• barsoap
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    2 months ago

    Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?

    Nothing. That’s what health insurance is for. Also practically noone has any issues with preimplantation diagnostics when it comes to things that are clearly genetic diseases, what rubs people the wrong way is a) selecting by bullshit criteria, e.g. sex, eye colour, curliness of hair, whatever, b) making designer babies the default at the expanse of erm wild ones, worst of all, c) the combination.

    And ethics aside the arguments should be obvious it’s also a bad idea from the POV of the honest eugenicist: Humanity’s genetic diversity is already low as it is it would be fatal to allow things like fashions to narrow it down even more.

    Humanity is already shaping its own selection criteria, we might need to start doing something extra to avoid evolving ourselves into a corner by non-PID means. Random example: C-Sections. No mother or baby should die in childbirth, yet, the selective pressure towards more uncomplicated births getting removed might, over many many many generations, leave us with very few women who would survive a natural birth which doesn’t sound like a good situation for a species to be in, to be reliant on technology to even reproduce. Thus is might become prudent to artificially select for e.g. wide-hip genes.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, but nobody here is suggesting racial criteria. This article is specifically about screening for health issues. Reading more into it, it seems like they’ve paired big data with genetic screening to lay odds on health problems that aren’t just a single gene going the wrong way.

      Edit to add, there’s no such thing as an ethical Eugenicist. The theory was based on racism and sterilizing “undesirables”. This isn’t Eugenics.

      • barsoap
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        2 months ago

        This isn’t Eugenics.

        There’s a debate about that ongoing, whether the word and basic idea can be divorced from its history with scientific racism. I don’t really have a skin in the game but would like to point out that psychiatry didn’t cease to be called psychiatry when we stopped physically abusing inmates, showing them off to gawkers, whatnot, got rid of phrenology, etc. You can make arguments both for “we must start from a clean slate” as well as “let’s own the bullshit of the past to have something to teach students to not do”.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          That’s because phrenoloy and the other theories are under Psychiatry and Psychology. You don’t throw out Astronomy because of Heliocentrism. Eugenics was specifically developed to produce racial outcomes. It’s a theory, not a field of science.

          • barsoap
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            2 months ago

            It’s first and foremost a word meaning as much as “good stock”, or, more modern, “good genes”. Nazis didn’t actually use it, at least not prominently, they were all about “racial hygiene” – very different implications.

            As to “specifically developed” I’m not so sure I don’t know enough about Galton. What I do know is that he first did e.g. twin studies to figure out the relative importance of nature vs. nurture and stuff. People motivated by hate don’t tend to be that thorough meaning if he had more information he might’ve ended up on the other side of the fence but as said I don’t know nearly enough about his work to actually draw conclusions, ask a literary critic or such.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              His base assumption was something called genetic determinism. Which is exactly what it sounds like and exactly as debunked as you would think. He also tried to link body build and head measurements to genetic determinism.

              And No. The Nazis absolutely loved Eugenics. The entire Western world did. The Nazis literally made it a required subject in grade school.

              Eugenics needs to go die in a fire. There’s no need to resurrect the name or practices when we’re talking about actual genetic science.

              • barsoap
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                2 months ago

                The Nazis absolutely loved Eugenics. The entire Western world did. The Nazis literally made it a required subject in grade school.

                I was talking about words. Said required subject was called Rassenlehre, very much not a calque of eugenics.

                There’s no need to resurrect the name or practices when we’re talking about actual genetic science.

                If anti-racist biologists want to reclaim the word, or even appropriate it as the case may be, I’m not going to call them racists over it. That needs to be judged by the practices.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Yeah that’s not whose arguing we should put call genetic modification eugenics. And the Germans didn’t use an English word? Shocking. Truly shocking.

                  • barsoap
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                    2 months ago

                    Yeah that’s not whose arguing we should put call genetic modification eugenics.

                    I’m sorry but that sentence doesn’t parse for me.

                    And the Germans didn’t use an English word? Shocking. Truly shocking.

                    It’s not an English but Greek word and yes it exists in German. Nazis (unsurprisingly) weren’t big on loan words but it doesn’t end there: The non-racially charged German word would be Erbgesundheitslehre, erm, “erf health lore”. Just as neutral as a term as “genome health theory” would be. But that’s not what the Nazis used, they specifically used a term that included “race”.

                    One factor that comes to mind which would make me, if I were a geneticist, argue in favour of the term would be people using the term “eugenics” to smear things like screening and IFV to get rid of Hutchinson’s. Sure the field has plenty of ethical question marks but much of it is perfectly kosher, yet there’s people who are opposed on principle and are fighting hella dirty. Re-claiming, even appropriating the term then gets you out of the defensive.

                    But, as said: I don’t have a skin in the game. As said, there’s arguments for and against.