If I told you I put a chemical into the water supply that gave people brown hair you’d probably think I am weird and stupid but not evil.

If I told you the chemical gave people down syndrome you’d probably think I am evil.

Whenever these topics come up there’s always people saying things like “but what if people like it?” And I can’t help but wonder, really? Are we really having this conversation? The answers are obvious so why pretend they’re not?

I don’t believe anybody actually thinks this way.

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pixl97 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>I don’t believe anybody actually thinks this way.

Oh, there are far too many people that do. I mostly call them the "Hell for you, heaven for me" bunch, the doublethink/cognitive dissonance in so many is very very strong.

https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...

“The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion” is a common example of this behavior.

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nathan_compton 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think this is a deeply flawed interpretation of the original commenter's post. They are suggesting that we think very carefully about imposing our standards of what constitutes a "good" person on the unborn. I don't see the problem, honestly.

	▲	pixl97 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If humanity had the ability to think very carefully then the world would be a much different place. The number one rule of thinking about the unborn would be thinking about those who are living first.

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bulbar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it's a valid argument to say that people with down syndrome are much happier than those without. Most of them need a society (or at least multiple other people) without that trait to survive, though.

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CooCooCaCha 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This post is about curing down syndrome though.

Saying “but they’re happy” in this context is implying that we shouldn’t try to cure it, which is obviously ridiculous.

	▲	refulgentis 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I had the exact same reaction as you but vitriolic, had to take a step back and treat it like a research exercise (in another reply) Re: "but they're happy" x obviously ridiculous, it hit me 10 minutes in, if we're going off 99% happy, it's absolutely absurd - then the conclusion is we should give everyone down's syndrome. My initial snap reaction was it must be trolling. But it can't be, if you're looking to stir the pot you don't do it on the 6 comment non-technical post on the second page. Which kinda makes it more disturbing, to me, because it goes beyond someone not understanding. It's some sort of weird active misunderstanding, like, seeing fun heart-warming Downs syndrome sibling videos on social media is enough for one to assume it's net-good, somehow.

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almostjazz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you force something major and permanent on somebody without their consent for no good reason, of course it would be evil. It would be evil to force somebody gay to be straight and it would be evil to force somebody straight to be gay, that has nothing to do with the goodness or badness of being straight or gay. Hair dye is temporary.

	▲	CooCooCaCha 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		All analogies are flawed and I think you’re taking the wrong message here. If doctors gave mothers a vaccine that prevented down syndrome, at a high level, that would be the same as putting an anti-down syndrome drug in the water supply. The point of the example is not about whether putting things in the water supply is good or bad.
	▲	theodric 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		All of the arguments in this thread seem to be treating this research's outcome as deleting a person, and applying a corresponding moral judgement thereto. But it is not! I personally find that choosing to not have a child with Down Syndrome by engineering away the possibility in advance is no worse than choosing not to have a child at all, and better than aborting a viable but affected fetus, because no life is ended. I am not a murderer for choosing not to have any child at all because I feel that my genes should not be imposed on another generation, and I am not a Nazi for saying that if I had a child, I would take any available humane steps to ensure it received the best subset of genetic material from the set available to it. I would, in fact, argue that leaving the creation of a whole person who will have to experience life for 80 years to a series of genetic coin flips is morally reprehensible. Just because we've always done it that way doesn't make it desirable or humane. I welcome this development.

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jjj123 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kind of a strange example, because yeah I do think it’s evil to inflict your aesthetic preference on everyone’s bodies without consent.

	▲	CooCooCaCha 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So there’s no difference at all? Making everybody have brown hair is the same as giving everyone down syndrome?

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nathan_compton 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The answers are not obvious. Arguably, putting anything into the water supply is seriously ethically questionable, whether it changes only your hair color or lowers your IQ or raises it, for that matter. People have the right to accept or deny medical treatment. For treatment which occurs before birth clearly they cannot do that, but if you were meditating upon whether to apply a procedure or not, and you had adults who could understand the question and to whom the procedure would have been applied, taking their opinions into consideration on the subject is entirely valid.

You think of a person with Downs' as less than a person without it, clearly. But why should your opinion matter? If we accept treating Downs' in utero, should we accept genetic treatments to lower criminality? What about independent thinking? What about other "inconvenient" personality traits. Like why not allow some "authority" to eliminate any "negative" trait they wish from the population?

Obviously these are extremes and your position that considering the question with respect to Downs' leads to a straightforward conclusion: on balance, it make sense, but I think we should approach any question about modifying people with serious consideration.