The Eugenics Scare

So here's a Moral Issue.

This semester I'm taking a philosophy of politics type class - basically a "how can we study politics?" type class. I knew I'd enjoy it because the prof is a blast, plus I think it's important to be self-reflexive about what we study.

Anyway, today--briefly--an issue came up with I've debated about with people before. One of the sciences that's growing right now is about how humans might be influenced by their genes, and whether there's such thing as a human *nature* - are there things in our character, elements that influence how we make decisions, that are partly influenced by biology. By evolution. Essentially there was a time when people thought everything we were was determined by our nature, and then in the 70s it swung to the other extreme--everything is environment; and now I think things are settling back into the middle. There's nature AND nurture. And while it's hard to figure out where one starts and one stops... I personally think there's plenty of evidence that nature cannot be discarded.

One of the most interesting examples that swayed me was the John/Joan case in psychology; where a boy had his penis accidentally burned off as a baby, so the doctors advised his parents that they raise him as a girl. They were so convinced that sex is socially constructed, that they made up a vagina for this dude, and tried to raise him this way. Long story short, he never felt like a girl, and it ruined his life--really sad.

Anyway. A lot of people get upset when you imply that biology might have something to do with who we are, because they think it's a slippery slope down to eugenics and Hitler. That's the first argument you always get. And here's my thing--what's your point? If we were able to prove that our nature is in some ways biologically determined, does the fact that that information might be used in nefarious manners, mean that it isn't true? Or that we should ignore it? Not explore the possibility? Not pursue that knowledge?

(I'm not going into the fact that this view of genetic tampering is a misunderstanding of how natural selection works, and has basically been dismissed as bad science.]

All this to say, I encountered this opinion again in class today, and I still don't get it. I'm one of those crazy folk who believe there is an objective reality Out There, and I don't think there's any harm in trying to get to it, uncover it, explore it. Doesn't matter what the idea is, I'd rather know how things work than not know. Morality comes into how you use that knowledge. [Well, and it comes into how you go about extracting that information, but that's a different moral topic!]

Thing is... just because you think something is Wrong, doesn't mean it isn't true.