Jonathan Anomaly is an American academic philosopher particularly well-known for his work in bioethics. He is academic director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in Ecuador. He was previously employed at various Universities throughout North America.[1]
Anomaly is a transhumanist, arguably a conservative transhumanist at that,[2] and accordingly concerned with ensuring that the transition from a dysgenic regime into one of a stringently liberal eugenics goes as smoothly and humanely as possible.[3] Regarding these reprogenetic technologies, he is an an expert primarily in embryo selection.[4][5]
Relevant work (in quotes)[]
"If random mutations are a constant part of nature, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with altered genes. Eventually, a combination of embryo selection and gene editing may be essential just to stay where we are now. This is because the modern world has been quietly fostering the accumulation of deleterious mutations in all of us. Genetic mutations occur throughout our lives, and some are passed along to our children. Most mutations are either neutral or harmful from the standpoint of fitness. [...] [E]ntropy is a pervasive miasma that leads to disintegration and decay. In the absence of purifying selection, and in the presence of the modern welfare state, which protects us from the ravages of disease and famine and scarcity, we will likely experience a rise in deleterious mutations, along with other genetic pathologies. [...] We may need to keep repairing the post just to preserve the parts of it that we cherish."[6]
Jonathan Anomaly with one of his best-known students, Jay Ruckelshaus.
"Eugenics has become a dirty word in popular culture because of its excesses in the early twentieth century, including forced sterilization laws in the USA and Germany (which were applied to the ‘feebleminded’ but sometimes also to epileptics and even sexual deviants). But a lot of the criticism of eugenics conflates what Galton and many modern academics in bioethics mean by ‘eugenics’ with how the Nazis misused it [...] Moral grandstanding has become so common in connection with the word that journalists often use ‘eugenics’ to mean something like ‘unjust coercion of innocent parents’. But Galton and Darwin would have rejected this, and so should we. According to Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son and past president of the Eugenics Society of England, ‘Eugenics is the study of heredity as it may be applied to the betterment, mental and physical, of the human race’ [...] While people disagree about precisely which traits are worth promoting, what motivates eugenics is a concern that individual welfare depends in part on the average traits of a population, and that demographic trends matter to the extent that they influence the success or failure of entire populations."[7]
"Evolution is path-dependent. Future populations will be shaped by the choices parents make now. These choices will be influenced by the social and political institutions they live under. It is up to us to think through what kinds of institutions we should create, and what kinds of future people should exist."[8]
Anomaly, Jonathan (2010-04-01). "Combating Resistance: The Case for a Global Antibiotics Treaty". Public Health Ethics3 (1): 13–22. doi:10.1093/phe/phq001.
