1. gnxp
  2. If you know genetics, you don't fear genetic testing

If you know genetics, you don't fear genetic testing

By razib on April 12, 2009.

That's what Dan MacArthur found in the GSS after doing a follow up on my post below.

Tags
Culture

More like this

Lott attacks Tom Smith

On pages 36-37 of The Bias Against Guns Lott attacks Tom Smith:

Lott cherry-picks which poll to use

In chapter 3 of More Guns, Less Crime Lott presents an analysis based on two exit polls of gun ownership (conducted in 1988 and 1996) that purports to show that a 1% increase in a state's gun ownership causes a 4.1% decrease in the violent crime rate and a 3.2% decrease in auto thef

Fertility in the USA vs. in the Old Country

I decided to look at the GSS and see if there was anything interesting about fertility of white Americans of various ethnicities.

Yes, Biblical fundamentalists are not bright

Tom Rees reports on an analysis of

Regarding...

"If you know genetics, you don't fear genetic testing"

That sounds like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.[1]

I think someone needs to go write a Sci-Fi novel about governments (or other organizations which use coercion) that effectively selectively breed their citizens[2], so that people have something to really fear[3] :-) Perhaps selective breeding is for the purpose of trying to remove aggression, like in the movie Serenity. Or for the purpose of keeping the ruling class in power. Or even to create various working castes. Etc.

__________________________________________________
[1] Yeah, I know I'm taking out of context. But it's funny that way :-)

[2] The effective selective breeding could be done by requiring licenses for breeding. By being selective over who is granted a license. And making breeding without a license illegal, and having a strong policy of punishing those who violate the law.

Governments could also make it mandatory that all fetuses have their genes be sequenced. Governments could grant themselves the right to terminate any fetus it chooses to.

There could also be laws which restricts who someone is permitted to breed with.

Actually, didn't Plato or Aristotle dream up all sorts of ways to selectively breed the citizenry?

[3] Although I suppose this isn't really a fear of genetic testing in general, but a fear of having the results of your genetic tests not being anonymous to everyone else that looks at it (including the company that did the test for you).