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Originally Posted by D
I wasn't saying alleles were the answer... my point was that the "example [of dominant and recessives] is analogous throughout all of genetic science"... as well as in anything, I gather... for every yin, there's a yang. For every action, an opposite and equal reaction. If we're to figure it out, we gotta start somewhere.
And why are your future prospects gone if studied? Many people have accomplished a great many things from behind bars.
I think committing yourself to a period of incarceration where you suffer steady observation coupled with an occasional pin prick and where you may have to, infrequently, answer a battery of test questions is a lot more humane and sensible of a situation than having your life ended...
But hey, maybe that's just me.
Not everyone has as calm and collected an approach to the idea of death as your argument presents... in fact, I don't think it's going too far our on a limb to say that few actually do.
And that's just from the prisoner's perspective. From society's perspective, there's much to be gained from study, and the best thing that we may arguably gain from capitol punishment - deterrence - isn't even an issue with minors. Everyone thinks they're immortal until about 25.
So, no... I really don't think we should kill them just for some misplaced sense of revenge contorted into justice.
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A fitting punishment, I believe, would involve life in prison without any chance of parole. Coupled with frequent testing, it would reduce them to guinea pigs, in the sense that the entire purpose of their life would be the furtherment of science. Some people have achieved great things while in prison, just like some have achieved great things while waiting for execution (eg Boethius), but for the vast majority it is an existence without prospects or sense. The only reasons one would choose to stay alive in such circumstances would be a fear of death and a tiny shred of hope of one day being set free.
I do not believe that many people view the prospect of death with calmness, but I do suppose that all find the state of being dead quite calm indeed.
Although, as I said in my previous post, I do not actually support the point I was defending, my argument for the death penalty was not based on a desire for revenge (although, I suppose, the emotions behind the argument were, at least in part). Rather, it was based on a rather vague wish for a symbolic cleansing of sorts, the act of their execution serving to remove the stain they form on humanity in the most radical way possible. It was, in a way, not so much a desire for the event of their death, as it was a desire for them simply not existing.
Irrational, I know.