Eugenics

1. Jason
   May 15th, 2008 at 10:01 am

   Though I think it should be pointed out that while Darwin did touch on artificial selection, he did not invent the concept, and he is not responsible for the idea of eugenics.

2. bean
   May 15th, 2008 at 10:47 am

   We as humans self-selected ourselves outside of evolution a long time ago. Using advanced medicine to keep alive a person that would not, without constant intervention, be able to survive and pass on their genes is also eugenics. Take, for example, near-sightedness and other hereditary disorders.

3. Thomas
   May 15th, 2008 at 10:49 am

   I think they were pretty clear that Sir Francis Galton applied it to humans. No confusion here.

4. L.C.
   May 15th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

   I think the world would be a much better place if this was still in practice...just sayin...

5. hooper
   May 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

   Great idea! They should also sterilize women who can't figure out how NOT to get pregnant after baby #3 or #2.

6. L
   May 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

   I agree with L.C. to a certain extent. Dumb begets dumb. And in today's world, where people are protected from nearly everything that might kill them, "natural" selection can't really take place... except for the folks who manage to slip through the cracks and win themselves Darwin Awards.

   The problem with the idea of eugenics, though, is that it will always be taken too far.

7. CheeseDuck
   May 15th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

   I don't like the idea, but seriously, some people just shouldn't reporduce...

8. Art
   May 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   "His cousin Sir Francis Galton said this principle could be applied to humans as well. The idea came to be known as “eugenics”."

   In fact, it was Darwin himself who expressed these views, his cousin merely coined the term "eugenics".

   From "The Descent of Man":

   “Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

   “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

   You ask, "Who is qualified to judge what traits are truly undesirable and which persons deserved to be sterilized?"

   Apparently a lot of "progressives", like Margret Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, thought that the government had the right and capacity to decide.

9. Thebes
   May 15th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

   I think it should be mentioned that eugenics was practiced as late as the late 1970's by the United States government which sterilized Native American women with neither their knowledge or consent.

10. Miss Cellania
    May 15th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    Sanger, Wells, and Shaw were white, well off, and nominally healthy. They had no reason to personally fear government interference in their lives. I wouldn't trust our government as far as I could throw it.

11. someguy
    May 15th, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    Unfortunately, if you believe in Darwinian Evolution, it is a perfectly logical extension that we could and perhaps should attempt to improve the human race by eliminating the "lesser" people.

    It is a dangerous notion to promote the idea that there is no God or moral ground to govern our society. Evolutionary theory can logically justify things such as euthanizing unproductive members of society, or the view of certain peoples as more evolved than others.

    Fortunately, we still have many people in the USA who are willing to fight these ideals as well as the suspect science of Evolution. It is, however, as hard as ever for Darwinian dissenters to have their voice heard.

12. Tim
    May 15th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

    And after Galton applied it to the human realm, psychiatry took it one step further and executed 70,000 people as a result of this ignorance.

    Though, being the cowardly sort, all the psychiatrists that approved humans for disposal in Nazi Germany blamed Hitler and others for their acts.

    Those cowards moved out of Germany and took up roots in America, Britain and other parts of the world and as a result we are left with racism, a climbing rate of crime and illeteray, and other crimes against humanity.

13. ted
    May 15th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    Tim, that's about the stupidest thing you've said here, and you've said some pretty stupid things.

    What exactly is a climbing rate of illeteray?

    Comparing evolution with the idea of selective breeding is like comparing apples to oranges, anyway.

14. jim
    May 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    everyone should watch these videos

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=lEEZXxFPHxo

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=IaH0Ws8RtSc

    L.C., your comment about wishing this was still in place is crazy

    do some research on how bad this practice was

15. rdubs
    May 15th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    we've cheated evolution with altruism, we must force it on the people (downright evil laugh)!!!

16. Dave
    May 15th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    Take, for example, near-sightedness and other hereditary disorders.

    God help us all; with people like bean in charge, nearsighted people would be marked for extermination or sterilization.

    It's downright scary how posts like this bring the true fascists out of the woodwork.

17. Carol
    May 15th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    There's an entire subculture in this country that discourages education and encourages irresponsible sexual behavior - leading to countless children in really unspeakable situations. It's heartbreaking to see.

    Oh, but one must have a license to fish or give a manicure...

    Does anybody really think the federal government even has the capacity to really deal effectively with this country's social problems? They couldn't do it with a million extra bureaucrats and $50 billion dollars. I lost faith in anybody in DC a long time ago.

    That said, whoever wins in November and all you senators and congresspeople: I hereby triple-dog dare you to actually fix some difficult problems. Betcha can't do it.

18. bean
    May 15th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Dave -

    Pull your head out of your ass just for a second. I didn't say people with genetically inherited conditions should lined up and shot; as someone with several genetically inherited conditions myself, I'd be first on the block.

    I said that eugenics goes both ways. Whether you're trying to exterminate all Irish people because of red hair, or redirecting resources to keep alive someone who would not survive to procreate otherwise, you're messing around with the gene pool. Both have horrible consequences for the species in general.

19. Lamonstrous
    May 15th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    Some of the comments here are asinine, on both sides.
    Social Darwinism is and was a disaster, but what does evolution really have to with genocide? If you really understood it, you would realize that it does not "logically lead" to immorality.
    Was the Armenian genocide committed by Turkish Darwinians? There have been pogroms and wholesale slaughter throughout history that had ZERO to do with evolution.
    Evolution is a long term phenomenon. The only criteria for success is survival and reproduction: so you can have rich, smart, talented, athletic people with 20-20 eyesight who have no kids and morbidly obese people with a slew of congenital defects who have eight. Which one is the evolutionary success? In the short term, the fattie with eight kids. In the long term, her kids may all end up being dead ends too.
    Evolution does not mean "progress." It just means being well-adapted to your environment.

20. BJN
    May 15th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

    Darwin merely observed what mankind had been doing with plant an animal species for thousands of years. Artificial selective breeding is responsible for the vast majority of our food and many of our pets.

    It wasn't called "eugenics" but slave owners in so-called "Christian" nations practiced selective breeding to enhance the performance of their captives. The Nazis were as much Crusaders as eugenicists. It's not a matter of belief that selective breeding can be used to propagate traits you consider desireable, it's a fact. What's immoral is when you deem yourself superior in religion, culture and physical attributes to other human beings and you use force to achieve your non-scientific non-rational ideals.

    Evolution tells us that variety is necessary for the long term survival of species, and it also tells us that our notions of "race" are a fiction when you discard superficial features and look at our genetic makeup. This is fact, not belief. "Belief" in evolution is like belief in gravity. You can use your understanding of gravity to make missiles and bombs kill with accuracty, but that doesn't make an understanding of gravity immoral. Morality is a human construct, and the golden rule is a great concept to guide a social species - especially a species with the technology to destroy the planet.

    Hey Neatorama, how is this topic "neat"? I look to this blog as a nice diversion, not a place for heated discussions.

21. Pol x
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:53 am

    Tim

    I call Scientologist Provocateur!

    "psychiatry took it one step further and executed 70,000 people as a result of this ignorance."

    Anyone who can read about eugenics and decide that it's Psychiatry's fault is obviously a $cientologist.

    As for the idea that Dumb begats dumber...well that just isn't so.

    The diversity of human reproduction throws up endless mutation and in that there will always be mutations to the betterment of the species.

    Other wise we'd be dog patch all over the world...oh hang on!

    No, really smart people spring from the loins of dumb parents all the time, similarly smart successful people have the sort of kids that would lose in a Quiz with a beagle.

    don't believe me?

    2 words.

    Paris Hilton.

    Generations of sucess and advantage produced this Apex of breeding.

    Now apply that to the royal families of Europe.

    Carlos Secundo of Spain, so much of a retarded in bred that all he was lacking was a banjo.

    Advantage and wealth are not indicattors of worth.

    If eugenics was in forse, then who'd be pasing out the breedign licenses or the compulsory sterilisation warrants?

    I'm betting that paris wouldn't find herself with her feet up in the stirrups.

    Basically, "We're a virus...with shoes"

22. Sid Morrison
    May 16th, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Thanks Art for digging out Darwin's actual words on the subject. I knew he had personal feelings on the subject as well.

    @Thebes - can you supply some references about forced sterilization of American Indians into the 1970s? I had never heard that before, so I'd like to look into it. How widespread is it? What level of government are you claiming was involved? Federal, state, county government?

    The eugenics movement started to crumble when the atrocities of National Socialism came to light. If you look up "Eugenics" or "Heredity" under books.google.com (choose "full view books"), you'll find dozen of fascinating texts written in the pre-War 20th century. The movement was very passionate and had a LOT of famous devotees.

    Indeed, intelligence has significant heriditary components, and yes, unfortunately IN AGGREGATE the stupid reproduce a lot faster than the intelligent. They start a lot earlier and they have lot more kids every generation. That isn't to say ALL people with large familes are stupid or all stupid people will have large families, but across society there is positive correlation, ESPECIALLY when the progeny are illegitimate with siblings having multiple absent fathers.

    That said, involuntarily sterilizing people IS a violation of basic human rights and I wouldn't trust a doctor or even a panel of doctors and judges to make such a determination. What needs to be done instead is merely to end the present financial incentives to have more illegitimate kids. The welfare state rewards promiscuous women for popping out more and more out of wedlock children and encourages them to keep them, rather than place them for adoption. These kids get double hampered by not only having their parents' intellectual genes, but are also socially mistrained by them as well. So they drop out of highschool at 15 and have children with muliple absent fathers -- just like how they grew up themselves. And so the cycle continues... A little tough love (be stingy with benefits in the first place and certainly don't increase them with added kids!) would do a world of good towards keeping these trollops on the straight and narrow. A little societal shame wouldn't hurt either.

23. dorkafork
    May 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    In fact, it was Darwin himself who expressed these views, his cousin merely coined the term “eugenics”..

    It was Darwin himself who expressed his opposition to those views, and his coined the term "eugenics".

    Here is more from Darwin's Descent of Man:

    The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.

    This quote, by the way, comes from the very next paragraph after the one quoted previously, and is an example is the typical dishonesty you find from deniers of evolution.

    Unfortunately, if you believe in Darwinian Evolution, it is a perfectly logical extension that we could and perhaps should attempt to improve the human race by eliminating the “lesser” people.

    If you actually understand evolution, it is impossible to consider eliminating people as a way to "improve the human race". First of all, it simply won't work. (I suggest reading the section of this article titled "The Evolutionary Argument Against Negative Eugenics" about the work of JBS Haldane for a brief description.) Even if scientists believed it could work (and let me repeat, they know it doesn't), you would find many scientists who would still oppose it. For example: Charles Darwin.

24. Claire
    May 19th, 2008 at 6:33 am

    Personally I think this would be an excellent punishment for paedophilia

25. DOJ
    May 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 am

    Retrograde Babies vs Designer Babies
    good stuff

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