eugenics

Are Disabled Children Worth Less?

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I read with bone-chilling despair “The Last Child of Down Syndrome” by Sarah Zhang in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine. The title alone conjured images of P.D. James’s novel, “The Children of Men,” which was made into a film, “Children of Men.” If you are unfamiliar with this story, I highly recommend it. […]

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Designed Human Embryos (CRISPR-CAS9)

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I attended a conference in Atlanta this month titled “Beings2015: Biotech and the Ethical Imagination.” During the main sessions, much was discussed regarding CRISPR, or what is more commonly known as gene editing. “Beings2015” convened to discuss how biotech should proceed and who should regulate advances like CRISPR in order to draft a statement of […]

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Transhumanism’s Eugenic Authoritarianism

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Transhumanism is selfish, all about me-me, I-I. Its goal is immortality for those currently alive, and the right to radically remake themselves and their progeny in their own image. Zoltan Istvan, an up-and-comer transhumanist, is very good at promoting himself and his ideas. (I met him at a transhumanist and religion conference, about which I […]

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No to Coerced Vasectomy

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A Virgnia plea deal is coercing a man into a vasectomy. From the CBS story: A Virginia man who has fathered children with several women has agreed to get a vasectomy to reduce his prison term by up to five years in a child endangerment case that has evoked the country’s dark history of forced […]

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Beware Sexual Orientation Eugenic Cleansing

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Oh, oh. A scientific study has concluded that about 40% of the “cause” of (white) male homosexuality is genetic. From the Telegraph story: Homosexuality is only partly genetic with sexuality mostly based on environmental and social factors, scientists believe. A study found that, while gay men shared similar genetic make-up, it only accounted for 40 […]

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Anti Gay Eugenics Wrong

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The Left and the libertarian right are all for “choice” in reproduction. Genetic enhancement? Check. Disability cleansing via eugenic abortion and IVF genetic engineering? Check. Choosing hair color and other physical attributes? Check. Even sex selection. But what if a test is developed that can predict a predilection for homosexuality? Wait just a darn minute! […]

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Having Children: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

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Eugenics is evil in that it presumes that some human beings are better than others, and moreover, that we have a duty to control procreation to improve the human herd. In the USA, the first iteration of this great wrong — a political progressive project, by the way — led to hundreds of thousands of […]

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Villainous Transhumanism

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I hear that the villain in Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, is a Malthusian transhumanist. Brown isn’t the first to use fiction to explore the potential downside of the transhumanist movement. The Frankenstein series by my pal Dean Koontz, for example, is all about transhumanism — as indeed, when you think about it, was Mary […]

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Eugenics as Preventative Health?

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Discover magazine has the latest in a long series of science writers claiming that the growing ease of genetic tests will open the way for a new eugenics. But not to worry, the new version of the old evil won’t be forced by the state. No, no: It will be a choice eugenics. From, “The […]

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Darwinian Joins Scientific “Regressives” Against Genetic Engineering

Neo eugenicists and would-be genetic engineers often claim that those of us who oppose their intention to engage in biological alchemy do so for strictly religious reasons. Not me. I oppose eugenics in all its forms because it violates the fundamentals of human exceptionalism by assuming that some people can be better than other people […]

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Intelligentsia Still Hearts “Eugenic Impulse”

The worst policies and values in society often come from those who think they are the smartest among us, e.g., the professorate and those in the intelligentsia. Even when they don’t originate very bad new ideas, all too often, they become deeply enamored of them. Take fascism and communism. The former was widely embraced by […]

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Paradox of Outlawing Eugenic Embryo Implantation but OK Eugenic Abortion

The European Court of Human Rights has a point about Italy’s policy that outlaws only implanting healthy embryos. From the Yahoo story: The European rights court Tuesday condemned Italy for its ban on screening embryos for genetic conditions, saying its laws leave couples wanting to avoid passing on diseases little room for manoeuvre. The condemnation […]

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Reader’s Digest Pushes Eugenics

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It has been coming for some time, but the top voices in bioethics — by which I mean those who inhabit the top floors of the ivory tower — are almost all blatant eugenicists. That sure is from whence the first eugenics came from — and the pattern is repeating itself. First, anti human exceptionalism […]

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The “Gay Gene” and the New Eugenics

We don’t know what factors lead to a propensity for homosexuality. (Frankly, I don’t think any “one” thing, but that’s an unexpert opinion.) But some believe we will discover a “gay” gene. If so, that has very real eugenic implications — which I fear would mostly accrue to the deadly detriment of fetuses with said […]

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Love is the Answer to Prenatal Eugenic Cleansing

My First Things “On the Square” bi-weekly column is up. In this edition, I address eugenic abortion. From the piece: Scientists recently announced that they are perfecting a maternal blood test that will permit technologists to map the entire genome of the developing fetus. Unlike amniocentesis, which requires the insertion of a needle into the […]

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Ivory Tower Types Can Spew Most Evil

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC There is a tendency in media and among the public to blame racism and other assorted bigotries on ignorance, stupidity, or “superstition” (religion). And sometimes that is true. But just as often, evil comes from the top, down — from those who are the smartest, […]

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Biological Eugenic Colonialism

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Our sense of entitlement — including not only to have a child, but the child we want — is driving us to ever greater extremes. The Daily Mail has a disturbing report about beautiful women selling eggs, rich men’s sperm, and paid destitute gestational carriers […]

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Consumerist Reproduction

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC A Canadian pundit named Kelly McParland has a good critique of how IVF has devolved procreation into consumerist reproduction. He writes in reaction to an American IVF clinic advertising sex selection, meaning that all embryos of the “wrong sex” become medical waste based on eugenic […]

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