From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: karljohanson@shaw.ca   
   Subject: Re: Shatner sick of Star Trek feuds   
      
   "Quadibloc"  wrote   
      
   On Dec 6, 1:13 pm, "Karl Johanson"  wrote:   
   >> But preventing siblings from marrying, as you and your   
   >> church supports, is a form of eugenics as sure as preventing people of   
   >> different races from breeding is eugenics.   
      
   >Actually, it's dysgenic, because it ensures that recessive genes are   
   >less likely to manifest bad consequences, and get their carriers   
   >selected out.   
      
   Yes it's dysgenic, but it's also eugenics if you keep others from breeding.   
      
   >Laws which prohibit incest, as well, are not primarily targeted at   
   >preventing genetic disorders. Instead, they largely function as   
   >*statutory rape* laws, prohibiting women and girls from being   
   >exploited by men who have power over them, like their fathers.   
      
   >While I would tend to agree that eugenic measures are not bad in   
   >_themselves_,   
      
   Yes, but it is a pretty steep slippery slope.   
      
   >the historical experience is that eugenic measures, when   
   >enacted, have not been scientifically sound.   
      
   Very well said.   
      
   >The example of Hitler's Germany has rightly cast a pall   
   >of suspicion over the field of eugenics.   
      
   >Of course, this has led to some nonsense. For example, I've read a   
   >claim that eugenics is inherently unsound, even if the goal was not to   
   >breed smarter people, but simply to prevent serious genetic disorders.   
      
   >Why?   
      
   >In the case of Huntingdon's chorea (which is caused by a dominant   
   >gene) - preventing everyone who had a parent who succumbed to it from   
   >having children, so as to eliminate this disorder, would prevent three   
   >healthy children from being born for every sufferer it prevents!   
      
   And there's conditions which are detrimental in some circumstance and    
   advantageous in others. HbSS Sickle Cell Aniemia is a serious disorder    
   affecting life expectancies significantly. At the same time, those with one    
   of the allels for sickle cells are more resistant to malaria.   
      
   >So what? Preventing a child from being conceived, while it deprives   
   >parents of the chance to raise a child of their own, is a minor thing   
   >in comparison to someone being subjected to the symptoms of   
   >Huntingdon's. So the price is quite reasonable to prevent anyone from   
   >ever again suffering that awful fate.   
      
   >In the case of most genetic disorders, caused by recessive genes - as   
   >I noted above, each person carries hundreds of genes for serious   
   >disorders! So how could you have eugenics against them except by   
   >abolishing the human race?   
      
   >Seems like a good argument, but it's made without thinking.   
      
   Yes. And there's the question of any prejudiced attitudes of those who    
   decide which genes shouldn't be passed on.   
      
   Each   
   >person might have a hundred bad recessives out of a pool of 100,000.   
   >To avoid sterilizing the whole human race, we just pick *one*   
   >recessive we want to get rid of in the first generation of the   
   >program. In the second generation, we add a second recessive. Since   
   >the first recessive has now been eliminated, except for new mutations,   
   >it stays on the list of genes which it is prohibited to attempt to   
   >transmit.   
      
   >After 100,000 generations, the recessive genes have been eliminated,   
   >except for a small number of new mutations, and the human race is   
   >still there.   
      
   >(Actually, it would probably be possible to eliminate from 10 to 100   
   >genes in each generation to make this go a bit faster, but I want to   
   >argue the principle, not the details.)   
      
   And if you get a 'genetically perfect' form of humans and only let them    
   breed, then one pandemic could kill all of them.   
      
   >So scientifically-sound negative eugenics is possible. But adopting a   
   >program of that nature would be a frightening intrusion on individual   
   >liberty and privacy, at least under the present climate. Many more   
   >important issues need to be addressed.   
      
   Karl Johanson    
      
      
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