Human breeding program

[Lauxa]

What do you think of the idea of encouraging males with undesirable characteristics to be sterilized? And encouraging impregnation with sperm of super-specimens (the strongest and the brightest)?

What would you think as a male if you were asked to remove yourself from the gene pool? Would you want to help raise and support kids that you had not fathered? Would the institution of marriage break down if most men were sterile?

Let's assume for the sake of example that "undesirable" men were offered $1M to sterilize and "highly desirable" men were offered $1M to contribute to the national sperm bank and "somewhat desirable" women were offered $1M to raise such a child and no "fascist" techniques would be used to encourage this behavior.

[Eric Revelin]

Like stupid people would ever give up their ability to breed.

Okay, okay, this is a hypothetical, not necessarily a realistic situation. By all means, if we can improve the quality of the gene pool without fascistic tactics I think we should. Humans are unique in that they have the intelligence to guide the course of evolution but up to this point we've not taken advantage of that.

However, it shouldn't focus solely on men. Good sperm is wasted if we're using the eggs of less desirable (or merely adequate) women. I've got no problem with genetically unfit parents raising children (genetics has little to do with how good you are at parenting) but if we're gonna go to all this trouble then anything less than superb won't do.

I don't want to support children that aren't mine, nor should I have to. One of the byproducts of this would be that less children would be born so it should be possible to ensure each child is born to a financially stable family. At any rate, my stance would be what it is now- if you want a kid you damn sure better be able to support it.

[Trezker]

We should just encourage intelligent people to reproduce more. I think that's all we really need to do to avoid evolving towards idiocracy.

There is an idea about removing all the stupid warning labels on stuff. But that's misguided. The warning labels aren't there to help stupid people avoid doing stupid things, stupid people never read those labels anyway! The labels are there to protect companies against stupid lawsuits. I think stupid warning labels ultimately helps human evolution by keeping money away from stupid people.

[aelle]

There is no way of telling which caracteristics are undesirable. A genetic trait that is considered a defect now can turn into a lifesaving advantage if the environment changes (the typical and most studied example of this fact is sickle cell anemia)

Some people have tried eugenism and racial epuration in the past. It never ended well. Life strives on diversity.

[Eric Revelin]

On the other hand, as science advances the gene pool becomes irrelevant. When we can pick what genes somebody is born with theoretically we should be able to adapt to any circumstance.

[newsbone]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

What do you think of the idea of encouraging males with undesirable characteristics to be sterilized? And encouraging impregnation with sperm of super-specimens (the strongest and the brightest)?

What would you think as a male if you were asked to remove yourself from the gene pool? Would you want to help raise and support kids that you had not fathered? Would the institution of marriage break down if most men were sterile?

Let's assume for the sake of example that "undesirable" men were offered $1M to sterilize and "highly desirable" men were offered $1M to contribute to the national sperm bank and "somewhat desirable" women were offered $1M to raise such a child and no "fascist" techniques would be used to encourage this behavior.

Adolf Hitler’s idea never died but keeps getting rebirths but under the cover of different methodologies but with the same purpose. My question is; due to the ever-changing answers provided by science how sure will we be of the “undesirables or desirables?” am this because today’s methods will be obsolete tomorrow.

[Xanafax]

I am sorry.

Is this serious?

Are you actually suggesting that we subvert peoples individual rights to have children for the sake of "the gene pool"... I can't believe I am actually hearing this. Are you serious? This is ridiculous.

Immoral isn't strong enough to describe this idea.

[pianoperformer]

Originally Posted by newsbone

Adolf Hitler’s idea never died but keeps getting rebirths but under the cover of different methodologies but with the same purpose.

Godwin, already.

[WanderingOak]

Originally Posted by newsbone

Adolf Hitler’s idea never died but keeps getting rebirths but under the cover of different methodologies but with the same purpose. My question is; due to the ever-changing answers provided by science how sure will we be of the “undesirables or desirables?” am this because today’s methods will be absolute tomorrow.

Actually, the Germans got the idea from America's eugenics program, where the insane and 'feeble-minded' were sterilized...

[newsbone]

Originally Posted by WanderingOak

Actually, the Germans got the idea from America's eugenics program, where the insane and 'feeble-minded' were sterilized...

Hitler was responsible me thinks saying Germans is kind of generalizing one man's evil crusade.

[Lauxa]

No, I am not saying we should force anyone not to breed, I was talking about an incentives program.

We selectively breed pets and livestock for desirable characteristics, why not people? Are people not interested in producing stronger and smarter people? Wouldn't selecting for these genetic traits improve humanity? As a group (nation, whatever) trying to compete against other groups, wouldn't this increase the chances of group survival?

@Eric: The reason I suggested targeting men is because this is the way it is done in other selective breeding programs with animals. It is much easier to obtain sperm than eggs, and fairly easy also to impregnate a female once the sperm is harvested. Leaving more women in your breeding pool would also ensure diversity and resilience of the gene pool itself.

@aelle: It is true we don't know how circumstances will change, but does that mean we shouldn't try?

[Xanafax]

What your saying is that people don't matter as long as the group is happy?

[Lauxa]

Originally Posted by Xanafax

What your saying is that people don't matter as long as the group is happy?

What I'm saying is that the group is stonger if individuals within the group get more reward from contributing to the welfare of the group than from going against the group.

[Xanafax]

That's just collectivism in a nice layout.

What your talking about is straight up communism.

You want a persons worth to be decided relative to his value to society.

[Lauxa]

Meritocracy != Communism

[Daffy Duck]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Let's assume for the sake of example that "undesirable" men were offered $1M to sterilize and "highly desirable" men were offered $1M to contribute to the national sperm bank and "somewhat desirable" women were offered $1M to raise such a child and no "fascist" techniques would be used to encourage this behavior.

If we did this, then $1M wouldn't be worth much anymore. I don't think the taxpayers would go for such an idea either. And who decides which man is desirable or not? This did remind me of Hitler's idea too.

[jimbos123456]

What do you think of the idea of encouraging males with undesirable characteristics to be sterilized? And encouraging impregnation with sperm of super-specimens (the strongest and the brightest)?

Sorry but if your idea is adopted it would mostly encourage elitism, power, control, ego, and ultimately the destruction of civilization through ego behavior like in past cycles of humanity.

What would you think as a male if you were asked to remove yourself from the gene pool?

I'm not a violent person at all, but we can have a civil war if it ever comes to that, that is something that is worth fighting over. That type of America is simply not worth living in.

no "fascist" techniques would be used to encourage this behavior.

I seriously doubt fascist techniques could ever be avoided. If a person is treated as inferior simply for having certain genetics, they are going to to go along with whatever those they perceive as superior think they should do. Its psychological warfare and about nothing more than power and control. That type of behavior is just elites at the top trying to eliminate the smarter people at the bottom, that could someday become a threat and challenge them.

Let's assume for the sake of example that "undesirable" men were offered $1M to sterilize and "highly desirable" men were offered $1M to contribute to the national sperm bank and "somewhat desirable" women were offered $1M to raise such a child
__________________

Thats a gigantic waste of money, the market is always more efficient, if there was no interference from the FDA natural therapies could be made much more affordable and effective. Meritocracy does not equal communism, letting the market do it's thing without this eugenics is a true meritocracy. For ALOT less then a million dollars you could cleanse someones entire colon, lymphatic system, stomach, liver, pancreas, parasites, and have them fast on 1 gallon of juice a day made from a norwalk juicer, for 90 days using gerson therapy. If they did that probably all of their medical problems would be gone, and their productivity would go up. If you have the best doctors checking for and correcting every nutritional deficiency, and have them sit around doing memory exercises all day long they could probably acquire photographic memory. Females should be required to eliminate the hundreds of different toxins in their bodies before becoming impregnated, to improve productivity of their offspring, but that would still be a lot cheaper compared to 1 million. I was not born with the best genetics, due to the poor lifestyle habits of my parents, I incarnated into a damaged body, but I fully understand whats going on and plan on repairing my body.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

What do you think of the idea of encouraging males with undesirable characteristics to be sterilized? And encouraging impregnation with sperm of super-specimens (the strongest and the brightest)?

...

I think it's a silly idea. You've just disqualified yourself to contribute to the gene pool. Please do not have children. Thank you.



We already have a great mechanism for this. It's called nature. Nature always wins.

[Lauxa]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

We already have a great mechanism for this. It's called nature. Nature always wins.

And humans are a part of nature and have selectively bred hundreds of species of plants and animals to make them more useful to us.

Originally Posted by jimbos123456

If a person is treated as inferior simply for having certain genetics, they are going to to go along with whatever those they perceive as superior think they should do. Its psychological warfare and about nothing more than power and control. That type of behavior is just elites at the top trying to eliminate the smarter people at the bottom, that could someday become a threat and challenge them.

People are treated as inferior for all sorts of reasons, including race (genetics), being short (genetics), being fat (maybe genetic), being stupid (genetic?), and being insane (genetic?). Saying that people "should" be all treated the same no matter their genetics isn't going to change the fact that a person with strong genetics has a head start in life.

Well, I can see that there is a lot of resistence to this idea, which I expected. Even couched in incentives and encouragements it sounds "facist"; people are not going to voluntarily withdraw from the gene pool. I suppose the rich elites will be improving the genetics of their offspring soon enough anyways, as well as using cyborg tech to synthetically increase capability.

[Xanafax]

Put it this way Lauxa:

I would have any defective genes removed from my child in a heartbeat, but I would NOT have them upgraded to identical "Superhumans".

I would cybernetically enhance them and myself, to an extent. (Ghost in the Shell anyone?)

However what your suggesting is nonsense. The only type of genetic control you can have is letting people marry and shag whoever they like.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

And humans are a part of nature and have selectively bred hundreds of species of plants and animals to make them more useful to us.


...

True. But there is a difference in breeding animals / plants, and human beings. Especially if humans are forced in one way or another.

Robert Heinlein wrote in several books, starting with "Methuselah's Children" about an interesting variation.

A foundation was started to improve longevity. People who had long living parents, grandparents etc were asked (not forced) to have children with people also with long living (grand)parents. The incentive was money: parents were 'rewarded' for each child. The foundation kept track of all those people so they could introduce them to each other (or their kids, when they became old enough).

As long as it is strictly voluntary, I don't have a problem with it. Problems arise when e.g. our government decides to eliminate 'bad genes' 'for the good of the people'. Yeah, right...

Heinlein's stories about this were great, BTW.

[bluedragon]

But who do you think wants to have more intelligent people around? Intelligent people are harder to manipulate, to control. Do you want the robots to rebel against their masters ?

Anyway, maybe it would be a good idea, but that would imply that some people would need to admit that they are inferior to others. If we believe in a certain degree of subjective reality, not matter how small - law of attraction, principle of attraction - we should not encourage people to label themselves as undesirable. I don t know, something about the whole idea makes me have a very strong adverse reaction - undesirable people?? Who can say who is undesirable? Undesirable by whom and undesirable for what purpose?

But a more urgent solution would be, in my opinion, to stop extremely poor people from raising tens of children in poverty, and avoid so many child deaths from malnutrition, etc.

[jimbos123456]

People are treated as inferior for all sorts of reasons, including race (genetics), being short (genetics), being fat (maybe genetic), being stupid (genetic?), and being insane (genetic?). Saying that people "should" be all treated the same no matter their genetics isn't going to change the fact that a person with strong genetics has a head start in life.

A person might be born into a damaged body, however that doesn't make them inferior, every soul is equal. A soul you might know in this lifetime might not have better memory, yet they might be way more advanced compared to you in the afterlife.

Well, I can see that there is a lot of resistence to this idea, which I expected. Even couched in incentives and encouragements it sounds "facist"; people are not going to voluntarily withdraw from the gene pool. I suppose the rich elites will be improving the genetics of their offspring soon enough anyways, as well as using cyborg tech to synthetically increase capability.

I was born into the bottom of society, and all the rich kids families that I went to school with are probably going bankrupt now. I am noticing a trend with the elites. Those that are born with good memory due to their genetics and wealth, are only given a temporary advantage. They think they are superior to others having attended elite universities, and live very unhealthy easy lives. The people that went to the elite schools got rich during the bubble years, but are starting to get vaporized as we speak due to the 2nd great depression, most people are in denial it exists. They are in so much denial they aren't positioning themselves to profit from it.

They were only as good as the propaganda they were taught, at their elite schools, and they weren't smart enough to figure out it was propaganda before it was to late. This breeds complacency and a lack of strong work ethic in their offspring, resulting in bread and circuses. Looking at pictures of these people I can identify numerous health problems, and weaknesses to exploit. I propose that the elites that lost their wealth and asked for bailouts are genetically inferior, and should be sterilized due to having the darkworker gene muhahahaha jk jk jkjkjk jk jk .

[Eric Roosevelt]

The question is who would administer such a program. If it were to have an effect on a large portion of the population, and if the whole process were to be free from special interests, I'm guessing some government institution would probably to be involved.

I'm not opposed to the idea of improving the human genome in principle, but I think we'd have to be very careful in the beginning stages of such a program. I think genetic manipulation and small scale "breeding programs" would have to be carried out first, probably focused largely on inherited diseases and obvious physiological deficiencies. More people would have to get some type of genetic screening in the first place in order to make informed decisions.

A lot more research is probably also needed in this area.

[funchy]

I agree with the people who said it's hard to know what is a "bad" gene and what is a "good" one. People are often scared to talk about this topic because it was actually put into use (eugenics) during Hitler's reign.

However, there are a few genes people probably don't ever want to pass on. Creating a child with the trait is IMO cruel. A few examples might be hemophilia, Cystic Fibrosis, and severe forms of Charcot-Marie-Tooth. Is it a form of child abuse to know both parents carry the CF gene and intentionally create a baby with CF?

Trouble is that our society has decided people have the right to procreate at all costs, no matter the harm it does to the resulting children or the community. Look at how many crack babies are still born, and yet we cannot take away those women's fertility. It's a "right" they claim. Women also think they have the right for everyone else to take care of them once the baby is born. We invented welfare and food stamps, which in the way it's structured, keeps people on it indefinitely (and you have to occasionally have another kid to receive full benefits). People who beat their kids to death are allowed the "right" to have more kids. Moms who let the kid be abused to death by the spouse or be given drugs or be molested still have a "right" to make more.

It's as if we're so obsessed with this "right" to "life" nobody wants to think about the quality of life and the results of protecting that "right" at all costs. We also seem to have a culture that has kids for selfish (or just simply thoughtless) reasons.

The other problem is that we can't seem to control our fertility. "Excluding miscarriages, 49% of the pregnancies occurring in 1994 were unintended" (source) Even if women wanted to be more careful about not having a child, short of full surgical sterilization, odds are they will face an unwanted fetus. "48% of women aged 15-44 in 1994 had had at least one unplanned pregnancy at some point in their lives, 28% had had one or more unplanned births" Perhaps our first step is to create 100% effective birth control, make it affordable to all, and make it more accessible.

Right now, people who want to be sterilized have an uphill battle. If you've never had several kids, expect strong pressure from doctors against it. Expect your insurance company to fight you (even if paying for your unwanted birthing would cost them more). Expect some religious people to look down on you. When I inquired with my OBGYN for more information on it, he got very upset and refused to talk to me about it. Expect to get a sales pitch for the latest birth control pill instead of getting information from medical professionals. Society seems almost scared of the idea of people not wanting to be pregnant.

[Brutha]

Breeding is really a slow process to change genetics. It takes houndreds of years.
If you want to change the gen pool it's much easier to do through genetic manipulation in a few decades.

[Odysseus Ithaca]

I think that eugenics has historically been used to justify a pseudoscientific attack on minorities and the poor, honestly. It also tends to ignore the role of nurture, or individual choice for that matter.

That said, I am fine with using gene therapy to remove genetic diseases and to make improvements to boot.

[Indiana]

All I have to say about this is "Stephen Hawking".

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by Indiana

All I have to say about this is "Stephen Hawking".

But what does that mean? Allow genetic defects even though we can prevent them (now or in the future)? Why?

I wonder what the 'Stephen Hawkings' of this world think about it. Would they use the possibility to detect and / or prevent genetic defects in their children?

[liamona]

I think we women have a lot of power over this—we could improve the gene pool significantly if we'd only sleep with and get pregnant by men who treated us well and had a lot of integrity.

On another thread, I posted about a video presentation on nutrition and behavior by Dr. Russell Blaylock:

Nutrition & Behavior (MD Russell Blaylock 2006) Video

And through the wonders of Google, I found a blog post that neatly summarizes the video:

Dr Russell Blaylock – Nutrition and Behavior « A Phil-for-an-ill Blog

Check out the section under "Crime and Nutrition."

Dr. Baylock mentioned a lot of studies done on criminals, alcoholics and mentally unstable people. They were able to make significant behavior changes by dietary changes alone, for instance by eliminating sugar and junk food.

According to one study, over half of prisoners were hyperactive as children. And 60% of family members of hyperactive children were found to be diabetic, obese or alcoholic (in other words, have trouble with sugar consumption).

So all we need to do is to encourage the "undesirables" to give up their beer, soda, candy and potato chips and everything will be golden!