Morality: Incest Laws

[Broomstick]

While it's viscerally unpleasant, I can't think of any argument for outlawing it that doesn't place you in either:

1. moral panic, people shouldn't have control over their own bodies group, in which case, why allow gay sex? a lot of people find that viscerally unpleasant.

or

2. the eugenics box, in which case, why not outlaw people with hereditary disabilities, or just anyone who isn't intelligent/good-looking enough from procreating?

So you'd have no objection to, say, a father having incestuous sex with his 8 year old daughter? Forbidding that is somehow moral panic or eugenics? Are you sure you covered all the bases, there? Maybe you meant to limit your statements to "consenting adults"?

Certainly, properly used modern birth control eliminates most of the the "deformed children" fear which, while blown out of proportion, isn't entirely baseless, particularly in small, isolated communities that are already to some degree inbred. Which, until recently, used to be a common living situation for most people. We really shouldn't condemn people with terms like "moral panic" who, lacking what we would call effective birth control, enacted social controls to minimize birth defects, particularly since those same societies almost always lack modern medical care as well.

As for the eugenics angle - many people educated about genetic risks voluntarily limit or forgo reproduction for themselves. I would certainly object to coercive means of eugenics, but the concept is not, somehow, a dirty word. It is, after all, why we add folic acid to many food items and even the US, which is not known for having a sane healthcare system, will nonetheless provide prenatal care to pregnant women even when it isn't available to anyone else. Every time incest comes up the question of possible birth defects do, too. While the average risk of problems in such relationships isn't huge in some particular families and/or the chances of a genetic disease can suddenly leap to 25% or 50%. Communities with lower than normal genetic diversity do have a higher rate of genetic disease (the Amish in the US are an example of this - that vast majority of Amish are healthy, but they have higher rates of some genetic diseases than anyone else, to the point that some folks have made careers of studying them). Family members mating with each other constitute and extremely small community. There are, in fact, people who feel that those who carry bad genes or have birth defects shouldn't reproduce - that's why in the 20th Century a number of countries passed sterilization laws and were cutting out the reproductive organs of young children without either their knowledge or consent. (A practice, by the way, I am completely against, personally). I don't don't see how you can discuss the morality of incest without dragging this issues into the discussion, as they invariably crop up in the real world.

[Zed]

I'd like to emphasize that the sterilization of mentally handicapped people is a practice that continues until today.

[HMS Conqueror]

While it's viscerally unpleasant, I can't think of any argument for outlawing it that doesn't place you in either:

1. moral panic, people shouldn't have control over their own bodies group, in which case, why allow gay sex? a lot of people find that viscerally unpleasant.

or

2. the eugenics box, in which case, why not outlaw people with hereditary disabilities, or just anyone who isn't intelligent/good-looking enough from procreating?

So you'd have no objection to, say, a father having incestuous sex with his 8 year old daughter?

That would be rape regardless of the familial relation, so this analogy doesn't work. I don't believe that it should be illegal for a father to have consensual sex with his 16 (or whatever the AoC is in your country) year old daughter. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I have no objection to it, though.

[Broomstick]

I'd like to emphasize that the sterilization of mentally handicapped people is a practice that continues until today.

True. However, these days, at least in the US, it requires a shit load of legal procedures to justify it, which must be instigated by a guardian if the person in question is mentally incompetent to handle their own affairs, whereas in 1960 it was routine and occurred over objections of family and handicapped people in question.* Also, the eugenic sterilization laws covered far more than mental retardation, such that surgical sterilization was legally mandated for many birth defects, and for conditions such a epilepsy which may not even have a genetic component. (In the 1950's infants were, in some states, sterilized if diagnosed with epilepsy, for example.)



* I hope I don't have to explain that some people with mental retardation or developmental delays nonetheless are high functioning enough to make decisions on their own behalf. The eugenics laws were by no means restricted to the severely disabled.

[Broomstick]

While it's viscerally unpleasant, I can't think of any argument for outlawing it that doesn't place you in either:

1. moral panic, people shouldn't have control over their own bodies group, in which case, why allow gay sex? a lot of people find that viscerally unpleasant.

or

2. the eugenics box, in which case, why not outlaw people with hereditary disabilities, or just anyone who isn't intelligent/good-looking enough from procreating?

So you'd have no objection to, say, a father having incestuous sex with his 8 year old daughter?

That would be rape regardless of the familial relation, so this analogy doesn't work. I don't believe that it should be illegal for a father to have consensual sex with his 16 (or whatever the AoC is in your country) year old daughter. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I have no objection to it, though.

One problem is that parent-child incest, by it's very nature, ALWAYS has the issue of age difference and power dynamics at play. Which might be way there is slightly more tolerance for sibling incest than parent-child incest.

[Zed]

I'd like to emphasize that the sterilization of mentally handicapped people is a practice that continues until today.

True. However, these days, at least in the US, it requires a shit load of legal procedures to justify it, which must be instigated by a guardian if the person in question is mentally incompetent to handle their own affairs, whereas in 1960 it was routine and occurred over objections of family and handicapped people in question.*

This presumably depends on the nature of the sterilization involved - temporary sterilization due to Depo-Provera injections, for instance,would probably not require that many legal procedures and are very common. I'd also like to stress that contemporary manipulation of mentally handicapped people is at times is far more far-reaching than it was earlier (although less widespread): see, for example, the Ashley treatment.

[Broomstick]

Well, yes, but keep in mind Depo-Provera wasn't released until the 1990's - it didn't exist as an option for 90% of the 20th Century, and certainly not in the era where eugenics laws were most widespread. Also, too, there are contra-indications that make it a very, very poor choice for people with Down's Syndrome (increased problems with the cardiovascular system, in a population already at high risk for problems) as well as others. Not to mention it wouldn't be at all appropriate for men who are mentally retarded. Arguably, given the medical issues, even where sterilization is in the best interests of a disabled person depo-provera may be worse and much more risky than surgical sterilization.

[Alyrium Denryle]

2. the eugenics box, in which case, why not outlaw people with hereditary disabilities, or just anyone who isn't intelligent/good-looking enough from procreating?

Why the fuck should we allow two Tay Sachs carriers to have children? Why the hell shouldn't we try to prevent inbreeding depression in our population? If that is permitted whole new and fun genetic diseases may surface, particularly in small communities that already suffer from background inbreeding.

[Broomstick]

2. the eugenics box, in which case, why not outlaw people with hereditary disabilities, or just anyone who isn't intelligent/good-looking enough from procreating?

Why the fuck should we allow two Tay Sachs carriers to have children?

With modern medicine two such carriers can reproduce without risk of actually producing a child with Tay Sachs. In the community at highest risk of this disease there has been an in-culture discouraging of marriage between carriers (some communities of Ashkenazim still practice arranged marriage, and simply do not match up two carriers) and encouragement to use various techniques to avoid producing an affected child should it be found a married couple are both carriers.

Why the hell shouldn't we try to prevent inbreeding depression in our population?

I think we should discourage it, but I have some serious qualms about what is effectively coercive sterilization. I realize that runs somewhat counter to my point that the ban on incestuous matings among humans may have merit based on eugenic concerns, but whatever. Parents not only want children, they want healthy children, to the point some will voluntarily opt for abortion, IVF techniques that prevent the conception and/or gestation of genetically damaged babies, or voluntary sterilization followed by adoption. It would be ideal if we could reinforce such tendencies to the point where couples eliminate may defects on their own without the need for social force.

[Alyrium Denryle]

With modern medicine two such carriers can reproduce without risk of actually producing a child with Tay Sachs.

Yes I know, and an amniocentesis should be MANDATORY for carriers, and abortion mandated if the embryo/fetus is positive.

In the community at highest risk of this disease there has been an in-culture discouraging of marriage between carriers (some communities of Ashkenazim still practice arranged marriage, and simply do not match up two carriers) and encouragement to use various techniques to avoid producing an affected child should it be found a married couple are both carriers.

I am of course, aware. I suppose I should have said "Why the hell should we permit a child with Tay Sachs to be born?"

I think we should discourage it, but I have some serious qualms about what is effectively coercive sterilization.

I dont think that humans are forward thinking enough on their own to actually do that the majority of the time, honestly. This has been shown true in most other facets of our lives and something as intimate as reproduction is no different. As a result, I have no principled objection to coercion.

[Broomstick]

With modern medicine two such carriers can reproduce without risk of actually producing a child with Tay Sachs.

Yes I know, and an amniocentesis should be MANDATORY for carriers, and abortion mandated if the embryo/fetus is positive.

We are going to have to agree to disagree here, as I can not in any way condone forcing a woman to undergo an abortion.

As it happens, Tay Sachs is not at all common among Bible-thumping Christian Fundies, and even in Jewish communities where abortion is frowned upon the community has tended to look the other way in these cases. Perhaps because many of these couples would elect to not reproduce at all if there was no means to avoid a Tay Sachs child (in the past, that would be a second Tay Sachs child, nowadays such couples can prevent even the first).

I am of course, aware. I suppose I should have said "Why the hell should we permit a child with Tay Sachs to be born?"

Because it is wrong to force a woman to abort her child.

I think we should discourage it, but I have some serious qualms about what is effectively coercive sterilization.

I dont think that humans are forward thinking enough on their own to actually do that the majority of the time, honestly. This has been shown true in most other facets of our lives and something as intimate as reproduction is no different. As a result, I have no principled objection to coercion.

I object to such coercion based upon past abuses. One specific instance of which, by the way, has rendered my own marriage childless (for a reason, I might add, that turned out to not be genetic). Governments and societies have done much evil in the name of eugenics. I view the occasional birth of a child with a terminal illness to be a lesser evil than laws forcibly ripping a fetuses from the wombs of an unwilling women. You may well disagree with that, however, that is my firm position.

[Terralthra]

Yes, by all means. Let us defend utterly the right to have a child who is going to undergo an unstoppable deterioration of mental and physical ability leading to painful death via starvation (inability to swallow) or asphyxia (inability to breath) before the age of five.

[Broomstick]

Last time a society deemed certain human beings as not worthy of life it started with "just" the handicapped and within a few years 12 millions people of a variety of ethnicities, most of those individuals being normal and healthy humans, wound up slaughtered like cattle.

I don't think Tay Sachs is a good thing - it is, in fact, a very bad thing - but I feel that extracting fetuses from women who choose not to abort, in the long run, will result in greater harm than the unfortunate few who are born and die of this disease.

In the past, eugenics programs always expanded from what appeared to be clear-cut cases to more and more marginal and iffy circumstances. It might start with saying two carriers must undergo testing and must abort if the child has two defective genes but I don't believe it will stop there. It will spread to preventing carriers from having children at all which, because the three populations that have the highest rate of this disease have historically been either oppressed or the target of genocide or both, is going to cause social and political problems.

As for people not having the wisdom to act in the best interests of family/society/species - the rate of Tay Sachs among the Ashkenazim has dropped 90% worldwide through voluntary actions on the part of informed adults. There were only 10 babies born with Tay Sachs in all of North America in 2003 and NONE of them were born to Jewish parents. So unless you start screening EVERYONE ON THE PLANET for this disease you're not going to eliminate it by dicking around with the reproductive rights of known carriers. The known carriers are not the problem! The unknown ones are and, since they're unknowns, it won't be found out until they have that first, affected kid.

So it is possible to greatly reduce the incidence of genetic disease through voluntary cooperation and without a need for force or coercion.

I realize not everyone agrees with that stance, however, it is my position.

I will also point out that, even rarer than the typical manifestation of Tay Sachs disease is Late Onset Tay Sachs - a disorder caused by the exact same metabolic malfunction that leads to the build up of gangliosides, which causes the damage in Tay Sachs. In LOTS, though, the symptoms do not start until the late teens or early 20's, and while physically debilitating, such people are able to meaningful and even independent lives. The few known cases of this are being intensively studied, and there are even drugs (OGT 918 and Pyrimethamine.) now in clinical trials that appears to reduce the deterioration in these individuals. Gene therapy is also being investigated. This holds out hope for being able to one day treat infant-onset Tay Sachs.

It also reveals that Tay Sachs is NOT universally fatal in infancy or toddler years. It is often so, but not always so. This once again illustrates that what so many are certain of is, in fact, not so certain.

Of course, some would argue that studying and treating such a rare disease is a pointless or wasteful endeavor - however, Tay Sachs is part of a broader group of diseases/disorders involving malfunctioning lipid (fatty acid) metabolism. Research in treating one such disorder may lead to treating other such disorders. As disorders of lipid metabolism of one sort or another affect a lot of people this would be a good thing.

[Terralthra]

Get back to me when you can avoid leading off with a slippery slope fallacy.

[LionElJonson]

Yes, by all means. Let us defend utterly the right to have a child who is going to undergo an unstoppable deterioration of mental and physical ability leading to painful death via starvation (inability to swallow) or asphyxia (inability to breath) before the age of five.

Better to be born and die painfully and slowly than to never be born at all. Any existance at all is better than none at all.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Yes, by all means. Let us defend utterly the right to have a child who is going to undergo an unstoppable deterioration of mental and physical ability leading to painful death via starvation (inability to swallow) or asphyxia (inability to breath) before the age of five.

Better to be born and die painfully and slowly than to never be born at all. Any existance at all is better than none at all.

As usual, you speak from a position of absolute and utterly profound ignorance.

[Simon_Jester]

Get back to me when you can avoid leading off with a slippery slope fallacy.

A couple of questions.

What is the mortality rate of this disease?

How does it compare to the infant mortality rate in societies where modern medical care is not available?

Say that there is a condition which causes horrible death in almost one fourth of all people who have it, prior to the age of five. Would you force adults to abort a fetus with this condition? Would you advocate sterilizing them to keep them from passing it on?

What if the condition is "being born in Afghanistan?" Being born in Afghanistan carries with it a 15% chance of dying in infancy, and a 23% chance of dying before the age of five.

And don't just say "obviously I wouldn't call for mandatory abortions in Afghanistan to avoid the infant mortality rate, that would be stupid." I want to know why it is stupid. Because there are a LOT of genetic conditions which are hardly more fatal than simply happening to come into the world in the wrong country... and which have historically been considered as horrible genetic defects to be purged from the human race by abortions and sterilization. Which strikes me as a profoundly hypocritical argument: if it's about avoiding misery and death in infants, there are more efficient ways to do that.

So I'm with Broomstick on this one. I don't trust negative eugenics arguments, because many of them seem to ignore utilitarian issues when only utilitarianism could possibly justify the program in the first place.

[loomer]

Yes, by all means. Let us defend utterly the right to have a child who is going to undergo an unstoppable deterioration of mental and physical ability leading to painful death via starvation (inability to swallow) or asphyxia (inability to breath) before the age of five.

Better to be born and die painfully and slowly than to never be born at all. Any existance at all is better than none at all.

Why? What exact value is inherent to existence?

What is the mortality rate of this disease?

100%.

[LionElJonson]

Yes, by all means. Let us defend utterly the right to have a child who is going to undergo an unstoppable deterioration of mental and physical ability leading to painful death via starvation (inability to swallow) or asphyxia (inability to breath) before the age of five.

Better to be born and die painfully and slowly than to never be born at all. Any existance at all is better than none at all.

Why? What exact value is inherent to existence?

In my current utility function, a horrible existence is a negative value; a horrible and painful death is a very large negative value. Being tortured in hell for all eternity is negative infinity.

Not existing is to burning in hell for all eternity as the set of real numbers is to the set of integers.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What is the mortality rate of this disease?

Nearly 100%

How does it compare to the infant mortality rate in societies where modern medical care is not available?

Nearly 100% vs ~25% in Afghanistan, the country with the highest infant mortality rate on the planet.

Say that there is a condition which causes horrible death in almost one fourth of all people who have it, prior to the age of five. Would you force adults to abort a fetus with this condition? Would you advocate sterilizing them to keep them from passing it on?

Maybe and no. It would depend on the genetics, and how well the condition can be diagnosed and treated. No one has the right to bring someone into the world who's life will be nothing but pain. That said, sterilization is not necessary, provided they do not pass the gene involved on to offspring, more on this later.

What if the condition is "being born in Afghanistan?" Being born in Afghanistan carries with it a 15% chance of dying in infancy, and a 23% chance of dying before the age of five.

False analogy. Any given child under these conditions has that chance. You cannot test for it, and it is not passed on genetically. It is rather simple to get rid of something like ALD or Tay Sachs. You just use Prental Diagnostics to test for the genes causing the disease and abort if positive. The genes dont get passed on, fitness drops to zero, it goes extinct. If you do this, then you end up with a mortality rate due to the condition of Zero.

Afghanistan has a different solution. Making the country something other than a third world shit hole.

if it's about avoiding misery and death in infants, there are more efficient ways to do that.

Not for heritable genetic conditions there is not. Thankfully you do not have to sterilize (usually). All you need to do is test the fetus and abort if necessary. You might not even HAVE to force abort. You just need to show the parent what a child with ALD or Tay Sachs looks like.

We are going to have to agree to disagree here, as I can not in any way condone forcing a woman to undergo an abortion.

Stipulating that no extant government is competent and sufficiently free of corruption to actually administer a good eugenics program (Sure it would start out just getting rid of things like Huntingtons, Tay Sachs, ALD etc, but it would not be long before arbitrary groups start getting sterilized), why?

If you can force women to abort (or convince them that abortion is the only moral choice, either way so long as you end up getting 100% success rates) and can completely rid the population of a horrific genetic condition in a few generations, why would you not do it? Again, stipulating perfect government.

As it happens, Tay Sachs is not at all common among Bible-thumping Christian Fundies, and even in Jewish communities where abortion is frowned upon the community has tended to look the other way in these cases. Perhaps because many of these couples would elect to not reproduce at all if there was no means to avoid a Tay Sachs child (in the past, that would be a second Tay Sachs child, nowadays such couples can prevent even the first).

Yes. I am however only using Tay Sachs as an example. There are plenty of other genetic conditions.

Because it is wrong to force a woman to abort her child.

Why, exactly? Bear in mind, while I am technically a Pragmatist, I lean heavily toward utilitarianism and find the concept of actual rights to be a convenient and useful legal concept, not a coherent ethic. My opposition to the pro-life position is based upon a utilitarian analysis of the suffering involved in carrying an unwanted pregnancy. On the same token however the suffering that comes from forcing an abortion must be weighed against the suffering of the potential child. Obviously convincing mom to abort on her own is preferable to strapping her to a table...

One specific instance of which, by the way, has rendered my own marriage childless (for a reason, I might add, that turned out to not be genetic).

You are also a hell of a lot smarter and forward looking than most people.

Governments and societies have done much evil in the name of eugenics.

Which is why there is almost always an issue with idiots and bastards fucking up things that otherwise should be done.

. I view the occasional birth of a child with a terminal illness to be a lesser evil than laws forcibly ripping a fetuses from the wombs of an unwilling women.

You do realize that most abortions are chemical right?

Last time a society deemed certain human beings as not worthy of life it started with "just" the handicapped and within a few years 12 millions people of a variety of ethnicities, most of those individuals being normal and healthy humans, wound up slaughtered like cattle.

Godwined yourself pretty fast...

That was in an era when populations genetics was in its infancy, genomics and genetic diagnostics was not extant at all, and when the perversion that was social darwinism was popular. Somewhat different situation today--though I will grant that I would never trust elected politicians to make the decisions.

I don't think Tay Sachs is a good thing - it is, in fact, a very bad thing - but I feel that extracting fetuses from women who choose not to abort, in the long run, will result in greater harm than the unfortunate few who are born and die of this disease.

If you abort carriers and those with the disease, you can rid the entire population of it in a generation or two (one with perfect coverage, if it is incomplete, you will need to wait a few more until Tay Sachs is no longer a problem). Jewish couples who dont want to deal with the abortions can always use IVF with pre-implantation diagnostics to chuck the fetuses carrying the gene.

Of course, not all of the abortions need be forced either. I am pretty sure a video showing an afflicted child will tend to convince most fundies even.

It will spread to preventing carriers from having children at all which, because the three populations that have the highest rate of this disease have historically been either oppressed or the target of genocide or both, is going to cause social and political problems.

Have you anything but a slippery slope?

With adequate safeguards (such as removing elections from the equation) you wont have that problem. The decisions could in principle be made by a body elected from the AMA (physicians), NAS (population geneticists), and the International Association of Bioethics. With the ethicists having veto power when voting as a block. All you need is a legislature to give their decisions the force of law, and limits on the scope their decisions can take. A constitutional amendment would probably be necessary in the US.

As for people not having the wisdom to act in the best interests of family/society/species - the rate of Tay Sachs among the Ashkenazim has dropped 90% worldwide through voluntary actions on the part of informed adults.

A matter of time. Soon (in generational terms) all they do is increase the proportion of carriers. Eventually, they will need to start removing carriers, the only way to do that is to prevent carriers from being born, or Tay Sachs will skyrocket.

So unless you start screening EVERYONE ON THE PLANET for this disease you're not going to eliminate it by dicking around with the reproductive rights of known carriers.

That is exactly what I want. Genotyping is becoming very very cheep, batteries of tests can be done on one blood sample.

Gene therapy is also being investigated. This holds out hope for being able to one day treat infant-onset Tay Sachs.

Frankly, I would prefer to eliminate the disease from the population. What do you think is cheaper? You can run samples for almost 384 patients and 31 diseases per patient for just a little more than 2000 USD. It is amazingly cheap.

Compare that to having someone being continually dependent on gene therapy.

In my current utility function, a horrible existence is a negative value; a horrible and painful death is a very large negative value. Being tortured in hell for all eternity is negative infinity.

Not existing is to burning in hell for all eternity as the set of real numbers is to the set of integers.

So... miscarried fetuses go to hell? You realize that Original Sin does not apply until after birth right?

[LionElJonson]

In my current utility function, a horrible existence is a negative value; a horrible and painful death is a very large negative value. Being tortured in hell for all eternity is negative infinity.

Not existing is to burning in hell for all eternity as the set of real numbers is to the set of integers.

So... miscarried fetuses go to hell? You realize that Original Sin does not apply until after birth right?

Reread what I actually said, and try again.

[LaCroix]

In my current utility function, a horrible existence is a negative value; a horrible and painful death is a very large negative value. Being tortured in hell for all eternity is negative infinity.

Not existing is to burning in hell for all eternity as the set of real numbers is to the set of integers.

You got the thing wrong.

Not existing = Not existing.
You can't burn in hell as you don't exist. You can't get to hell when you not even managed to achieve the original sin by the fact of no conception happening...

Please state why someone who didn't exist would be dammed to burn in hell for eternity according to your logic.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, he thinks not existing is infinitely worse than being in Hell... which is even stupider, when you think about it.

Think about this, Jonson. There are an infinite number of conceivable people. I can imagine an unlimited number of different people, who vary only by some slight quirk of configuration or personality. But there are only a finite number of real people, who exist, ever have existed, or ever will exist.

Therefore, there are an infinite number of people who do not exist, and will never get the chance to exist. What do you think about that?

If you truly thought not existing was an ultimate horror of such magnitude that it made being tortured in hell look like nothing, then I just blew your mind out through your ears with that thought, by presenting you with the unavoidable reality that this infinite horror has already come to pass. But I don't think you really believe what you are saying. You're just hallf-assing because you, personally, can't imagine the universe moving on without you.

---

That aside, you are far, far too quick to assign infinite utility values, positive or negative, Jonson. Don't you understand that the use of such values automatically breaks utilitarianism? Because they never really reflect your preferences, among other things: no semi-sane person would truly do anything to bring about a given goal. There is always something that must not be done, for it is too vile. That's how real people who are sane think, of course, so I'm not sure it should apply to your reasoning.

And even among the insane, an infinite negative utility value would mean devoting literally all resources to avoiding it. If the ultimate, infinite horror were nonexistence, then the only possible activity is whatever optimizes the chance of nonexistence, whatever banishes even the slightest incremental chance of nonexistence taking place. That would mean always being engaged in some activity designed to search the possibilities of an afterlife to ensure that there is one, and never doing anything that could possibly fail to contribute toward that goal. Like, say, posting on an Internet forum.

And it's worse than that. Infinity breaks arithmetic, and therefore breaks utilitarianism, even when you DO devote all your resources to avoiding an infinite-negative or achieving an infinite-positive, as soon as infinity appears on both sides of the equation.

Suppose, for example, that there is a 0.0001% chance that in punishment for your sins the Great God Glug will erase you from the multiverse upon your death, if you do not worship him. On the other hand, the Great God Zot will erase you for not worshipping him, and it is 99.9999% certain that he exists. It's either Glug or Zot- one exists, the other doesn't.

Which god should you worship? If being erased from the multiverse is merely somewhat bad, with a finite negative utility value, that's easy, Zot. But if the values are infinite, you have to choose between:

0.000001*infinity
and
0.999999*infinity.

But those are the same number, for the same reason that the set of all integers and the set of all even numbers are the same size. Two times infinity is still infinity. You can't judge between two things that are bad to equal orders of infinity by comparing the probability of them happening, any more than you can find a member of the set of integers that does not have a corresponding even integer.

Which makes it impossible to use this absurd infinite utility value system except as an unusually shitty excuse for ignoring utilitarianism whenever it happens to contradict your deranged little whims.

[Broomstick]

if it's about avoiding misery and death in infants, there are more efficient ways to do that.

Not for heritable genetic conditions there is not. Thankfully you do not have to sterilize (usually). All you need to do is test the fetus and abort if necessary. You might not even HAVE to force abort. You just need to show the parent what a child with ALD or Tay Sachs looks like.

The latter point is very true - MOST people will chose not to have that severely disabled a child.

We are going to have to agree to disagree here, as I can not in any way condone forcing a woman to undergo an abortion.

Stipulating that no extant government is competent and sufficiently free of corruption to actually administer a good eugenics program (Sure it would start out just getting rid of things like Huntingtons, Tay Sachs, ALD etc, but it would not be long before arbitrary groups start getting sterilized), why?[/quote]
I base that on the historical record of what happened last time sterializing people with genetic defects was popular.

If you can force women to abort (or convince them that abortion is the only moral choice, either way so long as you end up getting 100% success rates) and can completely rid the population of a horrific genetic condition in a few generations, why would you not do it? Again, stipulating perfect government.

1) There is not such thing as a "perfect government"
2) Being a carrier for a severe genetic disease may actually be an advantage in the right circumstances - sickle cell and malaria being the most well-known example. Being a carrier of Tay-Sachs might grant a certain resistance to tuberculosis (the evidence is not certain, though there is some). Being a carrier of cystic fibrosis may protect against death from diarrheal diseases (again, some evidence but not proven). Until we eliminate malaria once and for all eliminating sickle cell trait in malarial regions may actually result in greater overall harm than coming up with treatments for those who get a double-dose of the bad gene.

Are there some diseases so horrific and so obviously an error we can eliminate them without remorse? Probably. On the other hand, I know I don't know enough speak with authority which ones those are.

Because it is wrong to force a woman to abort her child.

Why, exactly? Bear in mind, while I am technically a Pragmatist, I lean heavily toward utilitarianism and find the concept of actual rights to be a convenient and useful legal concept, not a coherent ethic. My opposition to the pro-life position is based upon a utilitarian analysis of the suffering involved in carrying an unwanted pregnancy. On the same token however the suffering that comes from forcing an abortion must be weighed against the suffering of the potential child. Obviously convincing mom to abort on her own is preferable to strapping her to a table...

Why? Because it's her body you're entering to perform the abortion. It's her (potential) child you are killing. Perhaps I favor the individual over society more than you do. As my ethics in this matter come from my religion holding that up as the source is not going to carry any weight with you, and indeed I am in no way trying to convince to change your position here. I am simply stating mine.

I am also aware that the lives of the disabled are often perceived by the able-bodied to be more horrible than they actually. I am married to a man who, due to a birth defect, has spent almost every day of his life in pain, and you would use that as an argument that he should have never lived - but he vehemently disagrees with that position! He is the one doing the suffering, not you, and he judges life to be well worth living despite his hardships. He wants to live - and regards with horror the idea that anyone with his defect should be eliminated from existence. That's where your argument breaks down. I am not convinced how you value suffering in this context is properly weighted.

One specific instance of which, by the way, has rendered my own marriage childless (for a reason, I might add, that turned out to not be genetic).

You are also a hell of a lot smarter and forward looking than most people.

My husband did NOT consent to being sterilized as a young boy. Neither did his parents - it was done ENTIRLEY without the knowledge of either him or his family. His birth defect is NOT genetic. It was an example of a slippery slope that moved from "prevent grievious genetic disease" to "sterialize anyone less than perfect". There was no goddamned reason to do that - he would have been at no greater odds of having a defective child than anyone else AND he would have made a great dad. And that was taken away from him forever before he was even a teenager. WHY? Do you think that rendering him sterile didn't cause him suffering, when he wanted children? Not telling him sure did - he didn't find out what had been done until he was nearly 30. So he spent years of his life imaging starting a family when that had been taken away. You think that didn't hurt? It would have been kinder to squash all notion of that from childhood, wouldn't it? But the same jackasses who though giving a child a vasectomy on the sly was the "best thing to do" also though not telling anyone was the best thing to do - and people wonder why he doesn't trust doctors!

Governments and societies have done much evil in the name of eugenics.

Which is why there is almost always an issue with idiots and bastards fucking up things that otherwise should be done.

Which is why some things that might be done in a perfect world shouldn't be done in this one.

. I view the occasional birth of a child with a terminal illness to be a lesser evil than laws forcibly ripping a fetuses from the wombs of an unwilling women.

You do realize that most abortions are chemical right?

Except that by the time you get to amniocentisis and chorionic villi sampling it's too late for a chemical abortion. Chemical abortions work for children who are unwanted period - if you wait for the other testing because the baby is wanted THEN find the defects the pregnancy will be far enoug along to require a minor surgical procedure.

Last time a society deemed certain human beings as not worthy of life it started with "just" the handicapped and within a few years 12 millions people of a variety of ethnicities, most of those individuals being normal and healthy humans, wound up slaughtered like cattle.

Godwined yourself pretty fast...

It is, nonetheless, a historical fact - the Nazis started with the handicapped and moved on to slaughtering millions in the name of perfecting the human race. It is entirely relevant to the topic at hand.

That was in an era when populations genetics was in its infancy, genomics and genetic diagnostics was not extant at all, and when the perversion that was social darwinism was popular. Somewhat different situation today--though I will grant that I would never trust elected politicians to make the decisions.

And we still don't know as much as the average person thinks we do about genetics, diagnostic technology is still evolving, and social darwinism is still popular!

Damn right I don't trust the elected politicians to make the decisions. Last time around, the doctors didn't do too well, either. As I have said, the historical record is pretty fucked up on this issue and a LOT of pain and suffering was caused. I am not convinced the pain and suffering avoided would balance out the pain and suffering caused. I'm not pulling that out of my ass, I'm looking at history. It got REALLY fucked up last time around, why should we be eager to try again? Particuarly when we have instances where securing voluntary cooperation has good results.

I don't think Tay Sachs is a good thing - it is, in fact, a very bad thing - but I feel that extracting fetuses from women who choose not to abort, in the long run, will result in greater harm than the unfortunate few who are born and die of this disease.

If you abort carriers and those with the disease, you can rid the entire population of it in a generation or two (one with perfect coverage, if it is incomplete, you will need to wait a few more until Tay Sachs is no longer a problem). Jewish couples who dont want to deal with the abortions can always use IVF with pre-implantation diagnostics to chuck the fetuses carrying the gene.

Are you even aware of the carrier rate of TS in the general population? It's one in 250. That means to eliminate ALL carriers of TS you have to abort one in every 250 babies conceived for an entire generation. How many millions will that be? Have you not slid down the slippery slope into a pile of millions abortions just there?

Genes for rare recessive disorders are actually much more common than people think

Of course, not all of the abortions need be forced either. I am pretty sure a video showing an afflicted child will tend to convince most fundies even.

Nope. Won't (in my expeirence) budge the Fundies.

It will spread to preventing carriers from having children at all which, because the three populations that have the highest rate of this disease have historically been either oppressed or the target of genocide or both, is going to cause social and political problems.

Have you anything but a slippery slope?

In this instance, the slippery slope actualy occurred in history, it was not a hypothetical.

With adequate safeguards (such as removing elections from the equation) you wont have that problem. The decisions could in principle be made by a body elected from the AMA (physicians), NAS (population geneticists), and the International Association of Bioethics. With the ethicists having veto power when voting as a block.

Yeah right - how about we have a committte of severely disabled people with veto power instead? Shouldn't it be cripples making decisions for cripples?

As for people not having the wisdom to act in the best interests of family/society/species - the rate of Tay Sachs among the Ashkenazim has dropped 90% worldwide through voluntary actions on the part of informed adults.

A matter of time. Soon (in generational terms) all they do is increase the proportion of carriers. Eventually, they will need to start removing carriers, the only way to do that is to prevent carriers from being born, or Tay Sachs will skyrocket.

One in 250 people walking the earth today is a carrier. That's a fuck of a lot of carriers you're talking about. A lot of births to be prevented.

That's for just ONE genetic disease - things like cystic fibrosis have just a high a carrier rate. Who will be left to continue the species?

So unless you start screening EVERYONE ON THE PLANET for this disease you're not going to eliminate it by dicking around with the reproductive rights of known carriers.

That is exactly what I want. Genotyping is becoming very very cheep, batteries of tests can be done on one blood sample.

We do not yet have the science, or the cheap technology, to make that feasible for the world population.

Gene therapy is also being investigated. This holds out hope for being able to one day treat infant-onset Tay Sachs.

Frankly, I would prefer to eliminate the disease from the population. What do you think is cheaper? You can run samples for almost 384 patients and 31 diseases per patient for just a little more than 2000 USD. It is amazingly cheap.

Not if you have to run 6 billion samples. The money isn't there for it.

Compare that to having someone being continually dependent on gene therapy.

Having diabetics continually dependent on insulin sucks, too, but it's better than letting them die, isn't it?

Gene therapy might be a one-shot treatment, after all, we don't know yet if it's that or requires continual doses.

[Simon_Jester]

Stipulating that no extant government is competent and sufficiently free of corruption to actually administer a good eugenics program (Sure it would start out just getting rid of things like Huntingtons, Tay Sachs, ALD etc, but it would not be long before arbitrary groups start getting sterilized), why?

I base that on the historical record of what happened last time sterializing people with genetic defects was popular.

Same here, Alyrium.

It's not just a question of what happens when "it gets political." It's a question of what happens when you grant human beings the power to bind and to loose. Once they have effectively unquestioned control over other people's reproduction, well, the naive way to put it is that they're not going to be able to resist the urge to abuse that power.

On a deeper analysis, the problem is that they won't even realize they have to resist an urge to abuse power. They won't be able to tell the difference between correct and abusive use of power. Powerful people seldom can, once they get into a position where they are allowed to use rationalizations to govern their own behavior.

Last time a society deemed certain human beings as not worthy of life it started with "just" the handicapped and within a few years 12 millions people of a variety of ethnicities, most of those individuals being normal and healthy humans, wound up slaughtered like cattle.

Godwined yourself pretty fast...

It is, nonetheless, a historical fact - the Nazis started with the handicapped and moved on to slaughtering millions in the name of perfecting the human race. It is entirely relevant to the topic at hand.

Alyrium, when you propose something that is famously associated with the Nazis, you're performing the Godwin's Law equivalent of playing hopscotch in a minefield: you lose all credibility when you claim to be shocked that someone else would mention them.

That said, from a history standpoint I'm not sure whether there was a disconnect between the Holocaust and the earlier Nazi eugenics programs or not. On the one hand, Hitler's policies regarding Jews and other ethnic minorities were separate from those regarding individuals within the German Volk who were seen as "inferior." On the other, I can't shake the feeling that creating a climate in which it is ethically permissible to consign large groups of people to death makes it easier to find the people and tools you'll need to do it to completely different groups later...

If you abort carriers and those with the disease, you can rid the entire population of it in a generation or two (one with perfect coverage, if it is incomplete, you will need to wait a few more until Tay Sachs is no longer a problem). Jewish couples who dont want to deal with the abortions can always use IVF with pre-implantation diagnostics to chuck the fetuses carrying the gene.

Are you even aware of the carrier rate of TS in the general population? It's one in 250. That means to eliminate ALL carriers of TS you have to abort one in every 250 babies conceived for an entire generation. How many millions will that be? Have you not slid down the slippery slope into a pile of millions abortions just there?

Genes for rare recessive disorders are actually much more common than people think.

[The following is addressed mainly to Alyrium, not Broomstick]

There's a second issue, too. Amniocentesis carries a risk of miscarriage, somewhere around 1 in 400 to 500 (the Mayo Clinic website says around 500).

There are roughly four million live births in the US every year; I'm going to (equally roughly) estimate that means three million pregnant women in the US at any one time. If we perform amniocentesis on every one of those women, we're going to wind up inducing roughly six thousand miscarriages... to eliminate a disease that only twelve thousand of their fetuses are carrying the gene for. And that only a handful of them will actually have. Actually, I'd like to do a rough estimate on how many will have it, in the general population, using that 1-in-250 figure.

Three million fetuses, assuming the proportion of carriers in the general population is 1 in 250, and given that the child of two carriers has a 25% chance to express the disease...
3000000*0.25*(0.004^2) = 12.
Twelve cases in the general population born per year.

So, Alyrium, if you were to do amniocentesis and forced abortions on carriers in the general population, you would be causing six thousand miscarriages of genetically healthy fetuses per year for decades, and coercing twelve thousand women a year to have an abortion of a carrier fetus who could live a perfectly happy life for decades. Total number of abortions and miscarriages would probably approach half a million.

All that in order to eliminate a genetic disease that kills on the order of 1200 people per century, in the general population.

But I trust you to be a good utilitarian, Alyrium. So I think you'll agree with me when I say that if we're doing this on utilitarian grounds, I have to say that getting rid of Tay-Sachs in the general population this way is effectively out of the question.

The calculation is somewhat different in the isolated populations where it is most frequent, because there we have a no-risk way to identify people who are more likely to be carriers: we find out if they are a French Canadian or Ashkenazim or whatever. And the calculation above changes because of the increased carrier frequency: increasing the incidence of the carrier gene by a factor of 10 increases the number of infants born expressing the disease by a factor of 100, at which point the risk of miscarriage from amniocentesis doesn't seem quite so bad anymore by comparison.

But I think this adequately illustrates an important point about mandatory genetic testing in general: so far, it is not without risks, and if you're going to test for a rare disease in a large population, you must have a way to do it without risk, or the suffering caused by false positive diagnosis will outweigh the suffering avoided by the tests.

A matter of time. Soon (in generational terms) all they do is increase the proportion of carriers. Eventually, they will need to start removing carriers, the only way to do that is to prevent carriers from being born, or Tay Sachs will skyrocket.

One in 250 people walking the earth today is a carrier. That's a fuck of a lot of carriers you're talking about. A lot of births to be prevented.

That's for just ONE genetic disease - things like cystic fibrosis have just a high a carrier rate. Who will be left to continue the species?

I think this is also a good point. Once you factor in all the many, many possible genetic diseases, there are a lot of carriers when you take them all together. Make a policy of aborting carriers as a firebreak against the genetic diseases in question, and like Broomstick, I have to wonder how many people would be left.