IQ testing before birth and its potential moral implications

[ribozyme]

Forget using pencil and paper to “evaluate” one’s cognitive ability. Some people believe this can be done by analyzing the genome and one can determine intelligence via genetic sequencing.

Here is an interesting excerpt from Richard Lynn’s article on wikipedia:

In Eugenics, Lynn argues embryo selection as a form of standard reproductive therapy would raise the average intelligence of the population by 15 IQ points in a single generation (p. 300). If couples produce a hundred embryos, he argues, the range in potential IQ would be around 15 points above and below the parents’ IQ. Lynn argues this gain could be repeated each generation, eventually stabilizing the population’s IQ at a theoretical maximum of around 200 after as little as six or seven generations.

So what do we do to the other 99 embryos that we do not deem intelligent enough? What happens to those who are not on the far right of the “bell curve”? Since most of you find embryonic stem cell research distasteful, I think you find this repugnant.

To me, it seems that intelligence testing is used a weapon to discriminate against minorities and to justify the predicament of the disadvantage. Race and intelligence is not a topic that I pursue in my own leisure time (the origin of life is one example of such a topic I pursue during my leisure time), but I am interested because this can potentially justify exploitation and mistreatment of certain groups.

 

[apricot_yogurt]

What is intelligence anyway, if it does away with morality?

 

[Rosalinda]

In the words of Fr. Coropi.
[sign]God placed obvious limits on our intelligence but none on our stupidity.[/sign]

 

[RyanL]

Since most of you find embryonic stem cell research distasteful, I think you find this repugnant.

Why should the discriminant killing of embryonic humans be any more offensive than the indiscriminate killing of embryonic humans?

And “distasteful” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about it.

BTW, have you checked out this blog yet? I recommended it to you on another thread but I’m not sure that you saw it.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[dafalax]

IQ is a poor indicator of how “valuable” one will be to society anyway. I know many people with genius IQ’s who have fallen into the “sex, drugs, and rock n roll” mindset and would rather get high than cure cancer. I think i read somewhere, too, that Bill Gates has a merely average IQ. My brother has a higher IQ than i yet has never even attempted college. He wants to work on cars for a living. Scandalous, i know, with his potential.
The problem with this IQ testing thing is that once more it becomes more about a child being a right than a privilege, and essentially having no rights outside the parents’ wants. What happens when parents decide that they only want a child with a genius IQ? They may “discard” embryonic children who have IQ’s of 120 or 130 because they “just aren’t what mommy and daddy wanted.” Furthermore, when you design children like this, what happens when the child wants to be a mechanic instead of a doctor? The child is set up from before birth to disappoint his or her parents just because they ONLY want a certain type of child. The parents can select their genius with blond hair and blue eyes and may still end up disowning their child because he or she is not a blond haired blue eyed genius who wants to be a doctor.
If you want to have children, you want to have children. You don’t want to have a boy or a girl or a genius or an athlete. You want a little life, handicapped or not, to nourish into adulthood. When you get more specific than that, you start telling God how to do His job. That’s why we pay doctors to select our embryos for desirable qualities instead of leaving it in the hands of the author of life. It’s a slippery slope and society is one big piece of evidence for it.

 

[Meggie]

People with high IQ’s often have social functioning disorders including as aspbergers or autism, not all, but many. Many are extremely poor communicators and can display inaffectionate qualities, even if they are the most loving people in the world.

I’m not saying everyone with a high IQ is not socally graceful, but IQ without consience could create psyco and sciopaths who are nearly untouchable.

There’s a reason human IQ has leveled off where it has. IQ is a desireable human trait, but not THE most desirable human trait by far.

 

[Firefox]

It’s right there. I’m up almost to the level of genius at last IQ testing, but when I was young, they thought I had autism. I very much suspect that I do have Asperger’s, though I’m finally managing to crack that anti-social nature sometimes. If you’ve read my posts, I’m at least a bit scrupulous, and I also show OCD in other mannerisms. I’m on the computer right now just to keep myself from washing my hands again. That’s the classic symptom of OCD right there. When I first learned to talk, I hear from my mother, I used to rehearse everything before I said it. I read at 3, can work through Calculus at 16, but I cannot get away from the torment of my own obsessions. I count myself lucky that it isn’t worse, a good logical argument with myself, and I can beat the neuroses. Some cannot. There’s a reason we aren’t all geniuses, and there’s a reason left-handedness is kept at 10% of the population. Lefties statistically have higher rates for “intelligence” and mental disease. This is nothing short of abhorrent.

 

[Holly3278]

I seriously hope they don’t start trying to test the IQ of embryos and fetuses.

 

[ribozyme]

It’s right there. I’m up almost to the level of genius at last IQ testing, but when I was young, they thought I had autism. I very much suspect that I do have Asperger’s, though I’m finally managing to crack that anti-social nature sometimes. If you’ve read my posts, I’m at least a bit scrupulous, and I also show OCD in other mannerisms. I’m on the computer right now just to keep myself from washing my hands again. That’s the classic symptom of OCD right there. When I first learned to talk, I hear from my mother, I used to rehearse everything before I said it. I read at 3, can work through Calculus at 16, but I cannot get away from the torment of my own obsessions. I count myself lucky that it isn’t worse, a good logical argument with myself, and I can beat the neuroses. Some cannot. There’s a reason we aren’t all geniuses, and there’s a reason left-handedness is kept at 10% of the population. Lefties statistically have higher rates for “intelligence” and mental disease. This is nothing short of abhorrent.

I don’t count myself as “intelligent”, but I am obsessed with biochemistry and the origin of life. I can easily read technical articles in Nature, PNAS, Science, and other journals about molecular biology and biology, and I can instantly imagine the structures of major biomolecules (all the canonical amino acids; nucleotides; fatty acids, intermediates of major biochemical pathways e.g. citric acid cycle, glycolysis, Calvin cycle, pentose phosphate pathway, purine biosynthesis, pyrimidine biosynthesis, urea cycle; and cofactors e.g. coenzyme A, lipoamide, flavin adenine dinucleotide (reduced and oxidized), nictoinamide adenine dinucleotide (reduced and oxidized), folate. In contrast, I have no regrets about my obsession as it helps me delve into the nature and purpose of life.

I am concerned that “intelligence” is being used as an instrument to justify racism. The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein is an ignominious example of this.

 

[RyanL]

STRIKE UP THE BAND! Around the world today, February 12, admirers of Charles Darwin will celebrate the great man’s 198th birthday with lectures, concerts, and exhibits.
Darwin Day, as it’s called, is meant to be cheerful, with a bit of good-natured triumphalism, marking what celebrants see as the intellectual victory of Darwinism, the theory of evolution by the purely material mechanism of natural selection. But set aside the scientific legacy for a moment to consider the less frequently discussed question of Darwin’s moral heritage. This year happens to mark another anniversary as well: a tragic one, strongly linked to Darwinian theory.
As of 2007, it is exactly a century since the key turning point in the Darwin-inspired American eugenic movement. In 1907, the state of Indiana achieved the distinction of becoming the world’s first government entity to enforce sterilization of institutionalized “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and other individuals deemed genetically “unfit.” The idea caught on.
With Washington and California following in 1909, some 30 states eventually passed similar compulsory sterilization laws by the early 1930s. California was the leader in the field, accounting for half of the coercive sterilizations in the years leading up to World War I.

[snip]

That eugenics traced its origins to Darwin was no secret. A leading scientific eugenicist, the Harvard genetic biologist Edward East, explained in 1927 that “eugenic tenets are strict corollaries” of the “theory of organic evolution.”
It was a reasonable inference. In his Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin described the “one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.”
His more specific thoughts on human society were saved for his other major work, the* Descent of Man* (1871):

*With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment . . . Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.
*
Darwin himself opposed discriminating against the weak and helpless, but his disciples were less principled. The major ethical impact of the Darwinian idea has been to undercut what contemporary Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer decries as the “Hebrew view” of a purposefully-designed humanity, crowned by the solemn and central theme: “And God said, Let us make man in our image.”

​

Link.

God Bless,
RyanL