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From: stuart@rochester.UUCP (Stuart Friedberg)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Eugenics and Famine
Message-ID: <10763@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jul-85 23:14:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocheste.10763
Posted: Sat Jul 27 23:14:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 00:59:29 EDT
References: <1191@pucc-k> <36200235@uiucdcs>
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 96

> dahlback@uiucdcs.Uiuc.ARPA writes:
> Let's suppose such a person contributed germ plasm to a child that
> proved to have a genetic disease carried in that person's plasm.
> Would such a person consent to be sterilized and to have his or her child
> killed to eliminate the genes for that genetic disease? Naturally not. 
> So let's not talk about other human beings as animals to be bred, shall we?

I'm going to call you on this one.  I happen to be rather concerned
about carrying genetic traits for catastrophic heart disease (both
sides), myopia (both sides) and adult onset diabetes (paternal side).
My health at the moment is fine, but 20 years from now will be another
story and my natural children will almost certainly have the same
problems.  I don't have a "hard line" stand on eugenics but I don't
find it at all difficult to consider vasectomy and adopt instead.

You will notice that the traits I mention are relatively minor
disabilities compared to some of the metabolic disorders.  There is no
question in my mind that if I were, say, a "bleeder" or a juvenile
onset diabetic I would forego natural children.

If you think that humans *aren't* animals and subject to the same
principles of genetics and survival as other animals, you are being
foolish.  Not exceptional so; most people have the same idea.  If you
agree that humans are, in principle, members of the "Animal Kingdom"
but there's something special about human life that requires its
preservation at the cost of human misery, you are not only foolish,
but irrational.  We treat rural livestock with more compassion.

Condemning children to life when they can not even survive the air
they breath and the food they eat is SICK.  *Misery* and *Despair*.
Would YOU want to live your life in a 4 foot by 8 foot isolation tent?
Would YOU want to live your life never more than 2 hours from a
dialysis machine?  Would YOU want to live your life in fear of
bleeding to death from a scrape playing on the sidewalk?  Would YOU
want to have to carry a syringe of insulin and some sugar cubes around
because your brittle diabetes could send you into shock at any moment
with only a few minutes before you pass out and die without educated
attention?  OBVIOUSLY these lives can be *endured* and the latter ones
can, with care, emulate a "normal" one.  Readers' Digest usually does
a tear-jerker or two every year on such.  But what about "quality of
life"?

Old-time doctors had fewer facilities to salvage "hopeless" cases with
and fewer qualms about letting a malformed infant die.  Few doctors or
midwives today would dare to let *anything* die, even if it would have
to spend the rest of its pain-racked existence tied to a machine.  No,
we don't give enough compassionate consideration to questions of life
or death.  Most of the time we just mouth santimonious arguments about
the "sanctity of human life".  Such arguments are valid only if
axiomatic.  That is, if that's what *your* religion teaches, fine.
Just don't try to force it on somebody else who doesn't think so.
What's often just as bad in the long run is the adverse effect on the
child's family, who may never be able to afford a healthy child for
caring for the ill.

Don't be so quick to say "Naturally not."  There are people around who
have given this more consideration that you evidently have.  Although
I am willing to flame on this topic, I am not going to make any
attempt to force my decisions on you.  You shouldn't be so quick to
assume that *everybody* is as unrealistic about the human animal as
you are.  When you do, you are wrong.

As far as "the poor countries" always being the ones that take it on
the chin, yeah, that's right.  We have enough wealth to be able to
squander it in ways that strike our fancy.  They don't.  You are free
to send your money and fancies to Africa or Asia, but WHY?  Why don't
you send them the support they need for continued SURVIVAL?  I think
we'd differ wildly on what "survival" entails.  At the moment it
certainly includes agricultural assistance in a variety of forms and I
have no objections to Live-Aid and other such relief programs.  If the
government of Ethiopia would stop conducting a half-assed genocide
program ("politics of hunger", anyone?) and distribute the damned
food, I'd feel even better about it.

On the other hand, you probably want to spread that food evenly over
*all* the starving children?  What the hell for?  That way you
malnourish a quarter of a continent and *nobody* is healthy for the
next 25 years even with an unusually long period (say, 5 years (be
realistic, in 3 years few Americans will even remember this famine)) of
outside food, finance, advice and technology.  There is a medical
practice called "triage" that is normally practiced in times of extreme
emergency and critical shortages of medical facilities.  It is usually
practiced by the military, but recently (last few years) disaster
centers in the US have become introducing training for it.

In essence, triage means "use the facilities most effectively; let the
hopeless cases rest in peace, don't waste time and space on them; turn
the lightly injured away entirely".  It's a tough-minded economy that
runs counter to everything most medical students and practicing
physicians hold dear.  It's also the only thing that works when you
have 100 people bleeding and only enough gauze for 10.  You have to
pick the 10 that will be most helped. Now, if a long-lived drought and
famine spreading over the better part of north-central Africa isn't an
emergency situation calling for judgement like triage, just what is?

Stu Friedberg  {seismo, allegra}!rochester!stuart