Hotwheels: Why I Support Eugenics
Fredrick Brennan aka ‘hotwheels’, the creator of the popular imageboard 8chan and who is severely disabled due to brittle bone disease, uses himself as an example for why eugenics is a good idea for lowering healthcare costs and minimizing human suffering:
As a society, most of us seem to agree that people deserve medical care, and we are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars directly to the parents of disabled children who knew for a fact that their children would be crippled. We are also willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases millions of dollars indirectly in medical costs.
Simply offering people with debilitating, genetically dominant genetic diseases $100,000 cash each to undergo voluntary sterilization would be a libertarian, humane way to encourage genetic purity. Couples who both carry a recessive gene could be offered a smaller sum, like say $10,000, by genetic counselors.
This is a good start, offering financial incentives for people with inauspicious genetic markers that may cause severe, costly disability to undergo sterilization, or maybe at least voluntary forgo pregnancy.
But the problem is that many prospective parents are unaware of these genetic risks, and other severe disabilities may not have an obvious genetic marker or family history where genetic counseling would be of use. For example, to screening for trisomy 21 requires that all mothers of certain risk factors (advanced maternal age) be tested early in the pregnancy, because the presence of the extra chromosome can only be detected after the first trimester. On the other hand, Tay-Sachs disease, which is inherited in the autosomal recessive pattern, is amenable to counseling because couples can be tested for carrier status before having children, hence the risk is well-defined.
Reddit also agrees, and even though ‘hotwheels’ is part of gamergate, even anti-gamergaters see the merits of his argument:
I’m going to defend Frederick Brennan’s article. I’m not totally one hundred percent behind his idea, but I support the discussion of it. It shouldn’t be immediately dismissed, and it’s unfair to relegate it to the most undesirable corners of the internet.
Frederic Brennan is a man who is suffering. He is in constant pain. Having dealt with several broken bones from a variety of sports injuries, I can tell you how painful a screw, or a plate, or a support rod can be, especially when they move just ever so slightly, grinding into your nerves.
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His “eugenics” is not an enforced sterilization, nor based on pseudo-science.It’s a voluntary program, based on genetic screenings, clear science, and compensation. This isn’t based on some demented notion of genetic purity, but on the belief that sometimes, some people are too sick to live.
Many of you support the concept of death with dignity, where those with terminal diseases fight for their right to end their own lives on their terms rather then suffer. I support it as well.
Oh, and merry Christmas to everyone, too.
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