Xref: utzoo sci.research:644 talk.politics.misc:21652 sci.bio:1826
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!ogil
From: ogil@tank.uchicago.edu (Brian W. Ogilvie)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Gene pool
Message-ID: <1755@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 8 Feb 89 02:05:21 GMT
References: <674@intvax.UUCP> <9091@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: ogil@tank.uchicago.edu (Brian W. Ogilvie)
Organization: History of Science, University of Chicago
Lines: 33

In article <9091@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth Gordon) writes:
>
>BEING DISABLED IS *NOT* IMMORAL.  
>
>Therefore, 
>
>BEARING CHILDREN WHO ARE DISABLED IS *NOT* IMMORAL.
>
>: Seth Gordon / MIT Brnch., PO Box 53, Cambridge, MA 02139

This doesn't follow. While it is not immoral to be blind, it is immoral
to blind someone.

I'm not certain whether bearing children who will be congenitally blind
is immoral or not, but my gut feeling is that yes, it's just the same
as blinding someone who was formerly sighted. One can argue that the blind
child will not have an unblinded state to which to compare his blindness,
but that argument seems specious.

A congenital condition which results in the child undergoing excruciating
pain seems to definitely support this position. Pain is pain regardless of
whether one can compare it to not-pain; neurology backs me up here. To
knowingly bear children who would suffer this pain would be immoral.

Correctable disabilities are perhaps not immoral to propagate (obviously
myopia; phenylketonuria presents some problems). But making grand
moral pronouncements from on high without considering their implications
is no way to decide moral issues.

-- 
Brian W. Ogilvie  /  ogil@tank.uchicago.edu
"Cartesianism is the most popular 'popular science' ever invented."
					--Noel Swerdlow