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Imagine a future where we can use sperm samples as a panel test for health. We could measure the levels of stress, but eventually many other attributes. There a
by rhema 8y ago
Imagine a future where we can use sperm samples as a panel test for health. We could measure the levels of stress, but eventually many other attributes. There are other epigenetic findings, such as obese fathers producing children more likely to also be obese. These could be re-tooled as an evaluation.
- geggam 8y agoEugenics much ?
- nerdponx 8y agoPerhaps. It seems analogous to women being able to evaluate the health of their ova.
- magic_beans 8y agoOf course, and while we're at it, let's tax them extra to reproduce.
- rootusrootus 8y agoI can imagine that future, and it is frightening. As a society we imagine our technological progress to somehow imply that we are actually advancing as a species. Recent events suggest otherwise, and putting evolutionary control in the hands of those kinds of people (read: anybody) is likely to be really bad for us all.
- astura 8y agoRecent events?
- afterburner 8y agoRepublicans.
- antidesitter 8y agoWhy is it frightening to screen against health problems that cause prolonged suffering throughout an individual’s lifetime?
- frenchy 8y agoBecause of two things: 1. when it comes down to it, the notion of a disease is actually very wishy-washy. Is homosexuality a disease? The difference between yes and no has a lot more to do with cultural changes in the last 50 years than any science. 2. A lot of things are heritable, and could be health problems if you looked at them the right way. Poverty is heritable, and poverty also results in worse health outcomes, ergo, people below the poverty line shouldn't reproduce, right?
- antidesitter 8y ago1. That's just the gray fallacy. "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view." Just because some cases are uncertain doesn't mean all cases are equally uncertain. As Asimov put it in The Relativity of Wrong: "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." 2. Let's set aside the heredity assumptions for a moment and go straight to the heart of the matter: As a proportion of the people who will be born in the next generation, would you rather have a larger or smaller fraction of them be poor for life? Why?
- frozenport 8y agoThere are easier, more obvious and unambiguous ways to measure these characteristics.