Aspies For Freedom

Has anyone read This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman? Its a sci-fi book taking place in a future where Earth sent millions into space to colonize other planets. The FTL drives of their ships created radiation which mutated the genes of the colonists making their children seem bizarre to the orginal humans. The lead variants. as they are called, is a race called the Guerans. Their mutation manifests as what seems to be a considerable portion of the existing range of human variations (one main character is autistic, others seem to have attributes indicating Tourette's, ADHD, MPD, and amplified versions of personality traits like competitiveness), along with other, new cognitive and perceptual stylings. Their society embraces neuro diversity. Earth meanwhile has genetically engineered all variation out of their genetic code and as a result has become mediocre.

I think that the real life Earth is in danger of engineering all variation out of their genetic code. Already, they're aborting downs syndrome babies. They want to do the same with ASD babies. I thought the Nazis taught everybody that this is a bad idea. Hitler actually praised the US for its adherence to eugenics, including sterilization of undesirables.

There's a religious cult-a variation of Mormonism, albeit a century removed from the mother church-that is actively working towards a master race through inbreeding and polygamy. Most of the sect is descended from just two families, Barlow and Jessop. Many are direct descendants of Joseph Smith Jessop, who was one of the cult founders and who died in 1953 having sired 120 children via dozens of women. In addition, fathers impregnate daughters and siblings have children. The result is a massive epidemic of birth defects in the closed cult society that threatens to tear it apart. Once, defective babies were quietly abandoned in the desert, but eventually the defects grew too great in number to hide.

The cult's prophet, Warren Jeffs, is currently in the federal slammer for ordering a 19 year old man to marry and impregnate his 16 year old cousin. Before he was locked away, he ordered such measures as abandoning massive numbers of teenage boys in order to increase the number of girls (who are considered marriable at age 14) available to cult honchos, and the ritual execution of any who crossed him. He reportedly built a crematorium able to destroy DNA in order to get rid of the evidence. The end result is further inbreeding, and further birth defects. As I said, the integrity of their society is threatened by the sheer numbers of disabled and dying children.

If our politicians get their wish to eliminate "defective people", the result, played out over a century or two, might be similar. I think that if the Nazis had lasted 75 years, modern Germany would have the same problem. (Curiously, alternate history novels regarding a Nazi win usually take place in the 1940s or 1950s, thus avoiding the whole question of what happens if you inbreed a whole society for too long. I've only seen one or two that take place in 2000 or so, and they usually regard underground Jewish subcultures.)

One thing people here have a hard time recognizing is that it is a LOT HARDER to change a baby's eye color or genitals, than it is to modify its psychology. Psychology is largely influenced by one's environment, rather than the genes themselves.

One thing I'd like to say here, that I should have said in another post:

Aspies are far more threatened by society's preferences for sex and relationship (with a normal person, not an aspie), than any form of abortion or biotechnology. Keep that in mind.

There doesn't seem to be much point dwelling on this, though - it's not like anyone would want to pass a law requiring autistics to have equal access to sex.

True, for the time being, though its hard to do in a predictable and replicable manner.

Possiby, though its mitigated somewhat by the fact that Aspies often marry other Aspies.

EvilZakkie,
  Speak for yourself, mate...  

  -BobB