sterilizing & segregating the incapable

CerealKiller wrote:

It. Artificially sustaining such people (especially at the coerced expense of healthy individuals) goes against the natural mechanisms in place to thin the species and ensure that only the most able individuals survive, thus compromising the species as a whole.

Not necessarily so -- as I mentioned earlier.

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Re: sterilizing & segregating the incapable

CerealKiller wrote:

Do you think that it is okay to segregate mentally and physically incapable individuals, so they cannot reproduce or sterilize them in order to protect and save good genes within our society?

why or why not?

People who have raped repeatedly or comitted repeated extremely violent crime: maybe. Mental patients or the physically disabled, no.

A. qualifications for what is insane and what isn't change over time. Not too long ago we called people loonies for believing the earth was round or denouncing one g-d or another.
B. Patients can get better over time.
C. We have no idea what makes "good genes" and what doesn't. According to Darwin's theory of natural selection, good genes are the ones that survive.
D. How are we to mentally predict which qualia will serve the human race best in the future? Steven Hawlking seems to have helped our society out quite a bit, and he is an "invalid."

On a related note:
Let me make it absolutely clear that a parent's choice on whether or not to carry a disabled or mentally ill fetus to birth (or any fetus of early stages, for that matter) is entirely their personal decision into which the government should not intervene.

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Frank Apisa wrote:

CerealKiller wrote:
It. Artificially sustaining such people (especially at the coerced expense of healthy individuals) goes against the natural mechanisms in place to thin the species and ensure that only the most able individuals survive, thus compromising the species as a whole.

Not necessarily so -- as I mentioned earlier.

There is a huge difference between Stephen Hawking and someone who completely lacks the ability to function. I also think that minor mental retardation won't be a permanent reality for very long. The only reason it has remained so for this long, is the ridiculous assertion that the brain stops developing entirely by age four, which was considered "institutional knowledge" until 10 years ago. I strongly believe that neurological research and cognitive science will shatter such previously permanent barriers, in the near future. I don't at all think such cases are instances of genetic mutation/disease, so much as the result of many other possible factors. Early brain development is a fragile thing. Hopefully, we will soon know enough about it to prevent new instances of infantile retardation, and help others to achieve their full potential capacities.

Other situations - say Down Syndrome - are different altogether. Many genetic birth disorders can seal a child's fate prior to adulthood, and do so with alarming statistical significance. Many don't even make it to puberty. I really don't understand why a parent would want to bring a child into this world, with full pre-natal knowledge that the chances of the child surviving until puberty are slim-to-none. It reminds me of Blade Runner...I just don't get it.

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Well, with down syndrome and other severly debilitating diseases, they probably are only surviving because they are being taken care of, not because of their own merit. Either way, they have as much of a right to try to pass on their genes (in a concensual manner) as anyone else does. If they are unfit for life, they will die. That is the short and simple truth of it, and interference is not necessary.

What I feel the real question is, is when we live in a social collective where we come into contact with mentally handicapped, invalids, or even able bodied homeless, is it our responsibility as a socity to take care of them (support them, banish them, etc.), and if yes, what would be the most effective methods?

Blade Runner rules Smile

. Also, GATTACA.

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Portal Star wrote:

What I feel the real question is, is when we live in a social collective where we come into contact with mentally handicapped, invalids, or even able bodied homeless, is it our responsibility as a socity to take care of them (support them, banish them, etc.), and if yes, what would be the most effective methods?

Blade Runner rules . Also, GATTACA.

Responsibility? No. You can choose to do so for your own personal reasons. You can also choose NOT to again, for your own personal reasons.

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Well, my own personal reasons aren't an option because of government social programs started to look like they were ending the great depression (when really it was the war.) Now, the federal government takes my tax money to distribute to these matters through welfare, social security, etc. Businesses charge me extra and redistribute the money to such matters as well (not money from individuals in the company, the money from products sold and/or investors.) There is also the decision making: If the government is going to take a large chunk of my paycheck (and part of my house, part of my death, everything I buy and sell, required liscences for various activities like hunting, driving, and fishing, crops that I grow, land that I live on, every cent I earn, driving on the roads, paying $5 to park in the garage they built with my money....) for social programs, are they doing it effectively? Should the federal government be redistributing our money for these reasons?

Whether you like it or not, as a citizen of a semi-socialist state (I am making the assumption you are a citizen of the U.S.), your money is a participant in this.

BTW, on the issue of social care I find Thomas Chalmers really interesting.

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In the future all people will be beautiful.

Not through genetics but through appreciation.

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Society doesn't have responsibility for its parts, per se, but it does have a vested interest in keeping them alive, however decrepit they are. Culture and society shape evolution far more than the ability to stay alive - this is reality, not a Dungeons and Dragons game.

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CerealKiller wrote:

Mixed feelings. On one hand social darwinism makes sense, considering our population is rising everyday and our resources are decreasing everyday.

Natural selections control population by death-rates, Eugenics controls population by birth-rate.

But that puts in question human morality.

There is no validity in any of those statements. They are merely personal (and very highly subjective) views.

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We actually did this in the United States not too long ago. I think it was about eighty years ago when in the court decision, Buck vs. Bell, the judge said, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

I think that everyone has the same rights regardless of how we view their mental capabilities. So I vehemently oppose sterilization.

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Yup, xifar. And those three generations weren't even especially mentally unstable. They were being singled out as "evidence" that eugenics was a good idea.

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Wouldn't the fact that "defected" people are usually vegetables take care of the sterilization idea? It's pretty hard to have sex when incapacitated.

Most people wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for genetic defects. Everything from big noses to sickle-cell anemia were once huge disadvantages to human life but have since served to our benefit.

Therefore, I am completely against sterilization and segregation. However, I do not think that people who cannot live any real form of life (those in permanent comas) should not have to live, but that their life should be lived is a choice of those that brought them life.

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Blonde hair and blue eyes started out as mutations too, I believe.

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Those phenotypes were only allowed to come about after we moved out of the sun. But they were always there.

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We can't move out of the sun. We need it to live, otherwise it messes with our vitimin D levels. I'm not talking about melonin either, I'm talking about genes.

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What are you talking about now? Although you were talking about the sun, that really had nothing to do with what I had typed.

I was telling you that blonde hair and blue eyes weren't mutations, the components to allow blondes had always been there but were only able to manifest themselves (phenotypes) after we move out of sunny Africa and into cloudy Europe.

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Well, I have a child who is "incapable".

Come on around to sterilize him.

All your questions about Jesus will be answered, because I will send you to Him.

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I need a spouse like that

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sterilizing & segregating the incapable

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