4 ms·
They certainly have a good ecological niche to get started in. When I see people with Down syndrome out and about I only get more inclined to support policies t
by Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
They certainly have a good ecological niche to get started in. When I see people with Down syndrome out and about I only get more inclined to support policies that allocate resources to them.
Of course this niche doesn’t exist everywhere, for example in Iceland they have a very aggressive abortion campaign against the syndrome.
- seszett 3y ago> Of course this niche doesn’t exist everywhere Iceland has extensive support for disabled people though, irrespective of abortion policies. These are of course not mutually exclusive things.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoIt doesn’t really help if you’re trying to branch out the hominid tree into a future Homo mongolensis, but don’t even get to see the light of day to enjoy any of those accommodations.
- RoyalHenOil 3y agoI suspect that we would only see a speciation event like this if people with Down's syndrome were segregated from people without Down's syndrome and allowed/forced to form a parallel society. It's hard to imagine modern human society tolerating such an apartheid, leper-colony style of treatment of people with Down's syndrome, however.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoSegregation would take them out of the ecological niche where normal people provide for them. They’d be back to Stone Age survival outcomes. Besides there is already a social taboo against engaging in sexual intercourse with them because of the substantial power asymmetry. So really the only impediment to speciation is the lack of fertility.