Re:A little story in how this is dangerous
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· Score: 1
And the simple fact of life is, we still need ditch-diggers and ag workers and Walmart clerks
First, I guess you haven't been to a modern store lately. Around here even the cheapest grocery store replaced manned checkouts with user operated checkouts. As for ditch diggers there are still people who like the work. Years ago while between jobs and attending college I worked two or three days a week when I didn't have a class through a daily labor pool. People there tried to get picked to be sent to work for garbage collection, that was one of the preferred jobs. Others wanted to be picked for construction work. That's how I got my last full-time job, I was sent to a construction site and at the end of the day the supervisor asked me if I wanted a full-time job with him and I said yes. The rest of the week I worked through the labor pool then the supervisor hired me.
Not in this instance. There are way too many people using it in those ways outside of your control.
But as more people learn they may correct other, more, people. Nothing suddenly happens, most things require a lot of work. This happened when people started using "liberal" incorectly and it can happen when people correct others.
Yep, and no matter how many people you attempt to corect, when you call yourself a hacker, there will be people thinking your a script kiddie attempting to steal credit card numbers to make your super female love bot.
Only if they are not corrected, which I try to do whenever someone uses a word incorrectly. As for myself, I don't call or consider myself a hacker. I know I do not have the skills or knowledge to be one. Which is unfortunate, since the late '70s when I first learned about them I wanted to be a hacker in the mold of those at MIT and in California. I wanted to both program like the software hackers and build hardware like the hardware hackers. Back then one of my favorite magazines was "Byte magazine. I loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. In part because of them I decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering in college.
Well, not. It isn't about freedom of the body as you mention.
Yes, it is, Liberty is about controlling one's own body. There are some libertarians though who do not support abortion but for most it is about controlling your body.
Abortion effects the child's body too.
Embryos and fetuses are not children, if not aborted they may become children but before birth they are not.
That goes against the entire 'as long as you don't harm another'.
Since they are not humans no human is harmed.
Of course the pro-choice crowd use tricks and change terms much like we are talking about to turn an unborn child into just a cysts or something other then another human life.
So do fake pro lifers. One example is with Intact dilation and extraction. Ask pro lifers if they would allow IDE if the mother's life is in danger and most will say no, so they are not for pro life.
I personally believe it starts at conception and will only concede ground only up to a point where a baby can be reasonably expected to survive outside the human body with or without medical assistance.
Would you allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger? If not you're not a pro lifer.
At whatever stage-age that can happen, there is no way to claim the child isn't a human.
To you but not to others, yet you would dictate to others your beliefs.
Drug use is often results in people who can't control their addiction and end up stealing from others
Only because drugs are illegal. Legalize drugs again and the prices will drop. However alcohol can do the same thing but it's legal.
they end up getting depressed or escaping reality and jumping off buildings
So what? Who are you to tell others they can't "escape reality" or jump off a building? As long as a person does not harm another they should be able to do whatever they want with their own body. This is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. Because of an accident I had more than 10 years ago while I was attending college I now have a disability and can't do most of the things I used to do. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I live but my life as been a living hell. If I could I'd rather commit hari kari or seppuku
All the owners getting striked against are all Democrats - like Speilberg, Geffen, Katzenberg and more...
Citation needed.
I mean, I know you hate Bush, but as a politician, there are so many things he could have done at any given time to improve his own situation. Bush always had it in his head that if he did his policies successfully, then his personal popularity didn't matter.
You're right in that Bush didn't care about his own popularity, what mattered to him was his business buddies and the so called conservative Christians.
Unless you can point out where self selection is not allowed, and most definitions do not bar it, then it does apply.
You are referring to the situation in which two possible parents would voluntarily ("self-select") choose to comply and to participate with a policy based on eugenics. If that were true, they would NOT create fertilized embryos in the first place.
Excuse me but couples do that all the tyme, that's exactly what In vitro fertilisation, IVF, is all about. Couples use it frequently when they are not able to conceive a child naturally. All this clinic does is extend IVF so those couples can choose which fertilized eggs they will use.
Eugenics is generally defined as selective breeding based on human characteristics.
Show me one dictionary definition wherein force or laws are used to select those human characteristics. Here, I'll help with a link to a bunch of dictionaries, OneLook, I'll even include the link to eugenics.
I'll admit I didn't check all of the definitions, but I did check the first 5 and none of the said anything about the use of force. The closest is the first one which does say permitting reproduction, from MSN Encarta which says "selective breeding as proposed human improvement: the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable. It has been regarded with disfavor since the Nazi period."
I only said it was closer to abortion, not that it was abortion. Both abortion and whatever this is both involve fertilized embryos. The similarity ends there.
That's right the similarity ends with both involving fertilized eggs, so why did you compare it to abortion?
Not defined by me. Defined by various online dictionaries, medical texts, and Sir Franis Galton himself. How you and others define it is irrelevant and incorrect.
Not how I define it but how all those dictionary definitions I linked to above define it.
Did you even look up the definition or just arrogantly assumed you were correct? Spot checking onelook has entries that all support my statement that eugenics exclusively involves selective breeding and therefore the actions of this company don't meet it.
Check what I say above. Quite simply when parents pick a fertilized egg they are selecting it. Don't believe me, check this thesaurus select: "Definition: pick out, prefer from among choices". Of those 9 definitions you provide only 4 say anything about the discouraging unfit people from reproducing and encouraging those who are fit. Those are Encarta, Cambridge, InfoPlease, and SFF.NET That's less than half.
I got tired at this point, but needless to say it seems that the vast majority of online references prove that I am correct
I too am tired of this, so I'll end after one more statement. Four out of nine references is not a "vast majority" of references, that's not even half.
How do you distinguish between what you describe and eugenics?
I do it by using the definition of eugenics . For instance, eugenics: "a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed". No where in there does it say force or laws are used. What it does say is "control of human mating" and that's what the potential parents who go to this clinic are doing, they are picking which fertilized eggs they will use.
Ok, uh: If the child doesn't end up looking like the parent wanted, presumably they'll face a greater than average chance of rejection.
That already happens. Not only do parents reject children but they also beat and abuse them.
What if I really want a kid with no immune system? Or if the 4-arms option requires no immune system also? I wouldn't be the one killing the kid with an infection, but my action would be indirectly responsible, regardless.
Ah, you've got to make shit up to justify making something illegal.
As you will make up whatever you want to justify your position, whether it's basesd on facts or not, I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
The Fairness Doctrine will never be brought back.
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It's a right-wing boogeyman. Instead, we have the Money Doctrine, which dictates that wealthy media conglomerates are granted perpetual licenses to use the public airwaves.
That I agree with. That's why government started licensing radio. Originally the airwaves were homesteaded. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission in 1926 the airwaves were homesteaded, the first person in a specific location who broadcasted on a specific frequency courts ruled had the right to that frequency. Wealthy businesses and people didn't like this though so they pushed congress to require licensing.
I think that Republicans want the Fairness Doctrine back.
Except Republicans like Senator DeMint oppose the fairness doctrine. Having said that, I also found this saying Franken also opposes it. I also found this which says "Some Democrats have added fuel to the fire by suggesting a fondness for its return, while others say the issue is a straw horse and a distraction." It doesn't name name though.
If you do research with federal money, you are required to make your findings available.
It may be open source in the since that anyone could see it but just because it government funded doesn't mean anyone can use the info. I've posted before about how the cancer drug Taxol was funded and developed by the National Cancer Institute, NCI. The NCI is a government office and it spent $183 million to develop Taxol. Bristol-Myers Squibb then "bought" the exclusive rights to all of the NCI's data, which was needed to win FDA approval of Taxol as a cancer drug, for less than $50 million.
It is nice to be able to say that that's all eugenics means but it isn't accurate.
No. It is accurate. I am working with the accepted definitions from various online dictionaries. I cannot find a single one that does not have the limitation of selective breeding.
And the parents that use this clinic are selecting which fertilized eggs will be used. No government is dictating which eggs they can and can not use.
MSN Encarta: "selective breeding as proposed human improvement: the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable. It has been regarded with disfavor since the Nazi period."
Merriam-Webster: "a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed"
Cambridge: "the study of methods of improving humans by allowing only carefully chosen people to reproduce"
Websters: "the movement devoted to improving the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating"
Only the first one says parents may not be self selecting, though it does say eugenics is looked on unfavorably since the NAZIs.
Eugenics is a horrifically offensive behavior and this is NOT IT. Eugenics is when I tell you that dark skinned people cannot have babies with light skinned people. Eugenics is when the German government told people that Jews could not have children with non-Jews.
What the NAZIs did was not eugenics, what they did was racist.
What this company does it closer to abortion.
BS! Abortion is removing an embryo that has already been implanted in the uterus. In this case the embryos aren't even inserted into the uterus.
Please don't use the word "eugenics" since the only accepted definition of the word references a truly abhorrent behavior that should never be approved of, which is what you have done through your ignorance of the word.
Defined by you but plenty of others use a different definition than you do. Don't believe me, look at all the definitions OneLook provides for eugenics.
Falcon
Re:A little story in how this is dangerous
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· Score: 1
So convince me that in selecting the "perfect" health gene and high intelligence gene we are not also potentially removing other genetic traits that might appear to be useless at the moment but which may offer resistance to some future virus or similar threat?
You've got it backwards, if you want to make something illegal you need to convince me it is inherently dangerous.
Not to mention the social problems of trying to find a road sweeper or janitor when we are all giving birth to baby Einsteins.
Who says everyone wants to be an Einstein? I worked as a janitor and whie some I worked with wanted more than to just work as one, others liked the work. I was in college myself before, during, and after. But in case you haven't heard there's this thing called the Rumba vacuum as well as other cleaning aids.
Reducing the gene pool is bad for the longevity of the species. As the gene pool becomes more homogeneous the risk of a species exterminating disease increases
Who says the human gene pool will become homogeneous? Sure some might choose blondes with blue eyes but others will choose redheads with green eyes. And others may not make any choices.
If we restrict our genetic pool to people with blues eyes and blond hair the danger is that we are also restricting our genetic resistance to disease.
Ah but what's the likelihood many people would want their children to have the same physical traits? Personally I wouldn't want to pick blondes with blue eyes. If someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick the hair colour for my child or they'd shoot me I'd say either black headed or redheaded. And if the same thing happened for eye colour, I'd say eyes like my own, my eyes change colour from blue to green. That's something I got used to when fulling out forms that ask for eye colour, I always ask someone else what colour my eyes are. There are 3 things I might select for, health, high intelligence, and physical fitness.
Since most families do not have a parent at home available to teach (a situation that may be about to change due to economic collapse)
The thing is is an economic collapse means parents have to work longer and or harder, not less. Only if one looses a job will a parent be at home. I'd think it'd be likely though that that parent would be out looking for work because they need the money.
I would suggest that education results could be improved out of sight by eliminating administrators, ie have much smaller schools, teacher run.
Smaller schools might help but I think what would help more is decreasing the teacher to student ratio, less students for each teacher. I also think allowing students to learn at their own speed would help, faster learners won't be as bored and they could help slower students.
Screening for genetic tendency to intelligence and then processing those kids through the current cattle factory schools will probably not result in an improvement, but produce a mass of high capacity under performers virtually identical to a mass of low capacity under performers.
Why? Do you really believe a lot of parents would choose to have children with low intelligence? I'll admit some may but others would want children with high intelligence so they could take care of the parents in old age. Myself, I'd want my children to reach their full potential in whatever they decided they wanted to do.
And how much will "high probablility of hung like a horse" be worth?
OMG, I'm glad I didn't drink something when I read this, my monitor may of ended up all wet. I just started the movie "The Witches of Eastwick" and in it either Michelle Pfeiffer's or Susan Saradon's character says how her former husband was hugh and she couldn't take it all.
Only right wing wackos care about the fairness doctrine these days. I wonder why that is.
Because it's not just right wind wackos who care about the fairness doctrine, left wing wackos also care about it. For instance Al Franken. Bill Clinton and other Democrats want to bring it back.
- I'm not enough of a Libertarian to abandon efforts at requiring a better life for some. There's still a Liberal in me.
If you're not enough of a libertarian, small or capital "L", you're not a liberal either. Those who started liberalism would today be called Libertarians.
Even if it's your own child, you can't do anything you want to them. If you suddenly decided that your little girl would look nice in earings, fine, not many people will care if you get her ears pierced. If you suddenly decide that she would look better without ears, then you have a problem. The law doesn't allow for you to just go and cut them off.
Oh really? It may surprise you but worse things happen to babies. Read, I know this is/. and people don't read, this "Ms Mag" article "Making the Cut... It's a girl!... Or is it? When there's doubt why are surgeons calling the shots?" It's about how docs perform surgery on babes because those babies have ambiguous sex organs. They are called intersexuals and come in different varieties. Some even have both male and female sex organs.
Falcon
Re:This too was foreseen
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In this case the "shit you don't like" is a de facto eugenics policy. I would have thought we'd learned from the last century that eugenics is very problematic.
No we didn't learn eugenics was a problem. If anything what was learned was that a group of people, whether it's the government or not, should not try to to exterminate those they don't like in an attempt to create a super race like the NAZIs did.
No rational person wants to place blind trust the state to enact a eugenics policy allowing it an extreme degree of control over the physiology of the newborn.
Read this thread of which this post is my last and you'll see I don't trust government. Here's another. So I don't trust government, whether dealing with eugenics or not. But I am willing to allow others to make their own decisions on whether or not to design their own children.
Similarly, no rational person wants the same thing to happen by proxy as rich people design their children.
Why not? Please give rational reasons why people should not be able to make their own decisions on whether we will "design" their own children.
The point about names is a good one. Giving a child a horrible name is a form of mild child abuse.
And who decides what's a bad name? You?
Designing a child as one would design one's home interior (and that's how a lot of people who would do this think) would be much worse.
Citation needed. Can you prove this or are you just making it up?
I think diversity works great with ensuring the fitness of life.
Ah but that assumes everyone, or at least most people, will want their babies to have the same characteristics, which I seriously doubt.
2.We have a lot of ancient genetic material just sitting in our genome and that we don't fully understand to simply erase it.
I agree but I don't think we have the ability yet to remove so called "junk DNA".
3.Could we in fact create a new race of humans that would end up conquering us and turn us into the new Neanderthal?
The only way I see this happening is if governments try to force people to only have children that meet's the government's specifications. Even then though different governments would have different specs.
4.Would our tampering release a susceptibility to a common illness that our genes protected us from previously?
Of the four issues you bring up this is the only one that I think is of any importance. However if genes that decrease susceptibility to diseases are removed from some babies, as I stated above I doubt most people would want their children to have the same characteristics, then those who do have them removed will be less likely to survive to reproduce.
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
That because not everyone believes designer babies are bad. While there are some things to be concerned about, such as eliminating sickle cell anemia which protects people who have it from malaria, there are some who would like to have a child with certain physical traits. The NAZIs gave eugenics a bad name.
Falcon
Name your daughter Aryan Nation...
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In the movie "Where the Heart Is" Natalie Portman plays a character named Novalee Nation and she names her daughter Americus Nation. When asked "why Americus" she says she wants her daughter to have a strong name.
Yeah, but I'd watch for the Democrat-majority congress and along with the new Democrat administration to Bono-ize patent terms just as was done for copyright terms. If they'll do it for Disney, why not for the US' largest OS vendor Microsoft?
Because many other large corporations will also be adversely affected by extending patent terms. Also it's not just Democrats who extended copyrights, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was also called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act after the artist/performer Sonny Bono who was a Republican. Also though a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, signed it the Republicans controlled congress. 55 Senators and 228 members of the House, a majority in both cases, were Republicans.
Slashdot Mirror
And the simple fact of life is, we still need ditch-diggers and ag workers and Walmart clerks
First, I guess you haven't been to a modern store lately. Around here even the cheapest grocery store replaced manned checkouts with user operated checkouts. As for ditch diggers there are still people who like the work. Years ago while between jobs and attending college I worked two or three days a week when I didn't have a class through a daily labor pool. People there tried to get picked to be sent to work for garbage collection, that was one of the preferred jobs. Others wanted to be picked for construction work. That's how I got my last full-time job, I was sent to a construction site and at the end of the day the supervisor asked me if I wanted a full-time job with him and I said yes. The rest of the week I worked through the labor pool then the supervisor hired me.
Falcon
No, correcting people tells then they are wrong.
Not in this instance. There are way too many people using it in those ways outside of your control.
But as more people learn they may correct other, more, people. Nothing suddenly happens, most things require a lot of work. This happened when people started using "liberal" incorectly and it can happen when people correct others.
Yep, and no matter how many people you attempt to corect, when you call yourself a hacker, there will be people thinking your a script kiddie attempting to steal credit card numbers to make your super female love bot.
Only if they are not corrected, which I try to do whenever someone uses a word incorrectly. As for myself, I don't call or consider myself a hacker. I know I do not have the skills or knowledge to be one. Which is unfortunate, since the late '70s when I first learned about them I wanted to be a hacker in the mold of those at MIT and in California. I wanted to both program like the software hackers and build hardware like the hardware hackers. Back then one of my favorite magazines was "Byte magazine. I loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. In part because of them I decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering in college.
Well, not. It isn't about freedom of the body as you mention.
Yes, it is, Liberty is about controlling one's own body. There are some libertarians though who do not support abortion but for most it is about controlling your body.
Abortion effects the child's body too.
Embryos and fetuses are not children, if not aborted they may become children but before birth they are not.
That goes against the entire 'as long as you don't harm another'.
Since they are not humans no human is harmed.
Of course the pro-choice crowd use tricks and change terms much like we are talking about to turn an unborn child into just a cysts or something other then another human life.
So do fake pro lifers. One example is with Intact dilation and extraction. Ask pro lifers if they would allow IDE if the mother's life is in danger and most will say no, so they are not for pro life.
I personally believe it starts at conception and will only concede ground only up to a point where a baby can be reasonably expected to survive outside the human body with or without medical assistance.
Would you allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger? If not you're not a pro lifer.
At whatever stage-age that can happen, there is no way to claim the child isn't a human.
To you but not to others, yet you would dictate to others your beliefs.
Drug use is often results in people who can't control their addiction and end up stealing from others
Only because drugs are illegal. Legalize drugs again and the prices will drop. However alcohol can do the same thing but it's legal.
they end up getting depressed or escaping reality and jumping off buildings
So what? Who are you to tell others they can't "escape reality" or jump off a building? As long as a person does not harm another they should be able to do whatever they want with their own body. This is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. Because of an accident I had more than 10 years ago while I was attending college I now have a disability and can't do most of the things I used to do. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I live but my life as been a living hell. If I could I'd rather commit hari kari or seppuku
All the owners getting striked against are all Democrats - like Speilberg, Geffen, Katzenberg and more...
Citation needed.
I mean, I know you hate Bush, but as a politician, there are so many things he could have done at any given time to improve his own situation. Bush always had it in his head that if he did his policies successfully, then his personal popularity didn't matter.
You're right in that Bush didn't care about his own popularity, what mattered to him was his business buddies and the so called conservative Christians.
Falcon
In any case, self selection does not apply here.
Unless you can point out where self selection is not allowed, and most definitions do not bar it, then it does apply.
You are referring to the situation in which two possible parents would voluntarily ("self-select") choose to comply and to participate with a policy based on eugenics. If that were true, they would NOT create fertilized embryos in the first place.
Excuse me but couples do that all the tyme, that's exactly what In vitro fertilisation, IVF, is all about. Couples use it frequently when they are not able to conceive a child naturally. All this clinic does is extend IVF so those couples can choose which fertilized eggs they will use.
Falcon
Eugenics is generally defined as selective breeding based on human characteristics.
Show me one dictionary definition wherein force or laws are used to select those human characteristics. Here, I'll help with a link to a bunch of dictionaries, OneLook, I'll even include the link to eugenics.
I'll admit I didn't check all of the definitions, but I did check the first 5 and none of the said anything about the use of force. The closest is the first one which does say permitting reproduction, from MSN Encarta which says "selective breeding as proposed human improvement: the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable. It has been regarded with disfavor since the Nazi period."
I only said it was closer to abortion, not that it was abortion. Both abortion and whatever this is both involve fertilized embryos. The similarity ends there.
That's right the similarity ends with both involving fertilized eggs, so why did you compare it to abortion?
Not defined by me. Defined by various online dictionaries, medical texts, and Sir Franis Galton himself. How you and others define it is irrelevant and incorrect.
Not how I define it but how all those dictionary definitions I linked to above define it.
Did you even look up the definition or just arrogantly assumed you were correct? Spot checking onelook has entries that all support my statement that eugenics exclusively involves selective breeding and therefore the actions of this company don't meet it.
Check what I say above. Quite simply when parents pick a fertilized egg they are selecting it. Don't believe me, check this thesaurus select: "Definition: pick out, prefer from among choices". Of those 9 definitions you provide only 4 say anything about the discouraging unfit people from reproducing and encouraging those who are fit. Those are Encarta, Cambridge, InfoPlease, and SFF.NET That's less than half.
I got tired at this point, but needless to say it seems that the vast majority of online references prove that I am correct
I too am tired of this, so I'll end after one more statement. Four out of nine references is not a "vast majority" of references, that's not even half.
Falcon
How do you distinguish between what you describe and eugenics?
I do it by using the definition of eugenics . For instance, eugenics: "a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed". No where in there does it say force or laws are used. What it does say is "control of human mating" and that's what the potential parents who go to this clinic are doing, they are picking which fertilized eggs they will use.
Ok, uh: If the child doesn't end up looking like the parent wanted, presumably they'll face a greater than average chance of rejection.
That already happens. Not only do parents reject children but they also beat and abuse them.
What if I really want a kid with no immune system? Or if the 4-arms option requires no immune system also? I wouldn't be the one killing the kid with an infection, but my action would be indirectly responsible, regardless.
Ah, you've got to make shit up to justify making something illegal.
As you will make up whatever you want to justify your position, whether it's basesd on facts or not, I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
It's a right-wing boogeyman. Instead, we have the Money Doctrine, which dictates that wealthy media conglomerates are granted perpetual licenses to use the public airwaves.
That I agree with. That's why government started licensing radio. Originally the airwaves were homesteaded. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission in 1926 the airwaves were homesteaded, the first person in a specific location who broadcasted on a specific frequency courts ruled had the right to that frequency. Wealthy businesses and people didn't like this though so they pushed congress to require licensing.
Falcon
I think that Republicans want the Fairness Doctrine back.
Except Republicans like Senator DeMint oppose the fairness doctrine. Having said that, I also found this saying Franken also opposes it. I also found this which says "Some Democrats have added fuel to the fire by suggesting a fondness for its return, while others say the issue is a straw horse and a distraction." It doesn't name name though.
Falcon
I am confused but that foxnews clip doesn't seem to say anything about Franken's views on Fairness doctrine.
I thought I read where Franken did support the Fairness doctrine. However I found this which says he opposes it. Sorry.
Falcon
I would say that it is open source. Technically.
If you do research with federal money, you are required to make your findings available.
It may be open source in the since that anyone could see it but just because it government funded doesn't mean anyone can use the info. I've posted before about how the cancer drug Taxol was funded and developed by the National Cancer Institute, NCI. The NCI is a government office and it spent $183 million to develop Taxol. Bristol-Myers Squibb then "bought" the exclusive rights to all of the NCI's data, which was needed to win FDA approval of Taxol as a cancer drug, for less than $50 million.
Falcon
It is nice to be able to say that that's all eugenics means but it isn't accurate.
No. It is accurate. I am working with the accepted definitions from various online dictionaries. I cannot find a single one that does not have the limitation of selective breeding.
And the parents that use this clinic are selecting which fertilized eggs will be used. No government is dictating which eggs they can and can not use.
Only the first one says parents may not be self selecting, though it does say eugenics is looked on unfavorably since the NAZIs.
Falcon
Eugenics is a horrifically offensive behavior and this is NOT IT. Eugenics is when I tell you that dark skinned people cannot have babies with light skinned people. Eugenics is when the German government told people that Jews could not have children with non-Jews.
What the NAZIs did was not eugenics, what they did was racist.
What this company does it closer to abortion.
BS! Abortion is removing an embryo that has already been implanted in the uterus. In this case the embryos aren't even inserted into the uterus.
Please don't use the word "eugenics" since the only accepted definition of the word references a truly abhorrent behavior that should never be approved of, which is what you have done through your ignorance of the word.
Defined by you but plenty of others use a different definition than you do. Don't believe me, look at all the definitions OneLook provides for eugenics.
Falcon
So convince me that in selecting the "perfect" health gene and high intelligence gene we are not also potentially removing other genetic traits that might appear to be useless at the moment but which may offer resistance to some future virus or similar threat?
You've got it backwards, if you want to make something illegal you need to convince me it is inherently dangerous.
Not to mention the social problems of trying to find a road sweeper or janitor when we are all giving birth to baby Einsteins.
Who says everyone wants to be an Einstein? I worked as a janitor and whie some I worked with wanted more than to just work as one, others liked the work. I was in college myself before, during, and after. But in case you haven't heard there's this thing called the Rumba vacuum as well as other cleaning aids.
Falcon
Reducing the gene pool is bad for the longevity of the species. As the gene pool becomes more homogeneous the risk of a species exterminating disease increases
Who says the human gene pool will become homogeneous? Sure some might choose blondes with blue eyes but others will choose redheads with green eyes. And others may not make any choices.
Falcon
If we restrict our genetic pool to people with blues eyes and blond hair the danger is that we are also restricting our genetic resistance to disease.
Ah but what's the likelihood many people would want their children to have the same physical traits? Personally I wouldn't want to pick blondes with blue eyes. If someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick the hair colour for my child or they'd shoot me I'd say either black headed or redheaded. And if the same thing happened for eye colour, I'd say eyes like my own, my eyes change colour from blue to green. That's something I got used to when fulling out forms that ask for eye colour, I always ask someone else what colour my eyes are. There are 3 things I might select for, health, high intelligence, and physical fitness.
Falcon
Since most families do not have a parent at home available to teach (a situation that may be about to change due to economic collapse)
The thing is is an economic collapse means parents have to work longer and or harder, not less. Only if one looses a job will a parent be at home. I'd think it'd be likely though that that parent would be out looking for work because they need the money.
I would suggest that education results could be improved out of sight by eliminating administrators, ie have much smaller schools, teacher run.
Smaller schools might help but I think what would help more is decreasing the teacher to student ratio, less students for each teacher. I also think allowing students to learn at their own speed would help, faster learners won't be as bored and they could help slower students.
Screening for genetic tendency to intelligence and then processing those kids through the current cattle factory schools will probably not result in an improvement, but produce a mass of high capacity under performers virtually identical to a mass of low capacity under performers.
Why? Do you really believe a lot of parents would choose to have children with low intelligence? I'll admit some may but others would want children with high intelligence so they could take care of the parents in old age. Myself, I'd want my children to reach their full potential in whatever they decided they wanted to do.
Falcon
And how much will "high probablility of hung like a horse" be worth?
OMG, I'm glad I didn't drink something when I read this, my monitor may of ended up all wet. I just started the movie "The Witches of Eastwick" and in it either Michelle Pfeiffer's or Susan Saradon's character says how her former husband was hugh and she couldn't take it all.
Falcon
Only right wing wackos care about the fairness doctrine these days. I wonder why that is.
Because it's not just right wind wackos who care about the fairness doctrine, left wing wackos also care about it. For instance Al Franken. Bill Clinton and other Democrats want to bring it back.
Falcon
- I'm not enough of a Libertarian to abandon efforts at requiring a better life for some. There's still a Liberal in me.
If you're not enough of a libertarian, small or capital "L", you're not a liberal either. Those who started liberalism would today be called Libertarians.
Falcon
Even if it's your own child, you can't do anything you want to them. If you suddenly decided that your little girl would look nice in earings, fine, not many people will care if you get her ears pierced. If you suddenly decide that she would look better without ears, then you have a problem. The law doesn't allow for you to just go and cut them off.
Oh really? It may surprise you but worse things happen to babies. Read, I know this is /. and people don't read, this "Ms Mag" article "Making the Cut... It's a girl!... Or is it? When there's doubt why are surgeons calling the shots?" It's about how docs perform surgery on babes because those babies have ambiguous sex organs. They are called intersexuals and come in different varieties. Some even have both male and female sex organs.
Falcon
In this case the "shit you don't like" is a de facto eugenics policy. I would have thought we'd learned from the last century that eugenics is very problematic.
No we didn't learn eugenics was a problem. If anything what was learned was that a group of people, whether it's the government or not, should not try to to exterminate those they don't like in an attempt to create a super race like the NAZIs did.
No rational person wants to place blind trust the state to enact a eugenics policy allowing it an extreme degree of control over the physiology of the newborn.
Read this thread of which this post is my last and you'll see I don't trust government. Here's another. So I don't trust government, whether dealing with eugenics or not. But I am willing to allow others to make their own decisions on whether or not to design their own children.
Similarly, no rational person wants the same thing to happen by proxy as rich people design their children.
Why not? Please give rational reasons why people should not be able to make their own decisions on whether we will "design" their own children.
The point about names is a good one. Giving a child a horrible name is a form of mild child abuse.
And who decides what's a bad name? You?
Designing a child as one would design one's home interior (and that's how a lot of people who would do this think) would be much worse.
Citation needed. Can you prove this or are you just making it up?
Falcon
I think diversity works great with ensuring the fitness of life.
Ah but that assumes everyone, or at least most people, will want their babies to have the same characteristics, which I seriously doubt.
2.We have a lot of ancient genetic material just sitting in our genome and that we don't fully understand to simply erase it.
I agree but I don't think we have the ability yet to remove so called "junk DNA".
3.Could we in fact create a new race of humans that would end up conquering us and turn us into the new Neanderthal?
The only way I see this happening is if governments try to force people to only have children that meet's the government's specifications. Even then though different governments would have different specs.
4.Would our tampering release a susceptibility to a common illness that our genes protected us from previously?
Of the four issues you bring up this is the only one that I think is of any importance. However if genes that decrease susceptibility to diseases are removed from some babies, as I stated above I doubt most people would want their children to have the same characteristics, then those who do have them removed will be less likely to survive to reproduce.
Falcon
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
That because not everyone believes designer babies are bad. While there are some things to be concerned about, such as eliminating sickle cell anemia which protects people who have it from malaria, there are some who would like to have a child with certain physical traits. The NAZIs gave eugenics a bad name.
Falcon
In the movie "Where the Heart Is" Natalie Portman plays a character named Novalee Nation and she names her daughter Americus Nation. When asked "why Americus" she says she wants her daughter to have a strong name.
Falcon
Yeah, but I'd watch for the Democrat-majority congress and along with the new Democrat administration to Bono-ize patent terms just as was done for copyright terms. If they'll do it for Disney, why not for the US' largest OS vendor Microsoft?
Because many other large corporations will also be adversely affected by extending patent terms. Also it's not just Democrats who extended copyrights, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was also called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act after the artist/performer Sonny Bono who was a Republican. Also though a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, signed it the Republicans controlled congress. 55 Senators and 228 members of the House, a majority in both cases, were Republicans.
Falcon