So with this in mind, can you ethically remove the gene from the world (not including physical gene extraction and replacement, some weird sci-fi stuff)?

Hmm... I might be wrong but I don't think our technology is advanced enough to do this sort of thing yet. Because of this, it's impossible to determine whether it's ethical or not because we don't know whether the method would be ethical.

Second, no one knows what causes autism afaik. There is however, a research on how to calculate risks but it's still incomplete. In any case, it's unethical to prevent anyone from having any children if the potential disease is non-lethal.

I honestly think people have the freedom to do whatever the hell they want for the sake of their happiness, as long as it doesn't harm others.

It's a given that genes that lower a species' rate of survival are bad for said species' gene pool, thus bad for the species as a whole; but the damage retarded people cause to the human gene pool is too marginal for us to even have this discussion.

Additionally, it's not like retarded genes are expressed in a substantially large percentage of current living humans to be detrimental to our society and population. If it doesn't need to be fixed, why should we fix it? Better yet, if it isn't a problem, why does it need to be addressed?

EDIT: I think the real problem that needs to be addressed is:

Wow.

Protip: Any negative phenotype is very unlikely to be inherited to future generations. Either the subject dies quite early, or is not able to reproduce, or is too socially excluded to find a mating partner.

Therefore, any negative phenotype that can be inherited must also have positive effects.

Edit: Lost my respect for @guardian3.

Edit #2: I suggest changing the thread title. "Ethically" is too close to "ethnically", which is what I read first. You could replace it with "in a morally acceptable manner"

Edit #3: I think I should add an example of a negative phenotype having a positive effect: the sickle-cell anemia shortens your life expectancy, but makes you more resistant to malaria mosquitoes. In a context of an acute threat of malaria mosquitoes, people with the sickle-cell anemia would actually have an advantage.

This is completely off topic but: The symptoms of sickle-cell anemia is the equivalent to having Malaria. Having blood that can't carry as much oxygen = the same thing malaria parasite does to your blood cells.

Doesn't really help to have sickle-cell now-a-days that we have drugs like Doxycyline. Which is an outstanding malaria preventive drug.

But we don't really have anything to defeat sickle-cell, as it is written in chromosomes.

Sickle-cell was a nice mutation, being a co-dominant gene, it had an extremely high chance of reducing expression in future generations long after malaria outbreaks passed.

Sickle-cell included, just about every "inferior" gene is useless because we have drugs and technology that helps us overcome our "inferior" genes. There is no need to cleanse our genes. We have technology and science that helps us overcome our shit-genes.

Plus, the many organizations with business-interests in disorder-causing genes would not appreciate the ratification of their future endeavors.

@Gargron: C'mon, man. Learn to take a joke. I'm not really anti-Semitic.

EDIT:

Also, I agree with Gargron on the whole "expression of genetic inferiority is a self-resolving problem" statement.

Point being: Who the hell would want Jewish children?

@Gargron

You meant genotype? Negative phenotypes get inherited all the time. Just look at all the ugly people and jews lol j/k

And also, did you mean recessive? Some diseases are actually dominant genes and deadly too.

Of course, in populations that select amongst themselves as mates, you end up with far more expression of recessive malignant mutations. As a CF carrier, I have done a little research on this myself.

Would You Like to Learn More?

@Trev

Being a carrier means you carry the disease in one of your chromosome pair. Even if both parents are carriers, the chance for the kid to have the disease is only 25%.

Some diseases are attached to the X and Y chromosomes such as hemophilia. Using hemophilia as an example, It's perfectly fine to have daughters but the chance for the sons to be hemophiliac is 50%. However, if the hemophiliac son doesn't marry a carrier, none of his children will have any chance at all in getting the disease although all of his daughters will be carriers of the disease.

I wanted to suggest genocide :(

Also, we have bigger problems to worry about than our gene cesspit.

weeeell according to natural selection, a useless mutation i slikely to die out anyways. although witht he sheer amount of people and the technology to save people who wouldve otherwise died from it, natural selection might not work as efficiently with current humanity as it would with, lets say, humanity wihtout technology. which is actually interesting to think about...

@VivoDePyre Since ethical refers to a society's standpoint on an issue, it is pretty hard to determine what is ethical in a question meant to inspire debate.

But with Godwin's Law in effect, I don't suppose you'll see the terms "ethical" and "gene pool cleansing" in the papers anytime soon without a "not" firmly planted between.

@InsaneBoredGame: But Godwin's law doesn't propose an ethical stance on this or any other matter.

@TokoyamiSenshi But it factors into this topic pretty heavily. How long are we going to talk about gene pool cleansing without mentioning Nazis?

Alright, I call on Godwin's Law.

The Nazi eugenics program in which they killed disabled and gay people in addition to jews really didn't help on eradicating any genetic defects in Germany due to the unreasonable nature of eugenics at the time.

But given the acceptance of eugenics back then, let's try to think of what if eugenics were right. Would eugenics be accepted nowadays if that was the case?

PS: I'm doing this because the original question is practically impossible to answer

EDIT: Ok, let me elaborate. What I'm saying is that now we do have a reasonable scientific basis on determining genetic defects. What if Nazi's eugenics program wasn't used as a political tool? After all, Swedish eugenics didn't end till 1976.

We already have pretty functional natural eugenics. From this point on, it's my personal algorithm on what 'ethical' is. It breaks down on the matter of abortion, but I have a different algorithm for that.

Does it involve harming others? yes -> not ethical no -> does it limit others' choices? no --> ethical yes --> does it prevent harm to others in doing so? no ---> not ethical yes ---> ethical

No! we're supposed to be talking about Nazis now!

The formula should be

Did the Nazi do it? no -> ethical yes ->not ethical

:)

Natural selection will win out in the end, even if it takes awhile.

If man tried to eradicate certain genes from the gene pool, it would piss at least one person off, no matter what sort of intentions or ethics are involved.

Glad to see you all again, that this conversation is going moderately well. I need to change the title, too.

The idea behind the first example, while perhaps not clear, was a question of personal freedom vs societal burden. The gene isn't linked to anything, and it causes dangerous allergic reaction to some common substance, such as some kind of mold. We have the medicine to help these people live a healthy life, and natural selection does not occur on a large scale. Sexual selection is barely affected, because "Hey, it's just an allergy". The gene is more likely to spread than it is die out. So now there comes this question of "How can we remove this trait, and does a society have a right to limit personal freedom for the sake of itself? (such as preventing child birth, inability to wed certain people)

Edit: Second example is moot. Looked up some stuff really quick, @eterno was right. No effective way to determine this, so this question has no basis in reality. The second question is suppose to reintroduce feasibility, but isn't feasible.

And finally, I'm glad somebody brought up Eugenics. It's a similar concept, but poorly executed. People were being selected against for non-harmful traits, phenotype, and racial distinctions. The idea was applied to remove social traits, rather than survival traits. While they used sterilization in many cases, the Nazi's also used euthanasia in their Eugenics program. Also, note that the Nazi's aren't the only people who tried to have a Eugenics program. For Americans, check out the Immigration Restriction League.

Again, the first question can't be clearly answered because it depends on the cure.

But generally, we have done eradication of diseases before such as smallpox and polio, which is heavily contained. This is in no way unethical because the cure is harmless. And again, we don't know how to remove faulty genes yet so it's hard to tell.

And yes, there is selective breeding but as what's been said, it's unethical and so it doesn't really satisfy your question because

a) no genetic disease has 100% certainty b) the disease is non-lethal

That is to say, there's no way to justify selective breeding as long as the kid always has some chance to be disease-free.

Second, that's a negative. We have no practical way to determine a high-risk autistic parents because the research is incomplete. The best they can come up with are low percentages such as in 5% or less and again, not high enough to justify selective breeding because there's a really HUGE chance that the child will turn out normal.

You see, most genetic diseases we have nowadays are mostly low-risks. There are however, some 'diseases' that are 'higher-risk' due to them being dominant traits. But even then, they're still rare because most people have the recessive genes.

Examples include polydactyly which is dominant but since most people don't have extra digits, it's a rare defect.

And yes, Eugenics is sorta relevant because it caused a paradigm shift when it comes to the ethicality of it. If only the Nazis didn't do it, we might have eugenics programs nowadays because it sure was an accepted thing.

@eterno

I appreciate the discussion you bring, but you still miss the point of the first question. I know we have no effective means of doing this at the moment, and I know that genetics aren't so clean cut that we could do something with 0 certainty. That's why this question is hypothetical. The question takes place in a reality where genes are clean cut, the disease is lethal but treatable, and the problem can with 0 certainty be removed from the gene pool. This is not a question of reality, it's a moral question about personal freedom vs the potential damage to later offspring and the population at whole.

As for the second, I went ahead and looked it up. You're right, research isn't that far. My bad, should have checked that one before saying it. I suppose it makes the question moot, because it cannot be crafted in reality.

I appreciate the information you bring to the discussion, but try to ignore reality for the first one. Great stuff for the second question and eugenics topics. The second is not a question of genetics though, it's a question of morality.

when I say the disease is lethal means it kills you almost the very moment you are born or a short time after that. If it's lethal and treatable that means it could be treated while the mother is pregnant and therefore the resulting child will be he healthy.

If it doesn't kill you but is potentially dangerous such as hemophilia, then it is totally unacceptable in our current society to prevent the 'at-risk' parents from ever having children. HOWEVER, if the disease has the potential to be spread by OTHER means than sexual, then it's usually quarantined and it is ethical to do so. But then again, if that's the case it won't be a genetics problem anymore.

And yes, genetic defects only have a chance to spread by having an offspring. If we go by your example, in which it is ignored because 'hey, it's just an allergy', it is still not acceptable from preventing the parents to have kids because of how gene inheritance works.

A real example is hemophilia again, it's a deadly disease but in most cases can only affect males while females can only be carriers. But, what if a hemophiliac male marry a carrier? The answer is:

25% carrier F 25% hemophiliac M 25% normal M 25% dead F

you see, even the highest risk for something like hemophilia would be 25% while the other kids will be healthy or a stillborn female. Therefore, there really isn't enough reason to justify selective breeding because it is a biological impossibility to breach the 25% mark.