Separatist Peoples wrote:Marxist Germany wrote:"This is unfortunately out of my control, the Patients Rights Act includes this exception. However, your nation can ban it entirely, since this is merely an exception and not a mandate."
"I am absolutely appalled, ambassador. Eugenics are basically a form of genocide and your nation should be ashamed of using them."
"Not under WA law, which defines genocide as :"any act committed, or measure enacted, with the intent to destroy, in whole or partially, an identifiable group of persons on the basis of belief, ethnicity, nationality, culture, or a perceived innate characteristic, which for the purposes of this resolution shall include sexual orientation."
"Strictly speaking, many genetic defects are not perceived, but actual and identifiable. They are not beliefs, ethnicities, nationalities, or cultures. Thus, a government campaign to limit genetic maladies isn't genocide, except insofar as you use it to curry emotional support.
"The C.D.S.P. is opposed. There are, frankly, compelling government interests in limiting the propagation of certain genetic maladies, and the existing protections for genocide and patient's medical rights are adequate to protect unethical use of this system."
Unfortunately, if the compelling government interest is to limit the propagation of certain genetic maladies, then forced sterilization is far from the appropriate tool. Ignoring, for the moment, how "certain genetic maladies" can, by the more unscrupulous nations, be defined as something that would be exclusionary to otherwise healthy and competent individuals -- say, Marfan's syndrome, or Achondroplasia (and, in OOC cases, "poverty" and "criminality", during the historical periods when genetics was woefully misapplied) -- sterilization, when it discourages the proliferation of one genetic disorder, inevitably encourages another.
Sterilization "works" by decreasing the frequency of a certain gene within a population. The "spread" of genetic conditions is where the genes for those conditions increase in frequency within a population. The issue with sterilization is that it has a larger impact than just decreasing the frequency of a certain gene. We are not just eliminating that gene; we are also decreasing the frequencies of whatever other genes the individuals being sterilized has.
When the frequency of a particular gene decreases, the frequency of different genes of the same allele necessarily increases. That means that when you decrease the frequency of one gene, you increase the frequency of another. Decreasing the frequency of a gene one dislikes through sterilization may very well increase the frequency of a gene from a different allele one dislikes, therefore introducing one, possibly worse, problem to solve another.
And that's
if the genetic condition is spread only by one gene, or if the gene's only function is to cause disease. Take sickle-cell anemia, for instance: those whose two chromosomes both have the gene to express sickle-cell anemia receive it, while those who only has one such gene instead receives additional resistance to malaria. Then you have the fact that the expression of a gene causing disease is not always set in stone, with the environment often also having a measurable effect.
One could, hypothetically, tailor the situation such that the sterilization program ends once a certain set of genetic frequencies has been reached. Of course, that is utterly impractical -- one cannot screen every individual for every gene involved in every inheritable genetic disease, not unless one has endless resources (or technology from the distant future) -- so we'll have to assume that it's once a target genetic frequency for the gene expressed into the condition is reached. This more realistic case, however, introduces an element of injustice into the equation.
Who gets to be sterilized, then? Those who cannot afford treating their children? Those the state considers less valuable to society? Or perhaps those who are picked by lottery, or those who are simply caught by the state first, though these later alternatives don't seem particularly just, either.
What, then, is the effective solution, if the only tool available to stop the "spread" of these conditions is modification of the germ line? One effective solution is to increase diversity; in other words, immigration. The more sets of genes from a different population, the more "diffuse" the frequency of the gene causing the disease is. Increased genetic counselling is also an effective tool, insomuch as many disease-expressing genes often require both chromosomes involved in the disease to have the same gene, or that some genes may counteract the effect of others. Instead of forcing individuals to outright never reproduce, one could simply encourage individuals of one kind not to reproduce with another.
Either way, forced sterilization is not an effective solution, certainly not for the long term. At the very least, there are other, altogether more
just ways of reducing the "spread" of certain genetic conditions. If a genetic disorder becomes so dire that individuals have to be
forced to do something, then a state has reached the point where immigration into the state isn't allowed, and resources are woefully limited. Forced sterilization would help with the latter less effectively than outright mass murder; the latter, at least, decreases not only the frequency of a gene, but also the number of mouths to feed. On the other hand, unlike merely stopping individuals of certain genetic makeups to reproduce, both of these most-dire methods decrease the state's gene pool overall, thereby increasing the chances of a different, possibly worse genetic condition to proliferate. But that is, of course, the extreme case.
* - slight edit to the fifth paragraph
Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2019 2:22 pm