Eradicating genetic disabilities

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TerrorSperg99

TerrorSperg99

eugenics advocate
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jan 14, 2017
Would it be possible to eradicate hereditary disabilities like autism and other forms of mental abnormalities through prenatal screening. Would we ever see a world where no one is born disabled. Why are we putting more money into this all these disabilities cause is suffering for the afflicted and those around them.
 
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Would it be possible to eradicate hereditary disabilities like autism and other forms of mental abnormalities through prenatal screening. Would we ever see a world where no one is born disabled.
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Iceland already has a similar idea though narrower in scope. Even without requiring women get the screening or making any babies found to have Down syndrome be aborted their rate is very low. There isn't any prebirth autism testing I'm aware of and it usually begins in early childhood rather than in utero so you couldn't eradicate autism, but getting rid of Down syndrome and other chromosmal disorders? It'd be entirely possible but extremely difficult and probably unethical.
Why are we putting more money into this all these disabilities cause is suffering for the afflicted and those around them.
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Many are opposed to abortion for reasons other than a few narrow categories. That and eugenics in general does tend to make most people uncomfortable due to the association with Nazi Germany and scientific racism and some claim aborting an abnormal baby is "ableism." Some even call what Iceland does "genocide."
 
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No. People don't like abortions, even if they actually would serve a purpose by eradicating the bad genes from the pool. The autism/down syndrome babies supposedly deserve just as much respect and "life", even if they are just going to be a drain on their families/society in the end.

I really don't care about how "unethical" it would be either. I don't understand why healthy genes are not just the gold standard when it comes to humanity. And because of this B.S. we now have "out and proud" autistics and downies marrying normal, healthy people, and passing on their fucked up genes through their children, continuing such cycles. What's arguably worse about this are the normal people themselves who wholeheartedly see no problem with dating/marrying within the fucked up gene pool, when they could've very easily got with another normal person and had normal children with little to no possible problems for their children.
 
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No. We don't know nearly enough about many medical and psychiatric conditions to understand their origins clearly yet. Plus, prenatal screening would still miss all the congenital conditions that occur after the screening is done, as well as all the ones that will occur because no screening is 100% sensitive and specific, as well as all the conditions that are a result of the peri-natal and neonatal environment. Then you have the conditions that are phenocopies, where someone may have a predisposition and just the wrong environment will cause it to manifest, whereas if they are never subjected to that kind of environment, it will never occur. Since no one can predict the future, phenocopic disorders are impossible to determine in advance. If you wanted to err on the side of caution, you could just murder all the fetuses that have a phenocopic potential. However, the laws of statistics indicate that, on average, 50% of all the fetuses you kill will turn out fine, so at that point you are murdering babies that never would have had a problem. I think everyone can agree that is just straight up fucking wrong and evil.

So, I'm sorry, aspiring Führer, but your simple and pure world isn't realistic nor possible because life is neither simple nor pure, it is a constant struggle through an endless sea of shit, and then you die.
 
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Unfortunately many babies born with genetic malformations are either killed or abandoned, especially if the parents are poor or live in places where they won't be punished. So even if prenatal screening was forbidden, infanticide would still be a common practice.
 
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Another major sticking point when it comes to "eradicating genetic disability" is what exactly qualifies as a disability; realistically the idea of "disability" is a human invention in a lot of cases.

A specific example they sometimes use in biology classes is sickle cell anemia. It's a disorder that, as its name suggests, causes deformation of red blood cells which compromises their ability to carry oxygen. It's also known to be a disease that's more common among those of African descent.
So obviously that's just a flaw and evidence of genetic inferiority, right? We should totally get rid of that.

Thing is those adapted to live in Africa have it more often for a very good reason: it turns out that sickle cell anemia is also a major resistance factor against malaria. So what would at first glance appear to be a genetic disorder, in fact, confers a selective advantage under other circumstances.

And that's what a lot of this shit comes down to. Humans aren't nearly as good at figuring out what should and shouldn't be as they like to think, and whether we're talking biology or law or w/e it may be, trying to shove one's hands in there and play god winds up backfiring far more often than not.
So even if eugenics was an ok idea in theory (which is highly debatable; to direct the human genome life would have to have an objective universally agreed upon goal, which it doesn't), humans could never execute it on themselves. We're too fallible and prone to bias.
 
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Uberpenguin said:
Another major sticking point when it comes to "eradicating genetic disability" is what exactly qualifies as a disability; realistically the idea of "disability" is a human invention in a lot of cases.

A specific example they sometimes use in biology classes is sickle cell anemia. It's a disorder that, as its name suggests, causes deformation of red blood cells which compromises their ability to carry oxygen. It's also known to be a disease that's more common among those of African descent.
So obviously that's just a flaw and evidence of genetic inferiority, right? We should totally get rid of that.

Thing is those adapted to live in Africa have it more often for a very good reason: it turns out that sickle cell anemia is also a major resistance factor against malaria. So what would at first glance appear to be a genetic disorder, in fact, confers a selective advantage under other circumstances.

And that's what a lot of this shit comes down to. Humans aren't nearly as good at figuring out what should and shouldn't be as they like to think, and whether we're talking biology or law or w/e it may be, trying to shove one's hands in there and play god winds up backfiring far more often than not.
So even if eugenics was an ok idea in theory (which is highly debatable; to direct the human genome life would have to have an objective universally agreed upon goal, which it doesn't), humans could never execute it on themselves. We're too fallible and prone to bias.
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That's true, but more importantly this is one reason why we don't need to entrust a central authority with holding the keys to reproduction. Who is to say we can trust them to always do what is sensible and reasonable? Holding that much power is just asking for it to be abused. That and the government taking away someone's right to reproduce under any circumstances seems like vast overreach. It has less to do with the physical effect than the implications. That implication being that big brother government knows best for us and will tell us how we live our lives.
 
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I think people who have genetic disabilities should forgo having kids (powerlevel: have a genetic disability that would pass to my child 100 percent of the time), but I don't think the government has any place mandating who pops out a baby. It is the couple's choice alone, even if they make a really stupid choice and shat out a freshly baked potato. People have a right to be absolute morons. If they didn't, Kiwifarms would have no content.
 
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Jesus Quintana said:
Unfortunately many babies born with genetic malformations are either killed or abandoned, especially if the parents are poor or live in places where they won't be punished. So even if prenatal screening was forbidden, infanticide would still be a common practice.
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I've seen a few documentaries about this. When the kid is mentally normal but physically deformed it's very sad. Because the third world countries don't have the resources available to poor parents like they do here. And cultural beliefs may cause neighbors to believe you are cursed.

I know some downies and autists are against screenings and there are even some laws against aborting downies. But the issue is that you are often only shown the best case scenario. A downie who can live semi-independently and is employable. You don't see individuals who are utterly helpless by themselves and suffer severe health problems.

Same with autism. And since so many tumblr kiddies self diagnose because "lol I'm quirky" if you take that as face value you don't see a lot of glaring problems. But I had a friend growing up whose bad seed brother set the house on fire. There was an autistic older brother in the house who had to be dragged out by firemen. He was huddled in his usual corner and refusing to move. He was completely non-verbal and just sat in the same place all day. The fire wasn't catostrophic. But he easily could have died of smoke inhalation had he not been dragged out. People like this require a lifetime of care. That means when you are gone or can no longer handle your child someone else has to do it.

I'm not devaluing severely disabled people. But I would not want to deal with it. My life has been difficult enough. I'm sure many feel the same way. there is nothing shameful about wanting a mentally normal child.
 
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No, we should make laws forbidding autists to marry non-autistics. Autists are literally the next step in human evolution
 
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