I almost certainly wouldn’t have because I most likely would have been too poor for that.
I think it would have seemed sensible to me that only property owners could vote.
We tend to react emotionally, i.e. “I never would have been that bad”. My question is whether, assuming I had studied Greek and Hebrew and Latin and such back then just as now, whether I would have seen slavery as acceptable. I suspect I wouldn’t have given that the ancient argument of the church, that owning one for whom Christ had died was blasphemous, was being used. Yet on the other hand I don’t know that I would have been more than a mild abolitionist rather than a fervent one.
I most likely would have supported voluntary eugenics, urging people with deleterious traits not to marry and thus risk reinforcing those traits. Forced eugenics never made sense to me because it always struck me as contrary to “all men are created equal”.
Ditto. Plus, I would’ve been born either in Germany or England, and it’s against my religion.
Ummm, some of us were born in the early 60s and grew up in Texas (me!). My dad was a racist who routinely used the N-word and supported George Wallace for president. I’d already begun to reject that ideology by the time I was 15. So, no, it’s not delusional for me to say that I wouldn’t have supported any of those things. It’s delusional for you to lecture those of us who lived through it.
I was having some of those same thoughts. The ethical dilemmas haven’t gone away, that is for sure. There are families that have multiple children with cystic fibrosis, and it does make me think why they would continue to have children knowing the suffering they may face. I think we, as a society, have correctly put primacy on individual rights, but the ethical dilemma still sits there.
Added in edit:
I would also add that eugenics seems to reject Darwinian evolution on some level. If the goal is a fitter human species then we shouldn’t have to do anything. Natural selection will work all on its own without any artificial help from us. If the stated goal is to preserve specific phenotypes (based on racism and bigotry) through artificial means then that seems to be an admission that those phenotypes are less fit. Eugenics seems like a self defeating argument, at least in my eyes.
I sure appreciate Dr Davis’ thoughtful questions here. It seems there are lots of parallels (and also some dissimilarities) with medical choice, though I hate to dive too deeply into that, as it could be a red herring.
I keep coming back to remembering there may not be a perfect answer; and maybe we need opposing ideas to come to the best one.
It certainly helps me to overcome some chronological snobbery. We are not as strong as we think we are!
Or it’s an admission that we want to breed humans like we breed dogs, favoring certain traits and disfavoring others. It’s morally repugnant in any era of human history. As a Christian, I find it even worse. The whole point of Gen 1:26-27 is that all of humanity is created in the image of God.
Some traits should be disfavored since they are obviously not beneficial to those with them. Color blindness comes to mind.
And some should be favored, like one I recently read about, a woman who can see farther into the UV than anyone ever recorded; that would be nice to have all around.
The trouble is when traits are selected not for the benefit of those getting them but for that of those implementing them.
Personally I’d happily release a bio-agent that would result in all light-skinned people have nice dark tans, since the melanin involved helps protect against cancer.
Ok, I’m playing devil’s advocate–is there such a thing as higher thought evolution, and like with understanding the universe, it could be argued that favoring healthy genes is understandable? Do we do that with the recent CRISPR treatments for sickle cell, for example; or this case. Babies from three people’s DNA prevents hereditary disease
the problem appears to be the prevention of some people from having reproductive rights.
There is a reason why some are pale (light-skinned or ‘white’). Darker skin has been a disadvantage at the northern latitudes. A slightly higher risk of cancer has been outweighed with the ability to produce more vitamin D from the weak sunlight of the north. The dark-skinned people have suffered from the health problems of not getting enough of vitamin D and have disappeared, at least partly because of the health problems.
When humans start to manipulate the genes, we tend to think too narrowly. If a genetic mutation causes much suffering to the person, it is well worth the effort to try to get rid of the suffering. In most cases, the apparent handicap might be a disadvantage in the current conditions but might give an advantage in another type of environment.
Even color blindness might give an advantage in special conditions. One colorblind person in the military wondered the rationale of camouflage nets used in the military. For him, the camouflage nets were very discernible - what was good at hiding targets from the eyes of a normal person made the targets more distinct for the colorblind person.
I do not remember what type of color blindness he had; it is likely that the pros and cons would differ depending on the type of color blindness.
The best way to get people with tan skins would be to increase the mixing of people around the globe. That seems to be against the hopes of many.
There is an underlying notion here that we, as humans know what is best and are prepared to usurp nature or creation to get it. Even if Evolution was still happening within humanity chances are modern medicine would cut it out before it took effect. We enhance ourselves to resist things that we naturally are fallible to. it is ironic that a child brought up in squalor is more likely to be resistant to certain gastric diseases just because they have not been protected by artificial cleansers and sterilisers. You end up with the “War of the Worlds” get out twist, that the invaders had been so diligent in cleanliness that they became susceptible to our bacteria.
There are enough examples of human caused ecological disasters to show that we do not either think things through, or simply understand the consequences of our actions. Hey, just make everybody black! (or at least chocolate)
There is no such thing as “higher” in evolution. I think this is a concept from Victorian times where ideology crept into the science. In the original usage, higher meant more like humans which is a bit egotistical. It even carried over into Linnaean taxonomy with names such as primate (“first”) and eutherian (“true mammals”).
Whether we should favor certain genes is a question of ethics and morality, not science (at least in my opinion). With that said, I think it is entirely understandable to encourage carriers of disease related genes to consider whether they should have children, such as couples who are both carriers of the CF allele. However, as eugenics was viewed in the 100+ years ago, unfavorable genes were determined by which race carried them. It was just thinly veiled racism that attempted to use a scientific theory to justify it. It’s not as if racism just suddenly appeared after Darwin wrote Origin of Species.
That’s what I am seeing as well, especially when those rights are tied to which race you belong to.
My grandfather served in WW II at airfields in Italy. He fueled the planes and was on rescue duty for crashed planes. He was also colorblind, and he was often taken up with other colorblind soldiers to look for camouflaged enemy positions. I always found that fascinating. He also adapted as a farmer. I don’t know how he did it, but he was always able to tell when crops had turned a certain colors, such as when beans turned yellow when they were ready for harvest.
Do we know that any of those is connected to a genetic trait? and do we have the ability to change said trait?
If not, then it’s not eugenics anyway; that word just becomes an excuse to indulge the urge to treat other people like cattle.
No, it was bigotry invoking science as an excuse. Is it bigotry to fix, say, a congenital trait such as a bent spine? Is it bigotry to tell two people, “You share trait X and your children will have a 3/4 chance of having its debilitating defect”?
Having children with genetic defects when those could have been prevented is just another form of torture.
The Canadian story relative to this issue is similar. The percentage of their citizens who reject evolution is probably lower (I don’t have polling data at hand), simply because Canada is more secular; but, what went down here also went down there.
