Historiography, needless to say, belongs to the triumphant; although there was a Cato to declare, "The victor pleased the Gods, but the loser pleased me," it was not until very recently that underdogs as a class could be said to have had actual advocates, & their claims granted merit. We are only now feeling the loss of the Dodo, the Great Auk, & the Passenger Pigeon, which worried nobody earlier (when it was preventable). With that in mind i can start to contemplate sundry human & human-caused extinctions. Perhaps some of them even include my own--such as the case of left-handed children forced to indite with their other hand ("parasinistral" i say): when my generation of benighted helpfulness passes, there will come no more.
Prenatal testing, & its consequent effect on what would otherwise be a natural incidence of numerous SOCIALLY-DISFAVORED genetic anomalies, proceeds apace. It is not hard to foresee the absolute eclipse of, say, non-telegenic looks, in the fullness of time. Why not autism-spectrum? How is that not like having crooked teeth?
Seeds of all the earth's varieties are being saved, stored in a sort of library of genotypes, against ultimate oblivion (otherwise known as agribusiness monoculture): & we whose brains function, only not in the way our peers expect, might envy that scientific solicitude. Are there rare viewpoints, ways of life, preferences & even exceptional talents going to fall by the wayside; & will the regrets (there are always regrets) arrive just a tad too late? Oh, the Aspies & the Auties, they did not darken the sky like the Passenger Pigeon, but they left us with a few good licks, Special Relativity maybe; collections of bottlecaps for sure.
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