Is Dawkins wrong about eugenics?

[RecoveringYuppy]

If you could edit out the gene for Tay-Sachs disease, for example, I think you'd have a hard time getting people to oppose that on moral grounds.

Dor Yeshorim could be considered a eugenics program with that as one of it's goals.

 

[Ziggurat]

If there was a way to safely edit out mutations to the HEXA^WP gene, I'd think (a) it's a good idea to do so & (b) doing so would be reasonably considered eugenics, at least with respect to any morally-neutral definition of the term.

What is the argument against these propositions?

I can imagine arguments from Jehova's Witnesses or similar who would be opposed to gene editing categorically, but that's a fairly fringe position. I don't know of any non-religious arguments against such a proposition, given the premise. But right now, the premise (safe editing) isn't true, and may not be for some time.

Dor Yeshorim could be considered a eugenics program with that as one of it's goals.

Given the voluntary nature of the program, how it works (nobody is excluded from having children), as well as the severity of the defect, I don't have any problem with it. I wouldn't be OK with making it mandatory, though.

But it's worth pointing out that if that program were instituted universally, it still wouldn't actually get rid of the gene. It would almost entirely eliminate the disease (spontaneous mutations could still trigger it on rare occasions), but since the gene is recessive and carriers can still have children who are carriers, the problem wouldn't actually go away.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

What is the argument against these propositions?

See the link I posted above.

Tay-Sachs may be the best example to satisfy Puppycow's question. It is a very bad disease and linked to a single gene. But there is the lingering doubt that we may not know the full implications of eliminating the gene. There is a suspicion that the gene might be related to Tuberculosis resistance, for example.

Note that the method that organization is using won't eliminate the gene from the gene pool.


ETA: Sorry, I should be saying mutation of the gene, rather than simply "gene" here.

 

[d4m10n]

But there is the lingering doubt that we may not know the full implications of eliminating the gene.

The HEXA gene cannot be eliminated without creating unviable offspring, AFAIK.

Sorry for the confusion, but I was talking about replacing common mutations with the usual fully-functional version of the gene.

I can imagine arguments from Jehova's Witnesses or similar who would be opposed to gene editing categorically, but that's a fairly fringe position. I don't know of any non-religious arguments against such a proposition, given the premise. But right now, the premise (safe editing) isn't true, and may not be for some time.

Fair point, but effectively the same result could be acheived by vastly lower-tech methods which already exist.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

The HEXA gene cannot be eliminated without creating unviable offspring, AFAIK.

Sorry for the confusion, but I was talking about replacing common mutations with the usual fully-functional version of the gene.

Yes, I'm sorry too. I've been trying to keep that distinction clear myself.

 

[Ziggurat]

Fair point, but effectively the same result could be acheived by vastly lower-tech methods which already exist.

That's certainly much lower tech than gene editing. But it's still sufficiently invasive and expensive that most people won't use it as part of their reproductive plans, so I don't think it will make much difference to population-level genetics. That may change in the future, though, if prices come down.

I'm OK with using this technology to screen for certain genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs. But it has potential for abuse for things like screening for skin color. So it might not be a bad idea to regulate it so that only specific tests for medically disastrous genetic conditions can be used, to prevent "designer children".

 

[Puppycow]

So can someone provide an actual example for this currently hypothetical case?

I already did. Huntington's disease.

 

[Arcade22]

Thanks, I didn't know it was so low. However I do think it still stands as an example that people will practice "backdoor" eugenics if possible.

Selectively aborting fetuses that are very likely, up to certainly, going to be afflicted with inborn but spontaneous conditions like down's syndrome is not eugenics. The same applies to other severe chromosomal abnormalities.

 

[Puppycow]

See my post above about ALS.
Are you claiming that Huntington's Disease is a good example where you'd answer Puppycow's answer with "yes, let's eliminate the Huntington's disease gene"?

I came across HD while looking in to ALS. It has some of the same problems with the concept of eliminating the gene as ALS including the one that you would have to eliminate healthy variations of the gene in order to prevent new damaged copies from occurring in a few generations.

Both of these diseases sound like examples that would argue for genetic screening at conception rather than selective breeding.

Genetic screening at conception is functionally a kind of selective breeding. If you are selecting zygotes based on the genetic sequence, or aborting certain fetuses based on their genetic sequence, you are selecting which genes to reproduce and which ones not to.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I already did. Huntington's disease.

Genetic screening at conception is functionally a kind of selective breeding. If you are selecting zygotes based on the genetic sequence, or aborting certain fetuses based on their genetic sequence, you are selecting which genes to reproduce and which ones not to.

Have you read the subsequent discussion on Huntington's disease? It's caused by many different alleles of the Huntingtin gene. And it's not clear how many of them you have to eliminate. If you want to remove all risk you would have to eliminate not only all currently defective genes but also remove some that are currently healthy but have a short mutation path to the unhealthy state. Keep in mind that there is not just one way that this gene can mutate. Eliminating the variants that we think are related to the disease means eliminating other variations that may or may not be present in other variants. Where would you draw the line?


BTW It's not really a line. It's a far more complicated boundary than a line.

 

[dann]

Rebecca Watson's take on this:

 

[arthwollipot]

But it's not actually the case, every dog breed was a deliberate goal, whether breeding them to be small enough to go down fox holes, or big enough to take down a boar. People didn't need to know the mechanism that allowed us to breed for specific traits they just needed to understand that 2 smaller dogs were more likely to have offspring that were small. The same is true across all the animals we have domesticated, whether that be cows that produce more milk, or hens laying eggs constantly. People have been knowingly breeding for specific traits for millennia . And we have emperical evidence of how rapidly this can happen thanks to the Russian fox experiment.

Also a very good point.

 

[Darat]

I think you're going to have a hard time simply outlawing such technology completely. If you could edit out the gene for Tay-Sachs disease, for example, I think you'd have a hard time getting people to oppose that on moral grounds. Traits like skin color are much more problematic because the preference carries a whole lot of cultural baggage detached from its biological merits, but drawing the line between the two cases won't be easy.

I pretty much agree.

 

[d4m10n]

That's certainly much lower tech than gene editing. But it's still sufficiently invasive and expensive that most people won't use it as part of their reproductive plans, so I don't think it will make much difference to population-level genetics.

Most people don't carry genes for severe childhood birth defects or crippling disorders later in life. The moral question I'm posing here is whether it's okay to empower the few who do to select healthy offspring for themselves. (Yes, I know the slope is slippery here. I have enjoyed Gattaca on several occasions.)

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Most people don't carry genes for severe childhood birth defects or crippling disorders later in life. The moral question I'm posing here is whether it's okay to empower the few who do to select healthy offspring for themselves. (Yes, I know the slope is slippery here. I have enjoyed Gattaca on several occasions.)

Assuming some other moral imperative doesn't come in to play, I'm pretty much fine with the people who are going to raise the child being able to determine the genetic make up of the child any way they are able to.

I can think of some cases that would concern me that I think would happen. A deaf couple choosing to make their child deaf when it didn't have to be? That would be a problem for me.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Yes, but is it scientific that eugenics could increase meat yield of choice cuts and fat marbling?

 

[Roboramma]

Great, so what then is the scientific definition of eugenics? In particular that incorporates that difference between "genes and environment"?

I don't think it needs to incorporate that difference, but it certainly needs to be consistent with it.

Simply 'the application of selective breeding to humans' doesn't define eugenics in any scientific way other than simply as selective breeding and makes no clear distinction between "genes and environment".

I think "the application of selective breeding to humans" is a very good definition of eugenics, actually. We certainly want to differentiate between selective breeding applied to other animals, which I don't have any problem with, to selective breeding applied to humans, which seems quite repugnant to me. If someone were to propose a selective breeding program for humans, what would you call it?

I'd call it eugenics.

While selective breeding would certainly be a tool of eugenics every application of selective breeding can't be eugenics otherwise the word itself is superfluous.

It's not superfluous because it differentiates between selective breeding applied to humans and that applied to other species. I think that distinction is important.

You mention the distinction of the environment from genetics in regard to a scientific definition of eugenics.

Sure. To take an animal example, if someone were breeding horses to run faster they'd be unlikely to be successful if they didn't take into account the effects of exercise on running speed. If they thought that heredity had lamarkian characteristics and designed their metrics of success around that, they'd be likely to fail. Soviet agriculture suffered from exactly this mistake.
Your idea of defining success in eugenics in part around being in control of the breeding program would have exactly this problem.

 

[Arcade22]

Yes, but is it scientific that eugenics could increase meat yield of choice cuts and fat marbling?

As enticing and tempting the thought of keeping people as livestock is, there is really no good reason to do so given the poor potential that people offer any meat industry.

 

[Roboramma]

I'm saying that positive goals have never been sought by eugenics in the real world. Anyone is free to make up a scenario like the above where a "eugenics" program with the singular goal of eradicating a specific medical condition can exist for instance; but this hypothetical scenario bears no relationship to the historical reality of eugenics and the aims of those who have used it and thus seems to serve little purpose, except perhaps as a waypoint in an attempt to argumentatively thumb-wrestle people into eventually conceding that a carefully-enough-crafted hypothetical "eugenics" program that is "not bad" can exist.

Let me clarify then: I think a program such as I outlined would be a horrible idea. I said as much. It's not an example of a hypothetical eugenics program that is not bad. It's an example of a eugenics programs whose goal would be positive, but the means of achieving that goal, eugenics, would be repugnant.

If someone came along with such a program, I think we should oppose it. We should oppose it on the grounds that it would hurt real people and impose on their liberty. We shouldn't oppose it because it's not scientifically possible. We shouldn't say "that's not really eugenics". Eugenics isn't defined by what's already been tried in the past. Such a thing, if it were proposed, should be named as eugenics, and should be opposed on valid moral grounds.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I think eugenics is a thing we don't need to rush on. I'm not against, usually in favor of, people raising the best children they know how by any safe means available. But I can't see any dire, or even reasonable, need to start thinking we need to guard the human genome in any way that limits it.

As I understand the biology of the human race we are currently a genus represented by a single subspecies of a single species and are relatively inbred or lacking in diversity compared to other species. Our current understanding of genetics doesn't lead me to believe that good characteristics are being lost. They may be "diluted" but they aren't lost. Most humans reproduce or have near ancestors that reproduce. That means most genes are being retained unless they really lead to a complete ability to reproduce.

Our extremely large for our size population has occurred in a very short time. It has not had time to develop diversity commensurate with our numbers based on what I understand. No need to rush eugenics. Possibly our understanding of genetics would be better directed towards extending our diversity, rather than restricting it.