Sex and Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century: Huh?

In digging around on the web last week, I came across, Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century. I filed it away to look at today, and waking up with the first pot of coffee, I read the eBook by Seymour W. Itzkoff¹. It's downloadable from the site in various formats; I read the 932 kb PDF. It's not something I usually write about, but - having just re-read 'On The Origins of the Species', I thought it might be interesting.

If I were to be reviewing the eBook - which I am not - I could talk about the fact that it has rational arguments for Eugenics, as well as compelling arguments for application of Eugenics. But I'm not reviewing the book.

Eugenics is a scarey thing, because the premise is eerily rational and easily misguided. I don't agree with eugenics, but the reasons which I disagree with eugenics are found in the very premise of eugenics itself - that human evolution is supposed to improve. But then, I implicitly agree with some of the premises of eugenics - it can be tangibly seen by my own lack of offspring.

Like it or not, we practice what is called eugenics at a very private level: We choose who we have sex with. When people figured out how to have sex without having children, it was practiced more - we have 2 choices where we had one: we choose who we have sex with, and we choose who we wish to have children with by not using prophylactics.

Viagra, Cialis, Eugenics...

Indeed, on a planet where we have problems feeding everyone, it's hard to defend against Eugenics because we have Viagra and Cialis for people 'past their prime' to continue the natural act of sex. Viagra is marketed (check your email box) for simply having sex; Cialis is marketed in a more family way (except in your email box). Why? Because some people just want to have sex, and some people want to have children.

Logic would say that the people who only want to have sex would not be interested in having children - but that's sophomoric. They just may not wish to have children with the present sex partner, or not have children with them now, which begs questions like, "When do you intend to raise them?" when a 50 year old has children. Being 68 at a high school graduation ceremony might be something to look forward to, I suppose.

Logic would also dictate that people who want to have children would instead use artificial insemination instead of 'treating the equipment', but again - people enjoy sex. That's why there are so many of us; I often joke that humans are sexually transmitted diseases.

We have sexually transmitted diseases - especially HIV - which further reinforces, or should reinforce, who people have unprotected sex with. And unprotected sex in a world where we have so many prophylactics should be synonymous with having children. There are those that are uneducated, but steps are being made to educate them on the use of prophylactics, with HIV as a motivating factor. Fear of children having children didn't do much, but scare people to death with HIV and suddenly there's a whole lot of education going on. In a way, HIV was inevitable because of extras carried over during 'cross-pollination' and has proven to be the engine that sex educators needed to make a case people would pay attention to.

Is nature practicing Eugenics? Some attribute this to religious belief... I don't subscribe to that.

The point here, though, is that people do choose who they have sex with and they also choose who they have children with. Everyone has their own personal ethics. I've seen racism involved in such decisions, I've even seen religious and cultural prejudice in such decisions, and I've seen intellectual prejudice used in such decisions - the latter being probably the dumbest of all, because there's no 'intelligence gene'.

Inadvertently, by a complex process that scientists don't have much information on, we choose parents of our children. So in a way, we do practice eugenics on a personal level - but it's not really eugenics, is it? Is a female peacock who mates with the most attractive peacock practicing eugenics? Maybe, a case could be made either way. Does the female peacock know anything about eugenics? No. Therefore the peacock is not practicing eugenics.

Governments and Eugenics

I don't know, I'm a layperson myself (no pun intended), but... I don't want any group of people dictating who I have children with, or how many children I have with them. I have enough problems with these employees of ours (governments) doing what we expect or should expect them to do; I don't want Big Brother in my bedroom. While pro-life and abortion activists deal unimaginatively with a moral problem that has plagued mankind from the beginning, the root of the problem isn't dealt with.

Should a woman who has been raped have to have a child she was impregnated with during the rape? I do not know. I think that's up to her, which on one side puts me on one side of the argument, where I believe that a woman has a right to choose. What irritates me, and should irritate everyone, is the crime that forced the woman into the situation in the first place. Rape has often been used as a tool of invading armies to attempt to 'outbreed' the conquered race. It even gained mention in the movie 'Braveheart', with the practice of 'First Night', as well as the attempted rape of William Wallace's secret wife. Maybe that was fiction, maybe not. The moral, perhaps, is never to trust your sex life to inbred monarchs, but it's probably deeper than that. 'Take responsibility or someone will take the responsibility for you, at your cost'.

Should abortion be used because of a lack of use of prophylactics? On the surface, it's easy to say no - but then on the other side, everyone can claim that they used one and it failed, so it's not an easy question and it certainly isn't one that I would trust a government to decide and enforce. They have enough trouble handling anything but themselves, it seems.²

Personal Conclusion

I think people who shouldn't have children are out there. I know a few, everyone does, but that's a personal prejudice which in the end doesn't make sense. There's no telling what the offspring of two people will be like - genetics has helped answer some questions, but... controlling what traits children have doesn't make much sense when we can't control the environment. Sickle Cell anemia, called a disease, keeps 'sufferers' from getting malaria.

There's no concrete method for choosing who will have better or worse children. We don't know. It's that simple. So we'll just have to fumble our way through life, as we have for so many millenium before. Sure, as a species we've had our ups and downs, but the true indicator for evolution isn't about the future as much as it's about survival in the future.

So I'll make everyone a deal - a social contract. You don't pick who I have children with and how many children I have with them, and I'll return the favor, and we keep governments from gaining that power over us by being responsible for our own decisions.

I need another pot of coffee.

¹ It appears that the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism profiled the author of this eBook, though I could not find the profile on the website.
² Amusingly called political mutual masturbation?