Genetic Research

[[)arkredemption]

I myself am all for this sort of research due to the possible applications it may make possible in medicine in the future.

The concerns with this sort of research are largely split into three main groups (as far as I can see);

Ensoulment: due to concerns regarding whether the cells used have a soul and whether it is therefore wrong to use them for this purpose. This is not really an issue for me as I am agnostic (verging on the side of athiesm perhaps however).

Interfering with nature/playing god: concepts about the apparent purity and balance of nature and creationism (as well as often further religious comments) lead to many not wishing it to be interfered with. In my view however the nature we currently see came about through evolution and other scientific principles and was certainly not designed to be balanced, fair or of benefit to humanity (or designed at all in fact), so interfering with nature is not really a problem so long as we consider the impacts on the other organisms we share this planet with and upon whom we are to some degree dependant.

Attack of the Clones: people are also worried that research of this type might make cloning human beings possible and although I have no major moral objection against this, I am probably against the cloning of full human beings as it would reduce the variety of people on earth (making things less interesting), reduce the gene pool (perhaps causing problems with recessive genetic disorders and resistance to disease) and because I quite like being unique. The current research by no means makes this possible however so I have no objections to it.

Basically I think it is best to bring some very clear legislation in quickly across the world so as to make a clear distinction between theraputic (allowed) and reproductive (banned) cloning, rather than leaving it in the current state of uncertainty existing in most countries.

[Wizard_Mon1]

In my view however the nature we currently see came about through evolution and other scientific principles and was certainly not designed to be balanced, fair or of benefit to humanity

I think you are confusing nature and society. How is nature a product of scientific principles, the later results from (evolved?) humans trying to understand nature.

[Agrajag]

Biggles

I did not mean to suggest that the situations were directly analagous. In my clumsy way I was just expressing the opinion that the ends do not always justify the means. As you are aware, having read your posts, hyperbole is a useful tool.

[Biggles]

Originally posted by Agrajag@20 February 2004 - 21:15
Biggles

I did not mean to suggest that the situations were directly analagous. In my clumsy way I was just expressing the opinion that the ends do not always justify the means. As you are aware, having read your posts, hyperbole is a useful tool.

Oh yes indeed!

:-"

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by Biggles+20 February 2004 - 22:28--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Biggles &#064; 20 February 2004 - 22:28)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-Agrajag@20 February 2004 - 21:15
Biggles

I did not mean to suggest that the situations were directly analagous. In my clumsy way I was just expressing the opinion that the ends do not always justify the means. As you are aware, having read your posts, hyperbole is a useful tool.

Oh yes indeed&#33;

:-"[/b][/quote]


In the same spirit.

[[)arkredemption]

@ Wizard Mon1

No, my point remains the same...although perhaps I did not explain or define what I was saying well enough. Firstly I should clarify that I was making a point about the natural world and organisms such as humans, as opposed to current society.

I have the impression that many people talk of nature itself as being created (generally be a kind god) for the benefit of humanity. Perhaps people might say how great it is that plants photosynthesise which provides us with the oxygen we need etc. etc. and that this and other things were created purely for our benefit. If you believe however that these things came about by evolution and other natural processes which have been discovered by science, you can see that things such as the example I suggested came about with no planning and forethought, and were therefore not designed to benefit humanity.

Therefore it may not be of benefit to humanity not to &#39;play god&#39; and interefere with nature, so long as environmental concerns are taken into account. It also should be said that few people are complaining when a doctor saves a patients life, or about the many things we take for granted that came about through science and invention such as the computers we are now using to communicate in this forum and utilities such as toilets. These things are hardly natural and some (as in the doctor example) could be seen as playing god. I believe it is in fact our versatility at creating and using tools (and therefore interfering with nature if you view humanity to be outside nature) such as these (although starting with far simpler ones such as termite probes, clubs and fire) that has allowed humanity to be so successful. Whether this inventiveness and things such as science will eventually be our downfall is open to debate but they have certainly kept us going rather than killed us off so far.

Finally, although scientific principles were brought about by humans to describe what they could see, the statistics and processes determined by observation which they saw are still there, and therefore it can be said that they came about by what has been modelled by science...the scientific principles such as evolution. It is correct terminology to say an organism (and all current organisms) came into their current form through evolution. Perhaps our misunderstanding comes down to my use of the word &#39;principle&#39;?

[j2k4]

This is a column by a writer I read fairly often, Charley Reese.

I offer it here only to provide an additional perspective on the topic of this thread.

I will dispense with any further disclaimer, as whoever wants to brand me with the thoughts herein is bound to do so anyway-suffice it to say I ran across it with what seemed to me to be fortuitous timing for inclusion here.

2/11/04 Eugenics Is Back

Human beings are funny. Not funny in the ha-ha sense, but funny in the sense of peculiar.

Take the subject of eugenics. We humans are mammals, and since we know that selective breeding of other mammals (dogs, for example) can produce not only differences in physical appearance but differences in temperament, it&#39;s logical that the same thing could be done with people.

This topic was kind of all the rage early in the past century. Margaret Sanger, for example, was an early advocate of contraception and abortion because she thought there were way too many people she considered inferior (blacks and browns) walking around. She wanted to cull the herd.

Then along came Adolf Hitler, who gave the subject a bad name for reasons you can explore by reading a history of the Third Reich. At any rate, after World War II, eugenics and talk of anything remotely related to it became taboo. Even today, to even suggest that intelligence might be largely a matter of heredity will bring the wrath of the politically correct down on your neck.

So, OK, the consensus is that eugenics is a bad subject, and we just won&#39;t talk about it. But — and this is what is peculiar — breakthroughs in genetics have people talking about tampering with people&#39;s genetic code to cure diseases and do other things.

OK, let&#39;s have a drumroll. Genetic tampering is the same subject as eugenics. Eugenics is about engineering a certain type of human being. It makes no difference whether it&#39;s done with selective breeding (a slower but more fun way) or by tampering with the genes in a laboratory. Frankenstein is Frankenstein, no matter which method you employ to create him.

Words and thoughts have no effect on reality. The fact that we wish to say that "eugenics" is a bad word and to remain in denial does not alter the fact that we are largely what our genes say we are, and that if the genes are altered, the person will be altered.

I&#39;ve come to believe that every civilization is a matrix of truths and lies, and the lies are often as cherished as the truths. When Mary Shelley created the Frankenstein monster in her novel, she was expressing the fears of people of her day about science. I think many of us share those fears. We look at science as something devoid of human emotion and compassion, a ruthlessly true set of facts that cares nothing for our ethics or dreams or religious beliefs or wishes or even our very existence.

Whether we like it or not, however, the truth of how much of our existence is controlled by genes will eventually dominate our society. Then will arise all the troubling questions that we have deliberately avoided dealing with for the past century.

For example, why insist that drivers prove their qualifications while allowing anybody, no matter how obviously degenerate, to create offspring? Should not the government prevent people with genetic defects from having children? Why not selectively breed people who are smarter, stronger and faster than normal human beings? And what are we going to do when science proves definitively that some groups are, on average, genetically smarter or less smart than other groups?

We have built our society on the political concept of equality, but equality does not accurately reflect the natural world. As one writer put it, nature creates by profusion, not by uniformity. Some apologists are trying to avoid the truth by talking about how 97 percent of genes are the same in all people and animals. That&#39;s just begging the question. It&#39;s the 3 percent difference that produces a Great Dane rather than a Chihuahua.

I sometimes get the feeling that science is a speeding train that is about to smash our civilization to pieces. I also get the feeling that I will not like the civilization that science creates to replace the old one. It would be cruelly ironic if Hitler had the last laugh.

[Wizard_Mon1]

Thanks for clearing that up - nice post.

My understanding of nature is how the earth and cosmos work e.g. sessions, day and night, sun & moon, water, earth, fire, trees, animals.

The point i was making was that by working with nature we can understand it better, e.g. plants have many curative affects.

I think that western medicine has made some amazing discoveries but if we had a better understanding of nature many of the problems within the human body might not be created in the first place.

[ilw]

Originally posted by j2k4@21 February 2004 - 20:11
Then along came Adolf Hitler, who gave the subject a bad name for reasons you can explore by reading a history of the Third Reich. At any rate, after World War II, eugenics and talk of anything remotely related to it became taboo.

I think the first line there is actually the most telling of the article, Hitler gave eugenics a bad name which it still hasn&#39;t recovered from. However, imo the principles of eugenics are scientifically sound. Humans have removed themselves from evolution and natural selection and without this competition at the genetic level there will inevitably be a weakening of the gene pool. Imo the real problem is deciding what constitutes an undesirable gene sequence, personally I&#39;d probably draw the line at seriously harmful genetic diseases eg cystic fibrosis or hemophilia. (ie persistent medical intervention required).

There was a documentary about this sort of stuff a while back on tv, with the Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of DNA James Watson, who seems strongly in favour of genetic tampering/screening though i had the impression he was exaggerating in order to be more provocative and confrontational. (More info here). There was one part of the documentary that i found interesting and that was James Watson meeting a family whose child had Down Syndrom. If i remember well the family were dead against any form of genetic screening and argued that their child had just as happy a life as any other child and that he/she brought happiness into other peoples lives. Watson wasn&#39;t shaken from his argument at all and i think i agree with him.

I found this on the bbc website:

"If you are going to manipulate the genetic composition of an individual you are changing not only that individual, but perhaps a thousand descendants of that individual.

"This is so-called germ line manipulation, and it is very tightly regulated because it could be hideously abused."

"The fundamental issue is a question of justice between generations. Do we control the next generation in that sort of way? Are they are a sort of custom-specified commodity?"

[[)arkredemption]

Wizard Mon1

I believe your point is quite correct and well made...much can be discovered which would be of use to humanity from nature itself and has been in many cases. This, as you may well know, is one of the many reasons why rainforest deforestation is a great problem. The reduction in biodiversity it causes could be making extinct many species which might yield cures to major diseases humanity suffers from.

It appears that the definitions of nature we were using differ (and thats perhaps where our misunderstanding lay). Perhaps my definition of nature as the living world as opposed to this as well as the other things of which you speak (eg. water, day and night) was slightly narrower than it should have been.



It is also interesting that eugenics has been brought into this topic, as well as James Watson. In the later parts of his book DNA: The Secret of life he writes a particularly compelling argument for eugenics (though his definition of this may differ from many peoples) and I agree with him. Eugenics, as in trying to take some control over human germ lines in some way so as to improve the human race, is certainly a possibility which needs considering in the future, despite the way in which it has been tainted in the public view by Nazi pseudoscience and similar (although less extreme) pseudoscience carried out in the USA in the 20th Century.

Currently it appears to be both scientifically viable and morally acceptable (to many at least) so long as it is incredibly stringently controlled and possible improvements are limited to a small number of things, such as eradication of serious genetic diseases. It should also be noted that the methods by which eugenics could be carried out would also need to be stringently controlled and should certainly not include things such as forced sterilisation.

I know that I may have stuck my head above the parapet to some degree but believe that the people of this forum are open-minded and reasonable enough to think through these arguments carefully, rather than seeing the suggestion of eugenics and immediately launching into a flame war. It would be interesting to know what the general view is regarding what has been considered in this topic.