It was never soundly debunked in theory. We are animals and like all animals our offspring inherit traits from us. Hypothetically if you could agree on what “good traits” looks like you could selectively breed people based on those traits and get people who are more likely than average to have those traits. Keep doing it for generations upon generations and you’d get people optimized for those traits. Even without knowing what gene or genes are responsible.
The problem is that we’re notoriously bad at deciding what is and is not in the set of “good traits” and tend to pick stupid shit like “being Aryan/white.” Also forced/restricted breeding is unethical at best, and fucking monstrous on average. It’s one of those things that goes in the bin of “it would probably work, but if we start doing it we’ve already become the villains”.
It might work, but in the same way that it does with dogs. You might get some traits you want, but they will all be as inbred as a Bulldog. Probably would knock 15 years off average lifespan.
The more mixed up your genes are, the less likely you are to have health defects.
You’d need to start with a large enough sample and be very careful about who and how you breed them to limit damage from inbreeding. But again, it’s something that’s firmly in the “it would probably work, but if we start doing it we’ve already become the villains” bin.
It was never soundly debunked in theory. We are animals and like all animals our offspring inherit traits from us. Hypothetically if you could agree on what “good traits” looks like you could selectively breed people based on those traits and get people who are more likely than average to have those traits. Keep doing it for generations upon generations and you’d get people optimized for those traits. Even without knowing what gene or genes are responsible.
The problem is that we’re notoriously bad at deciding what is and is not in the set of “good traits” and tend to pick stupid shit like “being Aryan/white.” Also forced/restricted breeding is unethical at best, and fucking monstrous on average. It’s one of those things that goes in the bin of “it would probably work, but if we start doing it we’ve already become the villains”.
It might work, but in the same way that it does with dogs. You might get some traits you want, but they will all be as inbred as a Bulldog. Probably would knock 15 years off average lifespan.
The more mixed up your genes are, the less likely you are to have health defects.
You’d need to start with a large enough sample and be very careful about who and how you breed them to limit damage from inbreeding. But again, it’s something that’s firmly in the “it would probably work, but if we start doing it we’ve already become the villains” bin.