Public Outrage Getting in the Way of Good Eugenics Policy

One of the big stories this week is the lesbian couple that sued the sperm donor, setting off a firestorm of outrage.

Its easy to invoke the slippery slope fallacy, but in the second biotech revolution , genes are playing an increasing important role in society and preventative medicine; whether we wish to to accept it or not, this trend is inexorable.

Insurance companies already discriminate based on genetic predilections to disease; why shouldn’t individuals?

Eugenics offers the opportunity for parents to do what’s in the best interests of their offspring, and possibly society as a whole. By self-selecting for high-IQ, for example, we can possibly speed up technological progress and reduce entitlement spending and crime. Prenatal screening is commonplace among high-risk individuals to check for genetic or chromosomal disorders. Carrier testing is used to identify people who carry one copy of a gene mutation that, when present in two copies, causes a genetic disorder. Such screening saves taxpayers billions.

There is also a lot of potential good from eugenics that should not be overlooked, instead of defaulting to the leftist position on this issue. According to the left, the only gene worth studying is the gay gene; everything else is environmental, and hence off limits. Outside of physical ability, according to the left, there are no exceptional people, only unfair environmental advantages that allow some to excel while many others fail.

A commenter writes

Williamson wrote a good piece, but he circled around, and ultimately avoided, the main issue: the lesbian couple is racist, and doesn’t want to raise a black kid. Worse, even though half of the daughter’s DNA comes from a white mommy, because the other half came from a black daddy, they see the kid as black, something apart, something alien, a problem, not a daughter.

I’m not sure how wanting a white kid makes one a racist. Does wanting a boy instead of a girl make one a misogynist?

The republicans are taking the outrage too far and are sounding like the liberals. Now the republicans are wearing the piety beads. That’s how political journalism works. Both sides looking for weakness and magnifying it with contrived outrage.

I still stand by my earlier statement that republicans and libertarians can endorse eugenics as a possible way to curb the entitlement spending and crime, and that support of eugenics doesn’t make one a racist or a liberal – after all, it’s liberals who have spearheaded campaigns against any scientist or economist that even intimates the virtues eugenics or the link between genes and behavior and IQ. Eugenics is sound policy that maximizes public resources to those most deserving of it, while stopping the reproduction of those who take more than they contribute.

And if the super smart people are right and the robots makes millions of jobs obsolete, what do you think will happen to the millions become unemployed and a a drain on society?