Eugenics

[I Eat Pie]

What do you guys think of it?

 

[Jade Margery]

S'bad.

At least, when enforced against peoples' wills it is. One could argue that a person with a genetic disorder getting themselves sterilized is a kind of self-imposed eugenics. If someone decides for some reason that they do not want their genes to contribute to the gene pool, that's their business.

 

[If Not For Grace]

Reeks of Hitler to me

 

[Jade Margery]

Reeks of Hitler to me

America did it before Hitler did. If Hitler hadn't taken it to the logical extreme and made us associate it with the third reich, we might still BE doing it.

 

[If Not For Grace]

Correct; that is just how dangerous it becomes-

 

[Mystman]

Currently unnecessary. You could imagine a future where highly disadvantageous genetic mutations become so common, that they start having a significant effect on the viability of a nation. If half of the population has a disability and doesn't do anything except make more disabled people, the working half might want to cut social security in order to let nature do its thing, or sterilize the disabled. We're not at that point, and maybe will never get there, but still.

Eugenics of the "we only want blue eyed blondes!1!" type is nonsensical.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Agree with Jade. As something imposed on people by law, it's bad. Individuals making their own decisions about their own children should be allowed... at least to some extent.

I think new ethical issues are being created with the advent of prenatal genetic screening, gender selection for in vitro fertilization, and technologies on the horizon that would allow parents to select other genetic traits for their children.

Currently, we can test for Down Syndrome, and many such pregnancies are terminated. Your view on the ethics of that probably depends on your view on abortion, rather than eugenics.

Picking your child's gender is possible, and I don't see a problem with that, at least in a society like ours where there's no particular bias. What if you could pick eye color? I don't see a problem with that. What if you could choose your child to have six fingers on each hand so she would be a better piano player? I'm starting to get a little troubled...

Ultimately, I think medical ethicists will be able to develop some boundaries to how far eugenics (in this sense) can ethically go.

 

[CabVet]

Correct; that is just how dangerous it becomes-

Agreed, it is a very easy argument to make, and you can convince masses that it is "the right thing to do". Except it is not.

 

[FreeSpirit74]

America did it before Hitler did. If Hitler hadn't taken it to the logical extreme and made us associate it with the third reich, we might still BE doing it.

Maybe, but living through Hitler's era didn't stop it anymore than it stopped HUAC from blacklisting people. Look up the US's policy of funding sterilization programs in Puerto Rico - that started in 1936 and by 1968 roughly 1/3 of women in PR were sterilized.

Forced Sterilization in Puerto Rico » Family Planning

In 1936 Law 116 entered into force making sterilization legal and free for women in Puerto Rico while offering no alternative methods of birth control. The prevailing wisdom was that denial of motherhood was a more effective means of incorporating women into the workforce than affordable childcare. The Puerto Rican government and the International Planned Parenthood Federation ran a sterilization program with US government funding, and by 1968 the program had sterilized roughly one third of Puerto Rican women. Numerous studies have shown that misinformation about the procedure caused high rates or regret among sterilized women. Many women were unaware that the procedure was permanent, due in part to the euphemism of “tying tubes.” Additionally, many women had no alternative affordable contraceptive methods, so they opted for sterilization.

Sterilization in Puerto Rico under Law 113 was “voluntary” only in the narrowest sense of the word. Employer discrimination and a general lack of alternative options gave women a very strong incentive to participate in the procedure. The basic idea that that sterilization would free women from the burden of childbearing to work in an industrialized workforce underwrote the entire program. This was done in the context of a women’s rights movement in the United States strongly supporting birth control as a means for women’s gaining more reproductive rights. Most of the women seeking sterilization already had several children, so the effectiveness of the program in terms of population control was dubious at best.

By the 1970s US mainland feminists and Puerto Rican anti-colonialists united to end the practice of forced sterilization, but the legacy of distrust of US government intervention in Puerto Rican society remains. I don’t have time to delve into the depths of a discussion of the gendered framework that led to the widespread disabuse of Puerto Rican women’s reproductive rights, but I hope some of this information provides a clear example of how population policy can be used to coercively deny women rights over their own reproduction under the banner of “voluntary sterilization.”

Puerto Rico, Where Sterilization of Women Became "La Operacion" | Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment

While women suffered from lack of safe, legal abortion services, other methods of contraception, day care services, and health care services, they were offered sterilizations.
The results of deliberate policies, more concerned with curbing population than with meeting women's and children's needs, were high regret rates among the unprecedented nearly forty percent of women who by 1968 were sterilized. More than one third of women surveyed did not know sterilizations were permanent! Many approached sterilization decisions from mistaken notions that sterilization would improve their health, sexual life or marriage relationship. Many found depression, complications of surgery and abandonment by husbands as unexpected results.

 

[I Eat Pie]

Idk guys. It does sound wrong, but I think in some cases, it's needed. Like for criminals that are in for things like rape or murder. To me it seems like, if they get out, they're gonna do it more and so will their kids.

Or how about people whose ancestry has a history of diseases and mental disorders?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Maybe, but living through Hitler's era didn't stop it anymore than it stopped HUAC from blacklisting people.

Yep, involuntary sterilizations were being performed in North Carolina as late as the 1970s.

Eugenics Board of North Carolina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Paradoxum]

I doubt there is reason to force it on people, but people who know they are a carrier of some diseases should seriously thinking about whether it is the right thing to have a child and afflict generations to come with the disease.

 

[rambot]

I work with teenagers with some SIGNIFICANT mental, emotional and behavioural issues. Currently we have a 16 yr old boy with some significant sociopathic tendencies and the mental capacity of, literally an "idiot".
He's just started attending outside school. Judging by how he communicates with his GFs in his notes, there is NO DOUBT IN MY MIND that he will be a rapist when he is older. He has all the markings of a future bereft of care for other people; especially women.

Parts of me wishes he could be chemically sterilized (as he also doesn't have the capacity to father/care for children) just to know that the public will be safer.

BUT, I can't allow it to be a culturally accepted phenomenon so, I can't accept it for this boy either.

 

[I Eat Pie]

I work with teenagers with some SIGNIFICANT mental, emotional and behavioural issues. Currently we have a 16 yr old boy with some significant sociopathic tendencies and the mental capacity of, literally an "idiot".
He's just started attending outside school. Judging by how he communicates with his GFs in his notes, there is NO DOUBT IN MY MIND that he will be a rapist when he is older. He has all the markings of a future bereft of care for other people; especially women.

Parts of me wishes he could be chemically sterilized (as he also doesn't have the capacity to father/care for children) just to know that the public will be safer.

BUT, I can't allow it to be a culturally accepted phenomenon so, I can't accept it for this boy either.

Are you guys going to take any precautions to make sure he isn't a harm to anyone?

 

[rambot]

Are you guys going to take any precautions to make sure he isn't a harm to anyone?

Well, we are certainly supporting him as we can. We are teaching him those lessons on respect, boundaries, listening to others (his narcissism is unbelievable). Social skills of all types are constantly being reiterated. I make a point of getting one on one time with him every shift and we have important "life" type conversations several times a week. But it all comes down to what he wants and when.

We are a milieu with 3 staff teams all of which with at least social service (if not therapeutic) backgrounds with a unit psychologist there during the day (plus access to about 4 others as well as a psychiatrist).

He will certainly have social services support throughout his entire life.
The problem is that in the first 2 minutes, he can charm your pants off [good at scripted conversations...like trying to ask for something from a parent) but, if you keep going his whole facade crumbles (it helps that you are informed enough to pick up on his lies).

He'll undoubtedly have police involvement too. He is a bit of a fraudster. I take comfort in his lower cognitive capacity because I don't think he could avoid the police (if need be) for very long.

To clarify and reiterate: This is still just my opinion. While our unit psychologist has some GRAVE concerns for this boy functioning in society (in capacity OR legally), her concerns over people's physical safety are much lower than mine.

 

[I Eat Pie]

Oh man =/. It's nice that you're caring for this boy so much. I just hope that we can somehow know if someone is going to be dangerous before they commit the crime.


Is there any cure for what he has?

 

[rambot]

He has had an unholy cocktail of poor genetics and incredibly messed up home circumstances and awful peer experiences at school.

He WAS on medication that appeared to be helping him make some better decisions (though that was before he had the freedom of outside school) but for some reason WE have yet to understand, his current community psychiatrist has been takin' him off some of his medications. Though we are working on fixin' that post haste.

With this job, it infrequently sucks but when it sucks, it sucks worse than virtually any job out there.

 

[I Eat Pie]

Oh dang. Well I hope for the sake of everyone out there including him, he does get the medication so he can live a safe life.

 

[Gadarene]

Broadening the gene pool is generally a better means for long term survival than truncating, as I understand it.

 

[Gadarene]

Also, I think this notion of crime genes is a tad oversimplistic. Sterilising people will not solve this issue at all. Improving the economic state of people so they won't have to resort to crime would be a much more significant factor.