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What was called eugenics 100 years ago we refer to today as genetic counseling. Keep in mind that antiseptic surgery had barely become universal 100 years ago.
What was called eugenics 100 years ago we refer to today as genetic counseling. Keep in mind that antiseptic surgery had barely become universal 100 years ago.
Not true. The idea of eugenics is to selectively breed for intelligence or against defects. Genetic counseling informs people of heritability risks.
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Not true. The idea of eugenics is to selectively breed for intelligence or against defects. Genetic counseling informs people of heritability risks.
I submit that selective breeding is still occurring. A study of Abortions here in the US suggests this to be accurate. Abortion is most often committed by those with less education and poor .@ 62% of abortions are by non-whites. Seems to me some folks could be using the pro-abortion push to manipulate the gene pool.... Eugenics is still being practiced in my opinion...
From the CDC...
Stephen Hawkings and Michael J. Fox may not have the best genes one would want in the reproductive pool but if they were exterminated, the world would be bereft of their genius and talent.
Not true. The idea of eugenics is to selectively breed for intelligence or against defects. Genetic counseling informs people of heritability risks.
Did you forget in spite of the warning about the passage of 100 years? What was known in the field then was rather paltry by our standards, but it was the best anyone had at the time. And in addition to the time factor, consider that people then were not laughably concerned about the public coffers somehow being drained by illegal immigrants, but rather quite legitimately concerned that they would be drained by the endless tides of sick, deformed, and otherwise unwanted babies being abandoned at orphanages, firehouses, police stations, and almost any other such place one could think of. The negative influences of an unfettered Mother Nature were in people's minds 100 years ago in ways that (thankfully) they are not today.
I submit that selective breeding is still occurring. A study of Abortions here in the US suggests this to be accurate.
Abortions in this country are performed on the basis of each individual woman having the right to control her own reproductive history. No one tells her to have a baby and no one tells her she cannot. The decision to reproduce or not is about as extremely decentralized as possible. It is hard to see that any actual "master plan" of selective breeding could be carried out under such circumstances.
Abortions in this country are performed on the basis of each individual woman having the right to control her own reproductive history. No one tells her to have a baby and no one tells her she cannot. The decision to reproduce or not is about as extremely decentralized as possible. It is hard to see that any actual "master plan" of selective breeding could be carried out under such circumstances.
Master plan or not, the numbers are there to indicate that women who are poor, more often minority, more often single take advantage of abortions more then the affluent, predominantly White population. Regardless of why, those are the stats. A direct link can be established between cause and effect.....It's math. The fewer poor, minority kids being born the less % of the population that demographic holds in the population. If one were to look further one might conjecture if that's why a certain political party wants to make it easier to be illegal alien to stay in the states or to come here in the first place. If you let your voting block abort itself out of existence you have to make those numbers someplace
It's interesting that you brought this subject up, because after a recent discussion in another thread wherein we discussed the incredible success the Jewish community has experienced in America, I have been thinking about and reading up on "The Bell Curve" theory, which would seem to relate to Eugenics to some degree.
In that thread, it was mentioned several times that the average Jewish IQ was in the range of 113 to 117, and it also was noted that Asians have an average IQ in the range of 106 to 108.
If this is true, and my subsequent research suggests it is probably true, then it's hard for me to reconcile the Bell Curve not being true. Because it would certainly appear that IQ can be and is handed down through the genes to a significant degree.
Moreover, I can see it as a support factor for what you posted: i.e., "Although controversial because breeding is a basic human instinct and right that cannot be ethically denied anyone, eugenics tends to occur naturally anyway when those with less desired traits simply don't attract others sexually, aside from instances in which those with less-desired traits are attracted to their own kind."
First you'd have to factor out the degree that IQ tests test for language-handling capability, and distinguish that from whatever it is that innate IQ is supposed to be. The definition seems to be very amorphous, but maybe that's just me. I bring up language because an observant Jewish community learns Hebrew, and I believe their rabbis still work with Yiddish. Those languages also have distinctive alphabets, and read from right to left, up to down. Therefore, observant Jews necessarily have much more developed language-processing skills. including spatial relationships (reading) and eye scanning. Rabbis and lectors also use a pointer when working with sacred texts, yet another hand-eye skill that is explicit. Jewish religious training seems to involve reading the target script, reading commentaries, and then discussing the texts, with cites, examples, and so on. My impression is also that basic literacy for the Jewish community is their sacred language, whatever the main language is that surrounds them, and likely another major European language - German or French.
Language and literary analysis and theological analysis are thus an important part of the Jewish community - I think this emphasis has helped keep them together as a culture and as a community.
The main problem with eugenics - MO - is the problem present from the start of the movement: We're human, we didn't have the wisdom then to choose which characteristics were actually important to the genetic community. And from what I can see - we're still not sufficiently wise to make those choices. Oh, we have the capability - witness the fecklessness of PRC's one-child policy, and how many individual families chose to abort girls until they got a boy - to carry on the line, presumably. And note the distortions to Chinese culture/society that is resulting from that.
In the US, if we were to actually implement such policies, I imagine it would only be a few generations before everyone were blond over blue, with nice hair, teeth, skin (your basic generic TV talent). And then something like the Potato Blight would strike, and it might be the end of the US. In actuality, I don't expect any such thing to happen - the Japanese and Germans in WWII were quite convinced that they were genetic/cultural/religious and God-only-knows-what-all paragons of all the virtues, and that they would never be defeated by degenerate, multiracial shopkeepers with no marital tradition to speak of. They were quite wrong, of course. In the US, we are fairly protean, we can reinvent ourselves not only individually, but as a society. We reinvented ourselves as soldiers/engineers/administrators/laborers/logisticians - we used radio nets to concentrate and coordinate arty, we broke codes, we developed nukes, we built the logistics to deliver food, ammo, fuel and weapons to the corners of the World, and we supplied our allies, too.
I assume that wiser heads will prevail, and certainly we shouldn't leave important decisions to people whose only talent seems to be to look nice and smile for the camera.
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Begging the question
