*** NB: What follows are not necessarily my views so please don’t post me hate mail. The idea is to spark debate. ***
I am currently in a play called “The Chrysalids” which was originally a novel by John Wyndham. It’s about outcasts of society and creating a pure race of people.
Now, most people would say that altruism (acting totally unselfishly) is a noble path to follow and that being selfish is not. As Kennedy famously said, “think not what your country can do for you, rather what you can do for your country.” In our example this would translate into thinking about the human race, rather than yourself. Bear with me, the point is coming soon.
So, we want to do things that will be beneficial to the human race. Disease, in one form or another will always be with us but it seems that genetic disease can surely be eradicated (assuming that mutating them back into society is unlikely). If people with hereditary diseases stop having children, the diseases they have will discontinue to be spread.
Surely it would be selfish of them to disregard the rest of the human race and think only of themselves! Surely it would be beneficial to the whole human race if we cleansed the world of genetic diseases? That would be the most altruistic and noble thing to do. And after all, altruism is what todays society should aspire to…isn’t it?
[This message has been edited by ben (edited 07 December 2001).]
WOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow…STOP !!! U r treading on very thin ice ma boy…STOP NOW…cos the next thing u might be suggesting might not be that far removed from Hitler’s own ideas !!
not going to be much of a debating forum if no-one treads on thin ice, is it. i love a bit of controversy, me. plus it’s so cold here at work that i’m COVERED in thin ice, so i might as well darned tread on it.
i’ve got myself in serious trouble for discussing this thing before, because the minute you mention wiping out diseases, people start thinking gassing etc.
in some ways, hitler’s ideas were not entirely pschotic. people say he was crazy and arguably he was but at the same time he was trying to breed a pure and healthy race who could defend themselves against the allies, against whom they had something of a grudge. it’s also worth remembering that early in the last century, when hitler was doing his thang, disabled people were not very handy. these days there’s tons of things they can do, but there was so much more of a focus on manual labour back then that it was harder to accommodate them within society.
it’s a typical case of “should”. i personally believe that people with hereditary diseases should refrain from having children. however, realistically speaking, this will never happen and it wouldn’t be right ethically to enforce it. but i don’t see what’s wrong with the idea.
NICOLA: I am intrigued and impressed at your attempts to explain the reasons behind our dear friend Hitler’s actions- well done, have a badge.
It is every individual’s right as a human being to produce offspring. Obviously it can be recommended that someone with a hereditary disease does not have children if there is a risk that they may be disfigured or disabled, but it is still the individual’s decision, and no-one should make it for them. Hitler was quite blatently wrong to impose his insane thinking upon Germany - less able persons were still human, and no-one deserved to die.
Ethnic cleansing is unacceptable and there can be no excuse for barbarity and murder.
PS. Watch the film “Antz”. It rocks! …and also raises the issue of purifying a race.
I’m afraid there’s a difference between what Hitler did and what my post proposed.
Hitler killed peopled. My post just said people who have hereditary diseases should not procreate for the good of the human race.
That is different to saying “let’s exterminate all the jews, gays, gypsies and disabled people to create a pure race”.
I agree with Loz that everyone has the right to have children and I disagree with my first post entirely, but it is worth debating since at first glance it looks like the most unselfish thing to do.
What you must realise nicky is that you would have to be genetically tested and it could be shown that YOU have some recessive genetic diseases which would mean you could not have children. Would you be happy with that? I certainly wouldn’t.
heh heh, nic i didn’t realise it was you. here was me thinking ‘‘ooh, she seems like a funky kinda gal (ok, not those words exactly) … wish she were my friend’’
back to the point at (six-fingered) hand. (sorry). disallowing procreation to any member of the human race goes against any suggestion that doing so might improve society. survival is the focal point of our existence. having children is an innate desire over which we have no control. you may argue that so is fighting or killing enemies, but only those who are a threat to the continuation of our own genes. so everything our bodies are designed to do boils down to one thing: procreation.
admittedly, this includes the protection of one’s young, and getting rid of any risks to future generations. but disallowing some people the chance to give birth would, in my opinion, deem he whole idea of selfishism pointless. you can’t say that the self is the most important thing, but only to those who don’t have a disability. if those with disabilities are able to go against their own instincts for the ‘‘good of mankind’’ and not have children because they wouldn’t want others to go through what they have, then they should be praised. who are we to sit here and allow some people to have children, and others not? sorry to the feminists out there (ahem, sarah), but if we aren’t here to have kids, why are we here? xxxxx
erkyle - yes, but it should occur naturally if its going to. we shouldn’t try and induce it. on the other hand, a lot of future diseases will have been caused by us (ie. genetically modified food, etc), and our dabbling with nature. so where do we draw the line?
This is a common misconception of the Selfish Gene theory. Yes, you are right, if genes had their way then hereditary diseases would have been wiped out a long time ago. However, humans are unique in being able to go against their genes. Look at contraception for example. Therefore, there are people who will continue to have children even when they know the child will have hereditary diseases.
It seems unfair to say that people with hereditary diseases shouldn't have children because the purpose of having children is not just to make a wonderfully pure replication of yourself. I'm sure you all know people who have diseases that they have got from their parents. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable telling them they should'nt have been born for the good of the human race.
Once again, I raise the point that even if you didn't have the phenotypic effect of the diseased gene but only had the recessive gene inside you, you would not be allowed to procreate. That's a lot of people, including a number of us. I won't be told whether I should have children or not. No sir!
natural selection is all but dead. Dawrin’s theory does work, but it only works in the wild. it no longer works for humans, meaning we look after people with disabilities, we care for the terminally ill and we help the weak. survival of the fittest is dead. but if you take this view point (this is by no means my view point, hell i’m far too left wing to agree with Hitler) Hitler was only doing the natural thing in removing the ‘less fit’ and was returning to our wild instincts, and you can’t call wild instinct’s evil as they don’t revolve around such considerations.
also somebody said there is no excuse for murder and killing. yeah that may be applicable to your current situation, but if you had to fight other humans to survive i think you would change your view point.
What Hitler did was not acting out natural selection. He conciously chose to kill people to make what he thought was the perfect race. That is not natural selection, that is cold-blooded genocide.
Natural selection does not kill people and it also does nothing conciously. Therefore I can and will call what Hitler did evil because it was not wild natural selection.
I agree with you that humans do combat the natural selection process. Whether this is a “good thing” or not is debatable.
i really dont see why it is necessary to tell people with hereditary diseases they cant reproduce. Surely there is another way to attempt to remove hereditary disease. (You must remember, even if these sort of diseases are removed, they can easily return with the simple mutation of our genes.) An alternative way of removing them would be to use genetic engineering. The human genome has been mapped out and in the not too distant future the purpose and use (and even evil side-effect) of all the genes will be known. With this knowledge, it would be possible to remove and fix any faults/mutations in a person’s genes.
This can either be used on an adult person or even whilst on the foetus - the parents can be told whether the child will have these defects and then the decision lies to the parents if they still want the child. (Sorry, thats a really evil way of putting it.) And then this leads us into an abortion argument!!
I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but I personally think that Mr. Adolf Hitler was the man. But before I get banned from this forum let me explain a bit. I am by no means racist. I’m 100% Dominican, and I get mixed up for being black all the time. Race, to me, is so 20th Century. There is only one race. The human race.
I look at Hitler from the veiwpoint of a person that wants to accomplish many things in life. And Hitler, for as f*cked up as he was turned an entire country against a planet. That to me, is amazing.
I don’t see how he was eliminating the weak either. He took perfectly healthy Jews and murdered them. That isn’t natural selection, that is genocide.
My veiwpoint on all this is sort of tainted. My little sister has cerebal palsey. And I love her too much to try to regress back in time before her birth and murder her so that I won’t have the inconvienience of pushing her wheelchair.
But I do see the benefits of “cleaning” the gene pool. But on the same token, I could see the benefits of turning all the minorities into slaves. It just isn’t ethical.
I’m not sure what you’re saying, Smooth. Well, maybe I do. Hitler’s greatest achievement was to force the world to realise the race really doesn’t matter: we are what we are. If it hadn’t happened, we might still (lol) be segregated…
As opposed to comparing this post to that what was done by Hitler, let us compare it to that what is currently being done in China. Each family is allowed only one child, and by implementing this law, the government is determining the future of there country via the control of procreation. Although this is an infringment of the people’s rights, this insures that the country does not become over-populated and consequentially, reduces the probability of famine in future generations. Under this new mindset, let’s restate the question: is it right to control procreation for the benefit of future generations.
Who is to say all genetic defects are undesirable? Sickle Cell Anemia causes people, among other things, to be excessively tired. However, sickle cell anemia also protects against malaria. What is a defect in one situation is an asset in another. Another example is the Grey and Brown moths that were (are) in England. During the industrial revolution, the once predominate brown moths became easily recognizable, and hence easy prey. The once benign grey moths now blended in with their industrious surroundings, giving the moth species a second hope for survival. The human race is by no means intelligent enough to predict what traits will be necessary to survive in the future. One day malaria may run rampant, and the only hope for the continuation of the human species may lie with those that were considered “defective”.
To defend my position on Hitler real quick, all I have to say is that I look at his track record. What he accomplished as a person. What odds he add against him. That is what I look at. But the second that I look outside that scope I see what a derange person he was.
In my mind I could never quite understand why we didn’t just stop everyone with HIV from breeding for example (or flat out kill them) to stop the virus from spreading if it was so bad. Sure we would be forced to slaughter millions in Third World countries, etc. but in the long run it would be worth it for the human lives we would ultimately save down the road.
It would be a benefit for the human race. We would be stronger as a whole for weeding out this canker once and for all. Thus the person should accept their fate.
However… I put myself in their shoes and imagined if I had HIV or a loved did how would I feel. Let’s just say it wasn’t a pleasant feeling of compliance by any means. Meh, oh well.
