Eugenics improves the human race

The argument

Eugenics and genetic engineering have been pivotal to improving the genetic makeup of the human race. The practice of eugenics has helped eradicate genetic diseases that are debilitating to people. The scientific potential of genetic engineering has shown promise to help cure diseases such as HIV, sickle-cell anemia, and hemophilia. This makes the human race healthier as a whole. CRISPR treatments are a breakthrough in the genetic engineering world that would not be possible without the study of eugenics. During studies, scientists have been capable of removing and tweaking specific parts of a patient’s DNA. These studies have been applied to trials in an attempt to help cancer patients. It is clear that the practice of eugenics has forever changed the possibilities of eliminating disease. This shows that the goal of eugenics is meant to improve the human race by helping make it healthier. Therefore, eugenics is an ethical practice. If we do not utilize genetic modification and rely on Darwinian evolution, it is plausible that the human race will not survive. The environment around is is changing and adapting way faster than the human genome can mutate. Genetic diseases seen in approximately 7.9 million children annually can be prevented and eradicated through simple genome editing, meaning a very large number of lives would be saved. The reduced rates of genetic diseases or disorders would also help advance other scientific and medical advancements as we could better understand genome sequences and the way chromosomes come together to form a human. In editing the genome sequence, the level of intellect an individual has can also be heightened, therefore furthering the intellect of the populous as a whole.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The risks of abuse far outweigh the benefits when it comes to eugenics and genetic engineering. It can easily be abused by people that want not only to cure diseases but to enhance physical features. The research spent on eugenics should be spent on curing the actual diseases themselves. It would be far more beneficial to develop a cure for a specific disease rather than spending millions of dollars on research for eugenics. The possibility of curing disease is only a small portion of eugenics, while the rest is filled with the desire for physical enhancements that are not needed. Wasting valuable time and resources on enhancements rather than diseases is unethical.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The argument rests on an equivocation that runs through every premise. Eugenics is a programme for improving a population's hereditary stock by controlling who reproduces; molecular genetics and gene editing are laboratory techniques for altering DNA in identified patients. CRISPR did not emerge from eugenic research — it was developed from work on bacterial immune systems — and the historical eugenics movement produced compulsory sterilisation laws, marriage restrictions and, at its extreme, mass murder, not therapies. Attributing modern treatments to it misdescribes both. [Rejecting P2] The therapeutic examples do not support the conclusion the argument needs. Somatic treatments for sickle-cell disease or cancer alter cells in one patient and are not inherited, so they cannot change 'the genetic makeup of the human race' at all. HIV is an infection rather than a genetic disease. Only heritable germline editing would bear on the population claim, and that is precisely the intervention subject to the strongest scientific and legal restriction internationally. [Rejecting P3] The evolutionary premise is a non-sequitur: no environmental pressure identified in the body threatens human survival on a timescale genetic adaptation would need to answer. The intelligence claim is the weakest of all — cognitive ability has no known editable locus, being influenced by very many variants of individually tiny effect alongside substantial environmental contribution, so 'heightening the level of intellect' by editing describes nothing currently possible. [Rejecting C] The counter-argument on record adds the objection that has always attached to this programme: once a criterion for improvement is adopted, someone must decide which traits count as defects, and the historical record of that decision being made about deafness, disability, poverty and race is the reason the practice is in question. Curing an identified patient's disease requires no such judgement, which is why the therapeutic case does not carry the eugenic conclusion.