Eugenics

What do you think of eugenics?

  • Total voters
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If you can't understand what eugenics is, don't respond. The reason behind it is to push natural selection and advance the species, as well as more practical reasons such as healthier people. It doesn't claim that disabled people can't be great, but that it's better for people not to be disabled
 
Sorry but I have given no indication that I don't understand what it is. I also voted the "other" option
 
SheWolf said:
Do you need everything spelled out?

Because you just said a person's disability has no effect on how great of a person they may turn out. So why eliminate them?
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You demonstrate this here.

It means you don't understand what the purpose of eugenics is, or at least, why some people support it.
 
How does my opinion that we shouldn't control who mates and who doesn't, who's sterilized, or who's prevented from being conceived/born, mean that I don't understand eugenics?
 
SheWolf said:
How does my opinion that we shouldn't control who mates and who doesn't, who's sterilized, or who's prevented from being conceived/born, mean that I don't understand eugenics?
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You asked "why eliminate them?". Either you see no reason to, or you don't understand the reason behind why.
 
Norsefire said:
You asked "why eliminate them?". Either you see no reason to, or you don't understand the reason behind why.
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So in order to understand eugenics I have to be for it?
I'm against it insofar as it involves an authority purposefully controlling and directing it. Which part of that do you not understand?
 
vslayer said:
we have no right to tell other people whether they can or cant breed.
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We already exercise the right to imprison certain people.

A eugenics program of sterilization would ensure that these people have little influence over future generations...either genetically or socially.
 
SheWolf said:
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I don't think we have any right to weed out anyone or stop anyone from mating.
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Here's someone with a good plan:
story.strip.sign.jpg

A California woman's campaign to offer drug-addicted women $200 if they get on long-term birth control has resulted in angry confrontations with critics who call the idea racist and anti-poor.

Barbara Harris, who has adopted four children born to a drug- addicted mother, funds the program with private donations. She says something must be done to stop the cycle of addiction and pregnancy that has resulted in 800,000 babies being born drug-addicted in the United States.

"They're getting pregnant only because they're irresponsible," says Harris. She says 87 women have taken her up on her offer. Most have chosen sterilization, she says.

'It's a cheap shot'

But some critics believe that the message of the program is that when people are poor, their children don't count.

"It's a cheap shot. These people are already down, and then you're going to wave $200 (in front of them)," says Ethel Long-Scott of the Womens' Economic Agenda Project. "Everybody knows that's not going to help you get housing and that's not going to help you get medical treatment."

Both the Catholic Church and Planned Parenthood also oppose the program.

"To offer them money in a situation where it could be just feeding their habit -- it really smacks of coercion," says Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood.

Harris says many of these woman refuse to go into drug programs. If they are on birth control, she says they at least won't be having more babies while they are on the street.

And Harris, who is white, also takes issue with critics who call her project racist. She says more white women have used the program than black women. She took one of her adopted sons, who is black, to a recent protest where her program was assailed.

"Drug addicts come in all colors. And for these women to assume that every drug addict that comes to us is black -- that's stereotyping their own race," she says.

Sign torn down

But her arguments did little to sway the crowd in Oakland, where protesters ripped the face off a billboard touting the program. Harris says that kind of reaction only toughens her resolve to continue the project. http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/23/no.crack.babies/index.html
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It seems to me that if you're willing to be sterilized for $200, you don't deserve to breed.
 
if its for society's benefit, why can't the government provide incentives for the fit and smart to mate, and provide incentives for the unfit and dumb to be sterile? everyone wins.
 
just saw madanthony's post, i support the idea. its doing way more good than harm, drug addicted babies with drug addicted mothers are in a fucked up situation. i assume the sterilisation is just an iud or something, if they control their addiction they can have babies later. and is 200 bucks worth of drugs gonna make that big a difference to anyone? they'll have a crazy weekend, who cares?
 
Norsefire said:
From wikipedia,

To put if in laymen's terms, eugenics is basically breeding by natural selection. It's taking the healthiest, fittest, most genetically "superior" members of society, and breeding them, and discouraging the "inferior" from breeding.

The ethical issues should be obvious. First, when I say "superior" and "inferior", I'm not referring to race or anything. I mean, people who are genetically "stronger" or "fitter", or healthier, or however you put it.

The problem is, who decides what is "better"?

As for me, I think eugenics is OK if we are unbiased in how we implement it; ensure truly that people aren't discriminated on the basis of race or nationality or something like that. Then, we can encourage or implement the breeding of the fittest. The reason is because this can help push the evolution and health of our own species.

If you wish to read it more in detail, here is the entire page on eugenics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Suggestions_and_ideas
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Eugenics should only be used to further the advances of gene splicing technology, once the superior genes are created/ bred, they should be spliced/replicated and implanted in those that need it.
Now, If the technology were there ,Then this would be a truly altruistic society.
 
I would not object to eugenics being practiced by couples who used technology in an attempt to have what they considered to be the best possible children. I would not object to abortion due to dissatifaction with some analysis of the embryo.

It is eugenic programs run by politicians that are abbhorrent. Almost anything run or regulated by politicians seems to become a mess.
 
What if you have the genes for one trait such as being very intelligent, but not being physically fit or have a disease? If you sterilize that person to prevent their flabbiness from being passed on you would eliminate their genes for intelligence. And just because your parents were messed up doesn't mean you will be too. My grandmother had polio and can't walk without the aid of a brace. So she would have been sterilized. So then my aunt and mother who are healthy would have never been born. I think eugenics goes against nature. Genes are tricky little things. By eliminating one that you think is "bad" you might also be eliminating one that is good. Like the whole thing with malaria and sickle cell.
 
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