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Comment by cestith | Hacker News Reader

It is ethically unsound.

"Ethics" is subjective, there is no such thing as an objective ethics (unless you are religious).

This is why thought experiments like the Trolley problems don't have a simple answer.. and they get even more complex with variations of the thought experiment.

I agree ethics can be subjective, so much so that there is more than one model of ethics.

However, please tell me which model of ethics supports eugenics. Is it Utilitarian, Rights, Fairness, Common Good, or Virtue?

Since it's subjective, you can just make up your own model supporting eugenics, and it'll be just as valid as any other model.

but it may not be accepted or viewed as moral by others

Just as valid as the five recognized models of ethics? Do tell. How does your model of ethics differ?

If we eliminate a gene that causes bad thing to happen, this kind of eugenics would fall into the Utilitarian model, among others.

Would you propose selective breeding, selective sterilization, selective euthanasia, war, genetic engineering, or what to eradicate such a gene?

What single gene that only causes bad things to happen do you have in mind? Are you sure it doesn’t also control unrelated activity that’s helpful to the population?

Under the utilitarian ethics model, everything from embryo screening to selective breeding/sterilization and genetic engineering would do the trick.

As to what specific gene or sets of gene in mind to alter, that depends on what you define as "bad things" and what is possible.

From a rapid google search, Cystic Fibrosis seems like a candidate.

Selective breeding or selective sterilization fail under Fairness, Rights, and probably Common Good. Maybe you’d get a pass with embryonic screening, but you’re fall afoul of other considerations there. Preselection of specific eggs and sperm before fertilization might clear most of those hurdles. So unless you get everyone to measure by only one ethical measurement, you’ve lost right out of the gate.

Genetic engineering is probably acceptable to most under all five. You’d probably still have ethical arguments. GE has ethical arguments raised against it in general, but let’s not go into the baby and bathwater arguments here. Editing genes in a fertilized egg or a blastomere has different ethical implications than doing gene editing in a fully born person. It’s different for a patient who can consent and for a child, too.

Cystic fibrosis usually leaves men mechanically sterile, although not carriers and men with CF can still have children through medical/surgical interventions. Its complications are ever more treatable. There are over 2500 known mutations of this gene, accounting for about 30 different disorders including CF. Which mutations would you screen for? Who among the population would you screen - known carriers? People with any CF in their extended family? Everyone?

are ethics man-made or „given“ to us by god, the watchmaker or the universe?

I think that in this context it's more useful to pose the question in there other direction: which moral systems declare that the slave trade and the disenfranchisement of persons on the basis of skin colour is not ok?

For the most part they come out of emotions that evolution found useful for procreation (love, fear, anger), then extrapolated to people living in small groups, then to larger societies after the invention of agriculture via the "iterated prisoners dilemma".

Ethics is a field of study. I know some on this site loathe the humanities, but those same often don’t mind using language, psychology, and sociology to make a buck.

Eugenics rejects the idea that all are created equal. Equality is supported by both Judeo-Christian theology and secular enlightenment philosophy.

I can think of little modern philosophy more regressive than the idea that a self-appointed superior can determine that another is inferior to the point that they (or their offspring) should be culled from existence. Eugenics and racism have been intertwined since the beginning and with a modern twist continue to target vulnerable populations.

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