issues, health issues, are linked with gender inequity, the more that i believe that it must ethically trump anything else.

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But, what about the fact that humans have different visions of what a "just" society is?
What about women who don't want to give up the right to an abortion because such a society has been acheived (according to whose definition?).

Randomness of the wildness of nature that you describe is best described by Darwin and modern evolutionary biologists. Humanism involves a moral social safety net against the random inequalities of survival of the fittest. When wild nature tries to kill a premature baby, modern science and Canadian public healthcare try to save him.

I also don't hold any ethical "trumpt" cards for rights, in the event that some future person decides that my society is now "just" and I better quench my idealism. If you believe in the right to abort a fetus today, you should support a woman's choice to do it indefinitely. My inherent rights as a woman are as equal and unchanging as my rights to clean air and water, freedom, etc. My idealism is viewing human rights as not granted by the State, but inherent rights that are often denied.

That is what I think and what I am hearing as I listen to what a lot of the other posters have to say.

[ 29 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

You are right unionist, the topic does keep veering back to a woman's right to choose. This is inevitable as the discussion surrounds a woman's right to genetically alter a fetus that is growing inside her body.

morningstar indicated that she didn't think abortion was healthy for the "greater good" and that it was sort of a conditional right, due to gender inequality in our present society. I disagree strongly with that type of assertion. I support a woman's right to have easy access to an abortion during the first 20 or so weeks of pregnancy, unless there are medical complications. I don't care if we are living in some sort of just, equal utopia in 100 years, that right should still exist.

[ 29 June 2006: Message edited by: EmmaG ]

Although selective abortion is being used to do Down's syndrome eugenics and gender based eugenics, it will probably be less of a factor in the future because genetic screening, both good and bad, will most probably be practiced outside the womb as more sophisticated techniques become more common and go down in price. then again, if outside the womb eugenics were illegal, but eugenics-by-abortion was regarded as a legal right, this might incentivize people to accomplish their eugenics by selective abortion, notwithstanding the extra effort, discomfort and health risk.

[ 29 June 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

For example, if one watches old videos, one notices that back in the 1940s, 1950s politicians often had very bad teeth, indeed, a lot of people had bad teeth. Nowadays, the middle and upper classes get whitenings when needed and buy braces for their children, whereas the lower classes who can't afford 5000-10, 000$ braces are doomed to be more ugly and thus taken less seriously in their professions, have less fulfilling love lives and ultimately less interesting lives overall. Now this will spread to genetics in the name of choice unfortunately.

In fact, I believe they do have that right in Canada.

Furthermore, I believe any debate on that issue is generated by people who don't give a damn about actual people who have Down's Syndrome, but rather, are desperately looking for phoney fraudulent pretexts to re-criminalize abortion.

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
. . . Furthermore, I believe any debate on that issue is generated by people who don't give a damn about actual people who have Down's Syndrome, but rather, are desperately looking for phoney fraudulent pretexts to re-criminalize abortion. . . . .

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quote:

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Originally posted by Farces:

Including the woman who wrote the Business Week article I linked?!?!?!
Cause I think she does care about Down's Syndrome children. I think her article proves it. Listen to her.

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quote:

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I would not want scientists to stop delving into the mysteries and wonders of the human genome. I am glad that I knew my son had Down syndrome before he was born.

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And she made the decision to carry her foetus to term in full knowledge of the consequences. That is her right and her choice.

In fact, it appears to be based on a heroic personal commitment to diversity and opposition to eugenics and to discrimination against the disabled. Thanks for linking to the article, I found it quite inspiring.

Nowhere did I see her recommend that women not have a right to know about the state of their foetus, as some babble-posters have done (as witness her quote above). And nowhere did I see her suggest that women should not have the right to determine, unconditionally, whether to carry to term a foetus with Down Syndrome.

I think the author of the article I linked is an example of this. I think there are other examples, including me.

Note to Michelle: there is no sarcasm in this post. Its wording may somewhat echo a previous post, but it is sincere and sincerely aimed at correcting a misunderstanding that somebody has. I mean every word.

[ 26 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

For a more critical perspective, there's this interview with Abby Lippman on feminist concerns about genetic testing. She's worried (rightly in my opinion) about the economic interests behind genetics, and the ways in which social problems can get scient-ized.

And then there's this literature review I found kicking around that works through what feminist perspectives on genetics/bio-ethics are emerging:

quote:

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The overriding vision of feminist bioethics is development of a nonhierarchical human community that optimizes the health and well being of all.

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quote:

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Indeed Farces nobody can win a steroids-induced genetic arms race except for the rich. These things are going to succeed the previous thousands of years of phenotypic arms race. . . .

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I have been thinking on this comment and some of the other comments along the same lines. While I think genetic engineering is fairly likely to become the largest catatrophe in human history, I don't see it playing out along the class warfare lines you do. Rather, I think it will be played out along nationalist lines.

To illustrate what I am talking about here, here is an evocative example/prediction of how things might go:

China decides that it best path to Chinese national preservation is to have the smartest / strongest / best children. Because China has a culture and history of ruthlessly controlling fertility, they choose exactly the path you would expect. They basically decree that the genetic makeup of every Chinese child must be approved by the government. Representatives of the government make all the genetic engineering choices. Probably the individual parent is left with the choice to have a child or not, but the genetic makeup will be a matter of government control.

Once this happens, every other nation will feel threatened, threatened that the Chinese will become superhumans and that the world will be powerless.

Now, in a place like the US or Canada, I don't think there is a cultural background that will allow the government to impose genetic engineering by law. So Canada won't exactly go Handmaiden's Tale. However, I think you will see an awful lot of welfare handouts aimed at "encouraging" mothers to make the desired genetic engineering "choices" on their own. If pregnancies move outside the womb, then these payments and benefits might be granted to both mothers and fathers -- just so long as you make the genetic engineering choices the government wants. "Wouldn't your child like $10,000 just for being born! Sign up for your Health Ontario strong-smart kids screening today!!! We pay for the screening, for your parking and will even throw in a free iPod." What poor parent to be could resist that kind of pitch?

Nor do I believe the government will be honest about the genetic engineering choices it subsidizes. They will sell the screening as preventing autism or diabetes or whatever, and it will turn out that -- well, whaddya know -- we just don't seem to have gay kids the way we used to. Hey, this new generation sure seems to be super-patriotic and even warlike. Rich people won't be giving this money out of the goodness of their hearts. They will want warriors, specifically warriors who have certain kinds of intelligence (good at math), but not other kinds (capable of appreciating the novel Handmaiden's Tale). Superfically the women will be making the choices, but the choices and incentives themselves will be structured to allow the government to engineer the society that the PM (that Magna woman who switched parties maybe?) and his rich buddies want.

This kind of GE will be packaged as social justice and as choice for poor women. I could see a lot of Americans, and perhaps even Canadians, falling for such a grotesque scheme. That is my prediction anyway. We are going to see some unprecedented generosity from the rich, but there will be a quid pro quo that very few people will understand or care about until it is too late.

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Farces:

China decides that it best path to Chinese national preservation is to have the smartest / strongest / best children. Because China has a culture and history of ruthlessly controlling fertility, they choose exactly the path you would expect. [...]

Now, in a place like the US or Canada, I don't think there is a cultural background that will allow the government to impose genetic engineering by law.

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I'm sure this wasn't intended as an ugly racist, xenophobic and culturally chauvinist stereotype, but I'm struggling to make the distinction.

Still struggling.

Chinese genocide: "There is a great deal of controversy over the number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward. Until the mid 1980s, when official census figures were finally published by the Chinese Government, little was known about the scale of the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the handful of Western observers allowed access during this time had been restricted to model villages where they were deceived into believing that Great Leap Forward had been a great success. There was also an assumption that the flow of individual reports of starvation that had been reaching the West, primarily through Hong Kong and Taiwan, must be localised or exaggerated as China was continuing to claim record harvests and was a net exporter of grain through the period. Censuses were carried out in China in 1953, 1964 and 1982. The first attempt to analyse this data in order to estimate the number of famine deaths was carried out by American demographer Dr Judith Banister and published in 1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses and doubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figure is difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958-61 and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed underreporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. Various other sources have put the figure between 20 and 43 million."

quote:

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Today compulsory sterilization programs are usually seen as overly coercive and blunt attempts at genetic engineering which focused disproportionately on poor and disenfranchized groups. The most well-known compulsory sterilization programs were those of Nazi Germany (which sterilized over 400,000 individuals in the 1930s and 1940s), the United States (which sterilized over 64,000 individuals from 1900s through the 1970s), and many Scandinavian countries (Sweden, for example, sterilized around 62,000 individuals from the 1930s through the 1970s).[...]

The first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics was the United States. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, the epileptic and the physically deformed. Native Americans were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge, while they were in a hospital for some other reason (e.g. after giving birth).[...]

Although far less well-known than the Nazi eugenics and American eugenic sterilization programs, two Canadian provinces performed compulsory sterilization programs with eugenic aims.[...]

The eugenic programs of Nazi Germany and the United States are strongly suggestive of racial, religious, and cultural targeting in their victims. Not surprisingly, a statistical study done on sterilization victims in Alberta has yielded data supporting the theory that its sterilization program was biased as well. Minors, because of their legal dependency on adults, were almost always assigned as "mental defectives", thus bypassing the parental consent requirement. Albertan aboriginals and métis, regardless of age, were also targeted.

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
Respect for human life and worth is far more deeply entrenched in Chinese society and culture than in a less advanced society such as that of the United States.

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Strong disagree on that.

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Originally posted by Farces:
Chinese fertility law: "The Planned Birth policy (Simplified: 计划生育 Jìhuà Shēngyù) is the birth control policy of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is known in Western society as the One-child Policy due to its enforced limit of one child per couple in urban areas.

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The Chinese were reacting at the time to warnings from a western-based group, the Club of Rome, about the dangers of exponential growth. An M.I.T. computer simulation demonstrated catastrophic consequences for unbridled birth rates in China and India. The simulation was proven to be false years later.

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Chinese genocide: "There is a great deal of controversy over the number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

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Chinese infant mortality was worse than India's in 1949. By 1976 at the time of Mao's death, China's IM rate was better than India's infant mortality today. Before the Maoist revolution, Chinese were born in rice paddies and died an average of 30 years later. Life expectancy was doubled in Mao's time.

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Originally posted by Farces:

I don't care whether it is the Chinese or the Germans or the Ugandans or the Swedes or the Iranians or the First Peoples who start imposing GE by law. Some country will, and the rest of my example will flow just as naturally as if the Chinese are the first adopters.

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In fact, countries such as Canada and the United States which once had legalized GE schemes (as in Alberta) have moved away from that. Likewise, even the United States, the most socially and culturally regressive of all the developed countries, has made some halting steps in directions such as juridical respect for some human rights, decriminalization of abortion, etc. (although I emphasize that the U.S. is about 40 years behind Canada in such respects). The trend is fortunately in favour of more respect for the rights of minorities, of the underprivileged, of women, of LGBT communities, etc.

Conclusion: I see absolutely no point to your ahistorical fearmongering about genetic engineering other than a backdoor attempt to re-criminalize abortion.

ON EDIT:
My supposed slander about Chinese culture is that they have a history of "ruthlessly controlling fertility." I stand by that. It is not slander bcs it is the truth.

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

Anyhow, I'm not sure I agree with you. The chinese government, chosen for the sake of consistent analogy, would not be able to impose universal GE in the short term due to costs. GE will start off, when it starts off, as extremely expensive, a luxury for the rich, similar to braces and laser eye surgery or hearing aids. As such buying GE for 30 million people a year in its ineffective early stages is an economic non-starter.

However, as expensive as it would be... some things would be easier to fix earlier along. Intelligence would probably come far later I would assume but specific diseases and physical characteristics such as height and blue eyes would be fixable much earlier. The rich would proceed to immediately make their advantage over the poor genetic in nature - it is only natural and instinctive to pursue self-survival and advantage - and the fluidity of class structure would become permanently more viscous and eventually rock-solid (speciation). Say you want your male child to be 6"3 and it costs 25, 000$... if you can afford it and thousands of people are doing it you probably will, thus guaranteeing him greater power in life.

I do agree with your hypotheses on government incentives for automatons to do specific skills. Women's choice as prioritized by some on this board would be one between having a designer baby costing them their life savings, or raising a "natural" who would be inferior and rejected by the rest of society. Right now in the education system we favour what's good for the system (medicine, law, engineering) and we would likely do the same for genetic engineering. In the novel Brave New Worls you had alphas... but you also had deltas and epsilons. (Interestingly, contrary to what unionist believes, I don't think Huxley was campaigning against abortion).

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
The U.S. government has been practicing infanticide for many years with it's bottom of the barrel infant mortality rates when compared to 29 other countries with socialized medicine and Cuba. It's called private health care.
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I wouldn't quite call it infanticide, but I know what you mean. Speaking as someone born and raised in the US who lived most of his adult life there, I hope for better things when GWB is gone (900 more days or so?). I still remember the last serious go-around with medicine reform and it was encouraging, ultimately unsuccessful because Hillary Clinton (who seemed to be in charge of PR) was just not ready for primetime in 93.

Maybe I should have written my little scare story with the US as villain instead of China. then Unionist wouldn't be so distracted with the China luv. the point is that once one country decides on a nationwide, rigorous GE, all the other countries will, too. Its all in Dr. Strangelove and pay especial attention to the part about the mineshaft gap.

Apples: I disagree with Apples in the sense that while this technology will be introduced through rich people (that is always good PR in that rich people are smashing, just smashing), it is going to become a tool of military and economic competition. that means everybody smart and nobody on disability. It means people need to be focused and obedient. It will help if people can't get pleasantly drunk from alcohol, high from pot or euphoric from cocaine. It means that everybody in your country will need to be that way to compete with other countries where everybody is being built that way. Business leaders may not fund education very well, but I think they will trust GE to deliver what they want for their tax dollar.

More Apples: what I think rich people, in their role as parents and prospective parents, will pay for is control of the screening, they will pay to excercise screening choices that the government isn't paying people to make. Maybe in the US your child will need gov't approved screening to be eligible for public schools. The rich don't send theirs to public schools anyway, not even the Clintons. I guess you may have a point in that the rich may have different (and maybe more successful) children than the poor after governments take effective control of GE, but for society I think the real danger is what government funded, encouraged and rewarded GE screening will do to the 95% of the population with the rump end of the wealth.

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

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[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

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Originally posted by Farces:
I wouldn't quite call it infanticide, but I know what you mean.

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I think it is a form of planned and enforced infanticide,. And the reason I say that is because few other countries can afford to change their own mortality statistics like the U.S. is able to. The conservative ideology is still there though and will die hard.

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Maybe I should have written my little scare story with the US as villain instead of China. then Unionist wouldn't be so distracted with the China luv.

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Perhaps I should be clearer as well. China achieved remarkable things in the last century over what was the norm for century after imperialist century. The United States also made remarkable progress after WWII, and it was viewed by the world as sanctuary for the tired and downtrodden - kind of like England before Maggie got her mits on it. And Americans been dealing with a powerful right-wing lobby that has become the most influential political force since at least that fateful day in Dallas. The left in the U.S. has to dig its heels in and make a stand.

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the point is that once one country decides on a nationwide, rigorous GE, all the other countries will, too. Its all in Dr. Strangelove and pay especial attention to the part about the mineshaft gap.

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I think that the debate on GE and ethics will be fed in large part by groups within the U.S. and on both sides of it. I think Apple's example for making a child taller than average is benign. They can do things like that now without so much engineering of genes. I think what scientists find frightening now is the loss of "biodiversity" with man-made vegetable and grain crops, for example because they say we can't know all of the consequences. And what about jigging the human gene pool?. They will be tinkering with evolution at that point. 6'5" potential basketball stars aside, I want a kid with a brain the size of a planet. Who will control that kind of stuff?. All in all, it could be a good thing in the end because the world needs smarter people and more of them. We can't afford to spend so much time and effort with wars and political standoffs anymore.