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Originally Posted by uke_master
Sure. And I have done so. To repeat: An utterly trivial few hundred out of some mindboggling number of total genetic mutations out there are known to cause serious debilitating conditions to humans. It is known that these work by disrupting various cellular processes and thus cause this significant suffering. We can maintain enormous breadth of genetic diversity in a 7 billion strong population, while also reducing suffering today by reducing the degree of herd prevalence of these very unfortunate mutations.
https://ww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/I...Mutations.html
Granted, these are statistics from US women. Let's say that there are 300 million Americans. I'm not going to bother breaking it down by ethnicity and just handwave and say that it looks like maybe 3-5% of Americans have either the BCRA1 or BCRA2 mutations. Great, so let's just whack 9-15 million people. No problem.
http://www.babycenter.com/0_carrier-...rticlesection5
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People at high risk include Caucasians and people who have a relative who has CF or who is known to be a carrier. One in 29 Caucasians carries an abnormal cystic fibrosis gene, compared to 1 in 46 Hispanic Americans, 1 in 61 African Americans, and 1 in 90 Asian Americans.
So let's just say it's something like 1 in 40. So off with another 2.5% of the US population. Sure, there might be some overlap. So maybe you don't lose the entire 9 million people. Maybe only 7-8 million.
Do you want to keep going? After all, there are only a few hundred mutations that we can currently identify. And since they're each only in the few percent range, surely that means that we can just keep cutting these people out of the gene pool with no real consequence, right?
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If you are going to attempt to dismiss this PURELY out of "but but but genetic diversity!" reasons, you are going to have to find some way - you have currently offered nothing - to justify why the general principle of valuing genetic diversity should be interpreted so stringently as to include an example like this.
The illusion of control is powerful and misleading. In nice, controlled lab settings, where you have the power to control lots and lots of variables, you can play around. But out in the real world, it's very dangerous.
Your argument basically does little more than shrug and say "it's not a problem." It lacks any depth. You can say the same about the principle of favoring genetic diversity and its ability to address any particular mutation that you might want to consider. The difference is that the argument that maintaining genetic diversity is based on a general principle that is well-known and understood (and accepted), whereas your argument is trying create an exception without a sufficient basis.
"Risk of suffering" from the point of view of the genetic argument doesn't carry much weight.
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Your argument - at least when you leave the "almost a tautology" stage - is that of a trade off. You don't push back that we have massive, preventable suffering now. To counter, you raise the spectre of the risk of some future harm. If you don't want to call your trade off a utilitarian argument - if you want to call worrying about human suffering from diseases "extremly narrow" - fine, go ahead. The point that matters is that you can offer no suggestion, no medical advice, no hint of a methodology, absolutely nothing but baseless speculation as to what these alleged future harms could be. Why - precisely - should I be worried that the horrors of various BRCA1 mutations that most of us don't have, and that disrupt a normal function cellular process and cause untold death and suffering, in fact has a far great harm hiding around the corner that not a single person on this planet - least of all you - an identify? "But but but there MIGHT be" isn't a useful answer, even if it is your go to one.
Actually, we have lots and lots of evidence that genetic diversity is good. We have less evidence that targeted genetic pruning is good.
Whether one individual chooses to subtract from the gene pool makes very little difference. The issue, however, is when you try to generalize that to say that therefore the overall effect to eliminating this gene from the pool is going to be negligible. That's simply not the case.
A good example of this is herd immunity and vaccinations. If one person decides not to vaccinate, there's actually not really that much of a problem. But as soon as many people make that same decision, you run into the risk of outbreak. So yes, you can imagine that you making a particular decision isn't really going to change anything. And that's probably true. But if lots of people independently make that decision, there can be large consequences.