Argumentum ad Mitochondrium

An ad hominem argument is an attack on the person rather than their argument. Hence it’s a fallacy. “That bridge you want the American taxpayer to pay for doesn’t lead anywhere,” says Senator A. “Yeah, well,” replies Senator B, “you have horrible taste in ties so your views on bridge-building are wrong.”

Granted that this fantasized exchange is both silly and perhaps too close to legislative reality, it does illustrate the fallacy. Now a Turkish opposition leader has gone one better, accusing President Abdullah Gül of secret Armenian ancestry as the reason for his failure to reject a campaign to apologize for Turkey’s genocidal war against Armenians in the early 20th century. Republican People’s Party Deputy Canan Aritman thinks she’s nailed it. The acid test: Aritman wants Gül to take a DNA test to prove his pure Turkish origins, or disprove his impure Armenian ones.

Whether President Gül is a genetic Armenian or not (whatever that could mean), the notion that such a question is relevant to political discourse evokes ugly associations with National Socialist eugenics. One would think that any Turkish political leader seeking to distance Turks from a holocaust would want to avoid racial biology as an explanation for anything. And that is no ad hominen argument.

Tags: bioethics, genetics

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