Ethical question about child molestors

So, should we wait until a person molests a child before we decide if the procedure is ethical or not?

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joefromchicago wrote:

The genetic marker does not predispose someone to be a child molester: it causes someone to be a child molester. As I pointed out in a previous post: "Presumably, we can be assured that the causative link is well-established: in other words, a person with this gene will not simply be predisposed to molesting children, he will molest children."

I think were reading the opening post a little differently. In my view someone isn't a child molestor until they actually molest a child and it wasn't stated that the hypothetical person had actually done so. I haven't seen any scientific evidence yet that genetics can positively (100% certianty) cause a person to do anything. The inclination may be there but that's still a step away from actually acting.

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According to what you know about genetic traits and viral diseases or according to what you know about the hypothetical situation?

The hypothetical is problematic enough. Wink

I'll stick with genes and viruses.

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someone isn't a child molestor until they actually molest
In the end don't you think all that really matters is doing whatever's in our power to be sure this doesn't happen to a child? Whether a person has actually molested a child or not shouldn't even come into the equation. If there's the slightest chance that something like this could happen then I'm all for stopping it before it gets to that point. If you're worried about immorality, how moral do you think you'd feel if you didn't do anything and that person molested your child.

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ah, the siren song of the 'hypothetical question'!

[would it not be more cogent to discuss the rights of the 'victim', vs. the rights of the 'perpetrator', as to what can acceptably be done to/for them?]

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Victim/Perpetrator
Actually, you can't even say "victim's rights" or "perpetrator's rights" because in this scenario a crime hasn't yet been committed, but we could definately throw children's rights in there. Don't children have the right to be safe? Isn't that our main role in life, to love, care for, and to the best of our ability protect them from all of the bad, immoral things in the world? I can honestly say I believe child molestion is the worst crime a person can commit. I think we should have the option of the death penalty for anyone sick enough to lay their hands on a child in that way. I guess the only thing I don't understand from some of these responses is, if there is any possible way to prevent it, no matter what it takes, why in the world would you wait until this person has actually molseted a child to do anything about it? I guess when I read this I couldn't see how anyone would even question this. How can it be ok to put a kid through that just because you might offend someone or possibly violate their right just a tad? If your best friend called you up and said they were goign to commit suicide, would you wait until they actually did it before you went for help? If your neighboor told, dead serious, that they were going to kill thier spouse, would you wait until they did it before you called 911? If everyone waited until a crime was actually commited, whether it be because of the offender's rights or some other idiotic reason, I'm guessing there'd be a lot more dead people and raped women and all the other wonderful things criminals are responsible for.

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We all have a natural (you might say genetic) compulsion to do things that are illegal - for example, steal. We all need to eat. Doesn't the presuppose that we are all inclined to steal things to eat? It's not important what you MIGHT do - it's important what you DO do. The difference between someone who steals and someone who doesn't (taking socioeconomic position and actual conditions of starvation out of the equation) is not biological - it's mental. Even if there were found to be a gene corresponding to child molestation, there are mental/social means to overcome that, just as there are mental/social means to overcome everything else we are inclined to do as human beings. If there weren't, law and social custom would not be enforceable.

Another, (probably better) example - people don't even think about hitting on their pretty cousins. Why? Because social rules are stronger than biological inclinations.

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rufio wrote:

Even if there were found to be a gene corresponding to child molestation, there are mental/social means to overcome that, just as there are mental/social means to overcome everything else we are inclined to do as human beings. If there weren't, law and social custom would not be enforceable.

I think that is a very good point.

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I'll totally agree with the fact that each and everyone of us has thought about or even done something illegal in our lives. I'm sure even Mother Theresa had a bad thought once or twice in her life, but I'm just not understanding your train of thought. First of all, stealing a pack of gum or a loaf of bread and molesting a child are not even comparable. Yes, stealing is wrong and you should be punished for it, but the end results of these 2 actions are not even close. When you steal something, whether it's a five cent piece of candy or a thousand dollar piece of jewelry, and in the end you might be costing someone (probably some rich old man) a little bit of money. You molest a child and you will absolutely 100% completely destroy them mentally, physically and emotionally, and this won't just be for a couple of years until they get over it, this will be until the day they die. They will never get over it and they'll be lucky if they even learn to cope with it. Can I ask how many of you have ever known a child that's been molested? I mean really known them, spent time with them and their families, or even had it happen to someone in your familly? Have any of you ever heard the terrifying, blood-curdling shrieks of a 4 year old girl who was having a nightmare during a nap, this sweet, adorable, tiny little thing so completely hysterical that she's ripping chunks of hair out of her head because she thinks the bad man from the park is trying to get her again? Have you ever heard an 8 year old talk about wanting to kill himself? His foster brother did a wonderful job screwing up his head the last 6 months, telling him how he needed to be punished night after night why Mom was at work because he was evil, telling him he was so evil that even God didn't love him. Or what about the 13 year old girl that's slept with 25 men and now she's pregnant, you see, one night she stayed over at a "friend" of the family's house and this so-called "friend" told her that he was only doing it because he loved her. He also told her that if she told anyone about it her mom and dad would think she was a bad girl and they wouldn't want her anymore. Now she has it in her head that if she has sex with these 30 and 40 year old men it means they love her, and what teenage girl doesn't want to be loved? Now you explain to me how stealing and molestation are even remotely the same.
The other thing I wanted to point out was that although I agree that realistically the difference between someone who just thinks about it and someone who actually does it is mental, we're not dealing with reality here. You said "a gene corresponding to child molestation."The way I'm understanding it is that it's like the gene IS child molestation. Sort of like if you take a really strong pill like oxycotton or morphine, or even x. If it's inside you it will control your thoughts and behavior and make you do things you wouldn't even think about doing if it weren't there. So if you carry that gene, it will make you molest a child-no question about it. There's no "might do" or "just thinking". I'm also a little confused on these mental/social means that you speak so highly of. You make them sound as if they could be a cure-all for crime. While the majority of the population may live up to acceptable standards, there will always be some people who refuse to live by society's rules, and some people who can't. I also don't understand how it's possible to overcome a genetic problem/defect (that is what I'd consider this gene anyway) without using a physical cure. Can you please explain how that would possible, and why it hasn't been done for real, modern genetic problems? It seems to me as long as the gene is physically inside them they aren't going to be thinking about ethics or morals or social standards tbecause this gene will be doing all of the thinking for them. They'll have no control over themselves. If there's any type of procedure or cure for it, why shouldn't every person with that gene have to or even want have it done? It doesn't make sense to me why anyone who knows they are eventually going to molest a child wouldn't have it done on their own as soon as they possibly could.

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rochelle wrote:

The other thing I wanted to point out was that although I agree that realistically the difference between someone who just thinks about it and someone who actually does it is mental, we're not dealing with reality here. You said "a gene corresponding to child molestation."The way I'm understanding it is that it's like the gene IS child molestation. Sort of like if you take a really strong pill like oxycotton or morphine, or even x. If it's inside you it will control your thoughts and behavior and make you do things you wouldn't even think about doing if it weren't there. So if you carry that gene, it will make you molest a child-no question about it. There's no "might do" or "just thinking".

You may be thinking along these lines but none of that was stated in the original post and it's one person's view of what it may mean. I know a lot of women that genetically, are brunettes. But if anyone looks at them they'd see blondes or redheads. We've developed thousands of ways of over-coming genetic traits we don't necessarily like without resorting to a wholesale genetic makeover.

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I'm also a little confused on these mental/social means that you speak so highly of. You make them sound as if they could be a cure-all for crime. While the majority of the population may live up to acceptable standards, there will always be some people who refuse to live by society's rules, and some people who can't.

Very true but in our system of society we don't act against them until they actually demonstrate that they won't live by the social rules. We don't mark them at birth and decide then who will and who won't.

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I also don't understand how it's possible to overcome a genetic problem/defect (that is what I'd consider this gene anyway) without using a physical cure. Can you please explain how that would possible, and why it hasn't been done for real, modern genetic problems?

Hmmm.. What do we do with a child born with Downs Syndrome. Do we "cure" them against their will? Do we lock them up for the rest of their lives? Being born with Downs Syndrome isn't illegal in itself and unless the child actually demonstrates that they a danger to themselves or someone else they are allowed to go on with their lives in peace (just like anyone without Downs..).

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It seems to me as long as the gene is physically inside them they aren't going to be thinking about ethics or morals or social standards because this gene will be doing all of the thinking for them. They'll have no control over themselves.

Do you have no control over yourself because or your eye or hair color? Does your height or the shape of your nose control every decision you make? Those are all determined by genetic components.

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If there's any type of procedure or cure for it, why shouldn't every person with that gene have to or even want have it done? It doesn't make sense to me why anyone who knows they are eventually going to molest a child wouldn't have it done on their own as soon as they possibly could.

IMO, this is the key break point. If they want it done then I see no problem with it. Forcing someone to have it done however is very different.

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Rochelle, it's understandable that you want to label something tangeable like a gene as the absolute cause of something horrible like child molestation, so that you can get rid of it absolutely and totally and protect all the innocent children out there. People do that with guns too, whenever they hear about someone getting shot. But that's not the way the world works, and nothing is going to get solved like that. It's not that I don't feel for the poor children who are victims of molestation, it's just that they aren't really an issue when you start talking about it from the point of veiw of the genetic makeup of the molester. A gene cannot {i}be{/i} a social problem. It's just a gene. Drugs and alcohol are foreign to your body and cause it to function in a certain way because of that. A gene is a part of your body - it's part of what defines your body's normal state of being, not something that introduces additional states. And even with alcohol - everyone reacts differently to it, not because of their genetics, or how much they drank, but because of their personality.

First off, I am not saying that mental and social teaching is going to solve every problem - there will always be deviant people in society. But I would go so far as to say that social rules and customs and laws have more effect on the way people behave than does genetics. This is mostly from spending a few years studying anthropology and simply observing the large variety of ways that people who all have basically the same genetic makeup behave. Even our culture, centuries ago, was marrying young girls off to older men. Of course, that didn't have anything like the same effect of child molestation today, but you get the idea. You know how children who were molested often grow up to become molesters? That's not genetic. If people can be inclined in that way than they can be disinclined in another way. It probably won't be easy, but nothing in life ever is.

I'm not sure what you mean by "other genetic problems" - if you're referring to genetically passed diseases, or something else. I'm pretty sure most diseases don't really prevent people from functioning withing a given social code. My family has Marfan's, and all it really means is that I'm the bottle of milk on the shelf with the shorter expiration date. And I don't know how accurate any of these things are, but I have heard that mental variables such as how optimistic you are can change the outcomes of more terminal diseases, like cancer and such. I have never heard of a gene that controls your thinking, and I can't imagine that one exists. We are so patterned by culture that anything out of the ordinary would be SO out of the ordinary that it would have been a known phenomenon well before the advent of genetics.

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fishin' wrote:

I think were reading the opening post a little differently. In my view someone isn't a child molestor until they actually molest a child and it wasn't stated that the hypothetical person had actually done so. I haven't seen any scientific evidence yet that genetics can positively (100% certianty) cause a person to do anything. The inclination may be there but that's still a step away from actually acting.

We may have read the opening post differently, but I would suggest that my interpretation of it is more defensible. CerealKiller wrote:

If we found that there was a genetic marker that caused a person to be child molestor and we could change it with technology -- is it ethical to change it if the person never committed a crime but had the genetic marker ?Note, the word used is "caused," not "predisposed." We normally understand the act of "causing" to involve actual, not possible, causation; in other words, the genetic marker doesn't make it more likely a person will be a child molester, the marker will make it happen. The genetic marker, in effect, would then be a sufficient condition for child molestation. And your knowledge of genetics is of no avail, since (as I pointed out), we are dealing with a hypothetical. Presumably, if we know a genetic marker causes child molestation, then we also know of at least one case where a gene positively, 100% causes a person to do something.

On the other hand, if CerealKiller intended to use the word "caused" to mean "predisposed," then that changes things entirely. As I pointed out earlier, we currently believe that certain factors predispose a person to commit future crimes -- in particular, a history of committing those crimes in the past. And we already have policies in place to police those people and safeguard society, short of compulsory medical procedures. In that case, there is no need for further discussion, as the hypothetical would be largely uninteresting.

We might hope that CerealKiller would clear up this confusion, but he seems to have lost interest in this thread, so we may never know the truth.

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Causing is just a high probability of predisposition. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, but we say that smoking causes lung cancer. Not even everyone that smokes two packs a day gets lung cancer. It just gives them a much bigger predisposition to get lung cancer than someone who doesn't smoke. If you can point out one real thing that is 100% caused by some other effect, not excluding quantum mechanics, than I'll believe that "caused" can mean something other than "predisposed". And we hardly need quantum mechanics to know that there is nothing 100% about genetics.

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rufio wrote:

Causing is just a high probability of predisposition. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, but we say that smoking causes lung cancer. Not even everyone that smokes two packs a day gets lung cancer. It just gives them a much bigger predisposition to get lung cancer than someone who doesn't smoke. If you can point out one real thing that is 100% caused by some other effect, not excluding quantum mechanics, than I'll believe that "caused" can mean something other than "predisposed". And we hardly need quantum mechanics to know that there is nothing 100% about genetics.

You've got to be kidding.

I won't give you something that is "100% caused by some other effect," since things aren't caused by effects -- they're caused by causes. But I have no problem finding an example of an effect that is 100% caused by a cause, and I won't have to rely upon any quantum mechanics.

To use David Hume's example, when one billiard ball strikes another, and the second ball, previously stationary, moves, I would contend that the first ball striking the second ball caused the second ball to move. If, on the other hand, you contend that the second ball was somehow only "predisposed" to move, then I'd certainly enjoy an explanation of that curious notion of "predisposition."

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Haven't lost interest Joe. Have been thinking and enjoying the thoughtful responses of everyone.

To clear up any confusion you might have about whether I meant "caused" or "pre-disposed" in my example -- I meant CAUSED.

We know with absloute certainty that the person will molest, just hasn't molested yet, hypothetically speaking of course.

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CerealKiller wrote:

To clear up any confusion you might have about whether I meant "caused" or "pre-disposed" in my example -- I meant CAUSED.

We know with absloute certainty that the person will molest, just hasn't molested yet, hypothetically speaking of course.

You have a minor problem in your scenario here then. "Caused" is a past tense - something that has already happened. To be a child molestor one has to molest a child. If they "haven't molested yet" then what exactly has this genetic trait "caused"?

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fishin' wrote:

CerealKiller wrote:
To clear up any confusion you might have about whether I meant "caused" or "pre-disposed" in my example -- I meant CAUSED.

We know with absloute certainty that the person will molest, just hasn't molested yet, hypothetically speaking of course.

You have a minor problem in your scenario here then. "Caused" is a past tense - something that has already happened. To be a child molestor one has to molest a child. If they "haven't molested yet" then what exactly has this genetic trait "caused"?

Ok. How about the phrase "will cause" ?

Example: Mrs. Smith your son has been born with the genes that will cause him to molest children, be lefthanded, and have dark hair. Would you like us to make any changes ?

side note: Saw an interesting movie today about genetics and cloning named "Godsend" with Robert Deniro. I highly recommend it.

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Thanks! I still say forcing anything on the person would be unethical (reminds me of the eugenics movement!).

I saw "Godsend" this past weekend and it was a fairly good movie. Wink

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"things aren't caused by effects -- they're caused by causes."

Every cause is also an effect. I prefer to refer to all of them as effects, since that's their primary reason for existence.

"To use David Hume's example, when one billiard ball strikes another, and the second ball, previously stationary, moves, I would contend that the first ball striking the second ball caused the second ball to move."

Well, if you miss, than it doesn't....

But assuming you calculated all the geometric crap to have to going in just the right direction at just the right speed, and with just the right physics, and a perfectly even surface, sure. Whether that's possible or not is another matter. And then there's the quantum mechanics bit that I don't really understand where there's some iota of a chance that instead of hitting the second billiad ball, the first one tunnels through it and winds up on the other side without so much as a scratch.

Like, I said, I don't understand it, but I can assure you I'm not making it up.

I can't believe I'm taking the side of quantum mechanics and relativism here, but it sure as hell beats biological determinisim.

And wasn't it Hume who said that things that appeared to be caused were actually just highly probable?

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rufio wrote:

Every cause is also an effect. I prefer to refer to all of them as effects, since that's their primary reason for existence.

Yes, and doors that are marked "Exit" on one side are often marked "Entrance" on the other. The fact that effects oftentimes are also causes does not mean that effects are the same as causes, just as exits are not the same things as entrances.

rufio wrote:

Well, if you miss, than it doesn't....

True, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

rufio wrote:

But assuming you calculated all the geometric crap to have to going in just the right direction at just the right speed, and with just the right physics, and a perfectly even surface, sure. Whether that's possible or not is another matter.

Whether it's possible or not is not even the right question. Predicting the effect is far different from assessing the nature of the causal link. I can be quite confident that the first billiard ball striking the second caused the second ball to move without knowing anything about "all the geometric crap" or accurately predicting the ball's future movements.

rufio wrote:

And then there's the quantum mechanics bit that I don't really understand where there's some iota of a chance that instead of hitting the second billiad ball, the first one tunnels through it and winds up on the other side without so much as a scratch.

If you don't understand quantum mechanics, then I suggest you don't bring up the topic.

rufio wrote:

And wasn't it Hume who said that things that appeared to be caused were actually just highly probable?

No.

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fishin' wrote:

Thanks! I still say forcing anything on the person would be unethical (reminds me of the eugenics movement!).

Apart from its putative similarity to the eugenics movement, why would you find the compulsory genetic manipulation in this case to be unethical?

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Ethical question about child molestors

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