The counter-argument to advocating caution for widespread gene selection on human populations is "meh"? That's not very compelling.

If you think proposing future possibilities is useless "figments of imagination", consider that you were the one who started doing it. It is indeed the mainstay of your "defect" argument, that we will at some point consider not doing population screening for "immoral".

Well you are certainly correct that you aren't really doing anything beyond asserting your axiom. But can you defend your axiom, at least in the context to which you are applying it? As in, I agree with a sort of broad brush general sense that genetic diversity is a good thing. But I disagree that this implies every single possible instance of increased genetic diversity is a good thing. I still want to be a 7 billion strong population with just staggering combinations of genes in the population, with genetic diversity abounding. However, there are a couple hundred mutations out there that we know massively disrupt important body functions and result in massive suffering and death.


I want to note that nobody is raising any moral objections here. It is just a sort of utilitarian - though you deny that term - that the risk of future harms outweighs the dramatic and obvious present benefits. Maybe we will discover more antibiotic/malaria type consequences in the future despite having absolutely zero mechanisms to suggest such a thing today. Maybe doing this delays new cures as tame deuces suggests. Maybe "progress" isn't "linear" and reducing morbidity and mortality isn't a goal we should have, bizarre as that sounds. Maybe. And granted, a lot of human genetics is really hard (my brother works in this field, I'm' not sugar coating how uncertain a lot of things are - his specialty of cystic fibrosis is a ****ing disaster of a field). So what kind of conditions would need to change for you to change your mind. What level of scientific certainty do we need to have that a) yes BRCA1 mutations disrupt normal functioning cellular processes causing cancer and no) removing their herd prevalence isn't going to cause an antibiotic type future horror show? As in, is your argument actually sensitive to the scientific strength here or is always just the "tautology" of nope, don't care, never do this ever because ~*genetic diversity*~?

The meh was to the suggestion that preventing this suffering today might delay the use of fancy buzzword future medical tech. Should we stop chemotherapy to try and motivating nano tech advancement? Nonsense.

Yes I'm certainly speculating on what future societal attitudes will be, but the foundation of the argument is very solid. It is clearly and objectively true that we have a preventable way to substantially reduce the prevalence of a range of genetic diseases. You both have I think granted that objective foundation, but worried that possible some vague future negative consequence might be there. I'm not against being cautious. I would certainly want the very best of science to be dedicated to such a task. But in cases - and I believe we have several today - where we have clear and objective benefits but absolutely zero reason to suspect future negative harm, is that not being cautious? What other cautions should be done?

When you have a general principle, the argument should be for why the rule should be violated by the particulars of a situation. The argument is actually for you to explain why the risk of diminishing genetic diversity in this case is an acceptable violation of the general principle.

Again, if I could magically wave my hand and make those mutations disappear, I don't think it would be wise to do so.

Right. This is not an argument about morality, but about evolutionary principles.

We can call it utilitarian if utility is measured extremely narrowly. Specifically, if we void it of moral/ethical content and measure only at the level of species propagation or something like that.

Is it a tautology? Insofar as it's a principle that can be violated, no. But we have lots and lots and lots of examples of complex systems (not just the human body, but ecological systems) in which something that is seemingly small and irrelevant plays a function in the preservation and perseverance of the system.

Going from "We've identified a mutation" to "Let's eliminate the mutation" is a pretty big jump that can have very broad consequences. If you accept the principle that genetic diversity is good, then the argument must be made to violate the principle.

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.

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.




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.

That's not a "pure figment of imagination", it's plausible scenario. And it is not "fancy buzzword future tech", it is is technology, methods and research that exist today, but it is resource-intensive research in its infancy that would undoubtedly benefit from more funding and prioritization.

Maybe you should tone down the aggression a couple of notches on stuff you don't know.

Not taking action to help people today because maybe it delays advances in some other medical field is nonsense. Nobody would suggest we shouldn't help people today because maybe that motivates better cures for the future. Of course I'm sure we would all agree with working hard on other types of medical research, but to suggest we shouldn't do one medical thing because it crowds out possible untested advances in some other field just doesn't work as an argument and you would never suggest it in any other context. Should we stop chemotherapy to motivate nano medicine?

I suppose it's plausible in the sort of "I can't completely eliminate the possibility that hey SOMETHING bad might happen" way. But you have presented exactly zero reason for us to be worried that substantially reducing the herd prevalence of the dangerous BRCA1 mutations might actually give some completely unknown future harm from some completely unknown mechanism. What scientific reason do we have to suspect that the likelihood and severity of these future harms should outweigh the clear benefits for today?

Try to tone down your heaping pile of self righteous passive aggressiveness when you try to tone police others. I know there are limited early use cases of nanotech in medicine just fine, thank you very ****ing much. Which doesn't mean your usage is anything more than exactly what I said: throwing around buzzwords.

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

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?

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.

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.

Ok, so we discount discussing future possibilities, it's not important to my case. When we don't know outcomes, caution is merited. Your own argument of some future moral imperative for genetic breeding is completely dead however.

Indeed, take something like small pox where we are not completely sure exactly what confers resistances, but it is likely caused by mutations in genes that fight of viruses. So you'd might very well look at a scenario where a gene that was defective in one scenario was beneficial in another.