The reason people tend to think of eugenics and concentration camps and such is because they don't know where your slippery slope leads to. If someone with huntington's disease should not have children for the greater good, what about people with a family history of cancer, or a family history of heart disease. We find people with a tendency towards weight gain less desirable, should those people also not have children? What about people with baldness? It seems absurd but maybe they also aren't all that desirable. Where is the line where we say "You are desirable enough to have children"? And if we draw a line, do we need to enforce it? I mean people with huntington's disease certainly cost society a lot without bringing as much benefit. Should we force people like that not to have kids? Where do we lay that line in the sand and say "this is for the greater good!"
To me, I entirely understand why people give you scorn for your opinion. It is a slippery slope and it goes against a fundamental human instinct that brings joy and happiness regardless of the overall cost, pain, and suffering.
Each disease will have slightly different genetics, but Huntington's disease provides a good example. There, we know that some individuals have a predisposition to developing the disease - this bias results from having over a certain threshold of repeating DNA bases in the Huntingtin gene.
Here's an accessible discussion of Huntington's and similar diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ .
As a few have pointed out the slippery slope argument is a bad one. They are right. The slippery slope could be a logical fallacy. But logical fallacies often lead to scorning and anger and fights and such.
We should encourage people with rare generic deceases to use fertility treatments that filters out particularly bad genes; or adopt children instead.
By the way, there are a ton of people who actually do believe that taxes are a slippery slope to socialism! The employment one is funny. But I think there are people who believe consumerism or capitalism is a slippery slope to criminal activity like prostitution. People are so funny.
Where does it end? My Aunt had cancer. My father high blood pressure. I think one uncle on my estranged mothers family was quite mad.
Am I allowed to procreate? Who draws the line on what is an acceptable level of hereditary risk factors?
That is the line. It ends there.
- give the thing an odd, unearned, protection status: lots of things people are wired to are frankly pretty terrible and we could do without them (hierarchical dominance dynamics);
- it's very hard to prove that we're actually wired to something vs it being cultural. Given that we can't even prove this, the above is extra strange: we might be giving special statuses to unnaturally developed processes, and the status quo.
Procreation is not special because people want it. It's special because of its effects on populations and politics. But that's neither here nor there in terms of whether or it makes sense for a given group of people to procreate. That question shouldn't be closed.
> Where is the line where we say "You are desirable enough to have children"?
If there is a process out there that already exists, and you find yourself really not wanting to make a decision that is relevant to the continuation of that process, here's a little secret: the decision nonetheless will be made, and always has been made, just not by you.
So there's no slippery slope here, because the selection process is already in place, we're just washing our hands of it, so it looks like an easy decision because it's not our fault when a child with a horrible disease is born. It similarly not our fault when some people are unable to develop relationships.
But it is real, it is true, and it happens. And we could make a difference.
This is the eternal question of whether humans are ready to actually take responsibility for the process of the world or if they want to continue let it flow freely hoping it works out...
Embryo selection will still be hugely controversial, of course, but we have to overcome any reflex to ban the technique. Human genetic engineering is a technology that will profoundly reduce human suffering, and every year we delay it is pure misery.
Deliberately aborting 99 out of 100 or 999 out of 1000 or whatever, that's not how humans interact with each other. That's the sort of decision-making I reserve for cattle or other livestock. (Although we wouldn't make much money if we were so Procrustean in our evaluation...) In that sphere, it's considered immoral by lots of perfectly sane people.
I'm not saying that this practice will never be normalized and accepted by most people. I am saying that if researchers try a little harder and develop methods with the same results but less abortion, the world will be a better place.
Unfortunately, based on some quick reading, the technique is regulated in many areas and used only in cases where some specific genetic disease is suspected. This artificial limitation is a disgrace.
1 - There's a particular sequence of bases that are repeated a certain number of times on a certain chromosome 2 - Below 25 repeats: normal, no HD 3 - 25~35 repeats: no HD but there's a risk of spontaneous increase when generating sperm/ovules 4 - 35+ you have HD with more repeats meaning earlier onset and faster progression
My wife's mother has 40 repeats so she's on the milder side of the spectrum(age of onset ~50 and progression is steady but somewhat slow compared to her brother who started at 38)
Individuals in the 25~35 repeats bracket can have children with HD(especially fathers since it seems that there's a higher incidence of increase for them, for some reason)
In our case, my wife tested for this specifically once we seriously started considering the possibility of marriage and children. I'd decided I'd marry her regardless of the outcome but children were a different question altogether, so in that way I do agree with you, but it's definitely not a solution to the problem in the broad case of HD, but in individual cases where it is known to run in the family some people may choose to not have children if they are diagnosed at an early enough age.
That being said, most people would prefer not to know if they have it when a parent is diagnosed, only ~5% of people at risk actually test for it with the vast majority preferring to live in denial. Humans are weird like that, but having seen firsthand what this did to my wife and her family when her mother was diagnosed I don't think I can really blame someone for not wanting to know. You can't make judgements about something like that until you've been in their shoes
And FWIW it has a spontaneous occurrence rate, so even if all known carriers have no offspring it wouldn't eradicate it.
Not disagreeing with you I don’t think, I’d call it disease appearance to happen at middle age at best. Plenty have visible symptoms in their 20s though usually it’s in their 30s and 40s. Death is usually sometime around 20 years after onset of symptoms, though earlier onset often means earlier death. This is apart from the suicide risk, which is markedly increased. It’s about as awful a disease as one can have.
You do understand that some folks have few options for this, right? I have never wanted children. I'm female. I cannot take hormonal birth control. I would have been sterilized early in life, but most doctors won't do it to young folks. I'm nearly 40 now. Surgical sterilization is more of an option, but is still rather expensive. Additionally, it doesn't always prevent pregnancy and the option that would - a hysterectomy - isn't a healthy thing to do to an otherwise healthy person.
Condoms have their own downsides. Some of the lubricants make me itch. Plus the risk of breaking and all of that stuff. Sure, it is my option, but it sucks. Not to mention that they change the way sex feels for me, let alone the man. Luckily, my spouse is more than willing to be sterilized.
Even with various birth control methods, folks still become pregnant.
Abortion isn't always an option for folks - especially with states and entire countries restricting abortion for any reason. I'm not sure if doctors would test for these genes pre-birth either like they do for a few disorders, and the test itself has has some risks to the fetus.
I can only imagine the hell someone would go through that wants to have children, yet are simply too afraid of passed on some gene that might not be passed on - let alone that they might not even know it runs in the family. I'm not sure they'd be able to avoid having children simply by a combination of accident and happenstance. I've been lucky enough to avoid it, but many others have not and had few realistic options once it happened.
In 1918 doctors didn't know what a virus really was. It could just hijack a cell to reproduce. Measles were a much more real threat, so they focused on that. 18 months later between 3 and 6% of the world's population was dead.
The 21st century will see things we dream of. We can modify t-cells with crispr to attack childhood cancer. There's a HIV vaccine that was successful in human trials [2]. Have a little more hope.
[1] https://www.ge.com/reports/brazilian-doctor-3d-printing-baby... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-44738642
There is clearly a hierarchy of problem genes which will mean that the philosophical issue is not eliminated. Debilitating diseases is obviously something people are not opposed to eliminating. Eliminating the more subtle personality "defects" though will prove a lot more problematic where we start going into issues of homogenisation in a population.
The most powerful eugenics force in history is the modern education system. It is extremely effective in identifying those with high levels of abstract reasoning and strongly discouraging them from having children. Gets very little attention outside of documentaries masquerading as comedies.
https://www.nature.com/news/crispr-fixes-disease-gene-in-via...
> Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children
However, Huntington's also robs you of your impulse control, so simply resolving to never have children if you carry (or suspect you carry) the Huntingtin allele may not be enough:
Perhaps because not having existed can be equally as tragic as having existing but having a disease?
Lots of people are living today who were born blind, or with this or that genetic tendency. And they live their lives as best as they can.
Is the argument that these people better they weren't born at all?
I think there are arguments to be made that not every hint of imperfection should be eliminated (who gets to decide what imperfection means?), but your argument isn't one of those.
If I had never existed (for any reason) nobody would be able to miss me, least of all me. My parents would have tried again a month later and gotten someone else. Perhaps someone better, we'll never know.
This statement is true for all people.
Some will agree to that, most wont. So hardly "true to all people" except if qualified ("according to my philosophy of life and not their actual sentiments on the matter").
The problem with the suggestion (or that conversation) is that it creates guilt in people carrying that disease for no fault of theirs. No I am not religious.
I agree that for simple things such as Downs and Huntingtons it's fine. I'd prefer to know as a parent, but we need to have a deep and reflective discussion about the ethics and agree on the guiding principle for the future.
No more disease in one generation.
My cut feeling is that if we count every genetic disease then two digits are necessary to express this number.
There are very few human beings (if any) that don't have something lurking in their genetic history. An elevated risk factor for this or that.
It's potentially a great way to suppress particular groups of people since there are a lot of heritable diseases that are typically only carried by certain ethnic groups i.e. African Americans and sickle cell anemia.
Also where do you draw the line? Outlaw people from procreating if there's a 100% chance of inheritance? 50%? 1%?
What about nonfatal, inheritable stuff like obesity or blindness? Or fallen arches?
Even the "easy" case (a 100% inheritable, 100% fatal disease) is maybe more complicated than we want to think. What is "fatal?" Fatal in < 1 year? Fatal before adulthood? Fatal in one's 20s? What about a disease that is "fatal" in the sense that it just subtracts 5, 10, or 20 years from one's expected lifespan?
Penalty is a permanent tax of up to 10% of your income for life.
Limit the ruling to conditions which can effectively be prevented with genetic testing which substantially burden society, and which society is willing to gratis help you prevent.
If its a 1% chance of transmission you have a 1% chance of a burdensome tax if its a 100% chance you have a 100% chance no need for us to worry personally about the chance of transmission.
Its not really a slippery slope as nobody is being denied the right to procreate it's just that if they know they have a genetic burden and choose to pass it on anyway they will have to help shoulder some of the financial load they put upon society.
It makes perfect sense to help people for free figure out what skeletons they have in their genetic closet. We all have some but some have a 1 in 100,000 chance of being born blind and some have a 50 50 chance of a painful ugly expensive death and should probably adopt.