[datashow]

"geneticists today rightly treat eugenics as a laughable proposition"? Really? This author is not qualified to speak for geneticists.

Dawkins: It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.

https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/12289436869...

Crazy woke activitists like this author is not qualified to speak for science. They think if something is politically wrong must also be scientifically wrong. It is not.

[vikramkr]

Yes, scientifically rigorous does not equal moral. And the eugenics debate is coming up in a different form now with Gene therapy. From a moral perspective, I don't know of any genuine and sincere arguments that we should not genetically engineer an infant who was born with a devastating genetic disease. If we can cure sickle cell for example, we of anything have a moral imperative to. But, that technically lies under the umbrella of eugenics. It raises questions of what is a disease - if blue eyes (or, more realistically, dark skin) lead to discrimination in society, is that enough of a disadvantage to be worth engineering a child to have brown eyes or white skin? In general the consensus is no. So where is the middle ground? Or, is it a false question and fixing sickle cell is not even on the same sliding scale as changing skin color? We don't know the answers yet, but these are active moral and ethical questions that are technically under the umbrella of eugenics that we need to answer.

[frandroid]

It's like you missed the entire volume of responses to this tweet...

[throwaway6449]

Dawkins hasn't been relevant in the field of evolutionary biology for 15+ years and I don't know why people pay attention to whatever he says just because he built a brand about being an an edgy atheist.

There are literally dozens of arguments as to why 'eugenics' (beyond very basic hanging fruit like eliminating monogenic diseases etc.) wouldn't work and doesn't make sense to begin with and many of them have been spelled out in the tweet's replies and blog posts, I'll let you do your homework.

[datashow]

> beyond very basic hanging fruit like eliminating monogenic diseases etc.

So it does work.

[zepto]

Dawkins is failing there.

Yes, we breed animals and direct their evolution.

In all his examples, the animals are more fragile and less able to survive independently than they were before.

That is pretty much the opposite of what eugenics aims at and is exactly one of the problems it is criticized for.

Dawkins can be a fool sometimes.

[mistermann]

Breeding optimizes certain characteristics, independent survival is likely not a high priority.