If Scientific American has its ‘druthers… the Osmond family reunions may get a a bit dicier.
|
|||||
 |
Tonight We Gonna Party Like It’s 1799!3 comments to Tonight We Gonna Party Like It’s 1799!Leave a Reply |
 |
|||
|
Copyright © 2012 threedonia.com - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
Print
Digg
StumbleUpon
del.icio.us
Facebook
Yahoo! Buzz
Twitter
Google Bookmarks
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
MSN Reporter
MySpace
Orkut
Ping.fm
Reddit
RSS
Slashdot
Technorati
Tumblr
Webnews.de
I wish scientists would shut the ^%$#@*& up for once. They aren’t historians, philosophers, theologians, moralists, or often lack the common sense the average man on the street. Of course, the scientists of today severely diminished from the scholars and academics of earlier times, having all but abandoned a serious study of moral and philosophical issues. It used to be that science/natural philosophy was a pursuit embedded in the larger humanistic tradition that sought to elevate man as a whole. Thus, the words of a scientists like Bacon, Newton, or Pascal, giants of intellect involved in a great many pursuits, could be taken as words of wisdom.
The article is a prime example of that diminished state, rife as it is with so many stale academic tropes; class warfare, shallow readings of history, “outdated” morality. They fail to preform basic cross-examination of their own argument. First, cousin marriage may, by itself, not be any riskier than having children at age 40, but unlike having children when middle-aged, the genetic risks for cousin marriage are cumulative, meaning that if the practice becomes more prevalent among a common population, the risk of birth defects through “genetic load” increases. And the article, noting that cousin marriage is more common outside of the West, fails to note that most of the current immigration to the US comes from outside the West.
The article also assumes that laws on cousin marriage were past to target “immigrants and rural poor,” not asking why they were passed, if that was their target. Perhaps they noted that, much like I did above, inbreeding is a cumulative threat and sought to end the practice for public health reasons. Perhaps they also wanted to encourage assimilation of immigrant populations and end the formation of ghettos. That particularly important when immigrants are coming not particularly civilized and we want to make sure bad habits don’t spread, such as we see with Muslim populations in Europe, who undoubtedly bring some of their tribal politics to those countries.
correction: when immigrants are coming from places that are not particularly civilized
Mark Steyn on NRO, via Conservative Grapevine: Assimilation breaks down completely in Britain. 75 per cent of Pakistani Brits are married to their first cousins.