This article had some good points to think about in terms of eugenics and the modern world:
"The true nature of Darwinism is not merely an academic question. For we are moving, with alarming rapidity, from the Age of Darwin the Scientist to the Age of Galton the Inventor. Sir Francis Galton was Darwin’s even more ingenious half-cousin. (Their common grandparent was, not surprisingly, the brilliant Erasmus Darwin.) While Darwin was the hedgehog with one great idea, selection, Galton was the fox with innumerable notions large and small. Galton has as much claim as anybody to being the father of statistics, the dog whistle, fingerprinting, the systematic study of human variation, and the best way to cut a cake so it won’t go stale. Darwin, however, inspired Galton to devise one enormous idea glittering with promise and ominous with danger: eugenics. That’s the attempt to create a better human race by augmenting the slow and uncertain processes of natural and sexual selection with artificial selection.
Humans have always lusted for favoured genes for their future children. (Trust me on this one, because I know – I was turned down for a lot of dates.) Today, however, researchers are learning how to turbocharge evolution in laboratories all over the world.
In the first half of the 20th century, eugenics in action largely meant governments sterilizing or murdering people they didn’t like. (Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality. And, as Aleksandr Solzenhistyn has pointed out, the doctrine of “class origins” transformed “egalitarian” mass murder into ethnic genocide since there is no sharp line between family and race.)
Today, however, eugenics consists of couples voluntarily choosing to create life on their own terms. Orthodox Jews have largely freed themselves from the scourge of Tay Sachs disease through genetic testing. Lesbians comparison-shop the Internet for just the right sperm donor. Couples at risk for passing on hereditary diseases to their children are choosing to implant in the mother’s womb only a genetically-screened embryo. High-IQ Ivy League coeds are selling their eggs to infertile women for $5,000 apiece. Dr. Joe Tsien made the cover of Time magazine by genetically engineering mice with better memories. These breakthroughs are only the beginning. Galton’s Age will see far more.
While today’s free-market eugenics is infinitely less sinister on a day-to-day basis than yesterday’s totalitarian eugenics, its ultimate impact could be far greater. The very nature of the human race is up for grabs. Should we therefore ban voluntary eugenics? Regulate it? Ignore it? Subsidize it? To decide, we need to understand the social impact of the various possible changes in our gene frequencies. Fortunately, we have a huge storehouse of data available to base predictions upon: the vast amounts of existing genetic diversity. Unfortunately, we now discourage scholars from examining it.
For example, during the media firestorm following Dr. Tsien’s genetic engineering breakthrough, many worried that rich people could someday pay to have their kids’ IQ’s enhanced. Would having more smart people around help or hurt society as a whole? (I suspect it helps, but then I’m prejudiced: In 1997 some high-IQ cancer doctors saved me from a painful death.) There are lots of ways to study this, but none of them are politically correct. For example, we can investigate whether high-IQ immigrants hurt or help society compared to average-IQ immigrants. Canada discriminates more in favor of intelligent immigrants than the United States. Which country has benefited more?
Yet an awareness of ethnic differences in IQ suggests that the rest of us may have less reason to fear the artificially bright children of the future than they will have reason to fear us. After all, high IQ minorities have frequently had to endure murderous pogroms. Besides the Jews in 1933-1945, there were the Armenians in 1915, educated Cambodians in the 1970s (on ‘egalitarian’ rather than ‘ethnic’ grounds) and the Overseas Chinese as recently as 1998.
Progressives and Third Way centrists are likely to initially insist on outlawing human genetic engineering. Already, professional activists for the disabled worry that genetic engineering will put them out of business by reducing the number of disabled peoples. Feminists and gay male leaders will also soon grow concerned that allowing parents to select embryos will leave them with fewer followers. This is because free market Galtonism will increase the gap between the sexes. Parents will select for square-jawed, ambitious, high testosterone, first-born sons, and lovely, nurturing, high-oestrogen, latter-born daughters. Why? What parents want most from their children are grandchildren, and high-achieving sons, such as business executives, produce far more grandchildren on average than high-achieving daughters. Further, parents will want loving daughters to take care of them in their old age.
Thus, boys will become more masculine and girls more feminine. This will probably reduce the number of homosexuals. Although you are not supposed to say this, scientific studies have confirmed the obvious observation that gay men are more effeminate on average than straight men, just as lesbians tend to be more butch than straight women. And since the major feminist groups, like the National Organization for Women, are to a large extent fronts for lesbians, libertarian eugenics fundamentally threatens institutionalized feminism.
A ban, however, would drive genetics labs and fertility clinics to Caribbean freeports. Still, as shown by President Clinton’s recent heroic victory over that Sudanese aspirin factory, with enough cruise missiles NATO could likely Tomahawk the Cayman Islands into submission. China, however, would be harder to bully. Unencumbered by post-Christian ethics, the Chinese government recently passed a pre-1945-style eugenics law calling for the sterilization of “morons.” If China pursues genetic enhancements while the West bans them, the inevitable result within a few generations would be Chinese economic, and thus military, global hegemony. Thus, those serious about preventing genetic engineering should start planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike on China.
However, the left is likely at some point to flip from opposing voluntary Galtonism to demanding mandatory re-engineering of human nature. Feminists, for example, will decide that instead of parents designing their daughters to appeal to men, the government should redesign men to better appreciate women like themselves. This logic will also revitalize collectivism. Socialism failed, in part, because it conflicts with essential human nature. So, why not change human nature to make Marxism possible? And what better response to the intractable fact of human biodiversity than to eliminate inequality at the genetic level? What could be more equal than a world of clones?
Such speculations illustrate the necessity of our learning soon how genes actually affect society. Our only chance of foreseeing the potential world-shaking impact of Galtonian selection rests in the honest, unstifled study of Darwinian selection. God help us if we don’t start helping ourselves."
isteve.com/Darwin-EnemiesonLeft.htm
MaryJohnZ