Interesting post. What are in your opinion some of those ideas held by a significant fraction of the community that could be shown in the future to be akin to eugenics?
I prefer not to get into specific examples here (several have been brought up in comments to varying degrees of controversy), but rather to discuss the broader meta question of how best to be a community that avoids falling for things.
The anti-malaria programs are a good candidate for future moral outrage.
The politically correct people of the future may decide that malaria was a part of African cultural heritage, and the developed countries destroyed it in yet another unforgivable act of colonialism. Note that this opinion will sound much less absurd if the malaria is actually successfully eradicated planet-wide. Then it will become much easier to claim that the harmfulness of malaria was just a myth invented by the oppressors as an excuse for its eradication. Bonus points if you can point out actual harm to humans caused by the anti-malaria efforts; such as some insecticides having harmful side-effects on human health.
Alternatively, the lack of actually using gene drive mosquitos in the wild at scale and letting a lot of people die while we wait could also be seen as a moral tragedy.
Interesting post. What are in your opinion some of those ideas held by a significant fraction of the community that could be shown in the future to be akin to eugenics?
I prefer not to get into specific examples here (several have been brought up in comments to varying degrees of controversy), but rather to discuss the broader meta question of how best to be a community that avoids falling for things.
The anti-malaria programs are a good candidate for future moral outrage.
The politically correct people of the future may decide that malaria was a part of African cultural heritage, and the developed countries destroyed it in yet another unforgivable act of colonialism. Note that this opinion will sound much less absurd if the malaria is actually successfully eradicated planet-wide. Then it will become much easier to claim that the harmfulness of malaria was just a myth invented by the oppressors as an excuse for its eradication. Bonus points if you can point out actual harm to humans caused by the anti-malaria efforts; such as some insecticides having harmful side-effects on human health.
Alternatively, the lack of actually using gene drive mosquitos in the wild at scale and letting a lot of people die while we wait could also be seen as a moral tragedy.