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From: vin@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG (Vincent J. Erickson)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Gene Pool
Message-ID: <1254@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG>
Date: 2 Feb 89 14:52:12 GMT
References: <674@intvax.UUCP> <1252@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG>
Reply-To: vin@meccsd.UUCP (Vincent J. Erickson)
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Organization: Minn. Educ. Comp. Corp.
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In any species there are individuals born who are deemed to have
"subtandard" genes (physically or mentally). In non-human species, it
is thought that these individuals are more likely to die, leaving the
fittest of the species to reproduce and thus "improve" the species.
Among humans, however, this process is being perceived to have
stopped; substandard representatives of our species are being kept
alive longer, allowing them to reproduce. This is being perceived as
somehow "weakening" the human gene pool.

This would be true if only substandard individuals were being born;
they are not. Remember that even two severely mentally retarded people
have no more chance of conceiving a mentally retarded child than two
supposedly "normal" people. The retarded are sometimes discouraged
from having children because of their supposed inability to care for
the "normal" child they would have. These kinds of predjudices are
just the thing mental hospital nightmares are made of. The gene pool
is safe. If for some reason civilization ceased to exist, the struggle
for the fittest would continue as before. We simply have the luxury of
not having to have every individual with a glitch in their genes to
die. This includes everything from retardation and physical deformity
to nearsightedness and flat feet. The seemingly trivial flaws in our
genes (like nearsightedness) would cause far more individuals to
perish in a wild environment than mental retardation would. Think
about that "four eyes" the next time you think of others as being
inferior.