The return of Eugenics? What is it for?

[Stavros]

One of the by-products of the bogus 'science of race' that influenced so many otherwise intelligent people in the 19th century, was the emergence at that century's end and into the 20th century, of something called 'Eugenics' which attempted to use the new science of Genetics to take race a stage further. For a key question to ask those people who still today link Genetics to claims about human performance from basic intelligence to 'higher intelligence', the ability to run fast, or survive at high altitude is: what do want to do with this information?

An article in The Guardian reveals how Eugenics is still a matter of scholarly research and publication even in journals where the editors don't believe in it. It may be in a tangential manner be related to other threads on genetics in this section of HA.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...stream-science

The first reaction one might have is that Eugenics was discredited by the Nazi's, that nobody again would use bogus science to dismiss an entire 'race' as in some way unfit to live. Yet, as another article in the New Statesman last November points out, the Nazi's at the time were merely one group of people advocating mass murder as a solution to the 'problem' of 'useless people'. Here, for example, is George Bernard Shaw advocating murder (he called it 'involuntary euthanasia') to deal with persistent criminals and other social misfits:
“A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time looking after them.”

HG Wells produced a similar argument in 1901, as noted in the article (a review of a book on the future)
When in his non-fiction study Anticipations, first published in 1901, he considered the future of the “swarms of black and yellow and brown people who do not come into the needs of efficiency” in a scientifically ordered World State, Wells concluded that these and other “inefficient” human groups would have to disappear: “The world is not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go”.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture...morrow-s-world

For this to me is the point of Eugenics: a three-phased solution to a problem defined by the bogus use of science to determine which humans are of value, and which are not. The three phases are:
1) Identify , 2) Isolate, 3) Destroy.

This is not science, it is mass murder. And one always notices that those who believe there are too many people in the world never count themselves as part of them, just as the advocates of the murder of the 'unfit to live' do not consider themselves unfit, even though their ideas are derived from worthless 'science'.

Chilling to think that this bogus thought is at the root of immigration policy in the UK and it seems, the USA too. Maybe we do not always progress over time, but I am dismayed at the speed with which society appears to be marching backwards.

[trish]

There are businesses that, for a fee, will ‘test’ a sample of your DNA and attempt to tell you something about your ancestry; i.e. you’re 81% Scandinavian and 12% North African, etc. One problem that has recently come to light is that identical twins have sometimes received non-identical results from the same testing company.

When we were first learning how to sample and compare DNA (in the 80’s and 90’s) is was proposed one could compare the DNA of a suspect with the DNA left behind at the crime scene by the perpetrator. However, the methodology of the time was too unreliable and gave too many false positives. Back then we would break up the DNA into short strands and compare the broken strands with each other. Today we have the technology to compare entire strands, but I understand that it is very costly. Others should correct me here, but I believe to this day in the U.S. DNA evidence can be used to eliminate a suspect but not prosecute.

DNA analysis holds a lot of promise. It can show how proteins are coded and produced in the body. It can lead to therapies that might cure certain specific metabolic deficiencies. But it has its limitations. It is no easier to divide genotypes into distinct and separate races than it is to divide phenotypes into distinct and separate races. In fact its impossible. Moreover, it’s a whole lot easier to assign social traits, intellectual abilities or physical skills to actual people (but not before you actually meet and observe them), than it is to assign those sorts of traits to long strings of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s. (Pinker and sociobiology to the contrary.)

One problem here is the link between genotype and phenotype is not deterministic. A common misconception is that an individual’s DNA codes the individual: it’s not true. Were it true we could all live forever: just get cloned before you die. Clearly individuals are formed by their experiences after conception as much as by the recombination of genes that occurred at conception. But this is not the only source of ambiguity in the link between genotype and phenotype. There is epigenetics, morphology and host of other influences that effect gene expression. There is no direct link between DNA and how it is expressed. There is no unique way a given set of 23 pairs of chromosomes can be expressed. DNA does not code for a unique human being, let alone a unique individual. If you gave an alien scientist a complete compliment of 23 pairs of human chromosomes, I doubt that he could reconstruct a human being. He would have the code, but no insight into the machine that decodes it and turns into a human being and a functioning individual. Even on Earth, that machine wouldn’t always produce the same human being nor the same individual each time.

Eugenics is racism posing as science. Sociobiology is the pseudoscience that sometimes enables these quacks.

[broncofan]

. Others should correct me here, but I believe to this day in the U.S. DNA evidence can be used to eliminate a suspect but not prosecute.

In the state I'm in it can be used to convict. I've read a couple of cases on appeal about the quality of dna evidence and whether the convictions based on it violate due process. I'll have to find some articles about the state of the science and in what states it's admitted (and for what purpose) since it's very relevant for this thread. Scientific evidence that is presented to a jury in a way that overstates its reliability is a great menace to the justice system, and impacts other types of evidence as well. There was a whole category of cases that had to be overturned because they were based on a test that claimed it could match bullets to the batch they came out of.

In order to present the evidence, it has to pass something called a Daubert test or in some states a Frye test. The purpose of this test is to determine whether the evidence meets scientific standards of rigor to be worth presenting to a jury. The reason this is a concern is because people can tend to rely on the expertise of a witness without questioning whether their techniques have been subjected to proper scrutiny.

[broncofan]

I suppose the connection with this thread is the overestimation of scientific understanding. This can occur when we claim that genetic traits determine intelligence but cannot define intelligence or measure it and don't even understand all of the many ways in which gene expression depend on early life exposures and impact what we call intelligence. It can also involve an unreasonable belief in the use of new techniques to identify suspects and confirm their guilt, from the use of polygraph testing to ballistics tests to dna tests. Sorry, this was my attempt to broaden the subject a little bit to include this article.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/a...dna-testing-2/

This article discusses the use of dna evidence. It's similar to how I've seen it presented where the witnesses discuss how many loci out of thirteen are a match. The real question is whether the evidence should be presented at all when it passes a threshold where the results do not statistically rule out the rest of humanity and courts cannot decide what statistics are appropriate to summarize the findings. Instead of being able to objectively analyze the physical evidence, you have juries deciding whether to believe an expert who argues the dna provides a 1:2.5 chance of a match v. a 1:741,000 chance. At this point, the science has not provided juries something they can use to understand the issues and determine for themselves whether someone is guilty. The use of a statistic can also be misleading if at any point the prosecutor misstates what that stat means, or with what certainty they've calculated that stat. I believe the state I'm in doesn't even allow the discussion of the evidence if it doesn't match a minimum number of loci.

[broncofan]

I apologize for the second post as I realize it's a bit off the main subject. I think the entire cult of iq is useless because it provides very little accurate information and in the sense it attributes abilities to purely genetic causes, it doesn't provide usable information even if it were to become accurate.

I watched on Oprah a bunch of years back a 10 year old who had tested off the charts on an iq test and was entering college. Frequently these prodigies end up being burnouts whose test results gave them false expectations about what success in life would require. Some people who perform poorly on iq tests end up being enormously successful, despite the discouraging effect that information would have. Previous tests of intelligence measured discrete structures in the brain that there was no good reason to believe would be useful proxies for intelligence.

The study of epigenetics is at least interesting because the information can be used in ways to understand how our dna interacts with environment to produce phenotype. This understanding can at least lead to intervention of some kind to offset learning disabilities or to treat other conditions. But the attribution to genes of characteristics we do not even fully understand and which are used to value human beings has only the most morbid possible applications.

[Stavros]

I watched on Oprah a bunch of years back a 10 year old who had tested off the charts on an iq test and was entering college. Frequently these prodigies end up being burnouts whose test results gave them false expectations about what success in life would require. Some people who perform poorly on iq tests end up being enormously successful, despite the discouraging effect that information would have. Previous tests of intelligence measured discrete structures in the brain that there was no good reason to believe would be useful proxies for intelligence. .

I think the point here is that young people have a tremendous capacity for learning, though I don't believe DNA can explain why one child prodigy is good at maths when another is good at playing the piano or the violin. Memory is the key to both, but both must also have phenomenal abilities to analyse, although it is often the case that young musicians can play all the notes, but do not interpret the music with any depth. But if this is a major gap in genetics then how can it be possible to classify entire social groups on the basis of some trait as if it were scientific fact? The answer is it cannot be done with science, but evidently people seem to need to believe that they are superior or even inferior to others and if you tell them that it has negative social and economic outcomes then you are dismissed as a 'liberal'. There is no science in this, but when these days science is vulnerable to claims it is fake when it is climate change, but real when it is space exploration, you realise people are just cherry picking their way through arguments, and are thus keen to support politically those who echo their views. Another negative outcome.

[sukumvit boy]

Recent controversy regarding a 'secret' eugenics conference at University College London has caused some concern in the academic community . Covered well in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/education...held-on-campus

[SarahG]

I think the point here is that young people have a tremendous capacity for learning, though I don't believe DNA can explain why one child prodigy is good at maths when another is good at playing the piano or the violin.

DNA would never have been the full story, as even aside from the experiences that shape people it is also possible for genes to be triggered by environmental variables. Think about all those stress hormones that a fetus is subjected to when its mother is dealing with the problems that come with poverty for example.

NPR had a show on the other day about this talking about the ACE test. The science says if a child experiences severe enough stress during critical parts of its development it will carry a health penalty. Less academic performance, more auto immune disorders, shorter lifespan. My ACE score is 8 and I can't go a month without ending up in a doctor's office for something or another.

[Stavros]

DNA would never have been the full story, as even aside from the experiences that shape people it is also possible for genes to be triggered by environmental variables. Think about all those stress hormones that a fetus is subjected to when its mother is dealing with the problems that come with poverty for example.
NPR had a show on the other day about this talking about the ACE test. The science says if a child experiences severe enough stress during critical parts of its development it will carry a health penalty. Less academic performance, more auto immune disorders, shorter lifespan. My ACE score is 8 and I can't go a month without ending up in a doctor's office for something or another.

I had never heard of this test before so I had to use a search engine to find out.
There are various portals but I used this one and it gave me a score of 2, although I was not happy with the result because I was not entirely happy with the questions-
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...nd-doesnt-mean

The problem it seems to me is that it does not distinguish between isolated incidents in which, for example, a parent may slap a child where that is a rare, one-off event; and a child who is repeatedly slapped, or worse, by one or other parent. It could be that the psychological trauma of that one event, precisely because it is unusual, has a greater impact than regular beatings or slaps, but I don't know how that can be measured. It is also possible to generate emotional trauma through fear even if neither parent or someone in the home actually lays hands on someone or is in some way intimidating. I once read an argument on the internet in which a feminist claimed that most or all male to female transexuals have been sexually abused in childhood.

And it could be that the test is using moments in childhood that some people would say are 'normal' or 'inevitable', to diagnose contemporary issues that may have other causes.

I am not dismissing the test or its implications, but it seems to me at this stage to beg too many questions which cannot be answered. There are surveys of the impact on childhood of war and civil war, and it is clear that there are long-term issues for children who have seen terrible things caused by bombs or insurgent violence, who may have lost part or the whole of their families, and have been deprived of both emotional nourishment and a wide range of physical needs due to the absence of fresh food, drinking water and so on. There are two short surveys of the impact of the war in Syria on children in the links below -
https://conflictandhealth.biomedcent...031-015-0061-6
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.co...741-7015-12-57

I am persuaded that childhood trauma, be it in the home or in war, has long term implications for health. Not sure it can be reduced to a test score, or that problems encountered in adult life are solely the consequence of childhood trauma. And I cannot see a direct link to an individual's DNA. And would not some, perhaps many psychologists suggest to someone still stressed (obsessed?) over an event that happened at the age of 11 that there are ways of dealing with it so that it no longer interferes with life causing enough stress to warrant medical treatment?

[broncofan]

I am persuaded that childhood trauma, be it in the home or in war, has long term implications for health. Not sure it can be reduced to a test score, or that problems encountered in adult life are solely the consequence of childhood trauma. And I cannot see a direct link to an individual's DNA. And would not some, perhaps many psychologists suggest to someone still stressed (obsessed?) over an event that happened at the age of 11 that there are ways of dealing with it so that it no longer interferes with life causing enough stress to warrant medical treatment?

Childhood trauma would very likely result in long-term changes in gene expression. I did a quick google search for childhood trauma and epigenetic changes and though I didn't read these specific articles there is an enormous body of developing literature on it. I am not sure whether all of these changes suffered by those experiencing this are the result of changes in gene expression or whether some are mediated directly by neuroplastic effects. For instance, if someone in a war zone develops a startle response that's based in some ways on classical conditioning, if it's related to increased activity in the amygdala, to what extent is that neuroplasticity the result of changes in gene expression? I don't know, but either way, the brain is much more plastic in early life when someone would deal with the exposure than when they try to mitigate its effects.

There is also a great deal of evidence that people with ptsd have reduced hippocampal volumes and long-term increased negative feedback inhibition of the hpa axis that persists decades after exposure. The hippocampus is crucial when it comes to assimilating new information.

It's not that there aren't any ways of dealing with it, it's just that at this point the treatments do not yet mitigate all of the effects. So, the question is, if someone can experience events that make them jump or react with a startle when they hear a car horn twenty years after the exposure, then why could they not experience an effect that would make it difficult to perform well on a single exam like an iq test?