Nobody is better at being human, Professor Dawkins, least of all you

[hrmjustin]

Giles Fraser

Richard Dawkins has long flirted with eugenics. “If you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?” he asked back in 2006. “I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/aug/29/nobody-better-at-being-human-richard-dawkins

[cbayer]

1. If we could all just be more like him, the world would be perfect.

[hrmjustin]

2. He does leave a lot to be desired.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Interesting.

"To be absolutely clear: Down’s syndrome is not hereditary. So it cannot be bred out. So the belief that it is immoral to keep a Down’s syndrome child is not strictly a eugenic position. But the moral revulsion that we have at eugenics has little to do with genetics and everything to do with the way it treats the most vulnerable. For the problem with eugenics, like Dawkins’s belief that it is immoral to keep a baby with Down’s syndrome, is that it contains an implicit idea of what a better sort of human being might look like."

This article simultaneously acknowledges this isn't a eugenics issue at all, and yet, still tries to cast this as a eugenics issue. That last line is the key. 'Better' isn't the issue at all. The average (obviously not universal, some are very high-functioning) lifespan and quality of life for the people caught by this condition is not the baseline human norm, against which we measure 'better' people without the condition. That's completely the wrong-end way of looking at it.

"everything to do with the way it treats the most vulnerable"

Implies personhood for a fetus. A common anti-abortion position. This article leaves a worse taste in my mouth than the purported subject at hand.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

4. So you agree with Dawkins that it is "immoral" not to abort a fetus with Downs?

[AtheistCrusader]

7. I don't know that suggesting a burden on a potential mother is helpful in this discussion/issue.

I would certainly not choose to be a party to parenting a down child if I could in any way avoid it.
If anyone asked my advice, I would advise against it. (And I am not alone in this, as the percentage that do so is quite high, on receiving positive test results)

Would I tell a mother 'that's immoral' for carrying to term in that case? No, I would not. Rarely productive to tell a person in a bad situation that they are somehow morally culpable when they had no control over it at all.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

11. My problem with Dawkins' pronouncement

Was that he said it would be immoral not to abort a Downs fetus if you knew it was a Downs fetus. As has been said before, for a man who opposes dogma, he is remarkably dogmatic.

I don't necessarily agree with your stance, but I can certainly understand where you are coming from.

[cbayer]

5. Eugenics is about changing (improving) the genetics of a population

by systematically removing, or reducing the reproductive rate of, those you do not want to pass on their genes.

The article states that clearly and does not frame this as a eugenics debate, but notes that what is so morally reprehensible about eugenics is how it decides who is valuable and who is not.

That is the objection to Dawkins statement. He has made a moral judgement about who is valuable and who is not.

You really have to twist this to see it as an argument for personhood of a fetus. The argument is being made about the value of the individual once born, not while in the uterus.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. You said it yourself.

"how it decides who is valuable and who is not."

At the stage in development where this is an actionable issue, there is no 'who'.

"The argument is being made about the value of the individual once born, not while in the uterus."

Again, if the issue is corrected in utero, there is no individual to value or not value. No who, no person.
That line of argumentation, and the 'value once born' argument is the same as this common trope:

"Pro life thinkers believe that often times the decision to abort is made by inexperienced teens who do not know what they are doing, and are not capable of making an educated choice. They think that it's possible to take away societal contributions that could potentially be made by the unborn baby. For all the woman knows her child could cure cancer or be the next Einstein."

If-then. If it is born, congrats, personhood achieved. That's the legal/ethical bar we have today in the united states and in many other nations around the world. Discussing rights or value prior to that plays directly into the hands of the anti-abortion crowd who seek to limit a woman's right to choose, by among other things, leaning on some artificial potential future value the fetus might have when it attains personhood.

Surely you've heard the 'might find the cure for cancer' trope before? (And the common pro-choice rejection of that potential by pointing out it could easily be the next XYZ horrible genocidal dictator)

[cbayer]

8. That is just twisting words.

When you have a test that will tell you with 100% accuracy whether a person will be born with a certain abnormality, that does not equate to giving the fetus personhood at all.

Although there has been some preliminary research on this, this is not something that can corrected in utero.

This has nothing to do with pro-lifers and it is offensive to have it twisted in that way. This is all about pro-choice. You are pregnant. YOu have a test to look for chromosomal abnormality. YOu choose whether to have an abortion or not.

It is Dawkins that is making the anti-choice argument by saying that it would be immoral for someone not to have an abortion. It is he that is placing some measure of value on the fetus.

I know you want to find some way of defending Dawkins on this massive misstep, but trying to say that criticizing what he says somehow plays into the hands of the anti-choicers is just bullshit.

He is the anti-choicer in this scenario.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. I didn't twist anything.

The article makes a clear case for it. It's not even a dog whistle. It made a clear argument for the 'value' of a potential person, and that is a common anti-abortion trope. I fully stand by that assessment. I have heard it far too many times. I highlighted the exact problem.

"When you have a test that will tell you with 100% accuracy whether a person will be born with a certain abnormality, that does not equate to giving the fetus personhood at all."

I didn't say it gave it personhood. I said that the excerpted arguments in my previous post rely upon the potential personhood of the fetus in question. Because it clearly does.


I tend to agree with your characterization of Dawkins' position that it is immoral also constrains choice. It certainly excludes one choice from the equation. So we agree there.


However. I asked a question in the other thread that went unanswered. What would you think of potential moral implications of a medical study wherein people aborted non-down fetuses, until they had a positive test, and then carried that to term? Would that sort of medical experiment carry any ethical liability? To deliberately create children with down syndrome? (I modified the original proposition of someone just doing it on their own, to a study, because of the incredibly unlikely nature of the hypothetical.)

[cbayer]

10. I think you are reading something in to this that is not there.

But if you want to make this some kind of anti-choice go for it.

The only one taking a stand against choice here is Dawkins.

The anti-choice people have always had a strong stand against pre-natal testing for the purpose of determining whether to terminate a pregnancy or not.

The proposed scenario is ludicrous. There are plenty of down's children to study, if that is the goal. I can not fathom any possible reason for doing this, but...

my position on abortion is this - I don't care why one gets one. It's none of my business.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. Well, we agree on abortion.

I think we also agree that Dawkins' position suggests inhibiting choice.

The reason I asked about such a hypothetical study, was to explore any principle behind whether deliberately carrying a down fetus to term actually has any moral implications.

One way to test that is to explore whether we feel there is any negative moral connotation to deliberately gaming the system with the intent to explicitly create a fetus with down syndrome and carry it to term.

Playing the hand you are dealt is one thing, but what if someone tried to count cards, so to speak, for whatever motive, unimportant, to specifically create this condition? Moral problem? (a study would be the most half assed plausible motive I could think of.)

[cbayer]

15. Again, carrying a down's child to term is entirely up to the person

who is doing the carrying. While others who are close to her - the father, her doctor - have input, there is no other person who can make the decision.

I guess the ethical dilemma would arise is someone were being offered money to to this. But that moves well beyond the issue of choice and into medical ethics.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

12. If a fetus is not a potential person

Then what is it?

[AtheistCrusader]

13. The key is; potential.

Given time, materials, and favorable conditions, that potential will be constructed. Till then, it is not a person. No personhood, no rights/responsibilities. That's why abortion isn't immoral. There's no question/jeopardy of killing a person. The person does not yet exist.

Potential doesn't change anything in this context.

[cbayer]

16. You seem to be raising the question as to whether it is moral for a woman

to make a decision regarding abortion based on known outcome.

It's not about abortion. It's about choice.

I would hate to live in a world where people took the position that carrying a down's child to term is immoral. Since most acts that are considered immoral are outlawed, the most extreme potential outcome here is that one would be forced to have the test and then abort the child.

Now, that's some scary shit.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. I am stating that it is morally fine. 100%.

I will let fortinbras speak for himself on where that question was meant to lead. I have seen that question before, but I won't assume any particular motive.

[cbayer]

18. What if a woman was being paid to do it

and she already had 3 kids
and she was poor
and the investigator had some kind of nefarious hypothesis that she wanted to prove?

[AtheistCrusader]

19. Sure, i accept the revised hypothetical.

Do you think it has any moral implications?

[cbayer]

20. Yes, but it doesn't have to do with abortion.

It's about the ethics of medical experimentation and coercion.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Well, what I was trying to drive at is:

Would it be morally acceptable to intentionally conceive and bring to term a Down Syndrome child. Meaning, to, as I said earlier, game the system to produce that result, as the opposite of Dawkins' exhortation to game the system in the opposite way. Does it reveal a moral underpinning one way or the other?


I would guess that most people might find that a problem, but they might not be able to articulate exactly why.

Because that was the heart of his suggestion or the 'what', moral implications aside, that a prospective mother should, in his opinion, abort and try again. (Because this is a division/copy error, not a genetic artifact.) Separate from his claim of 'why', in this case, that he says it is immoral.

[cbayer]

22. I would insist on a psychiatric evaluation of anyone that wanted to do that, frankly.

But if it were purely about the individuals choice and they were sane, it is none of business.

And as I don't see fetuses as humans, it creates no moral or ethical dilemma for me.

Having an abortion is not gaming the system. It's a deeply personal choice. Dawkins has no right to make a moral judgement about those that might choose to carry a downs child to term. None.

His suggestion had nothing to do with any of this. His suggestion was that one would be amoral to bring a not perfect human into the world when one could simply abort it.

If anything, he feeds the anti-choicers by making abortion into something akin to taking a pee.

[AtheistCrusader]

23. Woah, that may have carried a negative connotation. Let me clarify.

"Having an abortion is not gaming the system. It's a deeply personal choice."

Sorry if that sounded flippant. I meant it in a dry, mathematical sense. Since most women who encounter this problem have some sort of risk factor, it is an odds game, but I don't mean it as a 'fun' game. Serious business. What I meant was, in most cases, it is not unreasonable to assume that a second or third attempt would not produce a Trisomy 21 positive fetus.

To get back to the 'intentional' question, why would you insist on said evaluation? I fully agree with you, but I am not able to articulate why, beyond some undercurrent of moral dilemma, intentionally attempting to produce a child that, statistically, is likely to remain a dependent or semi-dependent their entire life, and statistically, likely to have a significantly shorter than average life.

[cbayer]

24. Most women who encounter this have one single risk factor - age.

The "odds' are pretty well established. That doesn't mean that the decision to abort is easy or without consequences for the individual.

Bottom line, it's really nobody's business.

Anyone who wanted to abort until they had a fetus with a significant genetic abnormality would really need to be evaluated. Perhaps they have a sane reason, but it's hard to imagine what that might be. I would be very suspicious of someone who has a very high potential for Muchausen's by proxy and it would be unethical not to evaluate for that.

[hrmjustin]

25. kicking.