From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Sunday, May 11, 2014 9:40:50 PM UTC-4, J.Pascal wrote:   
   > On Sunday, May 11, 2014 6:18:18 PM UTC-6, William Vetter wrote:   
   >    
   > > Screen for known inherited disease carriers (accepting that I might   
   inadvertently screen *out* a genetic issue that could have saved the whole   
   colony)    
   > > What do you think that would be?   
   >    
   > > In crappy movie Species 2, I think, the monster leaves the black astronaut   
   alone as host for its progeny because he's carrier for sickle-cell anemia.   
   >    
   > Well, that's the point isn't it?  If it was something known then it wouldn't   
   be inadvertently screened out of the colonial population.     
   >    
   > Someone (or ones) setting up a colony might seize the chance to screen out   
   carriers for every possible thing they could think of, even stuff that we know   
   fairly well have a survival benefit in extreme environments (like diabetes),   
   or conditions that    
   aren't a disease but sometimes involve medical complications (say, dwarfs or   
   albinos) or pigeontoedness or colorblindness or a tendency to develop an   
   underbite or a too narrow birth canal.  A eugenic impulse would be hard to   
   resist... take genetic    
   material only from people with perfect genes, high IQs, who can carry a tune...   
      
   If it worked, I think you'd get too many chiefs and not enough braves.   
   There's the joke How many theoreticians does it take to screw in a light bulb.   
   N, where N approaches infinity.   
   >    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)