Genetic Discrimination

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Creator

Understand now...... Thank you very much. Looks like it will take everyone to control this power or completely eradicate this desire to make designer babies.

Pretty much. However, considering how well we work together... I don't hold too sanguine hopes on this. More likely, we'll have to learn by being burned... and that could be one very nasty burn we've got coming....

[Creator]

Then GATTACA is probably a movie I would want to watch!

[Dave]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Dave, was this part of the article you cite?

Eugenics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That bit about Graham's project... my gawd!

Yes that, but also if you do Google "Eugenics" like I mentioned you will find pages of modern-day organisations promoting Eugenics. I don't wish to promote them, but for instance this:
Future Generations

Then there is Eugenics by stealth, through the back door - sterilisation as a condition of parole from prison, contraceptive implants free to women on medicare, gene therapy.

There is more reading on that here:
Eugenics

This all comes as a surprise to me, I thought that Eugenics as a concept was buried long ago - the coffin lid sealed with it's association with genocide, human experimentation, racism, and the Nazi Party - but it seems to be alive and well.

The thing most concerning to me was that many of those websites appeared to be associated with religious cults. Because Christian and Islamic fundamentalist churches are those expanding the fastest in the USA, it would not be beyond a little speculation to see a future where a government there was lobbied to introduce some kind of Eugenic measures.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Dave

Then there is Eugenics by stealth, through the back door - sterilisation as a condition of parole from prison, contraceptive implants free to women on medicare, gene therapy.

Yes, I've heard of cases of this, especially dealing with sexual offendors ... which in the States is an awfully broad umbrella term that I've seen applied to everything from someone who kidnapped, raped, and mutilated, to someone who was basically drunk and disorderly and relieved themselves behind a dumpster and was seen by an adolescent (I kid you not -- some of those people are labeled as sex offendors for life, because of the way the case went).

Frankly, I don't give a damn what you've done, this is NOT something the state should be doing to people, period! Under NO circumstances should this be in their purview. Other methods of controlling someone who's a genuine danger, yes (though anything like this must be carefully considered and never a "one-size-fits-all" sort of thing... which is exactly what we have, a frightening amount of the time.

This all comes as a surprise to me, I thought that Eugenics as a concept was buried long ago - the coffin lid sealed with it's association with genocide, human experimentation, racism, and the Nazi Party - but it seems to be alive and well.

The thing most concerning to me was that many of those websites appeared to be associated with religious cults. Because Christian and Islamic fundamentalist churches are those expanding the fastest in the USA, it would not be beyond a little speculation to see a future where a government there was lobbied to introduce some kind of Eugenic measures.

Dave -- first, thanks for the clarification. I'll look at those a bit later. Second: I learned a long time ago to never count anything out. In fact, the more barbaric, the more inhumane, and the more disturbing... you can almost guarantee it will make a resurgence periodically, like a monster out of a nightmare. We've only made surface changes, really, since the dawn of civilization; our fundamental nature has changed very little. We may bemoan this but, frankly, that's an awfully short time, when you think about it... and human beings qua human beings haven't even been around all that long to begin with. This does not, however, prevent me from wishing we'd stop making the same damned mistakes over and over again. That gets depressing.

As I said, I'm not surprised that anything like this crops up again ... look at the various other things we thought we'd long ago outgrown: the odd sorts of neo-mysticism, and witch-hunts; prosecution and prison time (or stoning) for adultery; torture of political prisoners -- not even necessarily violent ones, but those who nonetheless get the rhino's attention in one way or another ... I recall a study done in the 1980s where there were prisons here where political prisoners were tortured via use of cigarette burns, cattle-prods (sometimes inserted)... etc. And, as you say, with the upsurge in the barbarism of so many of the branches of fundamentalism (religious or otherwise), which tends to condone such views of people who are "other"... well, what do we expect?

We've abdicated the use of reason and logic and genuine understanding for muddle-headedness, and this is the result. If anyone wants to know why it's important to learn to reason, to think critically, to examine and question authority, to discard any sort of party-line in favor of a genuinely humanistic and humanitarian approach... things like this should be inarguable. But people in general don't listen, don't think for themselves, and certainly don't take the time and effort to think critically. As long as that remains the case, we'll continue to see such things crop up, over and over again.

[Creator]

Thanks guys I am enjoying myself talking with you..... You just made my fic Alpha Omega a little bit more challenging and mysterious and "real". so it's time to remove some fantasy elements.

[Creator]

Whoa! It has been 6 months since I last stepped into this topic.... So let revive it..........

After all the research and all, I am still rather confused how genetic discrimination works, I don't think we have genetic information that is accessible to the public right?

[chrispenycate]

For the time being, no-one can map any gene groups to any particular characteristics (well, apart from some pretty blatant diseases) When they start remarking correlations between gene groups and behavioural patterns, the scene is set for a phrenology-type frenzy (and who will bet that certain "racial" types will turn out to have a criminal predisposition?)

We are some way from that, and a long way from "tailor-making" genetic structures, but with the detection of various faults, genetic surgery to repair potential diseases, the statistical probability of others (cancers and the like, that arrive later in life) the tendency is definitely in that direction.

Apparently, in the UK, every newborn baby's gene scan is now recorded. For medical reasons, of course, but it also gives the authorities thirty years down the line a database to find out wherever one of their citizens have been. And, if ever a correlation is found between work habits and some gene patterns, corporations will be able to choose the most genetically apt… Very "Bave new world"

Of course the information will be encoded, relyably secret – these are government departments, bureaucracies, we're talking about.

I'd get your story written relatively fast, while it's still SF.

But, modern technology apart, almost all discrimination has genetic roots. The further from your immediate family group he falls, the more suspect an individual is, and when this is made obvious by skin colour or "little slitty eyes" discrimination is a given. These characteristics are genetically controlled, and the reactions aren't calculated, they are hard wired into us (by our own genetic heritage) Certainly, as a society we can learn to overide these primitive hangovers, and should, but that does not mean they cease to exist. Females? they're almost another species. You can never truly understand them, they need constant surveillance (please feel free to invert or modify as befits your gender or social group – it makes little if any difference)

[Creator]

Errr.... still a bit blur... I meant how do we known if someone, like an employee has defective genes from one who has desirable ones?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Creator

Errr.... still a bit blur... I meant how do we known if someone, like an employee has defective genes from one who has desirable ones?

Well, this story was in the news a few weeks ago:
FOXNews.com - Study: Blue-Eyed People 'Smarter' than Brown-Eyed - Health News | Current Health News | Medical News
Study: Blue-Eyed People 'Smarter' than Brown-Eyed

While chrispenycate is right that it will be quite a while before they map the whole human genome, they are working hard at it, and they should be able to associate some characteristics with others i.e. intelligence with eye colour, concentration with hair colour maybe?? Haven't they found some correlation between heart disease and plaque growth on teeth?

Wouldn't employers only like to hire only the most intelligent people, who won't get distracted and won't die early?

I think it is more an issue with life assurance and health insurance than with employment though. If you can't get those because you are a bad genetic risk then you have no future, even if you can get a job.

You could envisage whole sections of society being excluded - imagine, ginger haired people completely ostracized.

Apart from the obvious discrimination or racism that leads too, it leads to social inequality - haves and have nots - the valids and invalids.

Social inequality leads to social unrest - people with no hope, no future except poverty and an early death, have nothing to loose but to revolt.

Although it sounds like a future where diseases are banished and everyone is a perfect human specimen, it is not somewhere I would like to live.

And your point - how do we determine a perfect human specimen - I think we covered that already as Eugenics - who has the right to determine this?

[Creator]

Well then our genetic codes would have to be on our ID cards for "real" genetic discrimination to happen right? I watched GATTACA again... and did some thinking... Our genetic data would have to be exposed so often like in our ID cards in the form of barcodes then...... well I am outta words to say.

But then why would a govt do something like this to its people??

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Creator

Well then our genetic codes would have to be on our ID cards for "real" genetic discrimination to happen right? I watched GATTACA again... and did some thinking... Our genetic data would have to be exposed so often like in our ID cards in the form of barcodes then...... well I am outta words to say.

But then why would a govt do something like this to its people??

Have you forgotten your recent history? Ethnic cleansing? Concentration camps? Death camps? Hell, yes, they would, under the right circumstances -- any government has the potential to do so. This is a lesson history teaches again and again... especially if things get rocky, and you need a scapegoat....

And no, you wouldn't need it to be on your ID cards... "sharing" programs that are in a gray zone (after all, it's to improve the economy!); hackers, illegal as they may be, can still sell that sort of information on the black market and, in places where it's an "at will" proposition (as with many states here), an employer can fire you without giving any particular reason -- and if they feel you're of a group that's a risk economically.... Let's face it, hackers have got into government computers before, and will do so again. How much information they'll get is problematic. Perhaps all they'll end up with is gobbledygook; but then I'm minded of a recent little fiasco here where tons of personal information got lifted from the government, and they're still scrabbling to clean up that mess....

As noted, the information itself is by no means a bad thing... but we human beings have a very nasty tendency -- at least, en masse, as in countries -- to turn any advance in knowledge into at least a potential weapon against others of our species... even if they are "our own".....

[Creator]

Ok... there's got to be a valid reason for a "good" govt to incorperate such a law.

The only reason is that there is some sort of "genetic disease" going around and the govt want to cull it at its tracks. Or maybe to eradicate or reduce diseases.

[j. d. worthington]

Nice of you to use quotation marks there... I'm afraid I tend to agree with a lot of the older philosophers -- and no few of the founding fathers here, for that matter: there is no such thing as "good government"... it is at best a necessary evil, and never to be trusted any further than a toddler can throw a skyscraper.....

Well, okay... that last bit is a modern restatement.....

[iansales]

A cynic might point out that your founding fathers' definition of bad government was one that didn't include themselves. And their attitude has created an expectation of bad government, which has only resulted to a self-fulfilling propecy :-)

British attitudes are different, possibly because government here was traditionally the perquisite of the land-owning class.

[Allegra]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

Females? they're almost another species. You can never truly understand them, they need constant surveillance (please feel free to invert or modify as befits your gender or social group – it makes little if any difference)

LOL Chris, don't you think it's better if we don't truly understand each other?

Ah, sorry, off topic.